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The day of my home group’s celebration of my second AA birthday, I saved a place at the table for my sponsor, but he arrived a little late and took the last seat in the back of the room. As I started to share, I suddenly realized whom that empty chair beside me was for, and here’s the story I told.

Just before reaching six months of sobriety in AA, I was having a very difficult time with a compulsion to drink. I was not sharing this with anyone and had not yet found a solution to this God problem (my prayers started with: “God, if you exist and give a damn …”). I decided to take a few days off to fish, an activity that usually took my mind off booze. I happened to mention to a friend that I was hungry for catfish but hadn’t found a good place for them in our area. He mentioned a lake near The Dalles, and I headed up there the next day. Having failed to ask for specific directions, I could not find the lake and so took my float-tube out into the Columbia and tried for bass.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t shake the fantasies about drinking and found myself thinking that my problem wasn’t with drinking, it was with my actions while I drank. If I could just figure out a way to drink without hurting myself or others, it would be acceptable to me, and I could lie about it to others.

The next day, I devised a way to get drunk safely. I was in the habit of freezing ice for my cooler in a certain container, and I knew it took about twelve hours to melt. Being an ex-cop, I still had my handcuffs. The plan was to freeze my ’cuff key into the block of ice, along with a sturdy cord. I would then take my booze and beer into the woods, along with a sleeping bag and a chain, which I would fasten around a tree and padlock. Next I would climb the tree and tie the block of ice to a branch. Then I could strip down, throw everything out of reach, climb into the sleeping bag, handcuff myself to the chain, and get drunk. By the time the ice melted and the key fell I would be sober again.

I finalized my plan on a Saturday and intended to implement it the following Wednesday, the exact six-month anniversary of my sobriety. I was very sad and disheartened, but knew that I couldn’t live with the constant obsessions.

The next day, for some reason, I felt compelled to go to my first Sunday morning meeting. After the meeting had started, a man came in and I could tell by the smiles and nods from the regulars that he was known but had not been around in a while.

When he was called on to speak, he stated that he was glad to see everyone again, that he had moved to The Dalles but had decided to drop by for a meeting and to see old friends.

My ears perked up when he mentioned The Dalles, especially since he looked like an outdoors type and therefore might know where the catfish lake was. I figure this might be a “God-shot” (if he existed) and I would talk to the man after the meeting.

He told about going to a meeting the night before in The Dalles, during which a good friend was celebrating six months of sobriety.

“The problem is,” the man said, “my friend somehow got into a bottle between the meeting and home. Before I left to come to Portland this morning I got a phone call—my friend’s young son had just found him dead in bed, apparently choked to death on his own vomit.”

The urge to drink, and my well-laid plans to relapse “safely,” left me at that moment, and I’ve never since had as strong a compulsion, nor made any other plans to get drunk.

It is my sincere hope that some day God (he does exist for me today) reminds some suffering soul of this story. I hope he or she can go to a meeting and look for an empty chair and think about the man whose death kept me sober.

MAX W.

BEAVERTON, OREGON

AUGUST 1992