I didn't start drinking until about five months after my 19th birthday, the other kind, as I was shy and afraid of getting into trouble, as the drinking age in Illinois was 21 back then. I had had been sent to the vice-principal for disciplinary reasons only once in three years at high school, and that was for getting to a class too early, 20 minutes before it was supposed to restart after a split lunch period when the rule said 10. I found myself at a social evening with people a lot older than me at someone's home, with a guaranteed drive back to the dorm, so I had a few beers I was offered. That beer seemed like the solution to most things that seemed wrong with me until then. I was like a guy who often said at meetings that he was born two drinks behind scratch.
Until then, I suspected that I must have some sort of mysterious mental illness that made me somehow different from everyone else. I was a good student but a klutz when it came to actually doing anything including getting along with others socially. I remember another guy who said he had a reverse Midas touch, with everything he touched turning into the brown smelly stuff. With me it was more like the reverse of a magnetic personality, a repellant one. My mother would tell me to be myself, but I didn't know what I was and usually found my efforts to impress people had the reverse effect. I had the stuff often talked about at meetings, feelings of not measuring up, not belonging, not fitting in, not being a part of, oversensitive, self-centered, etc. I wanted to be the center of attention but couldn't stand the spotlight. My head told me I was better than other people and my gut told me I was worthless. I escaped into food, fantasy, daydreams, books, TV, movies and sport. Things like sport got my mind off other problems that haunted me, but then I got obsessed and worried about the sports. I tried a bit of dating on the rare occasions when I got up the guts to ask a girl out, imagining myself marrying her on the first date but soon working out how to get out of it. Just a few years ago I told someone that I would like to get married but wouldn't want to live with anyone. I went to a shrink to try to stop a nervous habit which was getting embarrassing, picking my nose, about a year before I found alcohol. He happened to be a Cuban refugee with a strong accent who made me even more nervous and prescribed tranquilizers, which cost a lot and seemed to do little good as I was silly enough to take them according to directions. I gave up after a few sessions as it was costing me quite a bit and the shrink didn't seem to have much of a clue what was wrong with me and what I could do about it. As I can see now that my mysterious mental illness was alcoholism, I suppose about the only answer before I found alcohol would have been to get into Nose Pickers Anonymous, get a sponsor and start working steps. Still I doubt it would have worked as I still don't have much time up regarding this problem, although it isn't much of a problem now. I drank when I dared until 21, and then became a daily drinker. I only drank for 9 years before getting to AA. It now seems like a small part of my life, as I will be 60 next month. It was not even the worst part, as alcohol seemed to be more of an answer than a problem for most of it, and early sobriety often seemed worse. There are no jails, nut houses, car crashes, the dramatic stuff that sounds good in meetings in my story. There were frequent black outs and a lot of shaking, vomiting and pissing the bed. About the worst thing I can remember doing while drunk was piss my pants while a guy was giving me a ride to a club in Sydney when the pubs closes at ten in 1973, a few months before I got to AA. I hoped the guy who gave me the ride couldn't remember who soiled his car seat. After getting to AA, I would sometimes sit in meetings thinking about what I could do to jazz up my drinking story if I had a slip, as I couldn't talk about pissing the car seat every time. I got to AA to cry on someone's shoulder and try to hang onto my job as a high school teacher. I went to a couple meetings a week and drank every weekend for a couple months before I had my last drink on 14 May 1974. The biggest problem I had after getting to AA, and using meetings and AA people to fill the void when I stopped going to pubs, was that what I was hearing at meetings seemed to verify the idea I had that an alcoholic's problem was alcohol. People would mostly talk about drinking and then about how wonderful their lives were since they stopped. It seemed to me that their problem was alcohol, but stopping drinking didn't seem to solve much for me. I just went off my medication and got back that mysterious mental illness that alcohol seemed to cure when I turned to it. The way I see it now, I took care of my drinking problem when I stopped doing it, although I would clearly have it back, most likely in a worse way that I can't even comprehend, if I drink again. But then, I found that I had a sobriety problem instead of the drinking one that would drive me back to drink if I couldn't do something about it. I was wondering if I was an alcoholic, as sobriety seemed to be more of a new problem than a solution for me, unlike about everyone else in AA, I thought at the time. I think that is often the problem for alcoholics who have trouble getting it. Drinking gets so bad that it drives them to sobriety and then sobriety gets so bad that it drives them back to drink. I recall one of them saying, "I go to meetings when I can, but I don't make it my life." I have found that I do need to make it my life, not all of it, but at least a central core. I could not see that the mysterious mental illness that came back was alcoholism and I actually did belong here. My biggest push in the right direction came when I heard someone on a tape say, "The second and fifth drink are caused by alcohol, but the first is caused by sobriety. It just gets so bad you'vegot to drink." I still wasn't sure if I had a problem with alcohol, particularly after I stopped drinking the stuff, but