HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
This week, “HTYH” is a continuation of Keith L.’s story:
I went into that skid-row basement bathroom with every intention of ending my life. I had a medicine cabinet full of drugs and back then if a person worked at a hospital they could take whatever they wanted. I seldom used drugs because I thought if God made anything better than alcohol, he kept it for Himself.
It was my intention to take every pill in that cabinet and I’ll never forget this, I screamed, “You’re 29 years old and at last it will be over.” Suddenly a voice cut through the fog, it was a woman’s voice and she said, “It’s starting!” I was startled and next thing I remembered was that I had a phone number that somebody had given me and so I called it. The phone number was for Ernie’s treatment center; Ernie the attorney who recently celebrated 45 years of sobriety; a wonderful man. Ernie said they would have a bed for me in three days and so I called my boss at the hospital and told him about my problem. My boss said, “Do whatever you need to do because your life is falling apart.”
I detoxified on my own, and although that is not recommended, back then they didn’t have detoxification centers in that area. I shook, sweated profusely, flopped around on the floor, heard music and saw all sorts of things, but on the third day when I woke up, I was able to get in my car and drive thirty miles to the treatment center even though it took me five hours to get there. My heart was wildly pounding, today they call that having an anxiety attack, but back then it was called a running fit.
Before I got to Ernie’s I ran up and down the side of the road until I wet my pants and while trying to change them on Route 29 outside Washington D.C. my Phi-Beta-Kappa key fell out of my pocket. And I wondered whatever happened to the kid who had all the potential; it had all dissolved in alcohol.
When I arrived at Ernie’s I had heard of Alcoholic’s Anonymous, but I knew nothing about it. I did have a Big Book because my wife found one in the trash and packed it with my other things when she ran me off.
After I arrived at Ernie’s they put us on a bus and drove us to an A.A. meeting. An old man was greeting everybody at the door and I will never forget how kind he was. He looked me in the eye and I looked at his shoes. He said to me, “Son, if you keep coming back you’ll never have to drink again.” I felt like screaming at him, “Look pal, you don’t know who I am, I can’t stop drinking.” But as it turned out, he in fact did know me and what I was like because he was an alcoholic too.
That man introduced me to an old lady who gave me a half a cup of coffee, and put her arm around me and patted me on the back. About half way through that first A.A. meeting the woman turned to me and said, “Son, if you keep coming back you’ll never have to be alone again.” I started crying because my alcoholic loneliness had totally isolated me and I was very lonely. About two weeks later, I was walking into a meeting and another man said, “How’s it going?” I was miserable and blurted out, “I don’t deserve this.” He said, “Keith, if your head hits the pillow tonight and you haven’t had a drink, you’re a winner!”
After the meeting the bus took us back to Ernie’s where I was sleeping on a cot in the attic and when my head hit the pillow, his words came back to me and I burst into tears again. And to this day, every night when my head hits the pillow sober I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.
A few days later, I was going to another meeting and another old guy said, “Can you relate to these speakers?” I said, “No, because they’re all a lot older than me!” He said, “That’s too bad because if you can’t relate, you’re doomed to die an alcoholic death.” My muddled mind hence forth decided that it must either relate or soon die.
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