Honest personal accounts by young AA members of what it’s like to get sober at an early age and about the challenges and joys that lie ahead in sobriety.
This collection of personal stories from AA Grapevine focuses on the challenges faced by alcoholics who are young in years—as well as the life-changing sober joys that await them. You’ll discover frank accounts of drinking in the lives of young adults, how they managed to get and stay sober, the impact that practicing the principles of AA has had on their lives, and the challenges and rewards of finally learning to live and to love, one day at a time.
An essential read if you’re young and sober—or thinking about getting sober—this book shows how successful early sobriety can be. As one contributor writes: “To all the young people out there who are unsure, I want to say, ‘Keep coming back, no matter what. Enjoy the gift of sobriety and try to pass it on.’”
Other books published by
AA Grapevine, Inc.
The Language of the Heart (& eBook)
The Best of Bill (& eBook)
Spiritual Awakenings (& eBook)
I Am Responsible: The Hand of AA
The Home Group: Heartbeat of AA (& eBook)
Emotional Sobriety: The Next Frontier (& eBook)
Spiritual Awakenings II (& eBook)
Beginners' Book (& eBook)
Voices of Long-Term Sobriety (& eBook)
A Rabbit Walks into a Bar
Step by Step: Real AAs, Real Recovery (& eBook)
Emotional Sobriety II: The Next Frontier (& eBook)
Young & Sober (& eBook)
Into Action (& eBook)
Happy, Joyous & Free (& eBook)
One on One (& eBook)
The Best of The Grapevine, Vol. 1 (eBook)
No Matter What (& eBook)
In Spanish
El Lenguaje del Corazón
Lo Mejor de Bill (& eBook)
Lo Mejor de La Viña
El Grupo Base: Corazón de AA
In French
Les meilleurs articles de Bill
Le Langage du cœur
Le Groupe d'attache : Le battement du cœur des AA
In Our
Own Words
Stories of Young AAs in Recovery
From the pages of AA Grapevine
AA GRAPEVINE, Inc.
New York, New York
Copyright © 2007 by AA Grapevine, Inc.
475 Riverside Drive
New York, New York 10115
All rights reserved
May not be reprinted in full or in part, except in short passages for purposes of review or comment, without written permission from the publisher.
AA and Alcoholics Anonymous are registered trademarks of AA World Services, Inc.
Steps Copyright © AA World Services, Inc.; reprinted with permission.
ISBN: 978-0-933685-64-2, Mobi: 978-1-938413-33-9, ePub: 978-1-938413-32-2
AA Preamble
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women
who share their experience, strength and hope
with each other that they may solve their common problem
and help others to recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
There are no dues or fees for AA membership;
we are self-supporting through our own contributions.
AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization
or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy,
neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober
and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
©AA Grapevine, Inc.
Contents
Section One: WHAT WE USED TO BE LIKE
Rarely Have We Seen a Person Fail …
My Sneakers Never Looked As Good As Yours
Section Two: WELCOME — YOU ARE NOT ALONE
Section Three: SPONSORSHIP, THE HEART OF AA
The Kid Who Came In from the Cold
Section Four: IT WORKS IF YOU WORK IT
Keep Coming Back — No Matter What
Section Five: FAMILY CONNECTIONS
Section Six: FRIENDS WE HAVEN’T MET YET: Working and Playing with Others
A New Generation of Old-Timers
Section Seven: HAPPY, JOYOUS, AND REAL
The Most Beautiful Word in the English Language
FOREWORD
Getting sober and staying sober isn’t easy at any age. But its starting place is clearly marked: “Recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope,” says one foreword to the book Alcoholics Anonymous. It begins with stories like the ones in this book.
Most of us alcoholics are convinced that we are different, that we are too young or too old, too smart or too savvy to have a problem with drinking; we couldn’t possibly be drunks. But, after hearing other peoples’ stories, we discover that no one is immune to suffering. Others have felt the same soul-searing pain that we have. Others have felt just as desperate, angry, and afraid. After listening to AA members’ stories, we realize that other people understand us. We are not alone. People like us recover. We begin to have hope.
That is what you can find in this volume. A collection of stories by AA members who got sober in their teens, twenties, and early thirties, In Our Own Words not only articulates some of the difficulties faced by alcoholics young in years, but also describes some of the sober joys that await.
The stories in Section One are candid accounts of the drinking lives of ten young alcoholics. Some, like “Wanted” and “Far from Innocent,” depict the dark places that drinking took the writers. Others, like “Ten Minutes of Oneness,” capture the emotional and spiritual ravages that many alcoholics endure.