I was having a hell of a time with sobriety, and I could see that was what I was here for. Our primary purpose is to stay sober, and I needed to find out how to do that. Until then, I thought the purpose of meetings was to remind people not to drink. I was able to start working the steps. The first came when I was able to see that, regardless of my weak drinking story, I could not guarantee my behaviour after the first drink. The second was possible after reading of someone in Came to Believe who came to believe that there was something running things, and it wasn't him. I was able to get onto the third when I stopped waiting for God to whisper in my ear and just resolved to do my best to stay sober, show up when and were I should and try to follow whatever sense of right and wrong I had. I made a mess of the next ones but tried to do them, and that now seems to be what is important, stopping at six when I saw that I wasn't entirely ready to have God remove ALL my defects of character, and I sometimes wonder if I am yet. At least I can see that some of those defects are just defects and have nothing to do with being an alcoholic. After a ten meetings a week phase for about my first three years in AA, including a tape phase when I was trying to shove them down everyone else's throat as well, I went through a professional phase, helping to run a rehab and then got back into teaching, which I found still drove me nuts at times, for most of the time until I moved here to retire two years ago, including 20 years in Japan. For most of my time in sobriety, there has been some problem that seemed to stand between me and real happiness in sobriety. For many years, I thought the perfect job would be the answer. I finally found one that was close to that in Japan. I was teaching English at something like a junior college. I was overpaid, underworked, had long vacations and, aside from boring meetings in Japanese, which I tried to see as free language lessons, most of my "work" consisted of chatting with cute 20 year old girls, something you can get arrested for in a lot of places. But then the problem was getting to English meetings. Since moving here, there seems to be nothing in my way. I hadn't thought retirement would be this nice. I think the main reason I am still sober is that there was never a time when I thought I didn't need AA, and I never stopped working at the stuff that keeps me sane and sober. I had thought that doing that would get easier over time, but I still feel that I need to put about as much into it, although perhaps in different ways, as I ever did, but that is not a problem as I enjoy doing what I'm doing and feel no need to stop or slow down. I think I knew more than I needed to about drinking when I got to AA, but I feel like I am still making "discoveries'' about alcoholism and sobriety now. They are mostly insight into the obvious, but they are meaningful to me. In the last couple years, I have been able to truly live a day at a time, not living for the next weekend or vacation, which often turned out to be a disappointment when it came. I like each day of the week and month of the year about equally and no longer care whether time seems to be passing quickly or slowly. I also feel like I have been restored to a bit of sanity regarding an eating problem I've had most of my life, now eating three honestly sensible meals a day without calories in between(with yesterday being a bit of an exception). I'm down about 60 pounds on what I weighed three years ago to a 40 inch waist. Until recently, I couldn't work out how I could be restored to sanity regarding one problem but still quite nuts regarding another, conning myself with the same rationalizations as I had for drinking. While it is true that nobody gets arrested for fat driving, I realized that it had become a real danger to my health. Still I couldn't take OA seriously. It seemed clear that the first drink or drug did the damage, but I had to eat, and saying it was the second cupcake seemed ridiculous. I can't really say what happened. Perhaps I had been doing the steps long enough to finally get some sanity regarding eating. I am doing the stuff I am doing for what I am like now, not for what I was like 31 years ago when I was drinking. In one meeting here we have been going through a step study guide at a slow pace, taking about the last three months to get through the first step and are about to start on the second. One thing that impressed me is that most of the questions in it are about what I'm like now, and I had thought that at least the first step is mostly about drinking way back then. When I was in Melboune on summer vacation six years ago, I found that there was an old timers meeting on the meetings list. I thought such a meeting would be for sharing problems and experiences relating to long term sobriety, and was disappointed to find that they mostly talked about drinking. I feel that there are problems to deal with at every stage of sobriety. Older members can be tempted to rest on laurels and can sometimes get away with more stuff the shouldn't really be doing. I sometimes feel that I have the answers but don't always take my own advice. After 14 years at a job, it was hard to remember that I still needed God's help. My spiritual insight was a lot better than when I could only believe in the Serenity Prayer, but I now longer had the despiration that made me say that a lot knowing I was screwed if it didn't work. I think that time in sobriety means a lot more than being the first to get up this morning. It that was the case, New Zealanders would have a clear advantage here. But it is also probably true that most who are a month from their last drink would be saner than those a month from their next one. There can be rough patches at any stage, but time in sobriety enables me to understand that to be true, perhaps more experience with warning signs that I could be getting off the road( such as feeling that theyhave become useful warnings lights instead of seeming like problems in themselves), more tools for staying on track. |