I trotter along following Bill down the pea green disinfectant smelling corridors. A welcoming fire blazed in the grate most people were smiling with cups of steaming hot tea clutched in hand. No one had smiled at me for a long time. Some I recognised from my Rugby club days, the rugby club had been a watering hole back when drinking had been fun. I listened to the stories and then talked telling them how different my story was and using my plethora of lies and rationalisations which I had come to believe was my truth to explain why my case was special and different. I explained that I didn’t drink like them I had occasional binges and could stop for long periods.A total lie I had found many months ago the morning drink cure and topped up daily, perhaps I chose to ignore this fact. I was told in fact I was already projecting my next drink. I readily accepted that as a fact these people knew what they where talking about . Then someone said something which was to change my life. It was simple profound. You need not have another drink again.This one simple fact was to be the rock on which my sobriety was to be built.You need never have another drink again from this date forwards. Of course this was to be the start of a new life a completely changed life nothing would ever be the same again, a life of constant challenge and change.
Eston Bills kindness and friendship amazed me.This was a time of uncertainty and was my first tentative steps without the crutch that alcohol had become. This was an introduction into strange different world that I didn’t fit into, a world without alcohol. An alien world populated by sober people. My whole life had been constructed around alcohol every minute of every day a constant obsession. The description of myself would always have drink associated to it. My business was alcohol consumption in all its varied forms. I nearly said friends but all my associates were drinking partners. Long heavy drinking sessions were my norm, or had been wasted lunchtimes followed by binges. I longed for the old conviviality of the public house and the lounge bar whose smoky,beery atmosphere conjured up feelings of social acceptance, shared secrets and understanding winks. The alternative was meetings and drunkalogs. An acceptance that somehow I had crossed some invisible line. Social invitations started to reappear to drink inducing wine tastings. New launches of exotic and not so exotic wines, spirits and beers drifted my way.
The restoration of health the intermittent bleeding had stopped and yet the dry heaves returned at the slightest amount of stress. I buried myself into the meetings frightened and puzzled by the new reality of my situation. I had taken on the disease concept of Alcholics Anonymous and made my first attempts at the steps. My sponsor had had little experience but freely shared what he had. I understood very little my head was foggy and my reasoning suspect. I reacted with an alcoholic mind to fears, projections of impending doom and the slow realisation of the damage done and inflicted on others. I failed to acknowledge the profound changes that were taking place by stopping all alcohol and in consequence worked in a misplaced way to formulate the worst possible outcomes.
The meetings were sparsely attended many people relapsed and the resulting deaths,incarcerations proved the adage that alcoholism was progressive and fatal. I kept attending meetings and slowly started to understand this new world, as my business life imploded, in my drunkenness I had confided in the wrong people. Thieves had seen the opportunity of a boss who was seldom sober and irresponsable.The results of long liquid lunches had taken there toll. The unmanageability of a drunken life had spilled into a business life with catastrophic results. Explanations of my behaviour were asked for and then demanded.The blackouts I had so earnestly sort now became liabilities. People recounted outrageos episodes with someone I could not recollect. These new revelations cause me to become frightened and confused not understanding that try as I might I had little to no memory of events, the people or the circumstances.They induced a doubt as to my sanity and to further compound this unwanted effect.
The meetings were sparsely attended many people relapsed and the resulting deaths,incarcerations proved the adage that alcoholism was progressive and fatal. I kept attending meetings and slowly started to understand this new world, as my business life imploded, in my drunkenness I had confided in the wrong people. Thieves had seen the opportunity of a boss who was seldom sober and irresponsable.The results of long liquid lunches had taken there toll. The unmanageability of a drunken life had spilled into a business life with catastrophic results. Explanations of my behaviour were asked for and then demanded.The blackouts I had so earnestly sort now became liabilities. People recounted outrageos episodes with someone I could not recollect. These new revelations cause me to become frightened and confused not understanding that try as I might I had little to no memory of events, the people or the circumstances.They induced a doubt as to my sanity and to further compound this unwanted effect.
Yet this was sometimes the clarity of a forgotten moment.A brief techicolour flash of that moment would reassert itself into my consciousness when I had come out of a blackout then returned.Flashing headlights angry shouts and then nothing. Flickering firelight in an derelict house. A pool table in an underground cavern with dripping walls, my hands round another persons throat. I shuddered at these brief insights into a sots life, the terrifying spectre of my past. Much of this I kept to myself as I tossed in sleepless nights. Tortured by fear and anxiety what would happen to me. What had I become.Who was I.
The big book of alcoholics anonymous was my constant companion somewhere buried in its pages was an answer but where and how did it apply to me. It told me about the problem , but I was blind to the solution. Yet it gave me some consolation telling me threw its stories that I was not alone. I started to develop a belief in the book. All I could see around me was devastation. Each day brought with a new round of problems which I was ill equipped to deal with. Honesty was starting to glimmer into my life, but the reality of honesty frightened me. Bill had told me to find God. How and where do you find God?
The Dream Warrior Chronicles
The Dream Warrior Chronicles
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