Fifty Sober Years

I went to my first meeting on Sunday, January 24, 1943, a few weeks before my thirty-seventh birthday. I had been drinking more and more since high school. When I was in my early thirties I tried to stop again and again, until I realized I was in serious trouble. I redoubled my efforts to quit because I now knew what was happening to me. I knew if I kept on I would lose everything--my job, my wife and family of four wonderful small children, my house, and eventually, my life.