SamF
 
 

My Story, So Far...

My divorce was final. I was twenty years old. I had a job.  I had my home to
pay for.  I had my two children.  I had a car.  And I still had some self-respect.

I finished my shift, that night, and a friend and I went to the bar to
celebrate.  I remember that when I had had eleven drinks...I was counting..I
got up and wobbled unsteadily to the bathroom.  They told me, later, that I had
thrown up and passed out, at the table.

That was my first drink since I had turned fifteen.  I realize now that booze
had always made me feel better.  I could talk.  I could laugh.  My fears
vanished...my worries, too.  I felt like I was a part of the world, instead of
isolated and alone.

I never stopped drinking daily, from that day on.  I also started using drugs,
again.  (I had stopped both alcohol and drugs after a two year run, from 13-15.)

It all blurs together. Blackouts.  Coming to in bad situations. Losing my kids.
Being kicked out of places.  Losing jobs.  I felt like the world was beating me
down, and alcohol was my only friend, my only way of coping.

I learned that morning drinks would calm my nerves and stomach.  But I would be
off and running, again.  Totalled cars. DUI's.  Tickets.  Hospitalized.  Told that
I needed to stop.  (I continued.)  I figured I'd die, this way.

You see, there was fun and laughter, too.  And I loved the sense of relief and
ease. My mind just tore me apart, without it.  My body craved it.  I was full of
fear and self-pity and guilt and remorse.  But I really didn't know.  This was
the only way I could cope with my life.  It seemed normal.

My first big bottom landed me in jail and then in prison.  I sobered up.  I had
an experience with some power greater than myself.  I started to grow and
change, and to seek whatever that power was.  And I stayed clean and sober.  If
I hadn't been locked up, I don't believe that I would have ever stopped.  I got
lots of therapy and help.
 

My second bottom, I drank and used, again.  The next day, sahking and
humiliated, and really lost, inside, I was rescued.  I could remeber my past.  I
was terrified.

I had rank with a vengeance.  And I couldn't stop feeling, this time.  I blacked
out.  I passed out.  I had some more embaraasment, too.  I was really afraid.

Four motnhs later, I was twelve-stepped into AA.

I used to be afraid of drunks...what I termed alcoholics.  I had never been
around a fellowship of sober drunks.  Up to then, I could say that I was an
addict. I began to be able to see that I was also an alcoholic.  It ttok
awhile, but it happened.  And I started to take the steps that they had taken,
the best that I could, at the time.  They told me that I couldn't take them
wrong.

I asked people in the program questions, as I went along.

I progressed through the sixth and seventh steps, and then I waited for God to
relieve me.  I looked at the eight and ninth steps and decided that I had done
all that I could, and went on to ten, eleven and twelve...the best I could do,
at the time.

I got away from meetings.  I began to neglect what program I had.  My thinking
got crazy.  My emotions got crazy.  I was miserable.  When I was afraid that I
would drink again, I went back to AA.

I started over.

For me, today, I know that to drink is to die.  I would be locked up or covered
up. I cannot control the amount that I drink, and I am absolutely unable to
stop, on my own.  When I had tried to get sober, I had been miserable. So, I'd
drink...and it went on, forver.  It took me places that I had never intended to
go.

Today I am learning a new way to live.  I have great hope that I am on the
Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe, one day
at a time.

This is my story, so far.