These Good, Rewarding Years
I was born in a middle-class family at the end of the Second World War. The first six months of my life, my relatives and a housekeeper took care of me because my mother was ill. I had a brother who was a couple of years older than I am. He was from early childhood an exceptionally talented person. I myself was mediocre in almost every respect. Both my parents were completely sober, intellectually active, and well-educated--useful members of our community. My father died of cancer when I was twelve years old. I developed strong negative feelings of insecurity, jealousy, fear.
I took my first drink when I was thirteen years old and very soon started to drink regularly. Alcohol cured my negative feelings. From the first, I drank to become dead drunk. As long as I lived at home, I drank secretly. I had a strong desire to save my face in front of my family, so I used to go to our summer cottage to hunt because it was an acceptable reason to be away from home. Many times when I was drinking, I was in serious danger to myself because of combination of alcohol and guns.
My heavy drinking became still heavier when I went to study at a university six hundred kilometers from my home. I was now free. I could do what I wanted, and what I wanted was to drink--heavily. Very quickly I got into many difficulties. I tried to get help from psychiatrists, but because I could not be honest with these good people, they could not help me. I got medicine with the warning "Don't use with alcohol." I didn't heed this and so began a terrible merry-go-round when I combined pills and alcohol. It's a wonder to me that I got my degree during those years.
My last bout of drinking started in May 1968 and ended six weeks later. In June, very drunk, I went to my first AA meeting. I sat in the meeting for a while and then I started to give orders. Somebody shouted, "That boy is drunk--throw him out!" And so I was kicked out of my first AA meeting. When I went outside, I bumped into someone I'd met several weeks earlier in business. He asked me if I wanted to stop drinking, and I said yes. I don't know why I said this because I'd never wanted to stop drinking.
I sobered up at once and started to go to meetings regularly. In meetings I said, "I am an alcoholic," but what I thought was, "I am not." However, during my first year I became convinced that I was a real alcoholic, despite the fact that I was only twenty-four years old.
I have been sober all these good, rewarding years. I have taken part in AA meetings but for me that has not been enough. I also needed lots of work with the Steps and my sponsors. For years I have been an eager reader of the AA Grapevine. Especially important have been those articles that emphasized the continuing work with the Steps. Now I can believe what my sponsor said during my early years in AA: "You can't imagine the rich and wonderful life you will get if you stay sober in AA."
