others have helped them, and the impact that practicing the principles of AA has had on their lives. In Sections Five through Seven, the stories describe what life in recovery can be like. In “Family Connections,” writers reflect on the unexpected ways AA can heal families; in “Friends We Haven’t Met Yet,” AAs discover the unexpected pleasures of helping others; and in “Happy, Joyous, and Real,” they describe the challenges and rewards of finally learning to live and love, one day at a time.
Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Foreword to Third Edition
Haven’t You Had Enough?
AS I SAT IN MY CHAIR and looked around the room, I thought to myself that there was no way I belonged with these people. So what if I drank a little more than my friends? An alcoholic I was not. I was too young.
I started drinking at the age of eleven. When I drank, I became funny and beautiful, and it seemed to me I had friends. But somewhere along the way I crossed an invisible line. And drinking was no longer something I could choose. My friends had begun to say, “Haven’t you had enough?” But as drunk as I was, I had just started.
My self-esteem vanished. I was no one. Only when a guy said I was beautiful, did I even think, “Maybe I’m alright.”
I hated the sight of what I’d become. I started to isolate. I became suicidal. My parents, not knowing that I was drinking, didn’t know what to do with a depressed teenager.
Then I found tequila, and during my last year of drinking, I never drew a sober breath. I drank to the point of no friends and no self-worth. No one could trust me, not even my parents. The next day, I was in a thirty-day treatment program. That day, sobriety began. It was March 21, 1988. I was thirteen years old.
Today, I know who I am. Very proudly in my meetings I announce that I am an alcoholic. I pray daily, even just to ask my Higher Power (whom I choose to call God) to walk with me that day. He has never left me, even when I have left him. I’m active in AA — shaking hands, chairing meetings, making coffee, reading, and sharing my experience, strength, and hope. I try to live the Twelve Steps of AA. I’ve found that they apply to my every situation in life since I still have to learn to live life on life’s terms.
Every one of us in AA is a miracle. The gratitude I have is just to be breathing today … I was so close to dying. And although I have a lot of “yets” out there, I have true friends who love me. All I need to do is call them and go to meetings, work my program, and for today the “yets” won’t come.
So I write this to thank all of you for keeping the AA program strong and giving me a chance to continue my sobriety today.
A. C.
Raleigh, North Carolina
August 1999
Staying in the Momentum
I HAD MY FIRST DRINK when I was eleven years old, and it was wonderful. The first drink did so much for me that I had to have another and another. I was drunk and felt incredible. Up to that point in my life, I’d always been discontented with things, and now I had found the cure. Alcohol made me feel big, important, and content with life. I could feel the alcohol going through my veins, warming the chilly emptiness I always felt.
I started drinking on the weekends whenever I could get the stuff. Not many people wanted to have anything to do with alcohol in middle school, yet by the time I got to high school a lot of people joined in. But I gradually became aware that not everyone drank the way I did. The only thing I could think about was drinking: how much I needed and whom I would drink with. During the week, I was full of anger and stress, so when Friday arrived, I was ready. Others seemed able to get by with or without alcohol, but I had to have it. I couldn’t understand how people could just drink a couple and stop. Putting alcohol into my body was like giving me energy. I came alive.
During high school, I had troubles with the police and with my family. I would be asked, “Do you think you have a problem with alcohol?” And I would quickly say, “No.” The only thing that ran through my mind was what life would be like without the alcohol. I can remember being scared to pick up a date, and how a few drinks before I arrived seemed to help.
By this time there were some people I didn’t enjoy drinking around because they wouldn’t do it the way I did. I began to feel withdrawn the day after drinking. I usually woke up still tipsy, and as that wore off, I became jittery and befogged.
When I was eighteen, I enrolled in college — and found paradise. College will hide a drunk. The only thing on my mind was drinking and rushing a fraternity. The routine was pretty predictable. If I started drinking during the week, I’d drink every day until Sunday night. Sunday nights were when my fraternity held its meetings, plus I had to get in shape for the upcoming week. Usually I could make it until Tuesday before I started again. The worst was experiencing Sunday and Monday without any alcohol. I began to have breathing problems and would wake up thinking my heart had stopped. I was shaking all the time and sweating all over the place. But when I began to drink, the shaking calmed and the breathing problem stopped.
On mornings after drinking, I felt an incredible fear and emptiness. I remember listening to my mother and father on the answering machine and not picking up the receiver because I didn’t want them to know I was in pain. I couldn’t make it to any classes and the responsibilities that I had weren’t being attended to. This was always on my mind and I felt pretty useless. As soon as I started to drink, all these things fell from my shoulders and I was free. I’d be studying and the thought of drinking and the “good feeling” would pop into my mind. Drinking would usually win out, and off I would go. I never thought about the emptiness, fear, shaking, or withdrawal; I could only think of the escape and freedom.
Some mornings I told myself, “Not tonight. Just rest — you need it.” I told myself, “This has got to stop.” Yet I couldn’t say no.
I couldn’t understand how people could do things like play ball before they went out, go hiking on Saturdays, go to the movies, or decide to “take it easy tonight.” I couldn’t understand why people left a tailgate to actually go see the football game.
One semester I was dating this girl and she broke up with me. The emptiness and fear grew to an amazing extreme. I’d been drunk for about a week prior to this and stayed drunk for another week. But alcohol wasn’t freeing me anymore. I was in emotional turmoil, failing at school, and felt like I was going to collapse to the ground and go into convulsions.
I’d known for two years that I had a drinking problem, but I just couldn’t picture my life without the alcohol. Then on February 15, 1992, I was asked once again if I thought I had a problem. This time I said yes and asked for help.
To be honest I really only intended to clean up for a month or so in order to get myself out of the jam I was in and to dry out. When I came into AA, I thought I was different. Then an AA member who was committed to carrying the message came over and told me what it had been like for him. Wow! He had thought and drunk the same way I did. I was sold.
Once I started to feel better and to accumulate some time, I started to question whether or not I was an alcoholic. I’d listen to the stories at speaker meetings and would compare myself out. I hadn’t lost a wife or my family, hadn’t had a heart attack, never beat my kids,
