Hi, I'm David, and I am an alcoholic.
After thirty-two years of alcoholic drinking, I had my second DUI in five years. The judge said I was an alcoholic, but didn't mention A.A. Instead, he said the law gave him no choice but to give me my first felony, a year in jail, and take away my license for four years. I couldn't remember having more than two drinks and pleaded innocent.
California law was such that you can be arrested for drunk driving if you drink only two drinks an hour or get picked up within an hour after your last drink. I considered that to be nursing drinks, and I never did. I worked typically swing shift, and when I got off work at midnight I would drink six drinks or more by 2 in the morning when the bars closed. On a typical day I would drink twenty or more drinks. To me the idea was to get as drunk as I could as fast as I could and stay that way because it was the only way I could accept the problems I was having.
I knew I had to either quit, drink only at home, or find a way to get to bars without driving. I refused to drink at home because my father and stepfather did and I saw the damage it did, and refused to be part of it. The idea of depending on others to take me to bars was unappealing because I did a lot of bar hopping and couldn't stay in one place very long. So I told my younger brother I thought I needed to quit drinking but didn't think I could. He was going to Alanon, asked me to go to meetings with him, and gave me the Big Book and Twelve By Twelve to read.
At first, I treated them like all the other self-help books I had. Finally, one night I got off work at midnight, closed the bar up at 2, and read the first 164 pages of the Big Book and Doctor Bob's story while I waited for the bars to open at 6. I didn't understand it all but I got the message. If I wanted to quit drinking I had to start cleaning house, get on the twenty-four hour program as I cleaned house, and help other alcoholics stay sober. I didn't relate to everything Bill and Doctor Bob did. In fact, as far as I could see I was never a monster when I drank. I was mean and unsociable when sober, and drinking seemed to mellow me out and make me more sociable and loveable. I related enough to the description of the alcoholic in chapter 3 and 8 to get the point. I was a real alcoholic, drinking was making my life unmanageable, and I was unable to control the urge to drink on my own power.
After four hours, I did the first three steps and turned it over. Step four and nine reminded me of the inventory and amends I had to make when I quit smoking from over three packs a day nine months earlier. The stop-smoking program had me set a quit date two weeks into the future without trying to quit smoking until then. In the meantime, I had to take inventory and write down when I had a cigarette, what I was doing, what was happening, how I felt, and how I reacted. At the same time, I had to research the health problems associated with smoking and find out as much as I could about what withdrawal symptoms I could expect and how to handle them. I had my last cigarette on May 15, 1986 and then they made me make amends to people I offended and pay for any damages I did, like burning holes in furniture or clothing. There were no twelve-step lists to indicate they were using the A.A. program and I knew nothing about A.A., but that's ok. A.A. offers nothing new and gets all of its principles from external sources.
Alcoholics in Alanon meetings were telling me it was harder for them to quit smoking, and it gave me hope. For the next two weeks I took inventory. The difference this time was that I stopped every two hours instead of just when I drank, put down everything instead of just what seemed to be related with my drinking, and meditated when I stopped. I didn't try to stop drinking because I had tried before without success. Besides, the Big Book said on page 85 that if I maintained a fit spiritual condition through personal reflection, meditation, and prayer I would lose the urge to drink automatically without swearing off.
I had my last drink on February 14, 1986, did the sixth, seventh, and eighth steps, and asked God to forgive me and give me wisdom and courage to make things right. That day, I did what Doctor Bob did, "took the bull by the horns," and began making amends. I didn't take off work, but within a week I had most of them done or started. Then my brother invited me to breakfast to do the fifth step and celebrate. The breakfast turned out to be my first A.A. meeting – a breakfast-chip-speaker meeting in Sunnyvale,
California. The temporary sponsor they gave me told me to read the first 17 pages of the Big Book and promised to start taking me through the steps the following week by reading the Big Book with me an hour a week. I had already read the entire Big Book and had done or started most of my amends, and I had only been sober a week. I had no one to help me read the Big Book and didn't see a time table for taking the steps. I did it the way I thought Doctor Bob did it, and didn't have anybody telling me it was being done differently nowadays.
