I got dragged to my first AA meeting on October 31, 1987 by some irate relatives who had just bailed me out of jail after I was arrested for drunk driving. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt a glimmer of hope. But it quickly wore off when it sunk in that it meant I was never, ever going to be able to get drunk again. Sure, I wanted a better life, but I literally couldn't imagine life without alcohol. Because in spite of the fact that I could see what it had done to my life, drinking was still self-preservation and whatever "I" was would be annihilated if I stopped. One minute I felt like I was home at last, and the next like a cornered animal under attack.

And so it went for another 14 months. Sure, I wanted what those people had, and went to maybe 20 or 30 meetings on my own initiative partly because I felt pressured by others, but also by my own conscience to do so. But there was a clear line in the sand and "those AA people" were a tribunal of mentally and morally superior folks on one side of that line-- saintly role models where I was coming from-- yet they seemed strangely and coldly unsympathetic to my plight.

On the other side of that line was despicable me, the spineless degenerate, alone in a world where nobody understood me, with a pint of Smirnoff 100 hidden in my parka so I could get plastered as I hitchhiked home along dark country roads, baffled, ashamed and despising myself, yet fortifying myself with deep, throat-burning belts from the bottle in order to face that next inevitable scolding to shape up. As far as I was concerned, these people just wanted company in their white-knuckled, puritanical misery, and I wasn't about to oblige them.

When I got to the rehab 14 months later, they used to have one meeting per day that was only for us inmates, with no staff allowed in the room. The format was that we read the page for the day out of the Hazelden daily meditation book (the AA version wasn't around then) which has more scripture quotes in it than the latest Papal Encyclical, and we were supposed to put on our little angel masks & halos for an hour and discuss those holy thoughts. Then, I supposed, some of that contagious angel-dust would waft across the room and we'd be uplifted and transported to some sort of spiritual bliss on the other side of that mysterious line in the sand. That, as I understood it prior to that moment, was the meaning of the word "support."

So there we were, about 45 of us in this big dining hall. The chairperson, a relapser with about three weeks of sobriety, read the page of the day and then she said, "Well, I guess what we're supposed to be talking about today is gratitude." But instead sparking a conversation, the reading and her remark were met with the longest, most profound moment of silence I've ever sat through in an AA meeting. You could've heard a mouse fart across the street.

Finally one guy in the back hollered out, "Sobriety sucks!!"

Another guy chimed right in, "Yeah, man, why me?"

A third added, "Yeah, man, all I want to do is get off this f&%$ing hill right now and get high."

I still wish I had an audio tape of the rest of it. As if on cue from a commanding and trusted voice, 45 sullen, reticent, slouching, chronically inferior ne'er-do-wells sprang to life. They were feeling exactly what I was feeling and their thoughts were my thoughts. There was no superior person in the room to say, "This is what you must feel, think, believe and do if you want to stay sober." It was just a bunch of hopeless alcoholics sharing from the gut.

Here at last that line in the sand was suddenly wiped away by a huge wave of common suffering and I was really home for the first time in many, many years. Here too, at last, was a glimmer of hope I could surely trust, a bedrock of support that no individual or clique in any group could ever possibly take away from me, even if they wanted to.

That was in January of 1989 and I've been sober ever since.

I love to hear others stories. Mine isnt very exciting in fact its pretty lame. Death by a thousand cuts I guess? Or life in my case:-) I had gone through a ton of trauma growing up. And that + booze eventually == self medication. I drank because I essentially loved the effect. Until it took over and I couldnt quit. I became obsessed with drinking and with stopping drinking. I played around on that miserable hamster wheel for about oh.....5 years or so? Then finally made it to these boards. I quit drinking once for 3 months the summer before I walked into AA. YOU good people here convinced me to go to my first meeting. I didnt know anyone in "real life" who went to AA, or to my knowledge knew how bad my drinking was.
I was just sick of being sick. So on a random Monday night I walked into my first AA meeting. I had gotten drunk the Sunday night before and on that particular Monday I was just so done.
thank GOD.

Oh my! Nemo, that was beautifully said, well written and got to the point of what AA is all about. How we can sit in a room with 30 or so different people, all suffering in hundreds of different ways, and somehow we are helped by that!

I hung on every word when I read this, Thankyou for sharing!

BigBear, I am convinced that someone upstairs is pulling some strings to help each of us.

At the meeting last nite, I got there a little too late to get a raffle ticket. The prize was a BIG BOOK! I had always wanted one and now there was no way to get it until the lady sitting next to me threw 3 tickets at me and guess what? one was the winning ticket!

So I thanked her and asked her if she wanted the book and she respectfully declined say she already had 2 of them.

