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I HAD MY FIRST DRINK when I was eleven years old, and it was wonderful. The first drink did so much for me that I had to have another and another. I was drunk and felt incredible. Up to that point in my life, I’d always been discontented with things, and now I had found the cure. Alcohol made me feel big, important, and content with life. I could feel the alcohol going through my veins, warming the chilly emptiness I always felt.

I started drinking on the weekends whenever I could get the stuff. Not many people wanted to have anything to do with alcohol in middle school, yet by the time I got to high school a lot of people joined in. But I gradually became aware that not everyone drank the way I did. The only thing I could think about was drinking: how much I needed and whom I would drink with. During the week, I was full of anger and stress, so when Friday arrived, I was ready. Others seemed able to get by with or without alcohol, but I had to have it. I couldn’t understand how people could just drink a couple and stop. Putting alcohol into my body was like giving me energy. I came alive.

During high school, I had troubles with the police and with my family. I would be asked, “Do you think you have a problem with alcohol?” And I would quickly say, “No.” The only thing that ran through my mind was what life would be like without the alcohol. I can remember being scared to pick up a date, and how a few drinks before I arrived seemed to help.

By this time there were some people I didn’t enjoy drinking around because they wouldn’t do it the way I did. I began to feel withdrawn the day after drinking. I usually woke up still tipsy, and as that wore off, I became jittery and befogged.

When I was eighteen, I enrolled in college — and found paradise. College will hide a drunk. The only thing on my mind was drinking and rushing a fraternity. The routine was pretty predictable. If I started drinking during the week, I’d drink every day until Sunday night. Sunday nights were when my fraternity held its meetings, plus I had to get in shape for the upcoming week. Usually I could make it until Tuesday before I started again. The worst was experiencing Sunday and Monday without any alcohol. I began to have breathing problems and would wake up thinking my heart had stopped. I was shaking all the time and sweating all over the place. But when I began to drink, the shaking calmed and the breathing problem stopped.

On mornings after drinking, I felt an incredible fear and emptiness. I remember listening to my mother and father on the answering machine and not picking up the receiver because I didn’t want them to know I was in pain. I couldn’t make it to any classes and the responsibilities that I had weren’t being attended to. This was always on my mind and I felt pretty useless. As soon as I started to drink, all these things fell from my shoulders and I was free. I’d be studying and the thought of drinking and the “good feeling” would pop into my mind. Drinking would usually win out, and off I would go. I never thought about the emptiness, fear, shaking, or withdrawal; I could only think of the escape and freedom.

Some mornings I told myself, “Not tonight. Just rest — you need it.” I told myself, “This has got to stop.” Yet I couldn’t say no.

I couldn’t understand how people could do things like play ball before they went out, go hiking on Saturdays, go to the movies, or decide to “take it easy tonight.” I couldn’t understand why people left a tailgate to actually go see the football game.

One semester I was dating this girl and she broke up with me. The emptiness and fear grew to an amazing extreme. I’d been drunk for about a week prior to this and stayed drunk for another week. But alcohol wasn’t freeing me anymore. I was in emotional turmoil, failing at school, and felt like I was going to collapse to the ground and go into convulsions.

I’d known for two years that I had a drinking problem, but I just couldn’t picture my life without the alcohol. Then on February 15, 1992, I was asked once again if I thought I had a problem. This time I said yes and asked for help.

To be honest I really only intended to clean up for a month or so in order to get myself out of the jam I was in and to dry out. When I came into AA, I thought I was different. Then an AA member who was committed to carrying the message came over and told me what it had been like for him. Wow! He had thought and drunk the same way I did. I was sold.

Once I started to feel better and to accumulate some time, I started to question whether or not I was an alcoholic. I’d listen to the stories at speaker meetings and would compare myself out. I hadn’t lost a wife or my family, hadn’t had a heart attack, never beat my kids, never spent a year in jail, didn’t have blackouts every time I drank. And by golly, I wasn’t fifty-five years old!

I was resentful of the people in the meetings who were living life happily without alcohol. I was extremely angry much of the time. I can remember punching walls and having intense arguments.

I’m eternally grateful to a person who took me aside one day and sat me down in front of the Big Book. He talked and I listened. He pointed out “The Doctor’s Opinion,” “There Is a Solution,” and “More About Alcoholism,” then finished with the first paragraph of “We Agnostics.” It is in these chapters that the disease of alcoholism is talked about in great detail. I’d been in AA for over a year and I didn’t even know what an alcoholic really was. I knew that my life was unmanageable because of my drinking, but that was all. I saw that I had three choices: work the program on a daily basis as it was intended, drink, or go insane.

I’ve been given the chance to have choices and live life. I couldn’t have dreamed of having the life I do now. The Big Book is a text and I read it every day. I go to lots of meetings. I get there early and help set up. I stay late and help clean up. I extend my hand as it was extended to me. I hit my knees in the morning and at night. I clean house daily. I use my sponsor. I do the best I can to give away what has been so freely given to me. I’ve been given a second chance and I’m here to be of service.

Action is the key because “self” wants to creep in; “self” is what holds me back today. I must do these actions no matter how I feel or how my day went: had a great day, do the actions; had a bad day, do the actions. These actions keep the momentum going so when tough times come I’m on auto pilot. I give thanks to AA and a power greater than myself for the gift of sobriety today.

Scot G.

Blacksburg, Virginia

August 1995