Copyright 2007
I have an Alcoholics Anonymous birthday coming soon. It’s a birthday celebration because I stopped drinking June 14, 1988. By my count, that means as of June 14, I will have lived in sweet sobriety for 19 years.
My journals say that I’d got a Driving Under the Influence ticket on the last Friday in April of 1988 and had to appear in a Los Angeles court to answer for it the following month, on May 26. The whole ordeal was shaming and before I appeared in court, I had moments of seriously considering running away. I fantasized about just taking off for parts unknown, working as a waitress, or whatever half-assed job I could get, living a nomadic life on the run from the law. Just disappearing off the radar of all family and friends. A blip that no longer blips on the satellite camera. My shame was driving those fantasies. And that’s all they were because I was way too chicken to do something like that.
Though I didn’t think so at the time, I was lucky I got arrested. Lucky because I hadn’t killed or injured anybody, or myself. Lucky because I was sentenced, among other things, to go to 12 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I had anticipated that part of the sentencing because I’d consulted with a lawyer and she told me to expect it. I was also sentenced to do 300 hours of community service and to complete a fee-based Alcohol and Drug program for 12 very long and boring weeks.
I didn’t know what to expect from the AA meetings and I was nervous about having to go. The only information I had about it was a hazy memory of a scene at an AA meeting in the old movie, “Days of Wine and Roses.” Still, with all those conflicting feelings churning in my gut—shame, guilt, fear, desperation, hope—I saw AA as a remote chance for me—just maybe. For even before I’d been sentenced, I’d said to a friend that I was glad I was going to have to go because I hoped it would help me. That remark came from a revelation I’d had earlier which I’d confided to a friend from high school, one that had known me through all the twenty-eight years of drinking I’d done.
“I hope it does me some good to go to AA,” I’d said, “because I don’t know how to control it. I can’t stop. I’ve tried but I don’t know how.”
That was the first time I’d said to myself and to another person, aloud and with utter certainty, that there was something terribly wrong with me and alcohol. Aloud is the key word here. Because years prior, I’d know deep inside that there was something wrong. I just wouldn’t admit it. Couldn’t face it. I figured that if I didn’t say it aloud, everything would turn out okay.
But, years later, at the AA meetings, when I said aloud that I was and am an alcoholic, when I admitted to it, and believed that admission, I laid the foundation that I’ve built my sobriety on for all of these years. How ironic. Once I admitted aloud that alcohol had the power over me, it was the beginning of a new life, of things really turning out okay for me.
The shame, guilt, fear, desperation melted away. They were replaced with hope, with faith. And with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am grateful.
You can read stories about me and the bottle in Parts 2 and 3 of The Mee Street Chronicles. Go to www.amazon.com or www.kerlak.com or www.barnes&noble.com to order your copy now.