I continued making amends and using the twenty-four hour program.
Within a month, I found myself helping other alcoholics stay sober the same way I did, one day at a time, cleaning house and using the twenty-four hour program at the same time.
I had 90 days of sobriety by the time I had my court trial. I fearfully changed my plea to guilty and showed the judge my A.A. birthday chips. To my surprise, he said I was the first smart person he had talked with all morning. My felony was reduced to a misdemeanor. Instead of a year in jail I only got ten days in jail. Instead of losing my licenses for four years he restricted it for a year and allowed me to continue driving for work. I was put on three years probation and fined over $2,000, which is a lot of money when you only make $8.25 an hour like I did. My car insurance doubled for five years, and I never had any car insurance before.
In addition, I had to spend every Saturday for a year in a driver/alcohol program. The condition was that if I missed a class, was late, or went in under the influence of alcohol or drugs I would go to jail for a year and have to do the class over under the same condition. It was supposed to be a second-offender class, which would have cost more money, but the paperwork got mixed up and it was listed only as a first-offender class. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was getting a lucky break and mix-ups in paper work were turning out in my favor. It was also the first time in my adult life I had ever went a whole year without being sick.
Speaking of being sick, six years earlier I had been put on full disability
with heart problems, severe cervical arthritis, ulcers, liver problems, and nerves. Only a year earlier, doctors told me my health problems had reached their final stages, were irreversible, and I wouldn't live another two years.
That was 14 years ago. The twenty-four hour program not only helped me lose the urge to drink automatically without swearing off but helped me resolve other addictive and lifestyle problems without having to take time away from A.A. meetings and go to other twelve-step groups. As a result, two years ago doctors told me they couldn't find anything wrong with me that I "couldn't live with." The biggest challenge has been learning to live with them and do the best I can in spite of them.
Many try to say I probably wasn't a real alcoholic or it wouldn't have been so easy for me to quit drinking.
Let's put it this way: medical authorities say anybody can become a real alcoholic after only two years of binge drinking and needing two or more drinks back to back. I didn't start until I was 18, but by the time I was twenty I was already in institutions over it, or at least the military version of institutions, when I found myself in the psycho ward being discharged early. I really wanted to make the service a career, and was a take-charge kind of guy. But when it came to drinking I had absolutely no control at all.
Five years later, I managed to drink myself out of a good career with the Post Office. By then I was drinking twenty or more drinks a day, every day. A typical day found me working or drinking in bars and trying to survive on only two or three hours of sleep a day and one meal a day – usually a hamburger, hotdog,
omelet, or some other cheap food. I just told you about the health problems it
caused. It didn't ruin my marriages, but it caused me to marry "lower" types who drank more than I did and got into trouble that I was responsible for. In other words, it messed up my instincts royally, if I had any in the first place. My IQ was high enough that I should have been able to do whatever I wanted and be successful at it.
Although most people can become real alcoholics within two years, they will not believe they are real alcoholics and have to be pretty badly mangled before they will turn it over. I was no exception.
It took years to heal my body, but I'm finally off medication -- including heart pills. It also took a long to completely make all my amends, and I have been unable to make some of them. But I would if I could. I drank a lot in blackouts, and still find myself adding to my original amends list when someone at a meeting tells their story and reminds me of something I did but "forgot" about.
In 2002 I will celebrate fifteen years without a relapse. I know I will because the urge to drink has been removed. I have passing thoughts now and then because I'm alcoholic, but they are not strong and can't be classified as urges. As long as I maintain a fit spiritual condition with the twenty-four hour program of daily meditation and reflection and continue to clean house when my inventory discloses that it is needed, I have faith that I never have to worry about a relapse. I may never be able to drink again, but that's tough. And who cares? I certainly don't and neither do my real friends or family members.
