The Peter Principle

In 1969, when I was sixteen years old, I had a baby boy whom I named Peter. I saw him once, immediately after he was born, and then I gave him to a social worker and he was placed with his new family. With this he passed from my life completely. This event, which to most people would have been an agonizing affair, affected me on the surface very little. But the "Twelve and Twelve" tells us that damaging emotional conflicts which persist below the level of consciousness may give our emotions violent twists which will alter our lives for the worse. This appears to have been true with me as I went blithely on with my life, never discussing what I had done or even thinking much about it. In fact, I told people that the baby had died and later I denied ever having had a child. However, my drug and alcohol intake increased rapidly. By nineteen, I was living on the streets and in the throes of alcoholism that was beyond belief. I stayed drunk continuously (unless I was in jail, psychiatric hospitals, or mental institutions) until I was twenty-nine years old. Then, faced with a physical problem that made it impossible for me to force a drink down my throat, I entered AA in Dallas.