- Alcohol
- Drugs
I was introduced to the 12 steps at the age of 18 when I was sent to a 28 day program after a run-in with the law. I’d run and gun, use and booze, get locked up, get out and get sober. This pattern would plague me for years to come.
“Never again,” I’d proclaim and promise, only to repeat the performance.
Some 20-odd years later I sat across from my fiancée as she informed me she had had enough. “I’m done,” she so coldly confessed. I packed my measly belongings thinking she would stop me before I got out the door, but she didn’t.
On my way I went, all the while “never again” haunting me. It lingered in the air tauntingly, until it filled my vision. “Look at all you have lost.” I shut my eyes to keep from seeing, but it was even clearer behind closed eyelids. The friends, family, relationships and opportunities. The jobs, money and possessions. All of it gone. Traded. Sold. Taken for granted. Lost in the fog of alcohol and drugs.
Depression enveloped me in a cloud of despair. With 88 days sober one thought sunk into every second of my day. “I’m a f*** up, always been a f*** up and will always be a f*** up. Why build it up just to tear it down AGAIN?” Suicide became my goal. I saw it as the only option to save myself from the pain of being me. I decided that on my 40th birthday I would check out on the day I came in. This gave me two days to plan my escape. And while I contemplated the details the obsession to drink set in. At 1:20 AM I grabbed my keys, my wallet and drove to my destiny.
I returned from the convenience store with a 6-pack and a pack of smokes. Then it began. To say the battle within my soul raged and roared would not accurately describe the account. “Drink-don’t drink-drink-don’t drink- drink-don’t drink” drove me to my knees. I was in torment. The pain unbearable. Ever so quietly a voice, faint and light, penetrated the insanity inside my head. It was both soothing and logical: “You know what will happen if you drink. You will get drunk, you will do dope, you will go to jail.” I couldn’t argue the fact. It was why I was giving up to avoid the vicious cycle that was my life.
The voice continued, seeming a little louder, but I’m sure it was because it had my attention now. “If you want to drink tomorrow, go right ahead. But just this once, just this one time see what happens if you don’t drink. Not tonight.” By now I realized the voice was God. I accepted the challenge. I put the unopened beer away and went to bed, falling asleep instantly.
Upon waking my first thought was of the bottles in the fridge, but somehow the desire to drink was not there. I rang an old friend, and broke down and gave up: “Tell me what to do…Please…Tell me what to do…”
He gave me instruction to enter rehab, the very one he had graduated some 17 years before. We discussed the details and on what was previously to be the day I checked out, my 40th birthday, I drove 7 hours and checked in. Into rehab, into recovery and into God’s grace.