That's two
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Posts: 1,095
That's two
This morning I did my second AA lead.
My sponsor made me throw out my notes because he says I should talk from my heart and whatever comes out is what is meant to be so I just got up there and did my thing. The comments took longer than my lead.
Already got number 3 lined up for January 30th.
If anyone would have told be 14 months ago that I would be sober, have hundreds of good solid sober people supporting me and that I would be standing in front of a group of people spilling my guts I would have said they were insane.
My sponsor made me throw out my notes because he says I should talk from my heart and whatever comes out is what is meant to be so I just got up there and did my thing. The comments took longer than my lead.
Already got number 3 lined up for January 30th.
If anyone would have told be 14 months ago that I would be sober, have hundreds of good solid sober people supporting me and that I would be standing in front of a group of people spilling my guts I would have said they were insane.
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Posts: 1,095
Originally Posted by tomls 
Congratulations Doug! Have you considered putting your story on SR?
Serenity prayer
My name is Doug – I am an alcoholic
First off the fact that I am up here leading this meeting is proof that this program works and has helped me to change. I spent most of my life running and hiding from responsibilities. When I was in high school I had such a fear of standing up in front of everybody during my speech class that I cut the class and got into trouble.
My ability to stand up here and talk (especially without alcohol to give me liquid courage) shows real growth on my part.
I have a Sobriety date of October 24, 2016 – there is nothing special about that day. It was a day like every other day – I got up hungover and miserable - then endured depression, anxiety and panic until I had the first drink of the day.
I had that routine every single day for 27 long years – hungover till I had the first few drinks of the day (many times I had to force them down because I was sick to my stomach)
After the first few drinks of the day I felt some relief, almost felt normal and good for a brief period but like every other day that feeling faded quickly and then I kept drinking – chasing that good feeling that I had after those first few drinks.
But like every other day that feeling never returned and I only got drunk and passed out – only to get up the next day to do it all over again.
In late October 2016 it got to the point that the alcohol wasn’t taking the panic, dread and depression away anymore. I knew then I had to either stay drunk 24/7 until I died or make a change and quit drinking.
Thank God I made the choice to get help.
My background
My father was a mentally and verbally abusive alcoholic. He was very controlling and he took my mother as his hostage. She was Catholic and believed in “till death do us part”. I carried a lot of resentment toward my mother because she didn’t rescue my brother and me from my father’s twisted ways.
I hated my father’s drinking. I didn’t want to be like him but I ended up a lot like him.
I always had low self-esteem. I had a few close friends but in general I felt like an outcast – a loser that didn’t fit in. I always felt like I wasn’t normal and never felt good enough.
My brother came up with this saying that we lived in a household of discouragement. My dysfunctional parents always looked at the negative side and never encouraged us to take a risk or try something new for fear something could go wrong.
For example I wasn’t encouraged to go to college or try to do anything with my life – life in general was fearful and a burden to my parents and that fear rubbed off on me.
On top of that my father was very controlling – when I was 17, the day before I was to take my road test to get my driver’s license my father intimidated me into drinking whiskey with him and then he decided we should take a ride on I-71 so I could practice driving.
When that form of intimidation didn’t work he tore the muffler off the car so it wouldn’t pass the safety inspection.
I always felt like something was missing. I was always searching for happiness, the meaning of life and the feeling of being content. I never felt like I knew how to live life or that I was doing things right.
I had a lot of alcoholics on both sides of my family, my uncle on mother’s side died from alcoholism at age 60. My father’s father and my father’s brother were alcoholic.
My own brother is alcoholic as well and got into a lot of trouble – in 1988 he got arrested for drunk driving 3 times within a 6 week period. All 3 DUI cases were pending at one time. He moved to AZ in 1989 to make a change but moving away didn’t help because the problem with an alcoholic moving is that you take your disease with you.
I believe I had an alcoholic personality even before I drank – I was selfish, resentful, and dishonest. I have an addictive personality – it was all or nothing in everything I did. If I liked a rock band and bought their latest album I wouldn’t be happy until I bought every album in there catalog – I would obsess over it.
When I discovered pot I couldn’t just smoke an occasional joint I had to buy quarter pounds and smoke 24/7 – all or nothing. So of course I couldn’t be an occasional drinker – it was either drink like a fish or no drinking.
I didn’t start drinking daily till I was 25. I think the reason I didn’t start earlier was because my girlfriends and friends at the time didn’t really drink and I still suffered the pain of my father’s alcoholism.
But when I did start I thought I had finally found the answer to what was missing in my life. I finally felt complete. I figured I was from an alcoholic family so this was the missing puzzle piece. At least that’s what I told myself.
