I was at my regular Friday night meeting when they did birthday annoucement and asked if anyone was celebrating a birthday for the month of July. Well i raise my hand and when called said that on the 23th I would have 10 years. Quite a milestone, as i sat there I thought back to my bottom, I had a lady friend who was arrested for her 7th DUI and was being sent to prison (BTW she's been in and out ever since). I realized that it was the 14th of July, the last day that I was ever drunk or loaded. The day I hit bottom. I drank 1 beer (Bass Ale) on the 18th and smoked my last pipe load on the 23rd, the same day I signed up for an outpatient treatment program. I attend their opened to the pubic drug education class 1 night a week while waiting to get in the program proper. My main counselor was a man named Jack who had 16 years in AA at the time. The treatment center used the Matrix method of relapse prevention (never understood what that meant) but Jack pushed a 12 step approach and require that we attend meeting. Even though this was pretty much a cupcake program less the 25% of the clients completed it. My orginal thought was that modern science would cure me, I knew almost nothing about the 12 steps and AA just that it was founde by some old drunks back durin the depression.
Before I attended my first meeting I thought that AA was like General Motors and the other program like NA and CA were like Chevrolet and Buick. I was so niave that I thought that when the schuled said that chip night was the last Friday of the month that they had chips and salsa. LOL.
What a long strange trip it's been.

-- Edited by cooncatbob at 19:03, 2006-07-16