The stories in Sections Two through Four point to a way out. Talking about how they managed to get and stay sober, the writers describe what happens in meetings, how others have helped them, and the impact that practicing the principles of AA has had on their lives. In Sections Five through Seven, the stories describe what life in recovery can be like. In “Family Connections,” writers reflect on the unexpected ways AA can heal families; in “Friends We Haven’t Met Yet,” AAs discover the unexpected pleasures of helping others; and in “Happy, Joyous, and Real,” they describe the challenges and rewards of finally learning to live and love, one day at a time.
Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Foreword to Third Edition
Haven’t You Had Enough?
AS I SAT IN MY CHAIR and looked around the room, I thought to myself that there was no way I belonged with these people. So what if I drank a little more than my friends? An alcoholic I was not. I was too young.
I started drinking at the age of eleven. When I drank, I became funny and beautiful, and it seemed to me I had friends. But somewhere along the way I crossed an invisible line. And drinking was no longer something I could choose. My friends had begun to say, “Haven’t you had enough?” But as drunk as I was, I had just started.
My self-esteem vanished. I was no one. Only when a guy said I was beautiful, did I even think, “Maybe I’m alright.”
I hated the sight of what I’d become. I started to isolate. I became suicidal. My parents, not knowing that I was drinking, didn’t know what to do with a depressed teenager.
Then I found tequila, and during my last year of drinking, I never drew a sober breath. I drank to the point of no friends and no self-worth. No one could trust me, not even my parents. The next day, I was in a thirty-day treatment program. That day, sobriety began. It was March 21, 1988. I was thirteen years old.
Today, I know who I am. Very proudly in my meetings I announce that I am an alcoholic. I pray daily, even just to ask my Higher Power (whom I choose to call God) to walk with me that day. He has never left me, even when I have left him. I’m active in AA — shaking hands, chairing meetings, making coffee, reading, and sharing my experience, strength, and hope. I try to live the Twelve Steps of AA. I’ve found that they apply to my every situation in life since I still have to learn to live life on life’s terms.
Every one of us in AA is a miracle. The gratitude I have is just to be breathing today … I was so close to dying. And although I have a lot of “yets” out there, I have true friends who love me. All I need to do is call them and go to meetings, work my program, and for today the “yets” won’t come.
So I write this to thank all of you for keeping the AA program strong and giving me a chance to continue my sobriety today.
A. C.
Raleigh, North Carolina
August 1999
Staying in the Momentum
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
I’ve Never Had a Legal Drink
I WAS BROUGHT UP in an alcoholic, dysfunctional home — dysfunctional mostly because I was in it. My father was an active AA member, but in the twenty years he was “on” the program, he never put a year of continuous sobriety together. My mother was a functioning alcoholic who drank every night in the solitude of her bedroom. I lived in a house of fear.
My mother told me if I ever found my dad’s booze to “get rid of it.” So when I found it, I got rid of it: I drank it.
My first drink was on a resentment; at my father for abandoning me every time he chose booze over me, at my mom for making me responsible to fix my dad, at the booze for being so much more important than me, and at God for putting me in this family.
I immediately found out why both of my parents chose booze over reality. I was an instant alcoholic. I drank to oblivion.
My dad sensed the change in me and began promoting AA to me with incentives such as “Hey, there are some young, cute guys in the Fellowship.” Well, my dad was right — those young, cute guys were there. I was able to see that even though AA wasn’t working for my dad, it did work. People were actually staying sober for more than a year. I attended meetings for ninety days, then I got back into life and busy again. I put together a year and a half of not drinking, without the program, and I chose to go back out.
It took only a year for me to find my way back in AA, utterly defeated. This time I got a sponsor who was eighteen and had five years of sobriety (not uncommon). I attended meetings regularly and began to build a spiritual foundation with my Higher Power. I can also utilize my religious teachings, but I always remember that “religion is for people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have been there.”
God has blessed me with the precious gift of sobriety. He has never given me more than I can handle. He has put everything in my life that is good. God is my center of being. Nothing on this earth matters except for my spiritual growth. I have found that God is in me, in you, in all. He has given me the gifts of intuition, intelligence, and love. I don’t live in fear today. I live in the light.
As for my family: my mom found AA after she had her left foot amputated due to her alcoholism. My dad died alone in his condo on his kitchen floor. I found him after he had been dead for three days. I know my dad did not die in vain because he showed me how not to do this program. My mom and I both have over six years of continuous sobriety. We both have a sponsor, we both are in service, we both work our Steps, and we both have found our Higher Power.
This program has broken the alcoholic chain in my family tree. God saved me at a very young age and I can honestly say, “I’ve never had a legal drink in my life.”
