In January of ’79 (when I was 33 ½ years old) my family told me NO MORE. They would no longer help me in any way. If I called they would hang up, if I came to the door it would be closed in my face and if I tried to steal from them they would call the police. It was MY PROBLEM and I had to deal with it, they could not.

Later after being in recovery for several years, my mother finally shared with me that had they not shut the door on me, they felt they were all going to end up, locked up in a padded cell in an institution.

Well with that pronouncement, my attitude was F you. I did a geographic and moved back to California. It took me another 2 and ½ years to find recovery and the last year and a half I lived on the streets of Hollyweird.

I can tell you today that the BEST THING MY FAMILY ever did for me was to SHUT THE DOOR ON ME as they did.

I had an old ’63 beat up ford, typical ‘alkie car’ with all four corners banged in and a coat hanger for an antenna. I mostly kept it parked at the back of the HollywoodBowlPark parking lot, under trees. Slept in it the nights I made it back to the car.

On Sunday June 7, 1981, at approximately 4:30pm (I know it was afternoon, I had a cheap $2 digital plastic watch, it said 4:30 and it was light out so knew it was afternoon) as I would take a swig in (oh btw I was a Jack Daniels and/or Wild Turkey drinker for most of my life and was on Thunderbird Wine by this time) it felt like it was coming out of every pore of my body as fast as I put it in. It was then I had no doubts left …………………….. I was dying. I was going to die soon if I kept drinking and I was going to die soon if I tried to stop, but somehow I wanted to die sober.

I put the cap back on the bottle, threw it in the back seat with the rest of the empties and started to cry. I was sitting on the concrete bumper and I did scream out

PLEASE HELP ME

Not my typical alkie prayer of “God get me out of this one and I’ll never do it again” just PLEASE HELP ME.

I can tell you it was a pretty rough night. The next morning I knew something was terribly wrong. I knew there was a hospital called Olive View in Van Nuys, had heard about it from my Wino buddies, but had no idea where it was. I started the car, intent on finding OliveViewHospital. Yes, I found the hospital, there had to be someone guiding that automobile because I had no idea where I was going.

I found out later, by reading my medical chart and by talking to the gal that was at the admissions desk that day, that I walked up to the desk, told the gal I was an alcoholic, said I hadn’t had a drink since the day before and something was drastically wrong. She told me I was green, she was hitting the emergency button under her desk, while she directed me to a chair right across from her desk, maybe a distance of 4 feet. I never made it. I went into seizures on the floor in front of her desk.

Later in reading the medical chart from that day, I found out that when I went into seizures my BAC was .38 and my body was CRAVING MORE. My heart stopped from the seizures. They would get me started again, and after a little while I would start to seizure again. This went on all day. The last time my heart stopped, I was down for 28 minutes and the ER Dr gave up. He called it and was writing the TOD on my chart (24 hours after I stopped drinking) and my heart started on it’s own. I was given a SECOND CHANCE.