to the danger I was in after a year of slacking off, and I became involved in AA again. I seemed to be doing everything right. I got a sponsor who was serious about the Steps. I went to four meetings a week. I hung out with AA people with good sobriety. Yet, I started being plagued by voices telling me that drinking wasn’t as bad as I remembered. I couldn’t believe this was happening after five years of sobriety and following all the suggestions. It was then, finally, that I truly accepted in my heart, not just in my head, that I am an alcoholic, now and forever. I realized that in the back of my mind, I’d always believed that because I got sober so young, I would be cured someday. Things I’d heard at meetings but didn’t really understand suddenly made sense, especially “My disease wants me back” and “We have a disease that tells us we don’t have a disease.”
Since then, life has gotten better. I still have thoughts of drinking, but I cherish those passing thoughts because they remind me that I’m not cured and never will be. For me, staying sober depends absolutely on three things: staying involved in AA, remembering where I’ve come from, and accepting that some part of me will always want to self-destruct. The difference today is that I have choices.
Today, I try to treat others with respect. I try to treat myself with respect, and sometimes that’s harder. I try to give back what’s been given to me. Next week I celebrate seven years of continuous sobriety. I’m thinking of how miraculous that is and my nose is getting red and my eyes tickly. I’ve had the opportunity to make amends to several of my family members and friends. I do service work putting on detox meetings and now I’m starting to do public information work at schools. I’m doing graduate work in something I love. And I have a host of real friends today. But all of this is gravy. The real meat is that I’ve managed to stay sober one day at a time for seven years, no matter what.
C.S.
KINGSTON, ONTARIO
CHAPTER TWO
I Earned My Seat
Young, but no less an alcoholic
“If you are a young alcoholic, older members will see you as being different. It doesn’t matter. Don’t let them stop you. It’s your life, not theirs,” writes the author of a letter to Dear Grapevine.
The younger AAs in these pages want you to know they are members of AA—not AA junior, AA lite or Alateen (a valid but different Twelve Step program). And they’ve earned their seats. Their drunkalogs, such as those featured in the previous Chapter, may be slightly different. The drinking careers may be shorter—at least one member here only drank for three years. Many of the younger crew never took a legal drink. But all of this means nothing except that they were hurting bad enough to stop.
“Alcohol destroyed our lives and we came to AA for help,” the author of “All in the Same Boat” writes. “I have had many older members tell me they are proud of me for being so young and getting into the program. I am just as proud of them. Some say, ‘You’re lucky you’re young,’ and it’s true, I am lucky—not because I am young, but because I have this program to share in fellowship.”
That is the prevailing mood throughout this Chapter. These AAs who started young are proud to be in AA (perhaps that’s a given because they’ve chosen to write their stories), and are serious about staying sober. “I am an alcoholic and I am also seventeen—not surprising, because there are many teenage alcoholics,” the YPAA author of “Seventeen and Sober” says.
If they happened to “drink less than you spilled”— as the old cliché goes—they may tell you that perhaps if you hadn’t spilled so much, you might have gotten here sooner—as the newer cliché goes. The author of “Haven’t You Had Enough?” writes: “Today, I know who I am. Very proudly in my meetings I announce that I am an alcoholic.”
A Teenager's Tears of Hope
October 2002
My name is Jane. I’m an alcoholic, and I’m fifteen years old. I was raised in an alcoholic home. I wasn’t the smartest kid nor the prettiest, and all the other kids in school made sure I knew it, every day. So, eventually I turned to alcohol. My older relatives and cousins told me that it was cool, and that I’d be cool if I drank.
I had my very first drink when I was eleven years old. I hated it—the taste, the smell, everything. So, I didn’t drink right away. But the year I was fourteen, I wanted to be independent—you know, to take charge and be carefree. And I wanted to be cool. At first, it seemed harmless to have five beers, feel kind of tipsy, and laugh a lot. You see, I had a horrible past, having been molested from the time I was age five to age ten by my own relatives, and then by my older brothers until I was eleven years old. Soon I wasn’t drinking once or twice a month; it was every weekend.
That summer, I got a job and a boyfriend who didn’t drink. The relationship lasted a month. I lost my boyfriend because I ended up making out with a guy who was twice my age at a party (and who was put into the hospital that morning by my friends). But hey, who cared? I had money, I had friends who were cool, and I was finally cool.
Most weekends were a haze: I’d go to a party, drink, have a good time, and come Sunday, go home, usually with the cops, but not always, and have a great story to tell for days. The things I usually left out were waking up in strange places half-naked, puking all over myself, and finding mysterious bruises and scrapes on my body in the weirdest places.
Soon fall came, and I was a grade behind, but I didn’t care as long as I partied on weekends and had a good time. No problems, no worries, no harm done. That’s what I thought, until one day when I went to the bathroom. My groin area was itchy, and I noticed an awful smell and a burning sensation. I never told anyone. I studied some information about sexually-transmitted diseases and read in horror the signs and symptoms of genital herpes. I looked at my body—the bumps on my groin area, the bumps on my lips, the discharge in my underwear. I cried for the longest hours of my life when I read that it was incurable. I still had not gone to see a doctor after nine months. Why? Because I was scared of rejection, of dying, of losing all my friends and family.
Guess what came to the rescue? Alcohol and this time, drugs. I started to drink anything, anytime, anywhere, with anybody. I’m fifteen, and every time I went for a drink I was waiting to die. I tried every strategy: getting into cars with drunk drivers, going home with anybody, and eventually trying to commit suicide three times by taking pills, hanging, and cutting myself. No luck. Finally, my mom put me in a treatment center. I came in unwillingly, expecting a bunch of losers who couldn’t control their drinking, bums, hookers, crackheads, losers. That wasn’t me. I thought I was the complete opposite—cool, clean-cut, with class and style. Wrong. These people were my age, struggling to fight the disease called alcoholism. They looked normal and didn’t seem to smell or act funny. So I checked in, planning to party harder when I got out.
I started to have withdrawal shakes, sweating, moodiness, and worst of all, I was probably the most insane person in there. Then the weirdest thing happened. I began to follow the program in treatment, and I went to some AA meetings. I finally cried, not out of anger, guilt, or shame, but with tears of hope that I could survive, not for anybody or anything else, but for me. I graduate this Saturday. I’m very scared.
ANONYMOUS
ONTARIO
All in the Same Boat
February 1987
My name is K—and I am an alcoholic. I went to my first AA meeting when I was fourteen years old, which means nothing except