At first I drank alone to get “good at it” than started drinking socially and going to bars every day. I lived for my new love – alcohol. I got addicted to going to bars and spent many hours - day and night in bars. I hung out with other drinkers and finally felt like I belonged – I felt like I fit in.
Life became one continuous party. I had lots of friends and lots of drunken one night stands with drunken women. The woman I was in a relationship with at the time didn’t drink and didn’t take to kindly my new lifestyle – we broke up after 4 years together.
She was so good to me and such a good person – but I threw it all away for fly by night drinking friends and to have meaningless sex with whatever drunken woman I could find. I did get a chance to make amends to her.
By age 30 I was drinking up to a liter of whiskey per day every day.
One day in 1992 I spent 8 hours drinking whiskey in a bar. On my way home I stopped at the Burger King drive thru. After leaving Burger King I missed a stop sign and got pulled over. At the time my car had fictitious plates because I was too lazy to get the title changed and/or I just didn’t care. I did things my way.
The only thing that crossed my mind was whether or not the cop would let me take the burger king food into the jail cell with me. I was so self-centered and my thinking was so twisted I wasn’t concerned about the fact that I could have killed someone driving drunk, didn’t think of the trouble I could be in – I was worried about filling my stomach with that greasy whopper.
I didn’t care about anything and wasn’t even nervous. I think that being so at ease is what helped me somehow pass the sobriety field test; the cop gave me a ticket for running the stop sign and must not have run my plates.
I drove home thinking I was invincible. When I called the court to wave the ticket they said no charge because I had zero points on my license and let me off with a warning - this just fueled my cockiness and arrogance even more.
In 1993 I got arrested for DUI while in a blackout - Ironically I got pulled over on the same stretch of road my father did when he got his last DUI some 20 years earlier.
I said I hated my father’s drinking and didn’t want to be like him but my life paralleled his in so many ways.
The last thing I remember that night was doing shots around 8 or 9 pm with this woman I was trying to pick up at a bar in North Royalton. After that the next thing I remember I woke up in the Parma Hts. Jail around 4:00 am in the same cell with some clown with his face all beaten up trying to tell me his problems.
I found out later from a barmaid at a different bar from the one that I was doing shots at that I walking in completely wasted around midnight demanding a drink but she wouldn’t serve me.
I persisted so she faked pouring me a drink and gave me water which I dumped all over the bar. The barmaid was trying to find me a ride and even told me she would drive me after her shift but next thing she knew I was gone.
I also refused the breathalyzer or was too wasted to blow so I got an automatic one year suspension on my license.
I think about it today how scary it is that I was out there in the night for several hours driving and doing things that I have no recollect of doing. I thank God today that he watched over me during all my years of madness – even after I shut him completely out of my life he never left me.
I got a good DUI lawyer that everyone at the bar I went to used. He played golf with the mayor and I paid my way out of the DUI – it got reduced to disorderly conduct but I still got the one year suspension on my license.
Getting that break was the worst thing that could have happened to me because this made me cockier than ever. A short time later I remember driving drunk late at night doing 70 in a 35 down Sprague Rd with a suspended license just to prove to the world I was invincible and I could get away with anything.
My ego was out of control. My alcoholism was out of control - I was out to live life to the fullest and I was all about excess. I was out to take everything I could get out of the world and I didn’t care who I stepped on and hurt in the process.
I ran up debts, I used people; I thought I was better than everyone else and I was going to prove it. I did want I wanted when I wanted – it was all about me.
But in reality I was a mess. I couldn’t keep a girlfriend for more than a week because I was always too drunk and/or too much of an idiot. I was arrogant and selfish.
Looking back on my life today, even before I stared drinking, I now realize why all my relationships with women were often rocky – it was because it was always all about me. I was always out to get what I could out of the relationship and my main goal was having sex.
I didn’t have any true sober friends that I could count on – just bar people that were as dysfunctional as me.
In 1994 I was drunk in a bar and met the woman that became my wife. The first year of our relationship was a continuous stream of whiskey drinking. I finally found a woman that could drink as hard as me, and sometimes more than me.
In October 1995, as I was sitting in a bar (I remember it was the day OJ Simpson was acquitted) she called me and told me she was pregnant. This was before the popularity of cell phones – she called me on the landline at the bar. I sat in that bar 6 to 8 hours a day everyday so she knew where to find me.
She did quit drinking during the 9 months that she carried our daughter who was born in 1996 and during that time I drank enough for both of us.
In 1997 we got married. The anxiety from all these life changes just made me drink more – my life up to that point was all about me and now I had the responsibilities of being a father and husband.
I settled down a bit on going out and did most of my drinking at home. Since it is cheaper and safer to drink at home I drank so much more. The guilt and shame that I would be an awful father and put my daughter through what I went through with my father was intense but not intense enough to quit drinking.
