able to see that even though AA wasn’t working for my dad, it did work. People were actually staying sober for more than a year. I attended meetings for ninety days, then I got back into life and busy again. I put together a year and a half of not drinking, without the program, and I chose to go back out.
It took only a year for me to find my way back in AA, utterly defeated. This time I got a sponsor who was eighteen and had five years of sobriety (not uncommon). I attended meetings regularly and began to build a spiritual foundation with my Higher Power. I can also utilize my religious teachings, but I always remember that “religion is for people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have been there.”
God has blessed me with the precious gift of sobriety. He has never given me more than I can handle. He has put everything in my life that is good. God is my center of being. Nothing on this earth matters except for my spiritual growth. I have found that God is in me, in you, in all. He has given me the gifts of intuition, intelligence, and love. I don’t live in fear today. I live in the light.
As for my family: my mom found AA after she had her left foot amputated due to her alcoholism. My dad died alone in his condo on his kitchen floor. I found him after he had been dead for three days. I know my dad did not die in vain because he showed me how not to do this program. My mom and I both have over six years of continuous sobriety. We both have a sponsor, we both are in service, we both work our Steps, and we both have found our Higher Power.
This program has broken the alcoholic chain in my family tree. God saved me at a very young age and I can honestly say, “I’ve never had a legal drink in my life.”
I know God must have something very special and very important in store for me to have saved me from so much suffering. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to jails and institutions, tried to kill myself at eighteen, and put myself through hell. Yet there are so many things I didn’t have to do. I reached my bottom when I put the shovel down. My whole life is finally integrated. I do practice these principles in all of my affairs. I’m constantly putting positive information into my brain to record over the “old tapes.” I used to say my mind was my worst enemy, but I now realize my mind is one of my most powerful tools.
I can never repay AA for the life I have today, but it’s my responsibility to give back freely as God directs me and to remain forever humble, honest, open-minded, and willing to do his will.
Pam H.
Garden Grove, California
June 1995
Wanted
FOURTEEN YEARS OLD and two thousand miles from home, I realized something wasn’t right in my life. I had run away from home two months before so that I’d be able to be “on my own.” I found myself in Amarillo, Texas. I’d been running with a gang, but now I found myself on the street. I feared the night. I found food in the dumpsters of restaurants until I learned to steal, and stealing became a way of life. It is the way I acquired my booze, my food, my cigarettes, and my clothing. I lived in the fear that some day I’d be caught. Sometimes I got sick to my stomach just thinking about it. It occurred to me that perhaps my life wasn’t normal, but the thought would soon pass. This was life as I knew it.
I didn’t dream of the day that I’d be a success in a career. Instead, I wanted to go back to the time when drinking was fun, when I could sneak out of the house and return late at night, when drinking didn’t bring me pain. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I wanted a friend again.
In the fall of that year, I was placed in an adolescent facility for teenagers with social problems. It was an intense treatment. Most of those with me were convicted criminals. Though I’d also been guilty of crimes, I’d never been caught. The facility was safe and I liked it there. After three and a half months, they released me with the explanation that they were unable to help me. I was diagnosed an alcoholic and AA was strongly suggested.
At the first meeting I attended, I learned of the love that AAs have for each other. I was made to feel welcome. Unlike other organizations, there were no dues or initiation fees. In fact, I was told not to contribute until I’d been there six weeks. AA was different from anything I’d ever heard of. I was wanted.
It has been over seven years since I took a drink. Life hasn’t been all smooth sailing, but because of AA, I no longer have to live in fear. I sleep at night. I have a new relationship with my Creator. I have a purpose in life.
Shane L.
Mankato, Minnesota
May 1997
The In Crowd
In the early days of my drinking, I acquired a new lifestyle and it came with a new social circle. This is it, I thought. I’ve finally found my way to the In Crowd. I belonged. I was cool. This thought came back to me this morning during my meditation, and I realized what being part of the In Crowd brought me. It made me insecure, indecisive, insensible, intolerable, infantile, inebriated, incarcerated a few times, always insane, and at the end, very incomplete.
Mike M.
Sturgeon Falls, Ontario
August 2003
Give Me Enough Rope
I AM PRESENTLY DOING TIME in a maximum security institution for juveniles. I’m not able to attend any meetings, and I feel the need to share some of my experience, strength, and hope in order to stay sober — and help someone else if I can.
I’m a recovering teenage alcoholic. I started drinking on a regular basis at the age of nine or so. My early childhood was filled with the ugliness of alcoholism. My stepfather drank to excess and then he’d beat my mother and me. I told myself that I wouldn’t end up like that and I meant it. But somewhere I forgot all that pain; I lost it the first time I got drunk.
My first drunk was a blackout, but I do remember that special feeling the whiskey gave me — the feeling that we alcoholics want to recapture time and time again, regardless of the price we pay or the consequences we endure.
My parents were divorced when I was about ten and I went to live with my mother. It was a long divorce, with them getting together for awhile, then things ending up worse than before. I used anything I could get my hands on in order to escape. I started smoking marijuana out of “necessity” because it was much easier to get hold of. But alcohol remained my drug of choice.
At this time, I started stealing “for the fun of it.” I got off on the thrill it gave me. It was another form of escape. I also started getting into trouble with the law and at school.
My mother couldn’t control me anymore, so she sent me to live with my stepfather. Again I was in trouble with the law and at school. My drinking increased and my stepfather finally gave up as well. He took me to court, charging me with being unruly, and thus I was made a ward of the court. I was given the choice of going to a foster home or a group home.
I chose what appeared to be the easier of the two. My foster home was with one of the nicest families I’ve ever met. They were far from rich, but they were full of good old-fashioned love. But alcohol had gotten its hooks in me, and I drank when I could, which wasn’t too often. I remember going for bicycle rides and looking for full cans of beer along the road. I found them! During this time, my mother was institutionalized in a mental hospital due to her drinking, and I felt I was to blame because of my actions when I’d lived with her.
After a year with the foster family, I was given the choice of remaining or moving in with my mother. For the sole reason of alcohol, I chose to live with my mother. I thought it would be my dream come true, but in a short time I found it to be more terrible than anything before. One day my mother “went off” and started throwing everything out of the apartment. The police came and she was taken away, tied down to a stretcher. I felt guilty, so I drank excessively from this point on with little care about anything. I believe this is when I crossed that imaginary line of no return.
I went to