30 years and counting
My name is …………and I’m an alcoholic
There cannot be anything more painful to an alcoholic of our type than being humiliated and laughed at.
To be put in a position where I’m made to feel so small, so minute, so inconsequential. Its nothing short of wanting to die.
I was 12 years old at the time.
Being sent to my new grammar school in my eldest brother’s old school uniform. It was at best humiliating; at worst it was the kiss of death to whatever little self-esteem I had left.
Turned up trouser legs and a jacket that would fit an elephant, was not my chosen way to make an appearance at my new school.
And just to add insult to injury, a pair of policemen’s shoes had been purchased, with one purpose, and one purpose only, of lasting at least a hundred years.
They felt like policeman’s shoes.
They looked like policeman’s shoes.
I knew they were policeman’s shoes.
They sounded like policeman’s shoes.
I wanted to die. Truly, I wanted life as I knew it to end.
So, with Everything at least 3 sizes too big, I was told the fateful words, ‘You’ll grow into them.’
‘God, please help me …please’.
In my day, there was no saying no.
I didn’t know how to say no.
I’d never been told I could say no.
I didn’t walk to school that morning I clomped.
Arriving, I saw 599 boys in pristine, super smart, polished, and pressed new uniforms. And then there was me.
I would have looked smarter had I climbed out of a skip.
I just knew everyone was looking at me.
I would have looked at me.
I would have wondered why someone would arrive at their first day of school looking like a tent.
And unfortunately, I was that tent.
I was ashamed, belittled, sick with fear and I felt the joy of a ton of wet plastic.
Life at big school didn’t improve. It didn’t get any better. It got worse.
The school windows became my vision to the world outside.
To a world I yearned. To a world I wanted to be a part of.
I spent most of my life looking out of them.
Waiting for the bell to ring at the end of the day. Waiting for the 4pm bell.
I just wanted something else. Something other than school.
Anything.
But not this.
My world revolved around looking for something new.
Something exciting.
Something new and exciting.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know what that something was. But still I looked.
We broke up for the summer holidays.
I was the only boy that had long hair.
I was a smart kid but with no direction.
Until that is, I was taken to town.
It was the Friday we broke up from school.
My friend took me to a pub.
A bar. A tiny bar with standing room only and filled with smoke.
‘What would you like to drink young man’.
I was bought a double whiskey with two lumps of ice.
I drank it straight down.
Another one arrived.
I drank it.
The feeling was euphoric.
Overwhelming. It was intoxicating.
I drank all that lunchtime.
The fresh air on leaving the bar hit me.
It made me giddy.
It made me hungry.
It made my head spin and I felt sick.
I was a pissed as a Matterses.
And the next day I went back for more.
And I went back every day for the six weeks of that summer holiday.
In those six weeks, I went from being Mr shy, Billy no mates, with no friends to Mr not shy and lots of friends.
And my first girlfriend.
I went from looking like a tent to being dressed in stack shoes, stay-press jacket, bell bottom trousers, a smart shirt with button down collars.
I had arrived. Literally.
My hair was florescent blue.
I was becoming my pop star idol.
I was re born. My life awakened.
Returning to school in September I arrived like a returning veteran.
I arrived like my pop star idol id become.
The teachers took one look at me. ‘Whatever has happened to you?’
I was stood on the table at school.
In front of everyone.
They couldn’t understand the change in me. From tramp to superstar.
From shy, retiring and sensitive, to having the constitution of a clean-cut diamond.
I stood on that table proud, in front of the school, arms outstretched, feeling like all the wonderful feelings I’d never felt.
Whiskey had done for me that which I couldn’t do for myself.
It had taken away the mind-numbing feelings of fear.
It took away the loneliness, the hollowness of my self-esteem.
Whiskey gave me a reason to live.
And now I wanted to live. I wanted to live for ever.
I didn’t ever want this new feeling of euphoria to stop. I was still just a little boy. A little boy in a man’s world. And I felt so grown up and strong.
I felt like Everything I’d ever wanted to in my life. I felt Fulfilled. I felt wanted. The past now evaporated.
And I felt admired. I felt powerful I felt strong. I was still 13. But I had arrived.
Many years later a similar experience happened again. I arrived in AA. At my first meeting.
Over a quarter of a century later. It had been an extremely long journey.
And for the second time in my life, I felt a homecoming.
I felt reborn. I felt again as if life was at last worth living.
I drank up AA like I drank whiskey in that summer holiday. Every drop.
Going to my first meeting was akin to standing on that table in school. I felt like I had arrived.
Just like the whiskey, AA gave me a life that befits a human being.
Unfortunately, whiskey had consequences.
Consequences of pain, humiliation, dishonesty, resentments, an agonising aloneness, and a self-hatred I knew like a brother.
AA started to strip away my negative past and replaced it with the positive.
I had started an all-empowering new life.
Everything I searched for from a bottle I got from AA.
A new life, a new future.
A new freedom and a new happiness.
AA Meetings introduced me to friends.
New friends. Good friends.
I also met some mad, crazy, wildly silly Friends..
Fun, humility, willingness and trust were the steppingstone to enjoying my recovery.
For We are not a glum lot.
And I was not glum anymore.
I was happy, joyous, and free.
I met the wild man from Cornwall in a meeting.
He was certainly happy, joyous, and free.
His hat was instantly recognisable as his trademark.
His neatly trimmed beard the same.
His years of sobriety unknown.
But he wore his longevity in sobriety with humility.
He loved being sober.
He adored his sobriety.
And sobriety had been his making.
But as so often happens in recovery, we lost touch.
Only to reconnect in a meeting 15 years later.
We picked up where we had left off.
With jokes, photos of the lost years, humour, and candid AA.
It was to be a fun friendship.
A friendship of equals.
Jokes were jokes and not taken seriously.
I don’t think we could upset each other if we tried.
We met up just in time for his 30th sobriety Birthday.
A milestone. A wonderful gateway towards being an old timer.
His humour was still candid.
As was his philosophy. He just enjoyed being sober.
No frills or big-time speeches for his birthday.
Just a recognition that the 12 steps had saved his life.
It was a benchmark to aim for.
He told me that his 10950 days sober swelled to 10958 with leap years.
I jokingly mentioned to him, that if he had sobered up 42 days earlier, he would be 11000 days sober now.
He saw the irony of this.
If only.
‘If only’ is the broken soul of every alcoholic at some time or other.
It is only alleviated by a full and thorough step 5 ,6,7,8 and 9.
The other irony in his timing, is this.
Had he sobered up a year earlier or a year later his celebration would and could have been a party to end all parties.
The balloons and banners.
The trifles and party hats.
The speeches full of gratitude to AA.
But his higher power had chosen his sobriety date with purpose.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in god’s world by mistake.
The reason for this unique timing for his 30th AA birthday?
The reason his higher power chose his sobriety date 30 years earlier?
So that it would fall in lockdown.
At least now he could spend the time saved from all the parties he had planned, the speeches he would speak, to catch up on some much-needed step 11.
For it will only be through Prayer and meditation that my mad sober friend from Cornwall will ever find out why he was and still is one of the chosen few to stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous.
God really does work in mysterious ways.
Anon