Today’s guest post is from blogger Mary Christine, who has been sober since July 24, 1984.  I was 10 years old in ‘84, and I just bring that up because at 10, I was a big geek. I would have laughed if you told me I would wind up as a meth head at 25. It’s always easier to loose sight of your goals than it is to get back on track. Stories like Mary Christine’s are inspiring and remind me how deep my appreciation for life runs now that I came close to loosing it all! Thanks Mary!

I was a hopeless drunk who lived a life totally incongruent with my values.  I didn’t do what I wanted to do, and I did do the things I said I would never do.  I grew up in an alcoholic home and swore I would never touch the stuff.  And yet, I impacted my children far more negatively than my parents had impacted me.

I used to say that I grew up in an alcoholic home, even a dysfunctional home.  Then, in sobriety, I got to try my level best to raise my kids and realized that even sober, even trying my best, the home I provided for my children made the home I grew up in look happy, healthy, sane, and loving.  So, I no longer bash my parents.  They did a good job.

I was the youngest of 5 children.  My sibs drank, but none of them drank the way I did.  They would drink a lot, don’t get me wrong, but then they would get up the next day and go to work.  I couldn’t do that.  I needed another drink in the morning to get rid of the sickness, and then I was off on another day of the endless progression of drunkenness.

Sometimes I use as an example just one or two drunken episodes, just to qualify, and just to show the progression of the malady.

I was 21 years old.  Now that I am 57, I think I can be forgiven for saying that I was beautiful as a 21 year old.  I was 5’7”, weighed 110 lbs., had poker straight hair that came down to my hips, with natural blonde highlights.   I was a looker and I knew it.  I was also a drunk, and I knew that too.  I had my first “real” job and was invited to my first company Christmas party.  I bought a new dress for the event.  It was a floor length black dress with a sweetheart neckline and a sash that tied in the back.  It was beautiful.  I spent the day getting ready for the party.  I curled my hair, which was a major job.  It was hanging in golden ringlets, stunning against the black dress.

I knew I was in jeopardy of getting drunk at this party, which would not be a good career move, so I decided I would drink scotch.  It was sophisticated and would make me feel very grown up, but the main reason I wanted to drink scotch that night was because I thought there was no danger of me getting drunk because I didn’t like it!

When I woke in the next morning, I congratulated myself on doing a great job at this party. I wasn’t really clear on all of the details, but I was happy about getting up and going to work.  My first clue that things had gone seriously wrong was when I got up and walked into the kitchen.  My shoes were all jumbled up inside of my pantyhose, left in front of the refrigerator!  I had no idea what happened there, but didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it and just went forward with getting ready for work.

When I got to work, no one was speaking to me.  I could not imagine what they could possibly be angry about!  So I asked them, and they told me.  Among other things, I had made the most of the sprig of mistletoe and made the wives of the men very angry.  I had spent a lot of time enlightening one wife about what exactly was wrong with her husband.  And then, as I was leaving this stately home in Wilmette, Illinois, I fell in the snow on the front lawn, and since I couldn’t get up, decided to make snow angels.  After I was at work for a few hours, I realized that the hangover was just starting, that I had still been very drunk when I woke up and went to work.  There was a lot more to that story, but you get the idea.

This story and many others were mildly amusing and not terribly devastating.  I knew I was an alcoholic, but still believed I could “cut down” and control and enjoy my drinking.

I would try to control and enjoy it for another 12 years.  By the time I was in my late 20s and a married mother of 3 small children, my drunken escapades were no longer cute or funny.  They weren’t really even escapades any more.  It was more like I just drank.  I drank because I had to.  For a long time, I would try to wait until a “reasonable” hour to have my first drink of the day, but the hour got earlier and earlier.  Since I was living in the mountain time zone, I would actually add two hours because that was what time it was in the eastern time zone.  Later, I just gave up and started drinking in the morning because it would get rid of my hangover.

It is not at all humorous to be a young mother, laying on the couch, too sick to take care of the children, drinking beer from a coffee cup so that no one would suspect that it was booze I was drinking (ha!) and not coffee.  I was ashamed of the way I was living, but didn’t have a clue what else to do.

Which illustrates to me the delusional nature of our illness.  My father had gone to AA and gotten sober in 1965.  It was a miracle for our family, our lives totally changed when he got sober.  I knew about AA and I knew it worked.  I knew I was an alcoholic.  How do you not put those two pieces of information together when your life is a miserable daily progression towards an alcoholic death?  I know I am not alone in this failure to put the pieces together in any meaningful way.  This type of thinking is something we alcoholics have in common.

At the age of 32, I was drinking daily, I had no friends, I was 40 lbs. overweight, I usually looked unkempt, I had long straggly hair without any style.  I wore only jeans and t-shirts.  I didn’t even own a dress or a pair of high heels.  My kids avoided me.  My husband was fed up with me and my moods.  I was suicidal most of the time.  I had “PMS” so bad that I had been tried on medications for it, but to no avail, because I was drinking so much - and of course, I didn’t tell the doctor about that!