Amazing and things like that happen all the time!

Stick, I think you were afffected in the same way that most people are and that's by some trauma they can't deal with in other ways so they numb the pain with alcohol but glad to see you thriving in the land of the sober. Thanks for sharing and Big Bear also

after a long period of sometimes successfully trying to control the amount of booze I drank and the resulting behaviour, I ended up getting into a little arguement with my parents while I had one of my guns out and was trying to load it so I could go raid a house at 5am and kill everyone inside, and take my cat back. I believed at the time that those people stole my cat (which was most likely false, because there was no sober evidence to support the theory that they were the ones who had my cat... just a bunch of my own psychotic drunken bullshit backing up the story, ya know). Anyways, they figured they had to get me locked up somehow to stop me from doing something awfull, so the cops were called. Meanwhile, we wrestled around with them trying to get the gun from me. The cops arrived, and my dad told them that I threatened to kill them and kicked my dad in the face while he was attempting to get the gun from me. I was taken to the county prison and bailed myself out the next morning. I couldn't remember much of the incident, but my dad later told me that he believed the kick was unintentional and not intended to harm him. I have my doubts about if I actually threatened to kill my parents or not, but I wouldn't be upset with'em if they did add a little onto the story for the sake of getting me locked up, since I'm aware that the situation could've ended tragically had it worked out any other way. Anyhow, the serious charges were dropped and I ended up just paying a ticket for a harrassment summary offense. I didn't drink again after getting out of prison the following day, though... I just sorta decided that even if I could drink 30 times without anything shitty happening, that occasional one time is too many.

For me, I could never get myself to digest step one. External forces, powers greater than me, karma, GOD, whatever, did for me, what I could not do for myself. I was delusional and not-capable of running and maintaining a serene life. So these external forces and my brain came close to killing me in 07. It did win by having me shipped away for a while.
This time was meant to be, its where I was alone with my brain for quite a while. The final war was on and this is where I came to ingest step one. I looked around and finally understood the meaning of powerlessness, unmanageable was an understatement.
I was left with fighting this disease one moment at a time, dying, staying locked up, or just flat out miserable.
I got busy.

I started to have a hard time enjoying myself or any aspects of life without drinking. I couldn't phone someone or a friend without drinking etc...everything started to revolve around my premeditated drinking binges. I started drinking when I was 16 and it helped with social anxiety at parties,,,,it evolved quickly into drinking alone when I was 19. I've jumped down a flight of stairs breaking my ankle, run into a glass door hashing my nose, broken down bathroom stall doors in clubs and bars, and have ended up in some naked predicaments here and there. Now here I am 20 years later locking myself "safely" in my apartment when I drink. I wasted so much of my life. I have a really bad relationship with my family. I am 7 days sober today.

Oh and I went to my first meeting last Friday.

Got and Frankie have hit the lowest of lows' it sounds like.

City, congratulations on 7 days sober! Let's keep it going!

God Bless!

Bob ...lows are like a bad haircut. My head hurts even when I don't look in the mirror lol

Thanks for the post. Where do I go to get in a detox/IOP program without getting arrested???

Google detox, talk to family member about it, go to AA meeting I've taken many people to a detox from there. Call the salivation army the YW or YMCA , a local hospital lots of folks willing to help. AA inter group or Central office call them , crisis hotline.
Billy

I am speaking for all the family members of an alcoholic. As a sibling, watching the one I love so much, self destructing herself with booze, was so heart breaking..... Stick with A.A. They saved my sister's life. She has been clean and sober for 14 years now, and she goes to her meetings every week. There is a reason why she drank, she was self medicateing herself to numb the emontional pain she was feeling. She started drinking at age ten. We came from a very abusive childhood. Usually in life, people do'nt just ''wake up'' one morning and say to themselves ''Gee, I do'nt have anything to do today, so I think I'll drink my life away. I'll loose my job, loose my wife, loose my home, loose my self esteem,loose my soul. In other words, you have had some type of trauma in your past that you are covering up with booze. I do'nt think you will ever beable to find peace within yourself, until you get professional help from a trained therapist, and find out what happened to you, and face your demons. There is also a genetic gene in your family tree for alcoholism. Please get help. No one can do this but you. One is too much, and twelve is not enough. My sister thought she could never face life without booze, but she did, and so can you.

I have to admit that I skipped over this thread a few times, thinking it would be drunkalogues. But I have always enjoyed those stories of that *moment* when surrender occurred...whether it was a flash of light, the flash of the badge or a deep down feeling finally admitting it...it's an intimate thing sometimes.

Thanks for the shares.