I know God must have something very special and very important in store for me to have saved me from so much suffering. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to jails and institutions, tried to kill myself at eighteen, and put myself through hell. Yet there are so many things I didn’t have to do. I reached my bottom when I put the shovel down. My whole life is finally integrated. I do practice these principles in all of my affairs. I’m constantly putting positive information into my brain to record over the “old tapes.” I used to say my mind was my worst enemy, but I now realize my mind is one of my most powerful tools.
I can never repay AA for the life I have today, but it’s my responsibility to give back freely as God directs me and to remain forever humble, honest, open-minded, and willing to do his will.
Pam H.
Garden Grove, California
June 1995
Wanted
FOURTEEN YEARS OLD and two thousand miles from home, I realized something wasn’t right in my life. I had run away from home two months before so that I’d be able to be “on my own.” I found myself in Amarillo, Texas. I’d been running with a gang, but now I found myself on the street. I feared the night. I found food in the dumpsters of restaurants until I learned to steal, and stealing became a way of life. It is the way I acquired my booze, my food, my cigarettes, and my clothing. I lived in the fear that some day I’d be caught. Sometimes I got sick to my stomach just thinking about it. It occurred to me that perhaps my life wasn’t normal, but the thought would soon pass. This was life as I knew it.
I didn’t dream of the day that I’d be a success in a career. Instead, I wanted to go back to the time when drinking was fun, when I could sneak out of the house and return late at night, when drinking didn’t bring me pain. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I wanted a friend again.
In the fall of that year, I was placed in an adolescent facility for teenagers with social problems. It was an intense treatment. Most of those with me were convicted criminals. Though I’d also been guilty of crimes, I’d never been caught. The facility was safe and I liked it there. After three and a half months, they released me with the explanation that they were unable to help me. I was diagnosed an alcoholic and AA was strongly suggested.
At the first meeting I attended, I learned of the love that AAs have for each other. I was made to feel welcome. Unlike other organizations, there were no dues or initiation fees. In fact, I was told not to contribute until I’d been there six weeks. AA was different from anything I’d ever heard of. I was wanted.
It has been over seven years since I took a drink. Life hasn’t been all smooth sailing, but because of AA, I no longer have to live in fear. I sleep at night. I have a new relationship with my Creator. I have a purpose in life.
Shane L.
Mankato, Minnesota
May 1997
The In Crowd
In the early days of my drinking, I acquired a new lifestyle and it came with a new social circle. This is it, I thought. I’ve finally found my way to the In Crowd. I belonged. I was cool. This thought came back to me this morning during my meditation, and I realized what being part of the In Crowd brought me. It made me insecure, indecisive, insensible, intolerable, infantile, inebriated, incarcerated a few times, always insane, and at the end, very incomplete.
Mike M.
Sturgeon Falls, Ontario
August 2003
Give Me Enough Rope
I AM PRESENTLY DOING TIME in a maximum security institution for juveniles. I’m not able to attend any meetings, and I feel the need to share some of my experience, strength, and hope in order to stay sober — and help someone else if I can.
I’m a recovering teenage alcoholic. I started drinking on a regular basis at the age of nine or so. My early childhood was filled with the ugliness of alcoholism. My stepfather drank to excess and then he’d beat my mother and me. I told myself that I wouldn’t end up like that and I meant it. But somewhere I forgot all that pain; I lost it the first time I got drunk.
My first drunk was a blackout, but I do remember that special feeling the whiskey gave me — the feeling that we alcoholics want to recapture time and time again, regardless of the price we pay or the consequences we endure.
My parents were divorced when I was about ten and I went to live with my mother. It was a long divorce, with them getting together for awhile, then things ending up worse than before. I used anything I could get my hands on in order to escape. I started smoking marijuana out of “necessity” because it was much easier to get hold of. But alcohol remained my drug of choice.
At this time, I started stealing “for the fun of it.” I got off on the thrill it gave me. It was another form of escape. I also started getting into trouble with the law and at school.
My mother couldn’t control me anymore, so she sent me to live with my stepfather. Again I was in trouble with the law and at school. My drinking increased and my stepfather finally gave up as well. He took me to court, charging me with being unruly, and thus I was made a ward of the court. I was given the choice of going to a foster home or a group home.
I chose what appeared to be the easier of the two. My foster home was with one of the nicest families I’ve ever met. They were far from rich, but they were full of good old-fashioned love. But alcohol had gotten its hooks in me, and I drank when I could, which wasn’t too often. I remember going for bicycle rides and looking for full cans of beer along the road. I found them! During this time, my mother was institutionalized in a mental hospital due to her drinking, and I felt I was to blame because of my actions when I’d lived with her.
