IN
EARLY youth I believe I had some of the tendencies which lead to alcoholism.
I refer to attempted escapes from reality.
At
fifteen and sixteen, although free at home to drink small amounts
of beer and wine, I drank considerable quantities of stronger liquors
at school and other places. Not enough to cause serious worry, but
enough apparently to give me occasionally what I thought I wanted.
Escape? A feeling of superiority? I do not know.
I
then decided I'd had enough of school, which decision was probably
shared by the schools. The next few years were spent in civil engineering
work, travel, sports, and a little idleness, and I seem to have avoided
alcoholic difficulties of the more pronounced kind.
Immediately
before marriage and in the short time before sailing for France, alcohol
began to take a real part in my life. A year and a half in war time
France postponed the inevitable and the post war period of hopes and
plans brought me nearer and nearer to the point where I eventually
found myself to be an alcoholic. Not that I would have admitted it
then, having the alcoholic's usual facility for deception, both to
self and others.
Divorced,
sometimes suspecting that drinking was the basis for most of my troubles
but never admitting it, I had enough left in health, interests of
various
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Alcoholics
Anonymous
kinds,
and luck to carry on with considerable success.
About
this time I stopped all social drinking. I became a periodical drunkard,
the sprees lasting from three days to three weeks and the dry intervals
lasting from three weeks to four months.
During
one of the best years, I made a happy marriage and the age of thirty-five
found me with the following: a beautiful little home presided over
by a kind, understanding, and lovely wife; a partnership in a firm
I had helped to found years before; more than a comfortable income;
many luxuries and many friends; opportunity to follow my interests
and hobbies; a love of my work; pride in my success; great health;
optimism; and hope on the credit side. On the other hand, I had a
growing, gnawing fear of my recurring trouble.
I
slipped by far too easy stages to the bottom in less than eight years.
Not a pleasant place, the bottom. Sometimes I slept in a cheap hotel
or rooming house, sometimes a flop house, sometimes the back room
of a police station and once in a doorway; many times in the alcoholic
ward at a hospital, and once in a subway toilet. Sometimes decently
fed, clothed, and housed, I worked at my business on commission with
a large firm; sometimes I dared not appear there cold, hungry, with
torn clothes, shaking body and muddled brain advertising what I had
become. Helpless, hopeless, bitter.
Sometimes
I was apparently on the way back, and sometimes writhing in bed for
days at a time, terrorized by the fear of insanity and by the spectres
of people without faces, people with horrible faces, people grimacing
and laughing at me and my misery. Tortured
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On
His Way
by
dreams from which I would awake with a scream of agony and bathed
in cold sweat. Tortured by day dreams of what might have been, dreams
of the kindness, faith and love that had been heaped upon me.
Due
to this last however, and to what little remained of my former self
and perhaps to some lingering power of spiritual faith, I became somewhat
better. Not well, but better.
This
helped me to take stock and to try to do some clear thinking. I found
my inventory somewhat mixed, but as my thoughts became clearer, I
grew much better and at last arrived at that point where for the first
time in several years I could see some light and hope ahead of me.
Through a haze of doubt and skepticism I began to realize, partly
at least, many things in myself which had greased the path I had pursued,
and some vague thoughts and ideas came to me that are now crystallizing
with the help of the men I have been happy to join.
What
thoughts and ideas? The answer is short, although the road to it is
long and tedious.
My
intelligence, instead of drawing me further away from spiritual faith
is bringing me closer to it. I no longer react in quite the same way
when my will and desires are apparently frustrated.
The
simple words "Thy Will Be Done" and the simple ideas of honesty and
of helping others are taking on a new meaning for me. I should not
be surprised to find myself coming to the astounding conclusion that
God, whoever or whatever He may be, is eminently more capable of running
this universe than I am. At last I believe I am on my way.
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