My Story

[Firehazard]

There was the beginning being a innocent, open, loving, unafraid, proud,curly-headed, and bright. I was raised in the suburbs on the outskirts of Memphis, well adjusted, happy, and protected. My parents were together then, and I had a younger brother to pester and play with. At ten years old the family bought some property in the dirt road country and a adequate home was erected at the end of a long gravel driveway. We all moved together to the southern country-side, West Tenn.. In some ways it was great: open spaces, freedom to roam, trees, bare feet, dogs running free. However, socially it was isolating and we never got connected with our neighbors like we used to. The only social regularity was clockwork visits to the Methodist church in another nearby community. All the role models were seemingly in place to form a well adjusted young man, ready for success.
My parents did not drink really. However, later I did discover my maternal grandfather had a severe alcohol problem that killed him. A bottle of wine might have stayed in our refrigerator for well over a month and even then not be empty. My father was a traveling salesman and that was the bulk of the time I ever spent with him after the divorce. He had quite a temper and was very impatient with me at home. Other than that he teased me a lot. It felt like I had to walk on eggshells around him constantly when he was irritated and that was often by that time. When we would travel together I felt his love and only then. My brother Ben and me would cope with his capricious behavior by making fun of him, but it still hurt. I'm glad Ben was around. It would have been hard to cope without him.
The divorce happened at age fourteen but the fighting and tension had been building the entire four years after the move. My ears would ring when they fought. They just didn't love each other anymore and that lack of love affected me severely. I was very confused and took for truth my mother's villification of Dad to heart. He was the bad guy. Mot knowing any better, I wouldn't tell him anything when he called. He quickly became father instead of dad and had moved five hundred miles north to the Gateway to the West.
High school started and it was not a cool picture. My personality was drawn with bold strokes of country bible belt hick isolation shaded with a mounting emotional tension. I stayed to myself ashamed and only hung out with the other outcasts of High School. A world of comic books, D&D and shy virginity. By my senior year I was a tense, ashamed and antsy young man. I skipped achool a lot because of the depression and did not go to prom. My mom remarried to a man I did not like and I began to party that senior summer with a few friends. They weren't real friends though. I did not have anyone to share my highs and lows with and wouldn't have known how to engage if I did. As a result my social anxieties grew. When drinking began, generally bud, too much was drank to drown my nervousness and unease. The amount consumed was always all of what we had and later until drunk or passed out. After graduating, the new man of the house directed me to either start school, work, join the Military or get out. I joined the canoe club and there my heavy drinking started alone. When I could muster the courage to leave the ship I went to the base bar. I drank by the pitcher there and I only had to be eighteen. Yee Haa. One night I even went home with a woman and lost my virginity, Drunk.
I hated the Navy but luckily a friend on the ship that had stopped me form going A-Wall on two occasions also invited me to a AA meeting to support him. I didn't listen at the meeting and introduced myself as a normal dude there in support. This guy had been through the wringer, a real character. Vince had a ranking of E-4 but had been in for sixteen years which meant many bust downs in rank. He most likely knew that I had a drinking problem having seen me return on many occasions inebriated or bloody from frequent brawls I got in. He probably hope and prayed I might relate to something said about alcoholism at that meeting. I didn't know how to relate to people at all. That was 1991 and it was the last brush with AA until 2004 when exposure occurred again. During this period I saw these guys driving V.W. buses that were actually happy to be together and were having fun. Kind of like what that old Methodist diety wanted us to do. Brotherhood and belonging is what my soul needed so I hung out with that crowd and began using LSD, a requirement of membership. In retrospect, drug use was the end and the means of that fellowship but I was cool and accepted. The true ideals of hippies had long since past and my escape from myself had risen to a new height.
When I left the navy I went home for a spell of two years and began to travel after Jerry Garcia died. Living the travelling lifestyle that kept me distracted. Yes I was a true rubber tramp, footloose and fancy free I could hide my shame there behind my long hair and wine-stained birkenstocks. I never stopped to settle down but kept rambling until March 2007 at that point I had lived in six states and been through all lower fourty-eight states more than once. In addition, I drove a big truck over the road for three years and lived in the sleeper of the truck. I've been everywhere and it's been all over me. This might sound exciting to some but I was intensely slone emotionally and mentally insane but didn't know it. You see it's hard to see the picture when your in the frame. Seeing different faces and new places everyday was exiting but it wore me down. Now, thanks to A.A. I know that people need people to bounce off of to see the picture of our true selves.
On the road I felt a peace of leaving the world behind and didn't need to drink being constantly in motion but eventually even this fun escape didn't work. It wasn't life. Years later I finally found that the traveling peace I found was because that's when dad and I would spend time together, on the road. He wasn't angry or anxious then. In the church, teachings said that our father was the model of God. My traveling dad was that except I had put him out of the equation in my present life.