I was an alcoholic, I came from an alcoholic family, liquor is the missing puzzle piece – it was my destiny – remember?
I then thought that having material things was going to be the answer to happiness and fulfilment – I had good jobs, lived in nice houses, drove new cars and trucks, went on nice vacations, I had a lot of material things but I was still miserable and searching – and I was a drunk the whole time I had all those things.
My life was going along – and that was it - it was just going along. All my emotions were numbed by alcohol and I was just going through the motions – and when I was not drinking I was hungover and every little thing seemed like a devastating catastrophe.
I am ashamed to admit that I drove wasted with my daughter in the car many times. I remember going to a clam bake in Brecksville and driving home completely wasted with my wife and infant daughter in the car.
Another time we were coming home from a picnic, I was drunk and my wife kept yelling at me because I kept crossing the double yellow line and almost running oncoming traffic off the road – all with my daughter in the car.
I have been pulled over after drinking many times – but somehow I was never busted for drinking. As the laws and penalties got stiffer I really started to fear drunk driving. If my wife wanted to go out somewhere that involved drinking I told her she had to drive or I wasn’t going.
No way could I go out and only have a few or not drink at all. Let my wife get the DUI – I didn’t need to go out – I can drink at home. It was never about going out and doing something anyway - it was only about getting drunk – getting drunk was my number one and really only priority in life.
I mostly drank at home – I didn’t hang with friends as much and became more and more isolated – by this time alcohol turned into a necessity in order to function. I knew I drank too much and I was mentally and physically exhausted.
But I feared quitting. I didn’t know how to live life without booze. My life was all about drinking – it defined my existence.
I would be at work and say to myself "today after work I will go straight home and not stop for alcohol" but I would always stop.
I remember opening that first beer or whatever and thinking "what’s the point in stopping, I am an alcoholic and this is my life". It got to the point that I didn't even enjoy drinking and usually had to force it down. I was self-medicating - it was pathetic.
I resigned myself to the fact I was an alcoholic for life and this was my destiny. By the time I was in my late 40’s I pretty much gave up on ever being happy.
I remember sitting in a bar with my wife watching football in January 2010 and telling her I didn’t care about anything anymore and I had no motivation to live. About a month later she told me she doesn’t see herself spending the rest of her life with me and as soon as she can she was leaving.
As 2010 went on my depression, dread, panic, and anxiety were getting really bad.
I had no motivation. I got up, dragged myself to work, did my job the best I could with a hangover, after work got my liquor and went home and drank.
My wife never did leave - we are still together and have our problems – I will leave it at that – this lead is about me not my marital problems.
2013 was my first real attempt to quit drinking, my anxiety was bad, and my doctor put me on Zoloft for anxiety. I lasted four months without drinking – I was a miserable dry drunk because I wasn’t changing my life, wasn’t working a program and my heart really wasn’t in being sober– I was the same sick person minus alcohol.
I got off the Zoloft and tried controlled drinking for a while but within a few weeks I was back to everyday drinking – and that hell lasted an additional 3 years.
By 2016 things got bad - constant panic, anxiety and depression. I was hopelessly alcoholic. I was a total mess. Everything seems dark and gray even on a sunny summer day. We went to Virginia Beach for vacation and I just sat inside and drank the whole week – what a waste – I could have done that at home.
Once alcohol left my system I was in a state of dread and panic – I felt so isolated and alone and was living inside my head.
I sometimes thought I was insane or had wet brain. I don’t think I felt suicidal - but I didn’t want to continue to live the way I was living, I felt trapped and like I couldn’t go on. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t want to continue living – if that makes any sense.
By October 2016 the alcohol stopped working – I was in a constant state of dread, panic, anxiety and depression no matter how much I drank to try and stop it.
My last drink was on the evening of Monday 10/24. On Tues 10/25 I left work early because I was panicky and couldn’t function. I went home and stayed sober. On Wednesday 10/26 I went to work still panicky – lasted about 3 hours and went home and stayed sober. On Thursday morning I couldn’t even leave the house. I called my doctor and made an appointment for later that day.
I paced the house for 6 hours, ran up and down stairs to try and burn adrenaline. I was constantly sweating and dry heaving. I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin. I was withdrawing for alcohol. My mind was a total mess.
The Indians were playing the Cubs in the World Series and my brain was so scrambled I couldn’t sit and watch the ball game and comprehend what was going on. My doctor put me on antidepressants and for the next 2 months I was on short term disability for depression and I stayed home and rested.
I went through a roller coaster of emotions during early sobriety; I had blocked out life with alcohol for decades – it was scary to face reality and I had days when I didn’t know what was real or not. Just when I thought I was feeling ok I got blindsided with a thought or emotion that was mentally and physically crippling.