After a year with the foster family, I was given the choice of remaining or moving in with my mother. For the sole reason of alcohol, I chose to live with my mother. I thought it would be my dream come true, but in a short time I found it to be more terrible than anything before. One day my mother “went off” and started throwing everything out of the apartment. The police came and she was taken away, tied down to a stretcher. I felt guilty, so I drank excessively from this point on with little care about anything. I believe this is when I crossed that imaginary line of no return.
I went to live with my grandparents, but they weren’t equipped to deal with me, so I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle. I got in trouble with the law once again and was expelled from school for good this time. I went back to live with my grandparents, for I had nowhere else to go. During this time, I began eliminating things that I thought were causing me to have problems. Of course, alcohol wasn’t one of them. I seemed to think it was others around me, or maybe I was just jinxed when it came to life.
My stay with my grandparents didn’t last too long. One night in a blackout, twelve hours after getting my driver’s license, I took my grandparents’ brand-new customized $16,000 van out for a spin. I was picked up for driving while intoxicated and a long list of other charges. My grandparents gave me a choice: jail for grand theft or a rehabilitation center.
So now I was introduced to the Fellowship of AA. Strange indeed are these folks, I thought to myself. But I could relate. I remember that more than anything else. But ready I was not. My mother was now staying sober with the help of AA, and she told my grandparents to let me run my own course with little interference from them — in other words, give me enough rope to hang myself with. And I did. I kept going on binges every couple of months, each one worse than before. Each time I came closer to death.
On my last drunk, I wrecked my car and killed a close drinking buddy of mine. My world crumbled around me. I saw, at last, the horror of alcoholism. I had a decision to make — either commit suicide or surrender to God and AA.
I will soon be one year sober, one day at a time. I’ve been locked up for eight months now and am going to be released soon, with God’s help. Prison life isn’t easy, but it’s where I had to get sober. I can’t escape myself in here. I have to deal with myself — and the Steps are my keys to freedom.
We can all make it, one day at a time.
Anonymous
Ohio
May 1995
Ten Minutes of Oneness
I’M GRATEFUL I MADE IT TO AA when I was twenty-two years old. I felt at the time that I’d lived forty years of hell. I started drinking when I was thirteen, and I blacked out and got sick right from the start. But the way I felt when the alcohol hit me was worth throwing up for. I remember having ten minutes of complete oneness with the world. I was no longer ugly, stupid, or boring, and I could talk about anything. When I wasn’t drinking, I didn’t quite fit in this world.
In the beginning, my drinking was mostly on the weekends, but when I got to high school, alcohol became a number-one priority. At night (with a fake ID), I went to bars to have “a few drinks” and would end up with strange people in strange places, coming out of a blackout and not knowing where I was, how I got there, what day it was, where my car was, if I had money left in my wallet. Any values I’d been given by my parents were annihilated when I put alcohol in my system. Drinking produced heart-wrenching shame and remorse when I was dry and the insanity of thinking that another drink would make the pain go away.
I came to a place in my life where I didn’t care whether I lived or died. Then what I call miracles started happening in my life. In one of my blackouts, I came to at three o’clock in the morning in my parents’ kitchen; two police officers were sitting at the table with me, explaining that I needed to go to the hospital. I had two black eyes, cuts, and bruises — and had no idea what had happened. There was nobody to take me to the hospital, so the officers went through my parents’ address book and picked out someone’s name and called her and asked her if she could take me. The woman who came was one of our neighbors when I was a child and I hadn’t seen her in years. I was checked out by a doctor and was told I’d be okay, but meanwhile, this lady asked me a few questions about my drinking: Did I think I might have a problem with alcohol? I hadn’t really thought about it, but I did the next day when I woke up sick, with my head pounding, barely able to get out of bed. When I saw my reflection in the mirror, I was horrified since I couldn’t remember what had happened to me. Then suddenly, while I was looking in the mirror, I had my first clear thoughts about drinking: how every time I started drinking, I ended up in trouble, that it was getting worse, and I always ended up drunk.
Through a few other small miracles, I went to my first AA meeting that night. My first reaction was that I was too young to be an alcoholic. I certainly hadn’t lost my family, home, husband, etc. — because I’d never had those things in the first place. I hadn’t been in jail, and I had no drunk-driving arrests — police officers used to escort me home or to a coffee shop.
