AA Member: Story by M.K

My family was not immune to the disease of alcoholism as I knew growing up that my maternal grandfather was an alcoholic, but I never knew him that way.  He evidently had done something to address the issue by the time I came along, but I know to this day that my mother bears some scars of his disease from her childhood.  My uncle, my mother’s brother was also an alcoholic and I do remember the episodes when as a child I remember him coming home to my grandparents house drunk and out of control.  I remember being taken to the bedroom along with my brother and told to wait until someone came to get us.  I remember the yelling and screaming that finally ended with quiet when my uncle finally passed out on the couch in the living room.  I was just a child then, probably 6 or so years old.  As I got older and we continued to visit my mother’s family, I noticed that my uncle had changed somehow.  He was clean and well dressed and spoke quietly and courteously to the family.  Moreover, I remember him calling a taxi almost every day and leaving the house for a couple of hours, always coming back in the same condition as when he left.  I knew later that he had quit drinking and he stayed sober until he passed.  I believe that it was AA that changed his life, or I’d like to think it did.  I now wish I had gotten to know him better in his sobriety. 

 My mother’s sister was also an alcoholic and on reflection I think that the manner in which her disease exhibited itself was similar to my own.  My aunt was a hard-working woman who was our favorite aunt.  She had never had children of her own, but bestowed all her love and attention on her nieces, nephews, and godchildren.  My mom loved my aunt and often told us she owed her sister her life; I think related to the alcoholic home they grew up in, but I’ll probably never know.  My aunt always loved animals and had many pets over her life – something we definitely had in common.  However, when she drank she became an angry and very mean drunk.  I couldn’t believe that so much anger and hatred could be found in a person until I saw these same behaviors arise in myself, often fueled by alcohol but not always, often simmering under the surface and leading to alcohol as my resentments to people, places, and things grew.  My aunt worked her entire life and retired from the same job after many years.  She was a good and loyal employee and quite well liked, but it was a façade.  She decided to quit drinking, but never went to AA.  She died almost 10 years ago of cancer with my mom and I by her side.  While we loved her dearly and know she loved us – she died with all the resentments and anger still burning in her soul.  I am convinced that if she had found AA, the outcome would have been different.  It makes me sad.               

My parents are not alcoholics; neither is the older of my two younger brothers.  We grew up in what would be considered a typical Roman Catholic, French Canadian family.  Alcohol was always available in our house and our home was a welcoming place for friends and family.  Our youngest brother is 8 years younger than my one brother and I and we had both left the house by the time he hit his teens.  From the time he took his first drink at 12 – 13 years of age, my brother has had problems with alcohol.  This progressed over the years with periods of sobriety in AA, but progressing to repeated relapses, resentment and cynicism toward AA, and increasing street-drug use.  The burden my brother has put on my parents, his own now divorced wife and family, and the rest of the family has been really hard to take.  My resentments for him grew exponentially over the years.  In my opinion, he has literally “sucked the life” out of my parents and to this day they continue to enable him.  Now at 60 years of age, he lives with my parents and they continue to support him while they are in their nineties.  Nobody asks, but he still goes off on benders albeit not as often, during which time we are not welcomed into the house for several days afterward.  Fortunately, he has never been aggressive to our parents.  My father says he is the worst alcoholic that has ever lived and that there is nothing that can help him including AA.  I have not told my parents I’m in AA.  I don’t want to disappoint them.  

I would describe myself a social drinker in my younger days.  I never had problems stopping and rarely drank to excess.  However, I was always searching for something in life – never sure if it was approval, success, love – not sure and not needing to know anymore.  In retrospect, I guess I never thought I was worthy regardless of what I achieved in life.  Because I had high expectations of myself, I had high expectations of others and became angry or disappointed when people didn’t measure up to my expectations.  This extended beyond people, to places and things.  Relationships failed and I moved from one marriage to another.  In my thirties, I married again to my current husband and the marriage has lasted to this day.  As life stresses grew, my anxiety grew until I started experiencing severe panic attacks and agoraphobia.  I couldn’t go anywhere without a “safety net” and my husband was always prepared to come rescue me if I needed him.  An occasional glass of wine to settle my nerves became a glass of wine every day, and that extended to 3 glasses a wine every day.  Interestingly, I continued to excel in my career and our family life was good.  The kids grew up and moved on to their own lives.  The drinking continued and it was typical for me to finish a bottle of wine every time I opened one – usually every day.  My routine coming home from work was to stop at the bank, the liquor store, the grocery store and then home.  Sometimes I’d think I could pass on the liquor store finding only that I’d jump in the car while dinner was cooking to pick up a bottle of wine from the “beer and wine store”.   

