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i found alchohol at 13 and it was a helpful friend or so i thought for a very long time. my history is littered with experiencees of gaining some success in life only to lose it all because of my inability to control my drinking i was homeless for the first time when i was 23 and god put someone in my life to help me for the time being and i got on my feet again. soon after that i went to seattle to be a bone marrow transplant donor for my youngest brother, because of my desire to help my brother i didn't drink for awhile but soon enough i started again, mainly because of my inability to interact with,(known as fear) people in social situations. during this time god sent a wonderful woman i nto my life and we eventually got married and for 17 yrs had a pretty good life. while we never had children we were generally very happy together, and were best friends and did almost every thing together my drinking of course caused the usual intermittant crises such as totaled cars, out at nite with no way for her to know where i was, dui arrests, and lawyer and court cost's. you know, the usual stuff for an alchoholic. at thirty three i was intruduced to A.A. this was my attorneys best thinking, not mine, i wasn't too impressed with his plan to keep me out of prison but i didn't have a better plan so i followed his. and with a little time i grew to love the fellowship and the friends i made there, unfortunately i made a big mistake, i chose to do it my way, not the way my sponsor thought i should do it. for awhile it worked well no dui's on my record, no prison, didn't even lose my license, and my wife did not follow through on her plans to divorce me. even i would not of blamed her at that time. well as you might imagine i didn,t really change much during the next five yrs and the results of my selfish nature, without ever taking a drink or any other mind altering substances during this period i finally ran her off. apparantly it is harder to put up with a sober asshole than a drunk one, who knew. what i had heard in meetings was coming true, everything that i had made more important than staying sober was starting to go away. about 8 months after the separation i moved from seattle to spokane and tried to start over. i know now i moved becaused i couldn't face the people in my life as what i percieved myself to be, a failure. pride was kicking my ass and i didn't know it, it took 6 more months before i finally picked up that first drink again. but my old helper wasn't helpful anymore, no ease and comfort just an insatiable craving and an insane obsession, my how my friend had changed. it got really fun then. in the next 2 yrs i managed to lose the rest of what i thought was important, things like employability, responsibility, self respect, any kind of concern for anyone else, the ability to do anything except whatever it took to get that next drink. and i do mean anything without any reservations. i was completely willing to go to any lengths to get that next drink. i was only drinking to ease the pain of my intolerable situation at this phase the fun was gone never to be found again in the bottle. sleeping on park benches, living under bridges, or in a tent in a aqcuaintences back yard was my new claim to fame. this is what the big book calls "the complete anniallation of all things worth while in life". about this time i met a woman out on the street who told me she had been looking for an aa meeting but didn't know where one was,well i did , i had been walking past a little aa hall for over a year at least once a day, what went through my mind still amazes me i remembered " when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of aa to always be there and for that i am responsible" how i remembered that i have know idea but i did and i knew that i had to take her there, i formed a plan, i would take her to the hall show her the door and leave, i had no desire to go to an aa meeting. god did for me what i couldn't do for myself, this woman walked me into that room and i sat down. in that meeting i felt that peace that i only find in aa and i decided to "keep coming back" it took 3 more months for me to finally surrender and things started to change, a man i had never seen before offered me his couch to sleep on if i was willing to stay sober and go to meetings, i accepted and started living indoors, i got a sponsor and started doing what he said, you know read the big book and take the steps, very painful for awhile but well worth it. alot started to change but not on the outside, i remained homeless and unemployed for the first 16 mo's of my new life and i wasn't always very pleasant to be around. i was living off the charity of aa members and hating it, my pride was getting it's ass kicked and i didn't know that is what was going on. every thing i needed was taken care of by these amazing people even the cigarettes i smoked and the food i ate, i wanted for nothing that was necessary to survive and was not as grateful as i am now. god was taking care of me and i couldn,t see it. one day after spending a few days in total surrender and acceptance of my situation and praying that god would show me what to do because i was lost again, i got a phone call from an old friend from seattle, he asked me if i was looking for work, how did he know? he said i should call his boss as he thought that i would find employment, the only question this man asked me was when could i be there to start, he was in kentucky and i was in spokane wash. now i was really scared, sure i wanted the job but i didn,t know anyone except my friend within 500 miles of kentucky, my sponsor laughed and suggested i should just go where god wanted me to go and not think about it to much, i did and an amazing journey began to unfold. i have figured out that going to kentucky was partly about learning to rely on god more fully and i have gotten much better at this for the most part. the only problems i have had since that day have been caused by following my thinking that some area of my life wasn't good enough, and taking action to improve it, it has backfired and made it worse every time. i am a slow learner i guess but i do eventually catch on. the greatest gift has been that no matter what, i haven't even given any consideration to taking a drink, it just doesn't come to mind. that is a miracle for a drunk like me! my new life started at 44, so far so good. i have found a level of inner peace i never knew of, and it does seem to be connected to self acceptance gained through continuing inventory and prayer for guidance for my life. god has been very kind to me and continues to be unless i decide to follow my own thinking, then he just lets me go and do my own thing. it has been told to me, and i have come to believe it to be true, that god is a perfect gentleman, he never intrudes where he is not invited and always helps when asked. and that is a simple enough understanding of god for me to handle with my limited thinking skills
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