Patient Twelfth Stepping

My real heavy drinking began when my wife of three years kicked me out of the house and filed for divorce. It seemed as if I was drunk all the time. Every day I went to work strung out, hung over or still drunk from the night before. One of my co-workers was a very tall Irish meat cutter named Ivan. Ivan had a Marine Corp flat top haircut and chain smoked unfiltered cigarettes. Every day when he came to work he would shuffle across the back room and stop to ask me “How are you doing today, Jimmy?” Every day I would say “I’m all messed up, Ivan.” And he always said, “I remember what that used to be like” and then he would tell me about one of his drunken experiences.