I was 5 years old when our phone rang, the primary school principal told my mom “if your son Keith, doesn’t stop playing on the girls side of the schoolground, you will have to send him to school in a dress”. She said your son Keith because there were two of us, myself, and my twin brother. I sensed at an early age I was different; I just did not have a name for it. I was to find out that name in years to follow.
My twin brother and I were born 20 plus years after our first three siblings to loving, caring parents. They instilled us with strong family values, a sense of good and bad, right, and wrong. All of which would disappear later in life due to my addiction.
My parents were hardworking, honest people that attended church, sent us to Sunday school, church choir, cubs, and boy scouts. My twin brother excelled in sports and I excelled in overeating “my first addiction”. I was overweight, insecure, and embarrassed of the growing understanding that I was a fat gay boy in suburban Nova Scotia in the 70’s.
My parents were not big drinkers, dad would by a dozen beer for him and a fifth of rum for my mom on payday, by the time the next payday rolled around there was often beer left in the fridge and some rum in the cupboard.
We had 2 older and stable sisters, both living in southern Ontario, building their own families and an older brother who was a loose cannon. Our older brother was diagnosed in the 60’s as schizophrenic, the reality was, he was an alcoholic just like me. I often reflect on my childhood when my parents would take us to the parking lot of The Nova Scotia Mental hospital as my twin brother and I would wave to our older brother standing behind the barred windows of his hospital room. During my childhood I would often see my brother with his bottle in a brown paper bag, drinking and creating chaos in his path. I did not understand it at the time, but I was ashamed of him, I treated him poorly, often crossed the street when I saw him coming my way. I believe in hindsight he frightened me, because at some level at an incredibly young age I identified with his tortured soul and his pain, but did not want to turn out like him.
Growing up in a small community had its advantages, most kids in our classrooms remained the same from kindergarten until Jr. High. We were a large family, that looked out for each other and had no reason to hurt each other like I would witness in the years to come. In Jr. High, several communities would converge to create this new chapter in my life. I was by that time quite overweight and a bit more feminine than the average rural jock. I was excused from gym class and did not join sports teams because by then I just did not feel welcomed or that I belonged. I was harassed, bullied, and beat up, at that point I just went inward, started building walls and began to create a world of fantasy in my head that would carry into my addiction.
My final year of Jr. High I felt burdened by the weight that I was so different than everyone else in school, however, I still had good grades. I selected a few honor roll classes in high school for the following year and to my surprise I was accepted. I choose these courses “archeology and anthropology” because there was a Mediterranean cruise to ancient ruins attached to them. When Jr. high ended for summer break, I realized the horrible error I had made. In about 6 months’ time this grossly overweight boy would have to wear some sort of bathing wear in front of all his fellow students on the deck of that cruise ship. I became anorexic and bulimic that summer in order to drop sixty pounds of body fat. I started high school in the fall of 1977 looking completely different on the exterior, but I am sure more emotionally broken on the inside. I was bewildered how differently I was treated because my physical appearance had changed so drastically. I became popular and was invited to parties and dances. Girls who made fun of me in Jr. High would ask me to take them to school dances. It was all so very confusing, until I went to the first school party and found Rye Whisky. My entire world changed for me that night, I was no longer the awkward, feminine, pimple faced fat boy, that I was in Jr. High. Alcohol changed the playing field, I was funny, engaging and the center of attention in my own little world, but still full of pain and fear just under the surface. In Grade 11 at 17 years old I found the downtown gay bars and my world would change forever. I finally thought I had found where I belonged, but it was just the beginning of a nightmare that would last until I was 32 years old.
I was a mommy’s boy most of my childhood. Myself and my older brother where a huge burden on my mom. We were both completely unpredictable and we both had explosive personalities fueled by the inner turmoil we both experienced. I lived a lie those last few years of high school dating girls and guys at the same time, trying to keep up appearances for my mom and my family. The lies, especially to my mom was tearing me apart. I could deal with them when I was drunk but when I was sober the shame destroyed me. I moved to Toronto, which was the beginning of a trend for me, when things became too painful in my life or if I had created too much chaos in my life I would move again and again.
Between 1982 – 1985 I lived in Toronto, New York, Cairo, and Saudi Arabia. I found the perfect job for a young alcoholic, although at that point I did not know I was an alcoholic. I became a flight attendant with an International Airline who had many worldwide bases and when I created enough chaos at one base, I would move to another before I lost my job. I took a post in Saudi Arabia, knowing it was a dry country, maybe I thought I might dry out, but no, instead I learned how to build a wine still in the bathroom of my villa. I would smuggle vodka and hashish into Saudi Arabia at the risk of being imprisoned and I would buy bootlegged grain alcohol which at one point left me blind and unable to work for three days. I was unable to stop drinking, I drank before work, during work and if I had not passed out, I would drink after work so I could finally fall asleep to start it all over again the next day.
I travelled the world and, in those days, all I can remember are the bars I drank in not the cities I visited.
By 1985 I returned to Toronto, tail between my legs and I was hired to work at a large bar with very little clientele, I hung in there and in a few months a popular gay bar had closed due to a flood and the bar I worked at became the busiest, most popular gay dance club in the city. It was a license to drink and make money and both I did without scruples. By the fall of 1986 I had lost one friend to pneumonia “we didn’t really understand AIDS at his time of death”. Clients, friends, young people were getting extremely ill, one week healthy the next week, frail with lesions on their skin then they would just disappear forever. I drank more and more to cope with what was going on around me while staying in denial that it could possibly affect me too. I watched my first partner get sick and eventually die, but I was in so much denial from my addiction. On evening sometime in the early fall of 1986, a young man approached me at my bar when my shift was ending. He asked me If I thought maybe I drank too much. I am not sure if I were in a blackout, attracted to him or if it were the universe planting a seed that would bloom years later. I went home with that young man and to my surprise he 12 stepped me and I went to my first AA meeting and met my first AA sponsor the following day. I do not remember much of that period of sobriety; I remember looking for the differences instead of the similarities, while trying to find an exit plan from sobriety. I do remember the unconditional love that first sponsor Danny gave me and the lengths he went to keep me sober, despite myself.