However, at that first meeting, I listened to a woman sharing about how she felt. I couldn’t believe that someone felt as I did — different, shy, ashamed, full of guilt and remorse. I was terrified in that meeting, but when it was over I realized I had nothing to lose by checking out AA for a while. I was told to go to ninety meetings in ninety days, and if I didn’t like what AA had to offer, I could go back to the misery of my drinking. I was also told not to pick up that first drink because that’s the one that would get me drunk. What a profound statement that was. I thought about it for days, trying to figure it out!
I was full of fear in those first few weeks and wouldn’t raise my hand to speak. I just wanted to go from feeling terrible to feeling bad — a step up at the time. It was suggested I get a sponsor and I thank God I did; I was afraid of the woman I asked, yet at the same time I liked her because she had a sparkle in her eyes. (She still does!) I was able to talk to her and ask questions. Talking to her helped me start sharing myself in meetings.
I came to accept that I was an alcoholic when I was sober about six months. At the time there weren’t many people around who were my age, but fortunately I was taken under the wings of gracious AA members and spoiled with tough love. It’s ten years later and I’m still sober. I’m very active in AA. I don’t think I could ever give back what has been given to me but I try to thank God and AA for this gift in one way or another every day.
My drinking experience also involved the use of other chemicals, but I feel that’s unnecessary to share at AA meetings. When I brought up this “controversy” with my sponsor, she told me to read the Traditions and come to my own conclusion about what was right for me. I love the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I think the more I change, the more I hope the Traditions and principles of AA don’t change. I believe it’s my responsibility to support the Traditions and live the principles. I’m not here to change Alcoholics Anonymous; Alcoholics Anonymous is here to change me. Thank God.
D. W.
San Mateo, California
December 1995
Rarely Have We Seen a Person Fail …
I TOOK MY FIRST REAL DRINK, aside from sips of beer from family members, the summer after eighth grade. I was thirteen years old and baby-sitting with my cousin. She mixed some vodka and orange juice and without even thinking, I began to drink. It was one of those things, like smoking, that I swore I’d never do because I saw how it made my alcoholic family members act and I didn’t want to be like them.
The compulsion began immediately. Suddenly, I was beautiful and smart and funny, and everyone loved me. We continued to drink until we ran out of orange juice. One of us got the bright idea to mix the rest of the vodka with fudge ripple ice cream. The rest of the night is pretty blurry: it was my first time getting drunk and I experienced my first blackout. I later thought that this was normal, since I experienced them nearly every time I drank. All I know for sure is that right away I felt like I couldn’t get enough. I got sick, and the parents came home to me throwing up in their cast-iron skillet on their kitchen table. My cousin told them I had gotten food poisoning, even though I can only imagine how I smelled.
The next morning I woke up sicker than I had ever been before. I had several earrings in my ear that I didn’t have the previous day, and there was some kind of fluid all over my bed. I’m still not sure what it was or where it came from. I was scared and I was sick, but I also felt somehow whole. It was like I had finally found something I’d been looking for all my life. The suicide attempts, the running away, the faking illnesses — none of these had worked for me and I’d been trying them for as long as I could remember. But the alcohol, that was different. I had finally found something that made me feel like I was someone else. Someone better. Not me.
From that point on, I drank and got drunk whenever I could. I stole alcohol from my parents and brought it over to my friends’ houses. I stole it from my friends’ parents and anywhere else I could find it. My friends got tired of the new me pretty quickly, and it’s not hard to understand why. Every time I drank, I got sick and out of control. I was normally a very quiet and shy person, but when I drank I became loud and obnoxious. Eventually, I always ended up in a bathroom somewhere, passed out with my head in the toilet. My teenage years were proving to be very glamorous!
It wasn’t long after I started drinking that I turned to drugs. I used drugs like I drank; whatever I could get, whenever I could get it, as much as I could. I soon began selling drugs to support my addiction. Alcohol was a constant by now and I used it for maintenance. Drugs brought me over the edge when I felt I needed it.
Pretty soon, it all stopped working for me. That feeling of being beautiful and funny and loved was gone. Now I not only felt different and lost when I was not drinking, but the lostness seemed to be magnified when I was under the influence of something. I tried using more and more to get that magical feeling back, but nothing was working anymore. I remember thinking that I knew I had a problem because my life was like an After-School Special about alcoholics and drug addicts.
I had what I guess I would call the usual problems of a teenage alcoholic: I started to get in trouble with the police for things like shoplifting, underage consumption, and trespassing. I drank my way through several sets of friends, always finding new people to hang out with when the old ones got tired of my behavior. I was not fun to be around. I set limits for myself every night on how much I would drink and I always went over. My friends would tell me what I had done or said the next day.
