I will be honest I walked into a room that soon filled to over a hundred people. Men & women ranging from 20 - 70! I thought this is going to be long 2 hrs!
The 1st woman that runs it spoke & she seemed pretty matter a fact, and the whole if you get up for any reason & leave this room you won't be let back in. No bathroom breaks nothing for the next 2 hrs. In the 1st 10 minutes she went on about excuses for drunk driving, how she does not belive in the term alcoholic, or that alcoholism is even a condition, she believes its a made up excuse.
Needless to say I was kind of taken back & thought I was really going to have trouble for the next hour & 50 minutes if this is what it was going to be like.
But then 2 people spoke after that. The one guy was a long haired leather wearing biker dude! He went on to say how he should have had 50 DUI's in his day. And then he got one, but oddly it didn't stop him from drinking or even drinking & driving now & then.
And 5 yrs after his DUI, his entire family, Son, Daugter, wife were killed by a drunk driver.
That was very touching. Another woman spoke about losing he 4 yr old.
The time flew by. I was lost in their story & thought to myslef more than once,
All these months I hve been feeling so sorry about how aweful this DUI has been on my family & me. The $, the court dates, the meetings, the dissapointment, the inconvenience of asking everyone for a ride everywhere. Totaling my van, etc.
And I look at these people that live year after year with out their kids, wife, etc.
I just thought how selfish of me. I spent the entire time with a huge knot in my throat & wiped a few tears.
I really am thankful I went. I really wished my sister had gone with me. But she refused.