- Alcohol
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
A vacation brought Carolyn and her boyfriend to Memphis, Tennessee. They live in Laguna Woods, California, and came to see the beautiful city of Memphis with all its attractions, staying at the famous Heartbreak Hotel to wander in Elvis’ footsteps for five days.
In long-term recovery and sober for almost three decades, Carolyn’s boyfriend still takes his recovery very seriously and stays connected to the fellowship everywhere he goes. His first step in a new town is to look up where to find meetings and other activities regarding recovery. During his research, he stumbled upon the Heroes in Recovery 6K run and because he is always active and has been a runner since high school, he decided to participate. As always, in the past five years that they have been a couple, Carolyn went with him to support him from the sidelines.The year he stopped drinking, he was 48 years of age. Today he is 75, happy and proud about this major step that changed his life. Carolyn never saw him drunk or using anything.
Only twelve years ago Carolyn got divorced from an alcoholic after being married to him for 35 years. That past relationship was not good. Although Carolyn’s ex never got abusive, it was a time of constant worry for Carolyn. Her ex went to jail a couple times for drunk driving and was court ordered to a 12-step fellowship for over a year. He never admitted that he was one of ‘those people’, was totally in denial about his problems. Their marriage consisted of different episodes of her ex falling to his alcohol addiction in cycles. Some years, he was totally okay for up to five years without a drink. Those sober times occurred mainly after something happened in his life, like an accident. Then he would go somewhere to an occasion where alcohol was served and Carolyn was always after him, knowing that the first drink would kick-off a new period of despair and problems. He only had to go to a wedding and have a glass of champagne and the entire drinking cycle would start right away again. “We cut out a lot of our social life. We only went to church. All our friends dropped him. We never went anywhere. But I remember clearly the one time when we went to the wedding of my boss, a dentist in Bel Air, to a very ritzy place, and he took a first drink again. Here we go again,” Carolyn says.
God introduced her a different way of living in the form of her new boyfriend who is also an alcoholic, but in long term recovery for many years. He was also married during his drinking days. He got divorced at some point after over 20 years of marriage and later entered his recovery. His ex-wife asked vividly, “Why couldn’t you do that for me?”The answer was that he ultimately did not do it for anybody else. He had to do it for himself.
Carolyn herself never had a problem with drugs or alcohol. She was raised in an Italian family, where individuals drank wine regularly for lunch and dinner. She could not find anything appealing in this and was not attracted to the alcohol at all.
Meetings are very important to her boyfriend today and he also sponsors many other alcoholics. He attends three or four meetings a week. The 12-step fellowship and the steps have become a close part of Carolyn’s life through her boyfriend now. One day, they were traveling and he wanted to go to a meeting and Carolyn googled nearby meetings for him. There was one coming up four miles from the house and despite his age, he put on his sport shoes and started running to the meeting. No way is too long, he is never too busy to go to a meeting.