Читать книгу Young & Sober - Группа авторов - Страница 19

February 1987

My name is K—and I am an alcoholic. I went to my first AA meeting when I was fourteen years old, which means nothing except that I have the disease of alcoholism. Now, almost seventeen years old, I have been sober since March of 1984. The length of time sober is really of no importance to me. I am sober today, and that is how I take my program—one day at a time. I feel that quality of sobriety is more important than quantity.

I am writing this mainly with the hope that fellow AA members will relate to it, no matter how old, how young, or how long sober. We are all in the same boat—alcohol destroyed our lives and we came to AA for help.

I drank three years of my life away—three years of living hell. The three years of drinking are not what brought me to AA. The “hell” is what brought me here, just as it is what brings most of us to AA and to a better way of life.

I just finished reading an article in a 1982 Grapevine, in which the writer stated he was worried about dually addicted members taking over AA meetings; he didn’t feel he could relate to them. Well, I have friends who are dually addicted in this program and I, too, like other members, sometimes don’t relate with their drug usage. But I don’t look down on people who are dually addicted. I try to relate and to be a friend in the same way that they help me—by being friends.

To me it doesn’t matter how we get into AA (thank God it’s here to get into!). It doesn’t matter how much, how little, or how long we drank, just as it doesn’t matter how old or how young we are when we get here. What really matters is that we didn’t control drinking—drinking controlled us.

I have had many older members tell me they are proud of me for being so young and getting into the program. What they don’t realize is that I am just as proud of them. Some say, “You’re lucky you’re young,” and it’s true, I am lucky—not because I am young, but because I have this program to share in fellowship.

K.H.

OBERLIN, KANSAS