so stomp this sucker out right now! Before it does!
Remember the “Good old days” when drinking was fun? Going to the beach with a cooler of beer and then home feeling happy? Skiing and then to the bar to warm up with a couple and then away feeling alive?
Then the disease of alcoholism set in. Going to the beach with a cooler of beer? Finishing it and then drinking the beers of others because your cooler wasn’t big enough?
Not going skiing anymore because you seemed to be falling more and the fun was gone because you were getting hurt every time you tried it?
Explaining to others and yourself your drunk driving arrests by saying “The cops were out just waiting for me?”
Quitting drinking was not hard. “I can quit any time that I want to!” While drinking again, of course. This disease is cunning, baffling, and powerful. And patient!
When you quit drinking, alcoholism is in the parking lot doing pushups waiting for you. It knows you. How many times have you quit before, only to return big time? Finally, you decide to quit quitting because it was easier.
This and more describe me to a T. I did this back-and-forth shuffle for years until I finally became sick and tired of being sick and tired. I didn’t want to live in a constant state of fear, pain, and misery like I was.
No one to turn to because my family feared me and stayed away. I just didn’t know if I wanted to even live at all if it was going to be like this. Suicide became a real option for me. I didn’t know what to do.
My 1st wife and I were both practicing alcoholics. One day, someone from AA came to our home to introduce an option to her that neither of us knew anything about, joining Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had already chugged down a large quantity of alcohol and was quite mellow. They explained to her where they had been, where they were now, and how they got there. I sat at the kitchen table with them to “support her.”
Where once they had been miserable, agonized, and sick, they were now happy, joyous, and free. They told her of an AA meeting that evening near our house and invited her. I was starting to like what I was hearing.
I then told my wife that I would even go to the meeting with her “So you don’t have to go alone.” For some reason that I could not understand, my drinking stopped that day at the kitchen table.
Iwent to the meeting with her that night and that date, September 20, 1976, was the last drink for me. Unfortunately, it was not for her. She died a few years later of very painful cirrhosis of the liver.
Alcoholism wants to kill you in any way that it can. It is not picky. It will accept suicide, one car crash into an abutment or tree, cirrhosis, diabetes, or any of a wide range of death.
SO WHAT CAN YOU DO?
I chose AA to help with my recovery. There are many recovery programs and there are also self-help or religious programs. Maybe as many different ways as there are people looking for an answer.
The important thing to do is to stop drinking. The problem with many is that they think that this is the solution. It is not THE solution. It is only the beginning.
An interesting fact is that of all the 12 Steps of the AA Program, only the first half of the first step mentions anything about alcohol. ALL the rest is devoted to our thinking. It gives new meaning to “Change your thinking, change your life.”
The decision to trade my misery and despair for becoming happy, joyous, and free worked where nothing else had before. I now have a life that a rich man couldn’t buy and a thief can’t steal. Thank you, God!
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