So I was thinking the other day- my dad wasn't an alcoholic. My mom showed some really serious alcohol issues when I was a kid but doesn't really now, both grandpas died drunks. Anyhow- I think to me alcohol always was about a party- festivity. I remember going to company dinners and being disappointed that everyone wasn't tieing one on. I always hated that, from day one- to me going to a party or company dinner was supposed to be an axcuse to get hammered. I think maybe it goes back to these parties my mom used to have, and there would be a gallon of red and a gallon of white Ernest and Julio Gallo and a bunch of beer, just to get things going. My mom would work all afternoon to get bthe house ready and then when she was done- usually like a half hour before the guests were to arrive- she'd sit down and have a big glass of wine.
I don't know, but I think drinking has always been- at it's root- about festivity to me.
Even when I was just 15 I drank it all until it was gone. That's what I'd seen, so that's what I thought you did. I never did drink just one or two- if you were going to drink then you drank to get drunk, in my world.
If I were to drink, I'd drink until I passed out. The party wasn't over til the booze was gone, and I always made sure there was enough booze. If we left a party before it was over I'd grab some beer on the way home and drink myself to sleep at home.
I worked a shrimp boat in Port Lavaca, and was pretty close to the Capt. We'd been through a few serious situations out there on the boat, had a good measure of each other. So I opened up about stuff, that I had never really discussed with anyone, being the oak that I was. I was in the wheelhouse between a haul, bitching about the troubles I was having with my wife and in-laws, regarding alcohol of course. He stopped me cold in mid sentence, looked me square in the eye, and said, "Why don't you just stop." Somehow, that just cut through everything. I was literally speachless. Just no answer.
A day or so later, I approached mom in law, with my last beer, held it up, and told her if this beer wasn't still sitting on my shelf, I would just fess up I wasn't capable of raising a family and would be out of there greyhound. It had boiled down to that, and I was serious as a heart attack. We'd been through a lot.
When I hoofed it down to the store, and finished another twelve pack that night, I did not touch the beer I showed her. A month or so later I had run over someone again, and was not welcome back when I got out of jail.
I had wrote and told my mom, sitting in that jail, how I was cured of drinking. She wrote me back, and informed me about issues and dry drunks. I didn't appreciate that much. My head was up my ass looking at all my issues the last few years of drinking over that. Not fun.
Oh, and when I got out, I walked my cured ass home in my bob barker jail house sandals to say goodbye to the wife and kid, while I waited on a bubby coming to drag my carcass back to Houston, I got on my bike, peddled my cured ass down to the store and wrote a hot check for a twelve pack. By the time he got there, it was gone, we got a couple more for the road.
I said goodbye to the wife and kid 10 feet tall, bulletproof, drunk, and now homeless again, still sure I was gonna prove how in charge I was in the end. All a big adventure after all.
Forward a year and a half. My sister had taken custody of my daughter, wife crapped out, I had moved up here to be close to her, get back into roofing. I could at least be near my family, and worked and payed child support, so I had settled into my new low and it worked for a while.
The kid was to have a surgery to correct an eye problem, it was saturday morning, so I had a couple 30 packs in the fridge. I figured to fry us up some chicken for the ride to Little Rock. So while I'm doing that, since I'm such a swell feller, why don't I just have a beer while I'm at it. When they showed up for me, I had already passed out, about ten in the morning.
It still cuts me deep, my mom telling me that afternoon how my sister cried all the way to the hospital with my daughter. I threw the phone into the street, smashed some furniture, dug into the next 30 pack.
I still had another year or so to go. Got my wife back, had our second daughter, lost her, ran the wife back to Texas. But I could work like the devil, and no one had a damned thing to tell me, because they hadn't walked in my shoes. What does it take to get it through our thick goddamned skulls? The damned party had ended years ago. Unmanageability. So damned full of ourselves, wielding self righteousness like a damned shield against the very Grace that would save us.
I think that's what it takes, for some of us. To grow up and recognize what really matters in life, and having recognized it, go on to loose it despite our best efforts.
It doesn't really matter where or why it started.........It is that by those little steps the "grace" somehow seeped through the mighty sheild and infiltrated. Little by little it has brought with it the many benefits of the program, to you two, as many others. Whatever, one's struggling with it is in accepting the grace......the struggle becomes increasingly easier and life seems to run much smoother. "Amazing Grace".......what profound meaning in the words of the song and so often are overlooked and never understood or comprehended. Through your experiences may others do the same.
I have discussed possible alcoholic family members with my mother. There are none she can come up with. Neither of my parents drank, not even socially. Had a grandmother that loved a Pabst Blue Ribbon, but only one and only on Friday night!
The very first time I planned out a night of drinking with friends, I got hammered. I was 13. My high school years were spent working on who was gonna score the booze for the weekend. I moved out on my own at 17 so I could 'party' whenever I wanted, not just on weekends. By the time I was in my 20's, EVERY event was wrapped around alcohol....Going to the lake meant stocking up on beer. Going to a dinner party meant having to buy several bottles of 'nice wine'. Girls night out consisted of only the clubs where ladies drank free. I only dated guys that didn't care how drunk I got and always paid for my booze & were so willing to buy more......concerts, holidays, birthdays (mine and others), long work week, hectic work week, wonderful day at work - all reasons to drink!...before I knew it, I no longer needed a reason, I just drank!
Today, I so identify with the BB story "Because I'm an Alcoholic" 4th ed. pp 338 - ".....my real life seemed just out of reach. I wanted to consider myself grown up, but inside I felt small and helpless, hardly there at all. I would look at my friends-delightful, interesting, good people-and try to define myself through them." .....I am grateful that God allowed me to become an alcoholic, and then blessed me with AA.
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Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.