When my husband came home from work one day and told me he had quit his job and we were moving to Denver, I thought my world had ended.  (And indeed it had, thank God.)  We lived in a beautiful mountain resort town.  Denver was the last place on earth I wanted to live.  I was angry and even more depressed about having to move.

We got to Denver on July 4, 1984.  For some reason, this move jarred something loose in me.  In this new city and new surroundings, I looked at myself in a different light.  I felt that I was shabby and run down. I knew that my drinking had to stop.

On my last drunk, my children got in the back seat of the car, my husband rode in the passenger seat, and I drove us to the public library in our new town.  On the way to the library, I saw myself as I was.  A drunken fool, driving three little children to the library.  I knew that I would make a fool of myself once there and that I would embarrass my children.  I knew that I was endangering all of us by driving drunk.  I think I had a God given thought at that moment when I asked myself “why don’t you go to the library when you are sober?”  and in a moment of clarity, I knew the answer was “because I am never sober.”  It had been years since I had drawn a sober breath.  I honestly didn’t know that until that moment.  I drank until midnight that night.  After everyone else went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table and drank.

The next morning, July 24, 1984, I got out the phone book and called Alcoholics Anonymous.  The young man I spoke to talked to me for a few moments before he told me he would have a woman call me back.  Much to my surprise, a few minutes later a woman did call me back.  We talked for an hour!  She understood me!  I had been so terribly lonely for so many years, I could not believe that someone would talk with me for so long.  But after an hour, she (like a car salesman) “closed the deal” when she suggested that we go to a meeting that night.  Well, I told her, I couldn’t possibly go to a meeting!  I didn’t have a car!  (She would pick me up.)  I didn’t have a babysitter! (She would get a babysitter.) I didn’t have any money! (She would pay the babysitter.)  After a few minutes of this, I knew that I was too ill to argue with her anymore.  I agreed to go to a meeting with her.  She asked me to please not take a drink before the meeting.  I agreed.

I had every intention of thinking of something later and calling her and telling her I couldn’t go to the meeting.  But as the day went on, I became sicker and sicker and sicker.   And by the grace of God, instead of getting a drink to make myself feel better, I decided that I really needed to go to this meeting and try to get sober.

She and her boyfriend brought babysitters over later.  They drove me to the meeting. The picked me up a pack of cigarettes on the way.  We walked into that meeting place and I knew I had found my home.  For the first time in my life, I belonged.  It wasn’t just the friendly faces and the “keep coming back!”  It was the open talk about cheating on husbands, divorces, marriages, suicide atttempts, drunken debacles - and then the amazing miracle of recovery.  The moment of truth when you ask God for help, and He actually comes through!

I didn’t have insurance then because my husband had just started a new job, so going for treatment was out of the question.  I just stayed at home and shook and sweated it out.  I went to meetings.  I got phone numbers and used them.  I got a sponsor who helped me through all twelve of the steps.

I felt the whole world open up to me.  I had always felt that I was somehow less than others. I always felt that life was a class and I had missed the day when the instructions were given out.  With sobriety and God in my life, I felt I could try anything. I wasn’t guaranteed success, but I could try.  And try I did.  My first job in sobriety was as a roofer!  A 32 year old housewife with a terrible fear of heights!  But I did it.  And I enjoyed it.

In my first year of sobriety I left my husband because I don’t think I knew what else to do.  I struck out on my own and got a job and an apartment.  I actually came home from work and made dinner for my children, gave them baths, put them to bed and read them stories!  I thought this was so amazing that I thought for sure I would earn some kind of award for this outstanding behavior.  It took a while for me to realize that this stuff is what other people do every single day of their lives and it was not a big deal to anyone but me.

My sobriety has been the most amazing journey.  It hasn’t always been pretty, but it has always been real.  Since it has been over 24 yeas, it would take too long to chronicle what has happened to me.  But I can give some highlights…

My kids grew up.
I have two grandchildren who have never seen their grandmother drunk.
I have remained an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I was actively involved in AA service for years.
I have had the same sponsor for 13 years.
I have sponsored many women (most of them are still sober)
I have been married.
I have been divorced.
I have moved around the country.
I bought and settled into my own home and planted flowers here.
I went back to college and got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
I have worked for the same employer for 14 and a half years.
I started running (again) when I was over 50 years old.
I have run 5 half marathons.
I have participated in 5 triathlons.
I have gone back to the church of my youth.
I am just now finishing up the second year of Biblical School.

And most importantly, I have not had a drink of alcohol since the night I drove to the library with the kids on July 23, 1984.

I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.  By the grace of God, I have been enabled to become the woman I think I was supposed to be.  I live a life that is congruent with my values.  I do what I say I am going to do.  I don’t do the things I know I don’t want to do. I get to live a life free of shame and remorse.

In 2005, I started writing a blog, I had no intention of keeping it longer than a few posts…. 3 + years later, I am still writing every day and have met many wonderful sober people through my blog.  Come by and visit:  http://marychristineg.blogspot.com

There are still 5 days left in Alcohol Awareness Month. It’s not too late to submit YOUR story to alix@thesecondroad.org. Thanks!