Gay Pride Day 1987 I found my exit; I had the keys to the bar I worked at and thought one peach schnapps would not hurt. That peach schnapps turned into a Long… Long Island Iced Tea and some mushrooms and I was off to a path of self-destruction until 1993. I was 25 years old, I felt I was too young to be an alcoholic, the party was not near over yet. I could have spared myself 6 more years of torture, self-loathing, and the incomprehensible demoralization that our literature talks about. Those morals I spoke about earlier that were instilled by my parents had all but disappeared as I begged, borrowed, and stole my next drink. It was difficult to hold a job for any length of time in those days because I was unreliable and often too sick to go to work.
In 1990 I opened a business that did well, but I could not get ahead. I either spent all its money on alcohol or buying friendships in bars. I looked good on the outside but was totally broken and defeated on the inside. Later that year after being pushed for several years by physicians I caved and did an HIV antibody test, the time for my alcoholic induced denial was over. Of course, I was HIV positive and that bubble was broken. I spent about a week in bed ordering Vodka deliveries daily to my home, trying to kill the pain or kill myself. I eventually realized that was not going to work, I was young and still physically healthy.
I was exhausted dodging banks and credit card companies, so I packed up my car and ran for the last time to Vancouver in February of 1993. I gathered everything I could manage to gather from my broken life and packed it on top of and into a Honda Civic, with a hostage at my side and a few “several” bottles for the ride and off we went. It did not take long for my hostage to see I was not the man I pretended to be, he saw my alcoholism in both my erratic action and my never-ending lies. One afternoon I came to from a blackout, we were arguing, I did not have a clue what we were arguing about. I knew I had to keep the argument alive, so I could figure out what we were arguing about. I had to win! I could tell by the look in his face that he was on to me and he was playing this out to see just how far I was willing to stoop. I collapsed and with crocodile tears, I shouted “But I Love You”. His response was “You don’t even Love yourself”. I heard those words Loud and Clear as he packed up and left me alone to live in this horror, I had created for the next few dark lonely months, weeks or was it only days ahead. I began to feel a hopelessness that I had never felt before. Suicidal thoughts grew increasingly frequent as each day passed, I was living in a deep dark hole all by myself and a bottle of whatever I could get my hands on. I do not remember much of those final days or weeks; they were all the same. Alone, Lonely and Desperate for it all to end. I have often heard in AA never forget your last drunk, for me they were all the same a feeling of desperation as I took the top off the bottle I was about to drink, I was paralyzed by an overwhelming fear and obsession of where the next bottle would come from. That was my Powerlessness!
One night I went to bed and I started seeing rats in my window that were not there, I woke up the following morning more broken then I had ever felt in my life. From somewhere deep inside my soul I screamed out “God, I can’t live like this anymore”. I am totally convinced that was the first “REAL” prayer I had ever prayed, I picked up the phone and called a suicide help line. I hung up in minutes as a thought crossed my mind… Call AA, the seed had been planted so many years ago. I was at a crossroad, suicide, or something different. I followed my intuition and arranged to meet a man at an AA Meeting that night. For a moment, I got out of my own way and trusted fate. That night was a step meeting, I did not realize at the time, but they read Step One for me “the new person”. I did not hear a lot at that meeting but I did meet three men that night that walked with me through my first three years of sobriety. I owe my life to those three men and the incredible sponsor I would meet on my path. I honestly believe, like the poem “Footpaths in the Sand”, I never walked alone through all my darkness, I was carried at times and set free to trudge this road when the time was right.
My eldest brother died in my first few months of sobriety from complications due to Cirrhosis of the liver; I was far too broken to cross the country to say goodbye. I had the opportunity to speak with him on the phone before he died and attempt to start my amends process with him. As time passed and I started to work the 12 Steps with my sponsor, I saw through a clear lens that there was dysfunction in my immediate family. That dysfunction was my eldest brother and myself and all the insanity we carried with us. In the years to follow, I cleaned my side of the street, built a loving respectful and nurturing relationship, but more importantly friendship with my Mom. The one person, I had brought so much pain and fear too. I was blessed with 23 years of sobriety to share with her. When she passed her dysfunctional son was able to come home to the community and the family, he had caused so much pain, with my head held proud for the incredible Mom I had, and the person I am becoming.
Alcohol stripped me of almost every bit of good that was gifted to me at birth. The fellowship of AA, A loving man named Dave C. “my sponsor” and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has over the years helped me to try and become the man that my higher power wants me to be.
Recovery has not always been easy, but if I had written out the way I wanted my life to look like in those first few months of sobriety, I certainly would have shortchanged myself. The obsession to drink left sometime in the first few months of my journey. I believe with all my heart that if I keep doing what you AA folks have taught me; I will never have to pick up a drink again.
Go to meetings, Give back what was freely given, Stay in the center of the program, Be of service to others, Attempt to build a spiritual connection with a power greater then yourself on a daily basis, Remain forever grateful for this precious gift of Sobriety.
For me, God did for me, what I could not do for myself.
Thank You for allowing me to be of service
Keith J Vancouver, BC Canada
Home Group – West End Men’s Vancouver, BC
Sobriety date – July 05, 1993