My daily drinking went on for several years and I functioned quite well.  I finished my Master’s degree and my business was successful.  I thought about how much I drank and that maybe I was over the normal weekly expected limit, but it didn’t deter me.  At one point, I was hospitalized for a surgical procedure and remember worrying about how I would cope without booze every day.  I was in hospital for a week and nothing happened so I thought I was okay.  Eventually, my excessive drinking started to show at family events and with either my tipsy behavior or my hangover the day after starting to raise some eyebrows.  Some people were definitely starting to think I was drinking a bit much, but no one confronted me.

In 2010, we bought a house in Mexico and split our time between Canada and Puerto Vallarta.  I continued to work virtually, and life carried on quite normally.  However, episodes of “tipsy” behavior and terrible hangovers were becoming the norm.  My husband didn’t say anything, but on several occasions I admitted to him that I thought I was drinking too much and needed to slow down or stop.  He said he would help me, but that didn’t work.  Every year I would abstain from alcohol for a month to prove I wasn’t an alcoholic.  I hated it and white knuckled every day until I could drink again.  My drinking behavior became very clear and now in retrospect demonstrated evidence of my alcoholism.  This is how it worked:

• I drank every day unless I was so hung over I had to give myself a day to recover; toward the end I could often drink again by supper time that day.
• Once I opened a bottle of wine, I had to drink it to the bottom; toward the end I grieved the bottom of a bottle and often opened another.
• I would not go out to a restaurant unless it served alcohol and I hated any event where alcohol wasn’t served; I would drink before I went or when I returned.
• I typically drank before we went out to tame down my social anxiety and toward the end it wasn’t unusual for me to have 2 – 3 drinks before leaving the house.
• I became quick to anger and became frustrated easily and over nothing; I blamed my husband or anyone else who I thought was insulting or wronged me.  
• As my resentments toward people, places, and things grew, I would drink “to take the edge off” and I would get back to a better mood; toward the end, the alcohol just made things worse and I would pick fights or say mean things to members of my family.  
• I fell in the bathroom one time and hit my head on the towel rack that resulted in a concussion.  I passed out and threw up in bed before our guests even went home.  My husband made excuses for me.  
• I also tripped off a curb after drinking on a flight back to PV then following it up with a couple more glasses of wine at dinner.  I broke my ankle.
• In early, 2018 I actually did a video of myself hung-over and still half drunk to be used by myself before I drank too much the next time.  It didn’t work!
• The hang-overs got so bad that I was sick more hours in a day than I was better.  I told myself it was punishment for drinking and that I deserved it.  
• The final clincher is I started having black-outs.  Periods of time when I would think I had passed out and gone to bed, but was told by my husband that I had carried on with normal activities.  That scared me to death!

But I wasn’t sure I was an alcoholic!

In April of 2018, I woke up at 3AM sick with a hang-over and looked up the closest AA meeting.  I couldn’t believe it had come to that, but I was defeated.  I wanted to stop so bad and I just couldn’t.  In the morning I got up and got ready.  I told my husband where I was going and he was supportive, but assured me that he really didn’t think I was an alcoholic.  I was hoping he was right and that the folks in AA would confirm that.  I thought I might learn to drink like I used to – like a normal person.