At my core I still wanted to connect with people, to belong. Colorado springs looked like another exciting cool place to be so I landed there, got a housing authority apartment and began to drink heavy again. I discovered the joys of natural wines and found out I could be a sophisticatedly self-righteous drunk. My drinking was not social anymore drinking alone and when in public whould never let on I was drunk. Secretive, alone, all by myself I began to associate with the street folks. A adequate job in the micro chip industry was working for several months but the tech. market crashed in 2001. The unemployment ran out and I made the grand decision to live in my Van in the Wallmart parking lot. some of my other new aquaintences were doing it. All winter I stayed and felt a dirty sense of belonging with the street people, transients, fellow wall mart auto campers, soup liners, labor ready work crews and my beer and wine. It's ironic how I could look down on people in the gutter with me. That attitude kept them away from me and comfortably wrapped in my now familiar cocoon of isolation and binge drinking so familiar by now. It was the only way I knew and I wasn't ready to look for anything else being the king of my world.
Then the DWAI came in 2001, it was all thier fault, Ha. The usual pulling of my CDL, mandatory drug education class, community service and a fine followed. Since I had no council, I solved these roadblocks by skipping out of the state of Colorado. They can't hold me down was my mantra and continued driving without a license or insurance until May 2005. After a botched attempt to live with Mom (got caught growing Mary Jane in the house) I got tossed out. A attempt to support myself was made by working day labor and cooking breakfasts at the cracker barrel while living in a run-down crack house near downtown Memphis. My beer drinking had become mandatory for daily tension reduction. The building anger and a dangerously anti-social personality lost me the job and I gave up trying. No family, no friends I finally decided to try and make a new beginning by running again. Looking for that place to make my stand I hit the road, destination Alaska, with a tank ful of gas, haf ounce of weed, eighty dollars and a beer buzz I left the south for good.
Two months of driving and slumming around brought me to the Columbia river, Oregon. I had a moment of emotional clarity. I realized that I had been running too long and that I was actually just reliving the time with my gather so long ago on the road. I also felt as if my life was empty and had been for years, I wept. Determined to stop at the next major city, Portland Oregon to make a new start clean, I dumped the weed I had in the river and entered the City. I began attending MA mettings but quickly realized I wasn't powerless over that. The street people there seemed well taken care of so I began connecting with the locals. The word was that getting food stamps and getting housing was the best way to go and I got those. The only catch was that I would have to claim myslf a substance abuser to the local Va hospital. I did it went through the course and got what I wanted not what I needed.
The pattern of running continued on a smaller scale. During this period there was five bouts of homelessness and 15 moves in Portland. However, I have stayed in one area for the longest time since high school still looking for answers to the wrong questions. I understood by now that my drinking was losing me jobs and keeping me in bad situations and behavior patterns. It did not matter that I understood this because I still thought i could manage and kept on drinking. A white knuckle attempt was made in 2005 and lasted a year. It was not a happy time for me and I had to lock myself away in a small transitional housing unit to achieve it. Then one day I came home with a four gallon batch of hand picked blackberries. A neighbor, one-eyed ex prison brew master offered to make it into organic blackberry wine. He knew I did not drink anymore but I told myself that I could give it away as presents and agreed. The wine was delivered in two weeks and on that very night I drank all five bottles, guzzled by yours truly. My drinking started again and my utility money was spent on wine, the lights went out.
That was my bottom so I checked into the same VA sponsored substance abuse class I attend on arrival. This time I was listening. Questions like, Who is that long haired person in the mirror and maybe I don't have a clue began to resonate in my mind. during the classes a lot of charts, graphs and science explaining alcoholism where presented. They didn't really hit my core.
Then a cartoon posted on the side of a computer caught my eye. "You have to stop digging if you want to get out of the hole you're in" What a concept, could I be responsible for my own situation and life? I sobered up and began to attend meetings. The suggested sponsor was found and I attempted to work the steps but my old ways were strong and I could not accept the program. My sponsor just would follow me or call me? My life I thought was manageable. I did make a start and did gain enough serentiy to stay sober for 550 days and I was counting. However, I couldn't be still, I meeting hopped and never found a home group since I wasn't looking for one. Still running and I would not reach out and call people. I didn't belong! I started drinking after 550 days and my mental health and good thinking vanished only my anger and thinking was worse. Bank robberies were planned and I began lashing out at strangers after only one week of drinking.
I woke one morning with my face stuck in a pool of dried vomit after drinking. This scared me so I quit by myself for two weeks before dragging myself to a meeting on August 2, 2008 at 2pm.. I asked for help and a man named John (my current sponsor) handed me a card with the camel prayer on it. I began to pray. I attended the same group the next week and meet with him afterward. He suggested I read the 'doctors opinion'. This time it did resonate that mine is a hopeless condition and nothing short of a spiritual experience could work. The fire was lit and I have followed all suggestions from John and the members of my home group to the best of my abilities.
Having a routine and new direction every morning has given me the strength to work the steps of AA which has removed the desire to drink today and I pray it will tomorrow. Today I don't feel like I have to run anymore and have found a group I call my home group and stick around enough to connect with others who are doing it. A sponsee has appeared and I feel as though I am more a help or at least not a danger to the community or myself. The dead end jobs have stopped and a new career that fits is rising up on the horizon. I know I belong now and am alone no longer. The ironic thing is I never had to run or try things myself in the first place, all that was required was for me to surrender and ask for help plus Willingness, honesty and openness. I finish with hope that my recovery story can be as long as the time it took me to get started.
My life has taken on a new direction ever since. I pray in the morning and read twenty-four hours a day every day as a daily routine.