miracles, I went to my first AA meeting that night. My first reaction was that I was too young to be an alcoholic. I certainly hadn’t lost my family, home, husband, etc. — because I’d never had those things in the first place. I hadn’t been in jail, and I had no drunk-driving arrests — police officers used to escort me home or to a coffee shop.
However, at that first meeting, I listened to a woman sharing about how she felt. I couldn’t believe that someone felt as I did — different, shy, ashamed, full of guilt and remorse. I was terrified in that meeting, but when it was over I realized I had nothing to lose by checking out AA for a while. I was told to go to ninety meetings in ninety days, and if I didn’t like what AA had to offer, I could go back to the misery of my drinking. I was also told not to pick up that first drink because that’s the one that would get me drunk. What a profound statement that was. I thought about it for days, trying to figure it out!
I was full of fear in those first few weeks and wouldn’t raise my hand to speak. I just wanted to go from feeling terrible to feeling bad — a step up at the time. It was suggested I get a sponsor and I thank God I did; I was afraid of the woman I asked, yet at the same time I liked her because she had a sparkle in her eyes. (She still does!) I was able to talk to her and ask questions. Talking to her helped me start sharing myself in meetings.
I came to accept that I was an alcoholic when I was sober about six months. At the time there weren’t many people around who were my age, but fortunately I was taken under the wings of gracious AA members and spoiled with tough love. It’s ten years later and I’m still sober. I’m very active in AA. I don’t think I could ever give back what has been given to me but I try to thank God and AA for this gift in one way or another every day.
My drinking experience also involved the use of other chemicals, but I feel that’s unnecessary to share at AA meetings. When I brought up this “controversy” with my sponsor, she told me to read the Traditions and come to my own conclusion about what was right for me. I love the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I think the more I change, the more I hope the Traditions and principles of AA don’t change. I believe it’s my responsibility to support the Traditions and live the principles. I’m not here to change Alcoholics Anonymous; Alcoholics Anonymous is here to change me. Thank God.
D. W.
San Mateo, California
December 1995
Rarely Have We Seen a Person Fail …
I TOOK MY FIRST REAL DRINK, aside from sips of beer from family members, the summer after eighth grade. I was thirteen years old and baby-sitting with my cousin. She mixed some vodka and orange juice and without even thinking, I began to drink. It was one of those things, like smoking, that I swore I’d never do because I saw how it made my alcoholic family members act and I didn’t want to be like them.
The compulsion began immediately. Suddenly, I was beautiful and smart and funny, and everyone loved me. We continued to drink until we ran out of orange juice. One of us got the bright idea to mix the rest of the vodka with fudge ripple ice cream. The rest of the night is pretty blurry: it was my first time getting drunk and I experienced my first blackout. I later thought that this was normal, since I experienced them nearly every time I drank. All I know for sure is that right away I felt like I couldn’t get enough. I got sick, and the parents came home to me throwing up in their cast-iron skillet on their kitchen table. My cousin told them I had gotten food poisoning, even though I can only imagine how I smelled.
The next morning I woke up sicker than I had ever been before. I had several earrings in my ear that I didn’t have the previous day, and there was some kind of fluid all over my bed. I’m still not sure what it was or where it came from. I was scared and I was sick, but I also felt somehow whole. It was like I had finally found something I’d been looking for all my life. The suicide attempts, the running away, the faking illnesses — none of these had worked for me and I’d been trying them for as long as I could remember. But the alcohol, that was different. I had finally found something that made me feel like I was someone else. Someone better. Not me.
From that point on, I drank and got drunk whenever I could. I stole alcohol from my parents and brought it over to my friends’ houses. I stole it from my friends’ parents and anywhere else I could find it. My friends got tired of the new me pretty quickly, and it’s not hard to understand why. Every time I drank, I got sick and out of control. I was normally a very quiet and shy person, but when I drank I became loud and obnoxious. Eventually, I always ended up in a bathroom somewhere, passed out with my head in the toilet. My teenage years were proving to be very glamorous!
It wasn’t long after I started drinking that I turned to drugs. I used drugs like I drank; whatever I could get, whenever I could get it, as much as I could. I soon began selling drugs to support my addiction. Alcohol was a constant by now and I used it for maintenance. Drugs brought me over the edge when I felt I needed it.
Pretty soon, it all stopped working for me. That feeling of being beautiful and funny and loved was gone. Now I not only felt different and lost when I was not drinking, but the lostness seemed to be magnified when I was under the influence of something. I tried using more and more to get that magical feeling back, but nothing was working anymore. I remember thinking that I knew I had a problem because my life was like an After-School Special about alcoholics and drug addicts.
I had what I guess I would call the usual problems of a teenage alcoholic: I started to get in trouble with the police for things like shoplifting, underage consumption, and trespassing. I drank my way through several sets of friends, always finding new people to hang out with when the old ones got tired of my behavior. I was not fun to be around. I set limits for myself every night on how much I would drink and I always went over. My friends would tell me what I had done or said the next day.
I knew I had a problem and that I couldn’t stop drinking. I’d seen some family members with the same problem. No one had ever said anything about a way to quit, so at seventeen I thought that I was destined to live my life as a drunk. It didn’t much matter to me at this point. I didn’t think I would live that long anyway. I was so depressed that I figured I’d either kill myself in a short time or I’d end up dying in some accident while I was in a blackout. That’s when God stepped in.
It was my senior year and I’d been selling LSD around school. The Friday night that started off my winter break, I was planning on going to a party. I stopped by my parents’ house to get the address, and when I walked in they had this look on their faces like someone had just died. My little brother was sitting in the living room crying. He wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. My parents brought me into the kitchen and told me that a detective had been there looking for me. They asked if I had any idea what he could have wanted with me. Of course, I told them I didn’t. They knew about most of the trouble I had already gotten into, but they really wanted to believe that I was a good person and I played that role in front of them as best as I could.
They told me that the detective hadn’t told them what he was there for, even though I found out later that he had. They brought me into the police station to talk to him. He sat us down and explained to me that a girl I had sold LSD to a few months before had freaked out and gone to the hospital. She’d told the police that I had been the one to sell it to her. I’d been under surveillance for two months. I had been followed everywhere I went and had a tap on my phone. They said they had talked to some of my friends and schoolmates, and they knew that I was the one who had sold LSD to this girl as well as many other people. If anyone decided to press charges, I would be charged with attempted murder.
I remember thinking, “How am I going to get out of this one?” I tried to put a look of disbelief on my face, like I was so innocent I couldn’t believe they were accusing me. It didn’t work. My
