HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
This week’s Here’s To Your Health is a continuation of Steve C.’s story, we ended last week with …My parents got fed up with my alcoholism and bought me a one-way ticket back to Colorado… Dad was kinder than Louise (my wife); he gave me $100.00 and a one-way bus ticket. But, by the time the bus reached East St. Louis I was broke again and in another blackout and I never regained consciousness until my bus was driving down Pueblo’s main street.
Soon after getting off the bus I was knocking at my daughter’s apartment door because Louise was living there with her. When the door finally opened it was like opening the door to a freezer, my family was stone cold to me and that hurt my alcoholic pride. No hugs or kisses, no welcome home, just a rather nonchalant; how are you? They didn’t want me living there and they didn’t hesitate in telling me that, but they were willing to let me stay there that night while I found another place (like the rescue mission), to live. No sooner had I arrived when Louise and two of my daughters informed me they were going to an Al-Anon (for the family of alcoholics) meeting. They left me with my third daughter who watched as I “cased” their apartment trying to find something I could trade for a drink or maybe some methamphetamine.
As the alcohol began to wear off I got a bad case of the heebie-jeebies and I hurt all over. I have often heard recovering alcoholics speak about, “having a moment of clarity” and if I ever had such a moment it was while I was alone in the living room of that apartment, I was sitting on the couch and when I glanced at the coffee table, there was one lone Al-Anon pamphlet on it. I can vaguely remember picking it up and reading the first paragraph. Then I tossed it back down and said to myself, “What a pile of bull.” Then for some unknown reason, I picked it up again and read the whole thing. And then for some other miraculous reason, I remember picking up the phone book and finding the telephone number for Alcoholics Anonymous. I dialed the A.A. hotline and an elderly lady at the other end of the line answered it. Without admitting to her that I “might” have an alcohol problem, I inquired if there was an A.A. meeting in Pueblo that night? She said, “There’s a meeting every night in Pueblo at 8:00 P.M., and it’s held at the club.” I rambled on and assured her that I did not have a problem with alcohol, but I was interested in knowing what this A.A. stuff is about. By the tone of her voice, I could almost see her trying not to laugh at my attempts to pretend I had no problem.
There are seven steps leading down into the basement of the church where I attended my first A.A. meeting. I felt lower than a snake’s belly as I slithered down them…not wanting to drink anymore, but wanting one more than anything in my whole wretched life. I’d been humiliated by alcohol and forced to my knees by anger, resentment, remorse, guilt and shame, but yet another part of my mind remained convinced that I wasn’t an alcoholic? Filled with anticipation, and wrought with “a thousand forms of fear.” Uncontrollably shaking and quaking from horrible withdrawals, not wanting to be there, especially with “those” people, I wanted out of there and I wondered how I could escape without them seeing me. I took a seat at the back of the room and began judging the people around me, they were clearly fakers, it was so obvious because they were smiling and shaking each other’s hands and some were even hugging each another. They were putting on a big act and asking each other “How are you?” like they really cared. Well, I thought to myself, “While I’m here I might just as well get a cup of that coffee and maybe if I’m lucky they won’t talk to me.”
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