By Xmas 2016 I was 2 months sober but I was still a basket case. I was seeing a therapist and doing some meditation but I needed something more. I thought I would try AA to start 2017 off right. Not sure why or how the thought occurred to me – it just happened.
On Wednesday January 4, 2017 I decide to go to my first AA meeting, the Brown Bag AA meeting in Seven Hills. When I got there I just kept going and drove past and was planning to just go back home. But something made me turn around and go back and go in – I figured I had nothing to lose and if I didn’t like it I would leave.
Well I stayed and went to other meetings around town during the following weeks but I always got there right when they started and left as soon as they ended.
In the beginning I thought that by just going to meetings and listening there would be this magical cure. I was going to sponsor myself and just play the game at meetings. I actually read through the steps and told myself I was working the program correctly. But of course nothing had changed and I still was a mess.
I was going to only morning and lunch meetings and I would run into Mike a lot. In March he gave me his number but I never called. At Westside Thursday one morning he told me he was leading Laurel group that night so I went.
That night Mike asked me if I had a sponsor and I hemmed and hawed some lame lie about how I sort of had one but I haven’t talked to him and Mike saw through my ******** and appointed himself my sponsor that night.
Mike took me though the steps and helped me work the program according to the Big Book – nothing like my half assed attempt at picking and choosing what I was comfortable in doing.
Eventually I met Bill and he became my co-sponsor and between the two of them I started working a good program. They are both solid AA’s with over 75 years of sobriety combined.
As my spirituality grew - in April 2017 I went to church and talked to a priest and made confession for the first time in over 35 years. It really was my first true confession – I seem to remember going to confession as a teenager but I am sure I faked and lied my way through it.
Once I turned my will over to God and started to live an honest life things started to click. I know the religious part of the program isn’t for everyone but my AA program really started to work for me once I started talking to God, praying and trusting God will guide me in the right direction.
I had a lot of fears throughout my life – especially of death – but that is all gone. The way I look at it God has guided me though 54 years on this earth and things weren’t always wonderful but I survived.
Today I am grateful that God watched over me though all those years of insanity even though I shut him out of my life for decades – he is a forgiving God.
What I do now.
I start everyday with the step 3 prayer on Page 63 of the big book– may I do thy will always. Ask God to guide me. I read the 24 hours a day book and the Jesus Calling book.
If I have a troubling thought or feeling I pause and put the problem in God’s hands and ask for guidance.
I work the program - I read the big book and try to live by the steps and traditions – it does work if you do it right. I try to get to a meeting every day and stay connected with other AA’s.
It’s funny – if I go two or three days without going to an AA meeting I can feel myself reverting back to some of my old thoughts and habits – these rooms keep me straight and sober.
I try not to worry about things– if you trust in God you don’t need worry. Everything is going to work out one way or the other.
I try to stay calm and practice patience – getting upset over little things was always one of my biggest character defects – I can’t change the things that are not in my control so why get all bent out of shape over it.
When I relied on myself to run my life for all those years all it got me was a life of fear, anxiety, and unhappiness.
I let go of resentments – being angry only affects self – it is a waste of energy. Sitting there stewing over something isn’t going to change anything.
I try to live in the moment but it is hard sometimes. I have a bad habit of dwelling on past mistakes and worrying about the future and my mind can get so consumed with those thoughts that I can’t enjoy what is front of me. I may not always like it but I have to give up that need for control.
Everything isn’t perfect now. I sometimes still struggle with my faith in God. I also still struggle with ego and selfishness. After living that way for decades it is hard to change.
If I give something away or do something for somebody my first instinct is that I deserve something in return – it is hard to let go of that habit. I was raised with that fear that something bad could happen so you should hold on to whatever you got– but I have to let it go and trust in God.
On page 72 of the 12&12 it says “we never thought of making honesty, tolerance and true love of man and God the daily basis for living”. I was doing the opposite of that all my life – I was dishonest to others and to myself, I was very intolerant, self-centered and I had shut God out of my life.
And you wondered why I was always so miserable.
I now go out of my way to help others and give back instead of being self-centered – it really does feel good to help other. Being materialistic and being out for personal gain just leaves you living a lonely hollow existence, and feeling like a real creep.
I never thought life could be good again but the AA program and my faith in God has changed my life. It really works. I really feel at home whenever I walk into an AA meeting – even if it is a new meeting that I have never attended before.
Remember anybody can just stop drinking – to be truly sober you need to work a program and change your actions and your way of thinking.
Lords Prayer
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Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Out in the Stix of Southern Indiana
Posts: 2,784
Thank you very much for that Doug! Very well written! I'm sure many of us can relate. Sounds like you are doing pretty good and it's an honor to be on this journey with you. Have a great sober day!
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