the age of fourteen, I got my first unlicensed DWI. Six months after that I got my second DWI. I got into fights and got locked up in a ten-by-ten holding cell several times. Each time I got locked up, I’d say to myself, “How could this have happened again? This time it was going to be different.” It never was any different. But I believed alcohol took away the fear. I wasn’t prepared to give that up.
The minute I picked up the first drink I no longer had control of how much I would have or what I was going to do. I sat downstairs with my bottle of whiskey like a mad scientist, trying to figure out the right mix so that I could drink normally.
I did what alcohol told me. What choice did I have?
I came around AA for about a year before I got sober. From my first meeting I knew I belonged. I just thought I was too young. People would tell me when I came back in, “You never have to feel this way again.” In December 1987, through the grace of God and AA, I finally believed that in my heart. This program gave me hope even when I didn’t want it. AA people made me feel okay. God filled the God hole. Everything I looked for in a bottle I found in AA.
My life is beautiful today. I stay close to AA. I try to help another alcoholic. I am active in my home group. I got my driver’s license, I turned twenty-one, got married, had a son, and I did it all sober. To all the young people out there who are unsure, I want to say, “Keep coming back, no matter what.” Enjoy the gift of sobriety and try to pass it on.
I would like to close with a line from a prayer I read: “I asked God for all things that I may enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things.”
John L.
Howell, New Jersey
September 1999
Far from Innocent
WHEN I ENTERED ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, I was twenty-one years old. Notice that I did not say “only twenty-one,” but “twenty-one.” I have never heard people say they came in when they were “only forty-eight,” so why should I be any different? Being in AA for over a year now, I have noticed that people respond differently to young AA members than they do to older members of the Fellowship. At meetings, people will say, “It’s so nice to see you young people here tonight!” To this day, I have not heard that said about the older members or the old-timers. Why not? It’s good to see them too, right? It’s nice to see any alcoholic, of any age, on any given night.
Older members tell me how lucky I am that I didn’t have to go through what they did. How do they know what I went through? The circumstances and duration of time might be different, but the emotional hell is the same or similar. The Big Book tells me that one does not have to drink long to be gravely affected, as does my own life experience. Eight years of drinking caused me to give away everything I had, physically and emotionally. My family would no longer speak with me, and by my own doing, I was forced to live on the street. Having no social or employable skills, I stole and panhandled in order to survive. More importantly, though, I lost my dignity, self-respect, and dreams of ever having a fulfilling life. Did I lose enough, or should I have lost more? The only thing I didn’t lose by coming in so young is years of time. If I was so lucky to be here, why didn’t I win the lottery? Luck did not get me here, God did.
Why do people assume that a person is brand-new if he or she is young? A friend of mine, eighteen years old, has over three years of sobriety, yet people constantly treat him as if he is new. In the beginning, the phrase “Keep coming back” was encouraging. Today, it is insulting. If someone says that to me, it is because they have stereotyped me. Maybe people feel that we are not serious about sobriety, but that is a misconception. I take sobriety seriously, but try not to do that with life.
Young people are not “kids”; they are young adults. Many of us come from broken homes and shattered lives and have not been “kids” for many years. Do not judge us by our innocent appearance, for many of us are far from innocent. Do not condescend to us, because we are intelligent and you damage your attempt to be useful. Instead, love us as you would any other member in the family of Alcoholics Anonymous. What we lack in wisdom, we make up in enthusiasm and spirit. If I said I killed someone because I got behind the wheel intoxicated, would you take me seriously then? How old do you have to be to destroy someone else’s life?
Young and old and everything in-between, we are all in this together. Without the older generation, there would have been no one to carry the message to me. Saying thank-you would not be enough, but my appreciation can be shown by carrying the message to the next generation. We are definitely people who normally would not mix, but we are definitely not normal people. Despite our many differences, the harmony in which we get along and coexist is truly amazing.
Young alcoholics are real alcoholics and should not be treated with indifference, but with compassion and understanding. We should not be treated as special cases or with sugar-coated sobriety. Do not pamper us or pinch our cheeks, because we are the same as you. Our suffering and sickness were no different than yours, so why should our recovery be?
Justin W.
St. Petersburg, Florida
March 2003
Fun to Spare
IN THE OCTOBER 1986 GRAPEVINE, a report on the 27th International Conference of Young People in AA contained an apocryphal story about an AA old-timer who happened to be a Texas Ranger. The Ranger, it was told, “sat by himself in the back of the AA meeting room behind a pair of dark sunglasses, with his silver spurs propped up on the table in front of him, and his hundred-dollar cowboy hat tipped back onto his sunburned forehead.
“Well, one day a young fellow showed up at the meeting in pretty bad shape. He was cut and bleeding, and what clothes he had left reeked of alcohol. Some of the older members of the group quickly got to their feet and ushered the ragged newcomer to the front of the room where they began to tell him what AA was all about. After a pretty good earful, the newcomer took a skeptical look around him.
“‘Maybe I’m too young for all this,’ he said. ‘You mean I have to stay away from the first drink, come to these meetings, and never have any more fun?’
“From the back of the room the Texas Ranger’s spurs clanked to the floor like a gunshot. He got up from his seat and a path cleared in front of him as he sidled up to the newcomer. The Ranger bent down, lifted up his sunglasses, and looked straight into the newcomer’s bloodshot eyes.
“‘Son,’ he asked, ‘just how much damned fun can you stand?’”
The Foundation
“How will I know if I’ve really hit my bottom?” I asked at my home group. “When you stop digging,” they told me. The bottom is only the bottom until we find AA. The day we begin working the Steps, the bottom becomes the foundation. By taking action and following the program, we begin to build our lives again.
Bob G.
Chelsea, Michigan
November 2002
I heard my future told around the tables at my home group if I were to keep on going like I was, and I also heard what my future could be if I got sober and stayed that way.
Allen O.
Houston, Texas
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