I shared my story for the first time as the speaker at a meeting last night. I was nervous at first. Who wouldn’t be? When you share your story, you’re bearing your soul – to a room full of people that you don’t know. But there’s magic in those rooms. The people who fill them understand each other in ways that those on the outside simply do not. Once I got started, I fell into an easy cadence and was able to speak with clarity and confidence. ...
Of all the gifts I gave or received this year for Christmas, the greatest gift is my sobriety. I did a calculation yesterday and figured that this was the first Christmas I’d been sober in 27 years. That is not completely accurate, my wife was expecting in 2007 and I know that I didn’t drink on Christmas day that year because we didn’t know when the baby would get here. If Mr. Grey hadn’t been on the way, I certainly would have been drinking. In those 27 years, I there were many when I drank in moderation, perhaps even normally, but in the past 7 there was nothing moderate or normal about my drinking. And my recollections of those Christmases are somewhat foggy. But not this year. This year, I was sober and it was the greatest gift I could have given – to myself, and to my family. ...
Today marks three months since I traded in my drinking shoes for a pair of sober boots. “It’s taken me a long time to get here." That’s what I said when I introduced myself at the first meeting. In fact, it’s all I said. Defeated, I was surrendering. My healing began that day, though I didn’t know or recognize it. I have been fortunate in my recovery, I’ve undergone trans-formative healing in a short period of time. Others have told me that it took years for them to see the progress I’ve made in a few short months. ...
surrender |səˈrendər| verb [ no obj. ] cease resistance to an enemy or opponent In the United States, we live in a culture of winners and losers. Our heroes are sports personalities, celebrities, the military, and super-heroes. Our culture teaches us to be self-reliant and to “never give up,” to “fight the good fight,” and to “win.” Surrender is antithetical to our national identity and is not part of our national lexicon. Only the weak surrender. Surrender is never part of the plan. ...
In the fall of 1992 I’d just declared my major in English and was taking a few literature classes as well as a 200 level poetry writing class. I wrote the following poem about my grandfather and his battle with the bottle. Little did I know that 20 years on, I’d be struggling with the same problem. ...
Two months ago today, I walked into the old sanctuary on the grounds of a local Presbyterian church. The worn but functional building is no longer the main place of worship and now serves as a meeting place for a variety of groups and activities. I was there for the Wake Up East meeting of AA. I’ll never be able to fully express the sheer terror that I felt as I sat there, defeated and worn out like the floorboards of that hall that are covered in places with blue masking tape. I knew that I’d reached the end of the line. As I sat there before the meeting started I felt completely alone. I was no longer willing to hang on to the idea that I might be able to moderate my drinking. The past several years had already proven the impossibility of that plan. I was starting to accept that reality. And still, abstinence seemed impossible. ...
I grew up in the country and spent my formative years close to the land. Everyone I knew hunted and fished. Friends lived on farms and had livestock and horses. After school and on weekends, my time was spent outside, usually with a bb gun and a pair of boots. Farms were a big part of life. It felt like everyone had a pickup, usually with a gun rack in the window. My first jobs were on farms — bailing hay, painting barns, painting fences with creosote, splitting wood, and shoveling shit. The woman I lost my virginity to lived on a pig farm. ...
Yesterday, after a couple of days of agonizing debates between the committee members in my head, I changed my handles on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. After I started posting about going to an AA meeting publicly on this blog, I began to have some misgivings. These misgivings are rooted in two things: a sense of self-protection and the debate around anonymity in recovery. I’m really new to this and I don’t know how people will react – although the cat is out of the bag for the most part. ...
After going to that AA meeting on the 23rd of September, I decided that I needed to commit myself to sobriety. I knew that this meant getting past my angst with the first step. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. See, I truly didn't believe that I was powerless over alcohol. And I was positive that my life was not unmanageable. As I mentioned in my last post, I had not lost anything. I wasn't "at the bottom." I still had my wife, my house, my car, my job, my son. I had everything....
I haven’t written about this yet for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t put any artificial time limits on myself – I didn’t want to declare that I was taking a 30/60/90 day break from booze. Secondly, I wanted to see how this worked out. Finally, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. I’ve learned that I don’t have to be ashamed because I’m taking positive action to make my life better. I’d been suffering for a long, long time and I secretly knew it was time for a change, but I couldn’t bring myself to make the change. On September 21 of this year, I woke up full of regret. The night before, I’d had several glasses of bourbon, several beers and half a bottle of wine. I didn’t count my drinks anymore, but I knew it was a lot. The recycling told the story. I was fuzzy on the details of the night before, but I knew we’d had some family over for dinner that I’d cooked and I was reasonably sure that we’d had a good time, that I hadn’t been an overt ass or hurt anyone, and I didn’t burn dinner. I may have served steak that was so rare it was blue in the middle though. ...