Expertise:  Greetings to you! Having permanently recovered from chronic alcoholism by “taking The Steps” the original A.A. way, I now understand what makes people “tick”. I can explain the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic’s inherent condition, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required in order to truly recover. Beginning in 1981, I have spent a great amount of time studying “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, as if my very own life depended upon doing so, and it did, and I have spent nearly an equal amount of time listening and sharing in many thousands of fellowship meetings. I am often able to “read between the lines” and help others to see things not always immediately obvious, and I can usually draw from my own experience while tying everything back to the beginning of personal recovery: One-to-one sharing at Step One.
The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had “no effective mental defense against the first drink” (“Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, page 43), and I took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done: it had seemingly “fixed” something inside me I had not even known was broken. Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning very much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that might ever come along. At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the risks of continuing to drink had become too glaring for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive the drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as I had in days past, but something had seemingly “taken over” my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while scared-to-death over the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said or thought or did even only “one day at a time”, I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I quit and stay sober for long at all ... and such is the physical “allergy” (where one drink takes another) coupled with the mental-emotional obsession for the soothing effect of alcohol that eventually kills most chronic alcoholics ... ... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma – my powerlessness – and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I “could not drink even if [I] would” (“Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.