That first AA meeting was at 8AM, so I set the alarm in the night, got up (hung-over), showered, and drove to the address cited on the AA “Find a Meeting” website.  Interestingly, the location was about 3 minutes from my house and I had driven by that place a thousand times not knowing what it was.  I pulled into the parking lot and saw a few people standing outside the entrance to the building.  I have said this many times, but that day I can’t remember being able to differentiate people.  I recall and have stated that I saw them as “silhouettes”, not noticing if they were male, female, old, or young.  I parked the car and walked toward the entrance.  I can’t even recall how I was feeling.  I should have been embarrassed, tentative, and afraid but I don’t remember any of that.  I only recall walking directly into that building – like I was being led.  The determination surely wasn’t mine!  Voices welcomed me.  Introduced themselves (I think) and invited me in.  Someone asked me if I wanted coffee and what I took in it.  Another person led me into a room and to a big comfy chair in the corner of the room (away from the door so I couldn’t easily exit! I think).  I did look around my surroundings.  The building was a converted older bungalow that I found out later was known as “The Little House”.  It had been donated to the community by an individual, and it was always to be used for recovery programs including AA.  The meeting room was lovely: big chairs positioned in a a circle around a stone fireplace.  It was April and still cool so the gas fire was on.  I recollect most of the chairs being full so about 13 in the room.  The meeting started and I sat and watched.  To be honest I was sizing up the people in the room and was surprised that they all looked pretty normal.  They started with some readings: one was “How it Works” and the next was “More About Alcoholism”.  I was to find out later that the latter reading was also read whenever a newcomer came into the room regardless of what the program for the day was.  After the reading, I was asked by the chair if I wanted a 24 hour chip and I said yes.  I didn’t deserve it because I was probably still a little drunk, but my mind wasn’t in a decision-making mode so I just took it.  People then started to share.  In that meeting, the chair chose who spoke and in what order.  Again I was to find out later that there was “method in the madness” and often the shares started and ended with an old timer sharing their story and their wisdom.  They asked me if I wanted to share and I honestly cannot remember if I did or what I said.  All I remember is that I stayed, not really thinking anything.  At the end of the meeting, people welcomed me to the room and encouraged me to come back, then exchanged pleasantries with others as they headed off to work, to take their kids to school and to carry on normal lives – all sober.  I decided at that moment that I wanted what they had and would do whatever I needed to do to get it.  I received three voiced suggestions that day that set the stage for me, and that I like to share with newcomers to this day.  The messages were:

• Ninety meetings in ninety days;
• Listen for the message; and
• Get to the middle of the herd.

I made up my mind that I would return the next day and commit to the 90 days.  I was given an envelope with information and on the front were the names and phone numbers of all the women in the room that day.  These women are special to me to this day: Maureen, Sue, Diane, Monica, and Kirsten.

Now and looking back, my first year in the fellowship was an interesting and challenging one.  After a week, I started to feel better because the hang-over was gone.  I still craved alcohol every day, and late afternoons (Happy Hour) were always the worst.  I desperately needed the meetings every day because it was the only way I could manage not drinking – one 24 hours at a time.  I planned my days to the last minute – getting up at 6AM, showering, reading the daily reflections then heading to the meeting. I was still working, but given I was self-employed I adjusted my calendar to accommodate the meeting time.  I committed to not being available for anything work-related until after 9:30.  During the day, if things got tense I would read “Just for Today”.  It saved my sobriety many a time.  After about a month, I volunteered to open the room every morning.  I got there at 7:30 and set up the room and made coffee.  The relief of not being hung over every day was a blessing, but the craving for alcohol continued.  I know there will be some that will say that once sober, I could not have a craving and that the craving only starts after the first drink.  But to this day I believe that I did have a craving “until the last molecule of alcohol left my body” which in my mind, took several months.  Now, after almost 2 years, I can say that the obsession is gone and that seems to be true given I’ve been in pandemic self-isolation for a month without any desire to drink at all.  However, I believe I will always have an obsession with alcohol – a little voice in my head that says that since I’ve been almost 2 years sober and didn’t struggle too hard to quit drinking that maybe I’m not a real alcoholic and could have just one drink.  Then I play the video forward and I know what will happen, maybe not right away but at some point in the future for sure!  I’ve always thought that was the curse of high-bottom alcoholics – the spiral of the cocky is downwards!  

I want to end this chapter of my story (as it is only a chapter) by saying that the gift, miracle, and blessing of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it has changed my life.  I came into the rooms hoping to stop drinking, but that is not why I stay.  I stay because I have come to realize that my problem with alcohol was a problem with me and my thinking.  The alcohol was my way of coping with life.  Over the last 24 months I have learned so many things and they come to me in epiphany after epiphany!  I’ve never been a linear thinker so progressing through the program the first time in linear steps was very hard, but I committed to keep going through them and with each time more is revealed.  The fellowship of AA is now by tribe – these are my people.  At my first birthday, my daughter said to me that for the first time she is seeing the real me and on reflection I think I’m starting to see the real me myself.  

I’d like to end this story with a comment about Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.  I had a big problem with God (as I knew him) in the beginning.  It was really hard to listen to people talk about God.  For me, my journey in AA has been a chance for me to reconcile with my higher power and I can now say that I have.  It has come as a result of 3 realizations:

• I may not be sure who God is, but I now know it is not me;
• For me, organized religion is not God; and
• The connection with my higher power is is there for the asking – I need to reach out, listen and feel it through the fellowship and it has materialized just for me.

I am amazed and I am hardly half-way there!  Thank you.

(To check out a meeting see the zoom schedule here.)