Hi Everyone! I'm Lou and i'm an alcoholic. It's great to be here tonight! Compared to many, i had a really short drinking career--from around the age of 8 until i was 24. But i really only heavy during the last 6 years; even then often only as a periodic. In that time, most of the things that can happen to an alcoholic, happened to me. About my only real "i never"--YET--is that i never had a convulsion. All the same, in many ways i thought i was a relatively high bottom drunk--though no one else thought so. Of course, in my case high bottom translated to mean "that i had a lot more denial than many others coming into AA." Anyway, 22 years ago, on the morning of the day when i had my last drink, i reach for a can of warm beer, what little i had left over from the night before, and i got it halfway to my mouth before i stopped myself saying: "No, never again!" But by this time i was sure that the only way i could stop drinking and stay stopped was to kill myself and i jumped up and started looking through some dresser drawers for some pills that had, which i thought would do me in if i took all of them. There was a real sense on urgency, possibly because if i thought about it, i would change my mind. As my hands were reaching for the pills it was as if someone else was guiding them and i even remember thinking at the time that this can't be happening. Anyway, instead of finding the pills i found a meeting book and without opening it up, i knew there was a meeting at 12:15pm that day at the Kelly House--a local detox--and although i was not allowed in there as a patient anymore, i knew they couldn't keep me out of the meeting. (Some alcoholics got flagged from bars, but i got flagged from detoxes......Actually i got flagged from a lot of bars too...) Somewhere between then and noon, i started drinking again, but the thought about going back to AA, which i had been staying away from for over a year, was now firmly entrenched in my consciousness. That evening, i started making phone calls. I called Intergroup--no answer. A national AA or alcoholism Hotline but just got busy signals. I finally i called the local council on Alcoholism, and the person answers saying "Kelly House." Well, i swallowed my pride and asked for help and they sent someone out to get me. Although that wasn't the first time i had asked for help as far as alcohol was concerned, it was the first time that i really really meant it. I have not had a drink since. I had to put a lot of work into staying sober that first year. The obsession to drink just wouldn't go away. There were times when i said the Serenity Prayer hundreds of times a day. Any excuse seemed like a good reason to drink. I did everything that i didn't want to do the first time i flew over AA in a nut house a few years earlier--90 meetings in 90 days--actually somewhere between 2 and 3 hundred meetings in the fist 90 days, got a sponsor, joined a home group, and probably most important, i stopped arguing with everyone about everything and started listening. But the main thing i had to do was not take the first drink and that is of course the most important. But the obsession was still there.... Finally, when i had a year i got a resentment which i kept feeding and it got to the point where I almost drank and it was only then, when i honestly, with my full being, took the third step and really meant it, and it was only then that the obsession went away....For me, it was a Spiritual Experience. Even today I find that willingness is always an important ingredient to the quality of my sobriety. As long as i'm willing to change something about me, or willing to let go of that resentment, etc., then i have a good contact with my Higher Power and all the rewards that that includes such as the promises. But at the times when i was not willing: then i remained a slave to my character defects and i get caught in a seemingly endless cycle that keeps repeating until i hit some kind of bottom so that i became willing to change again. I can't begin to say how much better my life is since i came into AA. And AAOnline means a lot to me too since i no longer get around to as many meetings as i used to. But the main thing is that my life isn't centered around drinking anymore and for that i will always be grateful to AA. Thanks for letting me share.
Lou M., D.O.S: 5-25-79, Somerville, NJ