- Alcohol
- Faith
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
I am an alcoholic and my name is Anthony. I am also an addict and mentally disabled. I grew up in Norwood, MA, a suburb of Boston. For nine years, I went to Catholic school there. They decided to hold me back a year in 7th grade. Second time in seventh grade, I didn’t do anything different than before, but I had to make new friends and start all over. I started finding out about girls at this time as well. I stopped playing sports and started hanging out with a gang of public school children. We were drinking on weekends and started smoking cigarettes. Drinking alcoholic beverages made me sick, I didn’t like the feeling. But then I found marijuana and started smoking pot and dropping acid.
My life had it ups and downs at this time. I stayed out on weekends and finally quit school. My father forced me to enlist in the army. Sometime later I found my love of heroin and began to use it intravenously. I thought I would never do this because of my fear of needles, and I was surprised that it didn’t stop me. I got out of the army early after that.
One year and 3 months later, I was arrested for armed robbery and went to jail for the first time. It did not end there. Within the next 35 years, I got arrested a total of 132 times. Forty of the arrests ended in felony convictions.
In the year 2002, the lights started to come on. I was in jail for stabbing my friend in a blackout. I finally connected the dots. Drinking and getting arrested connected. Upon my release, I went to a twelve-step meeting, got a sponsor and did what I was told. I asked for help every morning on my knees. I went from there on to a meeting every day.
Since I began attending 12-step meetings, my life became different and I started to change. I always believed in God of my understanding. Today I put the same effort into staying sober as I did to stay high. My life got tremendously better. Since then, I never got arrested again. Today I have friends who love me and it really feels good inside. “Trust God, clean house, help others” is the motto I live by today.