One day I was this happy little hippy, complete with flowers in her hair.(seriously). I went to love ins at Irvine Park, CA. I went to Venice, CA. and got high for the first time. I was 16 and married. I stayed high on drugs, off and on, for the next few years. Then I found methamphetamine, and spun on that until I was in my early twenties. I ended up in a drug treatment center in Eureka, called Crossroads. After several months there, I came home. My best friend and I decided that alcohol wasn't like drugs, so it was okay to drink. Within less that a year, I was in detox for the first time. I gave birth to a daughter who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, and is now in prison for murdering her drug dealer. She never developed the understanding of consequences. After her birth, her father took her away. The other three children I placed with family members before cps did it for me. I drank thru 3 husbands. The only reason I was not on the street was because my dad paid my rent. I got general aide from the welfare department. I lived in a little trailer in the woods, and just kept drinking. I drank until I was lemon yellow, my liver distended so far I had to wear maternity cloths. I wasn't a cute little hippy anymore. My hair was falling out. I was bloated. I was in the hospital so much with bleeding, that my doctor and parents were trying to make a decision to have me institutionalized. I was 29 years old, and looked 49. I had gone to a few meetings after leaving the hospital, but couldn't stay sober more than a few days. It was a cycle--I drank until I hemoraged, the hospital would get me healthy physically, I'd get released, go to a few meetings, and within a week I'd be drunk again. I ran around with psychopaths. I'd prostitute myself to get enough $ to drink. I woke up in places I had no rememberance of getting to. And I didn't care. I really didn't care. I was just waiting to finally make a last trip and die in the damned hospital, and I was alright with that. And one day, I vaguely remember a fight with the woman who would one day be my sponsor, over the phone. I left the trailer, intending to hitchhike to Chico, to drink with my best friend. I woke up in a phone booth. I had to look at the phone book to find out where I was. Stockton, the most nasty place I could have chosen. For reasons I don't know to this day, I called the local mission. They tried to help me sober up, but the DTs got so bad, they sent me to a detox. This detox offered a 3 month program. My family told me not to come back. They couldnt stand watching me die. There was nothing at all left for me to lose. I went into the program so that I would have a place to live while I decided where I really wanted to go. I didn't go in it to find out about sobriety. And then, for the first time since I was sixteen, barring my first three pregnancies, I had three whole months without a chemical in my body. I don't know what grabbed me, I don't understand why--only that I began to see. I began to want. I lived in Stockton after I was released, went to work in an alano club as a cook, and rented a travel trailer. I went back to Paradise to get my car, and from then on, traveled back and forth, and went to a meeting nearly every single night for more months than I can count. I worked the Steps to the letter,linked up with a sponsor, and had a "co sponsor" in stockton, and learned to use the Steps in all areas of my life, daily. I could add alot of stomach churning details to this story, but it wouldn't change anything. I found myself doing whatever I was told to do, and it was a few years before I really could grasp the Spirituality of the program. My brain was so so foggy.(aka: fried)

And the years built up, I went back to school when my brain and body were ready. I still have residual health issues to deal with, but when I look back? There is nothing I cannot deal with sober. I could not have dealt with them drunk, if I'd lived long enough to have to. I now have a relationship with all my boys. I am incredibly close to my parents again.I am married, own a home---things I never ever thought I would have, let alone be worthy of. I'm not laying under some stranger anymore to get food in the house or buy booze with. I wake up every single morning, and I know where I am, and I look out my windows, and I see, and I can make plans and know that they'll actually happen. I can make friends now, and not chase them away with my anger and abuse. I can love now. I can love others, I can love myself. I have been given the gift of life through 12 simple steps, the people of AA, and my Higher Power. I will always be here, always, for the suffering alcoholic. Nobody gave up on me, and I will release, with love, when it's necessary but will never ever turn my back to them. Because unworthy as I was, nobody turned their backs on me. I'm really alive, and I can really love, and to me that's a daily miracle, a gift that still rocks me.

And just think, this is the condensed version.....with love, Wren