SPOTLIGHT ON…Helping and Being Helped in Sobriety
‘Call Don’
By joesteelhead
I come from a “Father Knows Best” type of family, and the alcohol abuse was very subtle in my house. The folks would buy a bottle of bourbon around Xmas and 2/3 of that bottle would still be there the next Xmas. But somehow my two older brothers and I all became abusers of alcohol and chemicals.
I heard a guy on a speaker tape once say he was rarely totally polluted, but he was never completely sober, either. That was me, more or less. I always managed to work (and when I couldn't, my union brothers covered for me). How we managed to do it and not kill someone is still a mystery to me.
But, I was one miserable guy. When each morning came around, I was pissed off I had to live through another day. Suicidal thoughts were a constant companion. In my mind, the only thing keeping me alive were my two dogs and, truth be told, even they were pretty tired of my sorry ass.
During one of my semi-lucid moments when I took the dogs out for a walk, a young puppy who wanted to play managed to knock over my old dog. I totally flipped out, kicking that poor puppy and going after the pup’s owner with murder in my heart. I tried to kill this man, and might have done so if I hadn't been so drunk.
As I was sitting there a few hours later, sucking down the booze, it came to me to call Don. I don't know where this thought came from, but it lodged in a corner of my mind and wouldn't let go. Now, Don had always been sort of a jerk, but there was something real different about him. For one thing, he seemed happy.
The next day, bright and early (too bright and too early, as far as I was concerned), Don was standing at my door all chipper and I was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. But off we went to a meeting. I don't know for sure, but at some point I looked over at the steps on the wall and focused in on step one. Okay, I was powerless over alcohol; and yeah, my life was unmanageable. These were not great revelations to me. The revelation was that I put these two things together. I had never admitted that one had anything to do with the other, but sitting there in a room full of strangers, sick to death and wanting a drink more than anything else in the world, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I knew I was in the right place.
I grabbed hold of the lifeline that was AA with the desperation only the dying can know, and I have never looked back. There are tough times in my life, but I welcome them (or try to) because that's just life - without the rain we would never appreciate the sunshine!
After a lifetime of dealing only with two emotions, anger and lust, coming to terms with all the rest of them is sometimes a painful and baffling experience. But, learning to laugh, learning to appreciate the simpler things in life, learning to be still, learning to be a better person, learning to help another human being -- it really feels good.