Twenty years of sobriety - unbelieveable!

[snowpea]

That is fantastic!!!

 

[LSK]

Congratulations and thanks be to God!

Do you mind me asking how you went from the point of thinking you didn’t need help to wanting to change and seeking help? A close family member is currently absing drink and possibly drugs, but they don’t think they have a problem at all. I understand rehab treatment is only successful if the person wants to change but this lad doesn’t. Any advice on how to get him from point A to point B? He is hurting everyone around him.

I do not mind at all.

Two years before I got sober my Italian mother told me she was going to lose everything because of me, that if that happened she would put what was left into a shopping cart with a sign on it that said, “My DAUGHTER did this to me” and go up and down the street so all the neighbors would see.

I thought, “Gee, she’s seems a little stressed”. So I stopped.

And 8 hours later I started again.

But it was the beginning. I spent the next two years going in and out of recovery meetings, trying desperately to get this deal, wanting it with all my heart. I could never seem to get it.

Then in May of 1992 I made the mistake of sitting across from this guy in a meeting.
He was a very mean, old alcoholic-in-recovery man that EVERYONE there thought was just WONDERFUL. He looked me right in the eye and said, “Aren’t you ‘bllllleeeeepppp’ tired of saying you’re in your first 30 days of sobriety? Because I am 'BLLLLLEEEEEPPPPP” tired of listening to you say it!".

He made me so mad I stayed sober at him for 6 months…and then, at the end of 6 months, when I was certifiably nuttier than a fruitcake because all I was was physically sober, I decided I wanted to die. I also wanted that mean old man to die. I went to a meeting to find him and try and run him over with my car. Instead, I found my first sponsor - another mean old alcoholic. He gave me a tape to listen to of HIS sponsor, and told me that if I still felt like killing someone when I finished the tape to give him a call because there were people in that fellowship he didn’t like, and he would help me.

I thought that sounded like a good deal. I went home and listened to the tape. I heard the message of the program I had been struggling in for 2 years. I heard the guy on the tape say that every time someone told him his problem was drugs and alcohol, he wanted to grab them and shake them and tell them that they were wrong. His problem was NOT drugs and alcohol, it was that he didn’t HAVE any drugs or alcohol and he couldn’t stand it.

That was when it hit me - I hated feeling sober because, for me, sober hurts. It is too loud, too bright, too weird and I am too alone.

Since realizing that alcoholism is what I feel when I am sober and that I was trying to treat that with booze, the 12 steps started to actually make sense and work for me.

WEIRD, aren’t I?

Eventually, the women of this program helped me regain my authentic self - and today, as a Catholic Woman, I can walk with grace, dignity and my head held high…and darn it but hardly any of those people seem mean to me anymore!

Anyway, that’s MY story…it is not the same for everyone…keep praying for your friend but do not pretend they do not have a problem. They will hate it, but if you can learn to answer every single complaint about life from them with, “Well, the problem is you are an alcoholic and you won’t stop drinking…hey, did you see the game last night?” evenutally they might get the hint.

Or not.

PRAY PRAY PRAY.