Too Young?

Like many other AA members, I feel that my life truly began the day I came to the program. That day came for me on March 7, 1969. Prior to that day my life seemed hopeless. I felt desperately alone and afraid. My trips to jails and hospitals weren't the worst things that ever happened to me. Losing complete control over my own life, never knowing where I would end up next, what I might do or what would happen to me led me to the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization our book describes. I feared death and insanity. I was eighteen years old. I had no idea that I was an alcoholic or that there was any way out of my alcoholism.