Nothing Left to Lose
March 1997
“I spilled more than you ever drank,” said a man with three years of sobriety and three million grey hairs. My alcoholic mind used that phrase to excuse my next drunk. I was fourteen years old and thought I was too young to be an alcoholic. I’m sixteen years old now and know alcoholism has no minimum age requirement. I realize that many fellow AA members have lost homes, marriages, and children to alcohol before I acquired any of those things. But I lost enough.
I drank for the first time when I was ten years old. I looked and acted sixteen at the time. I was a lot taller and more mature than the other kids. When I was drunk I could be any age I wanted. By the time I was eleven I’d do anything for any guy who would buy me a bottle. I was hanging out with twenty-year-old hookers by the time I was twelve. That was when I was put into a treatment center. I spent thirty days there learning the right answers and looking forward intently to my next drunk.
During the next year I never went anywhere without a mug full of whiskey and cola. Somehow I wasn’t picked up for prostitution or driving under the influence without a driver’s license. I was usually the designated driver because I was the only one who wasn’t passed out by the time everyone had to go home.
Again, I was put into a treatment center where I spent sixty days. There I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. No way was I going to spend all my time with those old fogies. They were all over twenty-five! After my sixty days of patience, I once again went out and got plowed.
During the next six months I remember three days. Those three days were filled with suicidal thoughts that I was too scared to fulfill because I thought I’d go to hell for all the people I’d hurt. Once again I was placed in a treatment center. Once again I got drunk. I realized I might have a problem when I drank all of my friend’s beer and was throwing up on his shoes.
Thanks to my many trips through treatment I decided once again to try Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t have anything to lose. I did what people told me to do: went to ninety meetings in ninety days, got a sponsor, started to work the Steps, and read the Big Book. My sponsor said this was “willingness,” but I preferred to call it “going to any lengths.” I now have almost a year in Alcoholics Anonymous. I love to spend time with the people in the Fellowship whom I used to think were “old fogies.” Every day I thank my Higher Power for them and their acceptance of me.
And occasionally, when I meet someone who says they spilled more than I ever drank, I politely reply, “Perhaps if you hadn’t spilled so much, you would have gotten here sooner.”
SUNNY B.
BOUNTIFUL, UTAH
The Only Failure
Dear Grapevine, March 1981
I’m a twenty-six-year-old alcoholic and drug addict—and very grateful I came back to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I found out early that I couldn’t drink like other people. Since booze caused so much trouble, I decided to experiment with drugs. For the next ten years, I mixed booze with drugs and landed in some pretty sordid spots—jails, hospitals, the street.
Four years ago, I was introduced to AA. I was going to learn from your mistakes and learn how to drink decent, like most other people. At twenty-two, I could readily admit I had a problem with alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. But to take never having another drink of booze? Never! It’s taken me four years to learn that I don’t take that first drink today.
I’m grateful that I still have my family, health, and youth. And after this last slip, I’m grateful for AAs who told me that the only failure in the program is the failure to come back.
V.L.
TEXAS
Someday I'll Be Cured
January 2003
When I look at what my life is like today compared to the way it was going seven years ago, I’m amazed. Seven years ago, I couldn’t stop drinking although I desperately wanted to. All but one of my friends had had enough of my erratic, violent, and rude behavior while drinking. I ate barely enough to keep me going; eating made getting drunk a slower process, and I needed to get drunk as fast as possible. I also wanted to die, but I couldn’t think of a foolproof way to do it. I couldn’t bear the thought of the shame I would feel if I tried to commit suicide again and failed. I didn’t really want to die, but I didn’t know that till I’d been sober quite some time. What I wanted was to have my life changed, but I didn’t believe that anything but death could change it.
Thankfully, I did find an alternative to suicide. In 1995, I found AA and have been sober ever since. Oh, I knew about AA long before 1995. My father had gotten sober several years previously; in fact, the year he got sober was the year I started drinking in earnest. He took me to open meetings and although I knew in my head that alcoholism wasn’t about willpower, I didn’t believe it in my heart. I believed I could drink differently, so I got drunk for the first time at age twelve. I never want to forget that night. I remember thinking, I’ve found it. This is what I need to feel okay. For the first time that I could remember I felt that I was okay, that everyone else was okay, and that the world was a safe and fair place. That was before I blacked out and was sexually assaulted.
I made a decision before the blackout to drink as much and as often as possible. The next morning, when I heard what had happened while I was blacked out, I felt deeply ashamed. I thought that guy’s taking advantage of my drunken vulnerability was my fault. And there began the pattern that defined my drinking. I always drank to get drunk. I always blacked out and did, or had something done to me, that made me feel ashamed. And then I needed to drink more to bury the shame that got bigger every time I drank.
My drinking continued that way for the next seven years. I got sober at age nineteen, only nine months after I became legally able to drink. Before reaching that age, I drank as much as I could, when I could, but that wasn’t often enough. When I could walk into any bar or liquor store and legally buy anything I wanted, my downhill slide accelerated significantly. By the time I got sober in May of 1995, I was beaten. I had known something was wrong long before—I had first tried AA when I was sixteen, but hadn’t been willing to change my life in any way. This time I was ready. The night of my last drunk, I had a vision: I saw myself not far in the future, drinking alone, and dying. I realized I was an alcoholic and called my father, who took me to AA the next day.
I haven’t looked back, but it would be a lie to say it has been easy. I was one of very few young people in the town I sobered up in. I got a lot of “I’ve spilled more than you drank!” and people telling me outright I wouldn’t make it. Worst of all, I couldn’t get a sponsor. But I stayed sober then for the same reason I stay sober now: I was willing to do absolutely anything to do so. I didn’t want to die drunk, and I knew that was what would happen if I didn’t get help.
I worked hard the first few years and grew a lot. The Fourth and Fifth Steps helped relieve a lot of the shame that made it feel necessary for me to drink. I began to feel good physically and picked up my university marks so successfully that I was accepted to do graduate work. Things were going well, but I got complacent. My meeting attendance dropped off. I didn’t contact many people in AA. I thought I was okay until after I got my master’s degree. I found myself working in a foreign country without all the usual support networks, which made complacency that much easier. I managed to find the AA number, and after weeks of excruciating