I knew I had a problem and that I couldn’t stop drinking. I’d seen some family members with the same problem. No one had ever said anything about a way to quit, so at seventeen I thought that I was destined to live my life as a drunk. It didn’t much matter to me at this point. I didn’t think I would live that long anyway. I was so depressed that I figured I’d either kill myself in a short time or I’d end up dying in some accident while I was in a blackout. That’s when God stepped in.
It was my senior year and I’d been selling LSD around school. The Friday night that started off my winter break, I was planning on going to a party. I stopped by my parents’ house to get the address, and when I walked in they had this look on their faces like someone had just died. My little brother was sitting in the living room crying. He wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. My parents brought me into the kitchen and told me that a detective had been there looking for me. They asked if I had any idea what he could have wanted with me. Of course, I told them I didn’t. They knew about most of the trouble I had already gotten into, but they really wanted to believe that I was a good person and I played that role in front of them as best as I could.
They told me that the detective hadn’t told them what he was there for, even though I found out later that he had. They brought me into the police station to talk to him. He sat us down and explained to me that a girl I had sold LSD to a few months before had freaked out and gone to the hospital. She’d told the police that I had been the one to sell it to her. I’d been under surveillance for two months. I had been followed everywhere I went and had a tap on my phone. They said they had talked to some of my friends and schoolmates, and they knew that I was the one who had sold LSD to this girl as well as many other people. If anyone decided to press charges, I would be charged with attempted murder.
I remember thinking, “How am I going to get out of this one?” I tried to put a look of disbelief on my face, like I was so innocent I couldn’t believe they were accusing me. It didn’t work. My parents took me home that night and gave me the lecture on how much, once again, I had disappointed them. They searched my room for paraphernalia, then left me alone. I was busted. I felt like my whole world was crumbling down. I knew that I was alone.
I decided to stay clean and sober, because I knew I was going to have to go to court. I had a real incentive this time, and I was actually able to do it, but not without a price. The first week I was clean I lay in bed under the covers and shook. I screamed at anyone who came into my room and at people who weren’t there. The paranoia and fear I felt was overwhelming. I thought I was going to die.
I began to slowly get better, physically anyway. By the time I went back to school, I wasn’t getting sick anymore. The girl who had turned me in ended up being in two of my classes. I hated her more than anything. I thought she was responsible for my pain. I always had to have someone or something else to blame for the way I was feeling, and she was perfect this time.
Somehow, one day in gym class the girl and I ended up running laps next to each other. She had tried to talk to me before, but I’d always ignored her and given her dirty looks. For some reason, that day I heard the words “What’s up?” come out of my mouth, and we started talking. I know today that God was completely responsible for this one. A week later she called me up to ask if I wanted to go to a meeting. I had no idea what she was talking about and she explained to me that she had been able to stay sober by going to AA meetings and working the Twelve Steps. I told her thanks, but no thanks. I was doing just fine on my own.
But that phone call really made me start thinking. Was I doing fine on my own? What about my obsession to go back to drinking and using drugs? The threat of court wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to drink and I didn’t care what the consequences were. I decided to try one of these meetings with her the following week.
I remember very little about my first meeting. They probably had a First Step meeting for me, but all I know for certain is that I cried the whole time. It didn’t matter that everyone else there was much older than me. I finally felt that I had found a place where I belonged.
I drank one more time after this meeting. I told my friends not to tell anyone because I was afraid the people at the meeting would find out. I was ashamed and I knew I was acting like an alcoholic — just like the people at the meeting had described. I didn’t decide then that would be my last time drinking, but from that day to this I have not had to pick up another drink. I know I owe that to AA.
I slowly started going to meetings and slowly started taking the suggestions and working the Steps. I was hardheaded and wanted to do things my way, so it took a long time for me to start feeling really better. Something told me that things were going to be okay if I kept going to meetings and didn’t drink. It was very hard and very painful, but one day at a time I was able to keep coming back until the miracle happened.
When I was about two years sober, I was sitting in a First Step meeting, telling my story, when suddenly I came to believe that getting busted was the best thing that ever happened to me. If it hadn’t been for that, I would never have found the program that I so desperately needed. I had been so resentful over that situation, but now I could be grateful for it. I believe that was my first miracle, and I’ve experienced many since then.
I am now twenty-four years old, and I just celebrated my seven-year anniversary in AA. The only way it’s worked for me is to do what others have done in the past: don’t drink, go to meetings, get a sponsor, and read the Big Book. It can be a very painful process, especially in the beginning and even now, but I’ve been given the tools to get through the pain and get to the gratitude. I’ve been able to see some of the Promises come true in my life, and I truly believe that is a miracle. I was able to get through the rest of high school and college sober. I have a job that I love today and people in my life whom I love. Everything I have I owe to AA. Most important, AA has given me a relationship with God. This has allowed me not only to stay sober one day at a time, but to live a full and meaningful life.
