Big Sky Guy
03-21-2009, 06:33 PM
Thanks to SS and RXM for hosting a Recovery Forum for Addicts, Drunks and the Like!
Introduction- I will try to keep it to the Cliff Notes :) Haaa! This is a small novel!
My father is a recovering alcoholic. He sobered up in 1981 when I turned 10. I swore I would not be a drunk like him. Little did I know I have an allergy to alcohol and mind and emotions of an addict.
I was always involved in sports (baseball, basketball, track, football) which placed me with a crowd of well liked people, but I always felt like a marginal member of that "in group"...like I was peering in rather than really in (my perception was so messed up. I was the one that felt that way, they didn't feel that way about me)
I appeared to be painfully shy, which is really just a polite way to say I was scared. I found booze at 13 and it changed my world from that night forward. It was like living a black and white life for 13 years and then someone turned on the technicolor!
I chased that illusive feeling for 5 years, with trips to AA at 16 and 17 YO when I really got in trouble a couple times with a near DUI, and once was 12-stepped by a friend of my father's. I remember wondering why this really old guy was sharing his krazy stories with me :lol:
OK, time for College = standard drunkeness and idiocy and a trip to jail for several felonies ... um, well, maybe outpatient counceling, but I don't really have a problem. Wife and I (weren't married at the time and she had pretty much put me in a time-out :lol:) had our first child right in this timefram. Took lots of people to convince me that I needed to go to treatment...which I did mostly because it would look good to the judge.
April 1, 1990 was my first day sober. After treatment...the morning of my sentencing my roommate from college killed 2 other kids on the campus....seconds and inches. If I had been there, it may have been me. Caught my attention, but I was still living in quite the fog of early sobriety. Came back to court about a month later and the judge decided not to lock me up again and I promply slacked off on going to meetings and doing the things that were making early sobriety tolerable. By the end of a few more months of that I was pretty desperate for a drink or to do something different.
Not drinking but wanting to really sucks! I was truly getting desperate. Who would ever think desperation was a gift? I was finally ready to take AA seriously and got a sponsor and and a home group and started to work the steps. Great things started to happen, I started to want to get out of bed in the morning and be a part of life. There have been many setbacks and rough patches, but such is life, whether sober or drunk.
As I started taking different actions, Gen (wife) was able to see that something was changing and we started dating again ... sounds corney, but it was exactly what we needed, to start at friendship. Got married 2 years later, moved and got involved in a new home group, finished up college, had our 2nd kiddo, moved again and got involved in AA and Al-Anon here and God opened some doors and asked some questions about our faith and we answered and have been involved in His Body ever since. So here we are, taking it one day at a time. Helping whoever God puts in our path to help and looking out for those people and situations He sets up to help us.
Blessings on Your Journey! BSG
Introduction- I will try to keep it to the Cliff Notes :) Haaa! This is a small novel!
My father is a recovering alcoholic. He sobered up in 1981 when I turned 10. I swore I would not be a drunk like him. Little did I know I have an allergy to alcohol and mind and emotions of an addict.
I was always involved in sports (baseball, basketball, track, football) which placed me with a crowd of well liked people, but I always felt like a marginal member of that "in group"...like I was peering in rather than really in (my perception was so messed up. I was the one that felt that way, they didn't feel that way about me)
I appeared to be painfully shy, which is really just a polite way to say I was scared. I found booze at 13 and it changed my world from that night forward. It was like living a black and white life for 13 years and then someone turned on the technicolor!
I chased that illusive feeling for 5 years, with trips to AA at 16 and 17 YO when I really got in trouble a couple times with a near DUI, and once was 12-stepped by a friend of my father's. I remember wondering why this really old guy was sharing his krazy stories with me :lol:
OK, time for College = standard drunkeness and idiocy and a trip to jail for several felonies ... um, well, maybe outpatient counceling, but I don't really have a problem. Wife and I (weren't married at the time and she had pretty much put me in a time-out :lol:) had our first child right in this timefram. Took lots of people to convince me that I needed to go to treatment...which I did mostly because it would look good to the judge.
April 1, 1990 was my first day sober. After treatment...the morning of my sentencing my roommate from college killed 2 other kids on the campus....seconds and inches. If I had been there, it may have been me. Caught my attention, but I was still living in quite the fog of early sobriety. Came back to court about a month later and the judge decided not to lock me up again and I promply slacked off on going to meetings and doing the things that were making early sobriety tolerable. By the end of a few more months of that I was pretty desperate for a drink or to do something different.
Not drinking but wanting to really sucks! I was truly getting desperate. Who would ever think desperation was a gift? I was finally ready to take AA seriously and got a sponsor and and a home group and started to work the steps. Great things started to happen, I started to want to get out of bed in the morning and be a part of life. There have been many setbacks and rough patches, but such is life, whether sober or drunk.
As I started taking different actions, Gen (wife) was able to see that something was changing and we started dating again ... sounds corney, but it was exactly what we needed, to start at friendship. Got married 2 years later, moved and got involved in a new home group, finished up college, had our 2nd kiddo, moved again and got involved in AA and Al-Anon here and God opened some doors and asked some questions about our faith and we answered and have been involved in His Body ever since. So here we are, taking it one day at a time. Helping whoever God puts in our path to help and looking out for those people and situations He sets up to help us.
Blessings on Your Journey! BSG