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July 2006

I discovered alcohol at the age of thirteen, then drank as much as I could, as fast as I could, for the next ten years.

I can't stop drinking once I start. So during that time, I found myself in jails in six different states and one intensive care unit, where I almost died of alcohol poisoning at fifteen. They were all alcohol-related incidents.

Before I graduated from high school, I'd wrecked four cars. I drove one into the side of a factory in my hometown of Newton, Iowa. My nickname was "Crash.”

A month after I graduated, I decided to appease my father by joining the Navy to “become a man.” My twenty-eight-month naval career helped introduce me to four of the six states mentioned earlier.

One evening, on the USS Enterprise, I heard someone asking for me. I turned around to see two Masters-At-Arms. They took me into custody and I was charged with possession and distribution of a controlled substance. The court-martial took place when we returned to port in Alameda, California.

I was convicted and celebrated my twentieth birthday in the brig at a place called Treasure Island. In Merle Haggard's song, “Mama Tried,” the lyrics say, “turned twenty-one in prison/doing life without parole/And there's no one for to blam/'cuz Mama tried.” God bless my mom. She had tried!

Give an alcoholic enough rope, and he'll eventually hang himself.” While I awaited discharge, I was caught getting high one night in the barracks.

“You're a drunk, a dope fiend, and a loser,” the commander shouted the next morning, “and I don't want you in my Navy!” Her daddy was an admiral and she meant it.

I was used to that sort of reaction. My own dad had “kicked me out of the family” for being court-martialed. I had sullied his name for the last time. (Today, thanks to AA, we have a peaceable relationship.)

I lasted three more years “out there.” At one point I even moved to Austin, Texas, in an attempt to find my birth mother (I'm an adoptee). If I just find my roots, I won't be such a drunk, I thought. Thank God, I didn't find her at that time.

I came into the rooms for good on an October night in 1987. Stewart, a man who would become my sponsor, invited me to coffee, knowing I was sick and angry. Later, as he drove me to my apartment on Alcatraz Avenue (I'm not kidding), he pointed something out to me that I hope I never forget.

“You know, Larry, it doesn't take a genius to walk out onto their back porch, look up at the stars, and snap to the fact that you, I, or any other human being could not have made all this.” I flashed on a starlit night from my childhood, riding with my parents in our Impala. I felt as if everything was happening very quickly and slowly at the same time. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but had held it in my mind until Stewart said those words.

I laughed in response, and I had not laughed in a very long time. Next day, I asked him to be my sponsor. He said yes and gave me the flashlight and road map to work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alcoholics Anonymous got my attention with the disease concept. All of my drinking life I had been told that I was a drunk and a loser. From the beginning, I accepted my inability to stop drinking once I started. I didn't know my body was physiologically different until I came to AA and heard about the physical allergy, coupled with the mental obsession. Without doubt, this concept saved my life. There's no shame in it.

Which leads me back to my time in the brig at Treasure Island. At different times in my sobriety, I have served as meeting secretary, coffee maker, general service representative, intergroup representative, and been on Hospitals and Institutions (H&I) committees. I believe in one alcoholic, one service commitment.

So, when a guy from H&I said he was going to “TI,” I leapt at the chance to go with him.

My sponsor suggested I wait until I was one year sober and had gone through the Steps before I tried to find my birth mother. I did as he suggested and found her in Austin when I was three years sober, along with the paternal side of my biological family. I met my paternal grandfather shortly after he was paroled after serving twenty years in a Texas maximum-security prison. He died not long after.

On a subsequent visit to Austin, I mentioned him to an old-timer after a meeting. The old-timer replied, “I met your granddad once about twenty years ago, when I took an H&I meeting into Huntsville.” I walked out into the parking lot and bawled. I never knew my grandfather had a taste of AA, and it puzzled me why sobriety had been given to me. But, as granddad said when we met, “I don't need a paternity test to tell you're my grandchild.” Right back at ya, Granddad.

In my fifth year of sobriety, I lived in a monastery in Big Sur, California, working for a famous monk as his liaison. The Rule of St. Benedict states, “Sit in your cell, as in paradise.” Thanks to living one day at a time in AA, I can go anywhere, provided it is on my Father's business, and have access to paradise.

Today, I have a beautiful wife who I met in AA on a Thanksgiving morning, a son, and countless friends, as well as eternal gratitude.

Thank you, AA, for reaffirming my desire to not drink today.

Larry K.F.

Studio City, California