This is an incredible Fellowship and I’m very grateful to be a part of it, although I don’t always feel this way. Sometimes I feel very sorry for myself, because I’m young and I’m an alcoholic and I’m never going to be able to drink again. When I start to think like this, I remember that this is a one-day-at-a-time program and that God has a plan for me. I was brought to this Fellowship at exactly the right time. I drank as much as I needed to get here and felt as much pain as I needed to. I’ve already been fortunate enough to see how my experience as a young person in AA can benefit others. I attend an AA meeting at a treatment center for adolescent girls. So many of these girls tell me that they can relate to me and that maybe AA can help them, too. I don’t know how many of them stay sober once they get out of treatment, but that really doesn’t matter. They help to keep me sober one day at a time, because they help me remember where I was and why I got here when I did.
Thankfully, there isn’t a set amount that we have to drink or certain things that we have to lose for us to become members of this Fellowship. I always remember that “the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.” I know I have this desire, so I will keep coming back.
Jennifer B.
Libertyville, Illinois
July 1999
My Sneakers Never Looked As Good As Yours
ALTHOUGH I ONLY DRANK FOR FIVE YEARS, I am an alcoholic. I was born with this disease and I will die with this disease. Without AA, I would be dead. I am so grateful for this program. It has given me eleven years of sobriety this month. Everything I am is a direct result of God and AA.
When I speak, I talk about my childhood a little, not because I blame anything that happened for my alcoholism. I talk about it because I believe I was born with this disease. Whether I came from a mansion or a cardboard box, I would still be an alcoholic.
As a child I always felt different. I like to say I had a God hole. I was filled with fear. I never felt like I measured up. I always just fell short. I judged my insides by everyone’s outsides. They all looked so happy. I wanted to feel the way they looked. I just didn’t know how to get there.
I come from a loving home. Alcohol was always present, but I wouldn’t consider it an alcoholic home. I was adopted at age three but I was never made to feel different. Yet I was always filled with fear. And that God hole was always there.
The best way I can describe the way I felt is with my sneaker story. When I was a kid, sneakers were a big thing. If you had a cool pair of sneakers, then you were cool. So I would see a cool pair of sneakers on someone and I would go out and get the same pair as they had. But for some reason my sneakers didn’t look as good on me as they did on other people. I was in constant turmoil. If I could have unzipped my skin and crawled out, I would have. I was always searching for a way to feel okay, something that would take the fear away.
I had my first drink at age eleven. I had seen drinking as a kid. I noticed before people started drinking they were quiet. But after a few drinks, they seemed to be happy. I wanted what they had. So a friend and I raided his mother’s liquor cabinet one night. I had a little bit of everything. And then it happened! For the first time in my life, I felt okay. The fear was gone. And my sneakers were as good as everybody else’s, and if they weren’t, it didn’t matter. I could talk to people, I was as good as, and I measured up to. I knew then that I was going to drink whenever I could.
The “Twelve and Twelve” says that “alcohol the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and will to resist its demands.” “Rapacious” means “feeds on living prey.” When I look back, I realize that alcohol robbed me blind. It stole family, opportunities, and finally my desire to live. At the end, I prayed for death.
I became a violent alcoholic. I got in a lot of trouble with the police. At the age of fourteen, I got my first unlicensed DWI. Six months after that I got my second DWI. I got into fights and got locked up in a ten-by-ten holding cell several times. Each time I got locked up, I’d say to myself, “How could this have happened again? This time it was going to be different.” It never was any different. But I believed alcohol took away the fear. I wasn’t prepared to give that up.
The minute I picked up the first drink I no longer had control of how much I would have or what I was going to do. I sat downstairs with my bottle of whiskey like a mad scientist, trying to figure out the right mix so that I could drink normally.
I did what alcohol told me. What choice did I have?
I came around AA for about a year before I got sober. From my first meeting I knew I belonged. I just thought I was too young. People would tell me when I came back in, “You never have to feel this way again.” In December 1987, through the grace of God and AA, I finally believed that in my heart. This program gave me hope even when I didn’t want it. AA people made me feel okay. God filled the God hole. Everything I looked for in a bottle I found in AA.
My life is beautiful today. I stay close to AA. I try to help another alcoholic. I am active in my home group. I got my driver’s license, I turned twenty-one, got married, had a son, and I did it all sober. To all the young people out there who are unsure, I want to say, “Keep coming back, no matter what.” Enjoy the gift of sobriety and try to pass it on.
I would like to close with a line from a prayer I read: “I asked God for all things that I may enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things.”
