Start Right Now

My name is Michael and I am an alcoholic. The alcoholic bit is the most important, admitting it saved my life. But it took time. I had my first drink when I was a young lad, I was allowed to lick the bottom of my mum's glass of cherry brandy clean. I still remember it now, the feeling of ease and comfort the Big Book talks about. I felt I was part of things, life was bright and warm and in colour. I could talk to people, my parents, my school friends and later girls. I chased the drink from day one. I became very good friends with my grandmother: when we went for dinner as a family my grandmother would give me a sugar cube dunked in alcohol. I can still feel what I call the hit, then later, two sugar cubes. I would spend part of my holidays with my grandmother because alcohol was freely available. There were consequences right from the start, the embarrassment of facing my parents after what I'd said the night before, or of facing my actions. I started avoiding a lot of people. Only a drink would sort that out. Eventually drink stopped working. But I could not stop. I only did stop when I was sent to a mental hospital and they dried me out. I went to my first AA meeting there and I liked the welcome, the tea and biscuits. But I did not think I was an alcoholic and definitely not an 'alky' as some people shared.

So I did a year and a half of going to meetings but not taking any action. I only prayed for a sober day and said thank you at the end of the day for a sober day. Then I would ask to die that night and please let it be painless. So I stayed dry but it was madness, I only said nasty things, it was untreated alcoholism. It was bad, I had no hope.

I am grateful for that time because it taught me I cannot do this on my own. In the end I decided I had reached that jumping off point again and decided I needed to take action. So at my next meeting I asked another alcoholic, a guy who had what I wanted, to help me out, to show me how he'd done it. He gave me a little routine, a set of daily actions and I followed his clear cut directions. After we did Step Three together he showed me how to do Step Four. He said, "It is like writing a shopping list" and to do an hour a day on it. In the beginning I spent a lot longer on Step Tens every day and I prayed a lot for my sponsor because I would get to sleep very late, but it started working. All this nasty stuff, stuff I had promised myself I would never reveal to anyone, I dragged it out and wrote it down, alongside the character defects my sponsor showed me. It was like reaching into the depths of a slimy pond and exposing the stuff to air. And it lost a lot of its power as I put it on paper. It did not haunt me as much. I stopped walking through the street muttering to myself, "Michael", meaning that if I had said this or done that, things would be very different. It helped, when I started Step Four, that my sponsor shared some of his dark stuff and showed me how to write it out. I then felt it was ok for me to write my very dark stuff out. Sometimes it got a bit too much so I went to a meeting, and that always got me out of myself and lightened my mood. I did lots of meetings then. I did sometimes wonder about sharing all this with my sponsor, but he said, "Treat it like a shopping list," and "Just do Step Four." And there was a bit of friendly competition with newcomers like me, particularly those younger than me. I thought they had it easier, that they had fewer resentments. So that spurred me to try and finish my Step Four quicker. I can't recommend all this highly enough: The Steps, sponsorship, daily suggestions and my relationship with a Higher Power. For me this is a programme of action and recovery can start right now.

MICHAEL.