John L.
Howell, New Jersey
September 1999
Far from Innocent
WHEN I ENTERED ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, I was twenty-one years old. Notice that I did not say “only twenty-one,” but “twenty-one.” I have never heard people say they came in when they were “only forty-eight,” so why should I be any different? Being in AA for over a year now, I have noticed that people respond differently to young AA members than they do to older members of the Fellowship. At meetings, people will say, “It’s so nice to see you young people here tonight!” To this day, I have not heard that said about the older members or the old-timers. Why not? It’s good to see them too, right? It’s nice to see any alcoholic, of any age, on any given night.
Older members tell me how lucky I am that I didn’t have to go through what they did. How do they know what I went through? The circumstances and duration of time might be different, but the emotional hell is the same or similar. The Big Book tells me that one does not have to drink long to be gravely affected, as does my own life experience. Eight years of drinking caused me to give away everything I had, physically and emotionally. My family would no longer speak with me, and by my own doing, I was forced to live on the street. Having no social or employable skills, I stole and panhandled in order to survive. More importantly, though, I lost my dignity, self-respect, and dreams of ever having a fulfilling life. Did I lose enough, or should I have lost more? The only thing I didn’t lose by coming in so young is years of time. If I was so lucky to be here, why didn’t I win the lottery? Luck did not get me here, God did.
Why do people assume that a person is brand-new if he or she is young? A friend of mine, eighteen years old, has over three years of sobriety, yet people constantly treat him as if he is new. In the beginning, the phrase “Keep coming back” was encouraging. Today, it is insulting. If someone says that to me, it is because they have stereotyped me. Maybe people feel that we are not serious about sobriety, but that is a misconception. I take sobriety seriously, but try not to do that with life.
Young people are not “kids”; they are young adults. Many of us come from broken homes and shattered lives and have not been “kids” for many years. Do not judge us by our innocent appearance, for many of us are far from innocent. Do not condescend to us, because we are intelligent and you damage your attempt to be useful. Instead, love us as you would any other member in the family of Alcoholics Anonymous. What we lack in wisdom, we make up in enthusiasm and spirit. If I said I killed someone because I got behind the wheel intoxicated, would you take me seriously then? How old do you have to be to destroy someone else’s life?
Young and old and everything in-between, we are all in this together. Without the older generation, there would have been no one to carry the message to me. Saying thank-you would not be enough, but my appreciation can be shown by carrying the message to the next generation. We are definitely people who normally would not mix, but we are definitely not normal people. Despite our many differences, the harmony in which we get along and coexist is truly amazing.
Young alcoholics are real alcoholics and should not be treated with indifference, but with compassion and understanding. We should not be treated as special cases or with sugar-coated sobriety. Do not pamper us or pinch our cheeks, because we are the same as you. Our suffering and sickness were no different than yours, so why should our recovery be?
Justin W.
St. Petersburg, Florida
March 2003
Fun to Spare
IN THE OCTOBER 1986 GRAPEVINE, a report on the 27th International Conference of Young People in AA contained an apocryphal story about an AA old-timer who happened to be a Texas Ranger. The Ranger, it was told, “sat by himself in the back of the AA meeting room behind a pair of dark sunglasses, with his silver spurs propped up on the table in front of him, and his hundred-dollar cowboy hat tipped back onto his sunburned forehead.
“Well, one day a young fellow showed up at the meeting in pretty bad shape. He was cut and bleeding, and what clothes he had left reeked of alcohol. Some of the older members of the group quickly got to their feet and ushered the ragged newcomer to the front of the room where they began to tell him what AA was all about. After a pretty good earful, the newcomer took a skeptical look around him.
“‘Maybe I’m too young for all this,’ he said. ‘You mean I have to stay away from the first drink, come to these meetings, and never have any more fun?’
“From the back of the room the Texas Ranger’s spurs clanked to the floor like a gunshot. He got up from his seat and a path cleared in front of him as he sidled up to the newcomer. The Ranger bent down, lifted up his sunglasses, and looked straight into the newcomer’s bloodshot eyes.
“‘Son,’ he asked, ‘just how much damned fun can you stand?’”
The Foundation
“How will I know if I’ve really hit my bottom?” I asked at my home group. “When you stop digging,” they told me. The bottom is only the bottom until we find AA. The day we begin working the Steps, the bottom becomes the foundation. By taking action and following the program, we begin to build our lives again.
Bob G.
Chelsea, Michigan
November 2002
I heard my future told around the tables at my home group if I were to keep on going like I was, and I also heard what my future could be if I got sober and stayed that way.
Allen O.
Houston, Texas
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.