Pelham House in Alexander City, AL

Well, hey everybody, I'm Chris. I'm an alcoholic and thanks to a relationship with the God of my experience that I found through sponsorship, working the steps and the fellowship of Alcox Anonymous, I've been sober since the 20th day of April 2010.

And for that, I'm grateful.

I found the letter I wrote

about six months ago. Maybe five months ago, I wrote a letter to my 10th grade English teacher. She just so happened to be my best friend growing up. Mother,

By the time I was a sophomore in high school, things weren't going real well

since I wrote her a letter to express not only my wrong that I had done by treating her class the way I treated it, but also to express my thankfulness. Because when I was acting the way I acted in her class, she pulled me out in the hallway and she asked me what was wrong. And she was the first person to ever pull me aside and actually asked me, you know, what's going on, because this isn't the person that I know.

And in looking for a way to describe what I was like,

she kind of described it for me in a letter. So she says, Dear Chris, you touched me with your sincerity and impressed me with your recall. That was many years ago. I'd long forgiven and forgotten those sophomore antics of which you have such uncomfortably clear memories. You were pulled out of my class because I knew the real boy underneath the braggadocio. My strongest impression of you from childhood on, was of a wonderfully bright but somehow very insecure boy.

I worried when you moved out of Wesley's orbit, that's her son, to find faster friends, attributing partly to them to your eager to your early angry cynicism.

Intelligence poses a danger to kids who perceive the foolishness of the world before they are mature enough to deal with it. Chris, I wish you the best, and we'll think of you often, knowing the difficult struggle you've embraced. If apologizing helps and facing your demons, I'm glad for it. But don't give another thought to any offense you imagine you may have given me. What we did when we were 15 is so minor in the scheme of things. Thank God.

So that's what I was like. I was very, very insecure. But at the same time, and if you've been around the rooms a little while, you might have heard the term an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

Umm, I was very sure of the things that I knew and very insecure about the things that I didn't. Mathematically I was gifted,

but socially I was very awkward.

I I wanted desperately to fit in with those around me and couldn't no matter how hard I tried.

So

I knew from an early age that I was different. Or at least that's how I felt anyway.

And I stress this because what I'm about to say is going to take this in a different direction.

There was something in me that was leading me in the direction of alcoholism from the beginning.

But I had a an instance when I was 11 years old. I went to stay with a friend and his uncle did some really unsavory things to me. And what that did was solidify my belief that I was very, very, very different from everyone else. No one could understand how I felt or what I had been through. It also solidified my belief that if there was a God in this world, he didn't want to have anything to do with me because he wouldn't let that stuff happen.

And from that point forward, I chose not to be confirmed into my the church that I was attending. And I chose not to ever pray to God again until much later in my life.

And I did so arrests, trouble, whatever came, it's what came. I never turned to God for helping those situations. I wasn't one of the people who did the prayers to save me from this situation. God to Get Me Out of this. You know, I won't do it again. I never did that.

I, I took whatever I got like I took it, you know, I also stopped sleeping real well. I've developed and I still to this day have a mild case at the time, severe case of insomnia. I do not like going to sleep. And it started then.

I remember staring at the stars and thinking, well, look at all this and how big it is and how wonderful all this stuff is. How could this be without a God? Without God? But so hurt by what had happened and by not feeling like anybody was there to protect me, that I, I just, I couldn't, it was too much for me. I didn't want to deal with it. And she talked about in that letter that being a being aware too soon of how the world really is.

And I felt like I kind of got robbed of a little bit of my childhood

and I had to grow up real fast. And I made it a point for

the next many years trying to act older than I was. When I was 14, all my friends were in college. By the time I was 18, I was doing things that or I was attempting in my own mind to do things that I thought people much older than me would do, run restaurants, you know, develop a life. The things that I thought I wanted, you know, the child, the children and the marriage and all these things. I wanted that as fast as possible because I thought that's what life is about, is about setting these goals, achieving them. And, and when I get there, everything will be OK.

And I kept believing that that everything would be OK. At some point I was going to get to a point in my life where everything was going to be all right. And that point never came.

I started drinking at 12, and it doesn't surprise me. I felt very uncomfortable in all the situations I was in. Someone offered me a drink. They gave me a chance to be a part of a group. You know, I kind of fit in with the outcasts. And the outcasts like to drink, and they like to smoke weed. And so that's what I did. I have to say this up front. I am an alcoholic but I did a lot of drugs

and I'm going to try my best to stick to tradition here and and and hold it to the alcohol side of things. But if I slip I apologize. I do not mean to offend any pure alcoholic,

it's just part of my story.

And from 12 on I made it a point to drink and or use as often as possible. Now early on it wasn't real often. I'm 12 years old. It's hard to come across alcohol. It's hard to come across other things. It's just, you know, I got it when I got it and I did it when I did it. Cigarettes were kind of my go to. I could smoke them every day. That was my little bit of, little bit of being bad, you know, sneak out of class, go smoke some cigarettes out in the woods or in the bathroom or something like that.

I, I got into high school and, and I started experiencing a separation. I don't really know how it's to say it like it just things got worse. It started getting to where I couldn't relate at all. And, you know, nobody around me understood. And it's just, you know, I got all caught up in poor pitiful me,

you know, and I lived in it. It was a beautiful thing to behold for a little while. By 15, I was very angry and, and it showed. And hence the letter, you know, I was acting out in all my classes. I was skipping school. I was getting sent to in school suspension and I was still making good grades. I mean, I'm a smart guy. I test well. I just

didn't apply myself at all.

My junior year in high school is probably my worst and I say that

kind of jokingly. It mean, in all honesty, my experience with it was my worst

it, it didn't go real well. I got into even more trouble. I spent about 70 or 80 days and, and suspended from school that year for skipping, for smoking, for cussing out teachers, for doing whatever it was I was doing, you know, and, and sometime between my junior and senior year, I became very fluent in using and drinking every day.

And my senior year was wonderful because I had a solution. I had something that worked for me. You know, when I had that drink, I could mix with the people I was with. I felt comfortable. You know, the promises that it described that we read right before the meeting starts, those were true in my life. You know, I take a drink and all my fears go away and I don't worry about stuff anymore. You know, I can, I can mingle and I can handle myself. And I'm 10 feet tall, you know, and I use on top of that. And then I get, you know, I got all these other great things going for me. I found my solution to all my problems

good. I felt whole. I felt complete and umm, and I had enough access and enough money to

do it as often as I could. And by that point in time, it was very often. I got expelled my senior year of high school for possession of marijuana on campus. And

I was very upset at first.

I upset that I wasn't going to get, not so much that I got expelled from school. I didn't like school. I didn't want to be in school. School really meant nothing to me whatsoever. But it was that I had grown up with all these kids and these people and my peers, and I'd gone from first grade all the way to my senior year in high school with all the same people,

and all of a sudden I won't go get a graduate with them anymore. And that made me really, really, really mad.

I went and I took the GED. I didn't pretest for it. I went and took the GD and I scored so high on the GD that they named me the valedictorian of the GD class of that year and gave me a two year full pay scholarship to college. And

basically what it did was it solidified my belief that what I was doing was OK because I had no consequences related to what had happened. You know, I didn't get arrested. I didn't go to jail, I didn't pay any fines. I got a two year full pay scholarship to college, you know, and, and I didn't use it. I mean, I I needed the things I was doing on a daily basis and it was really hard to go to school and to do well

when you're doing the things I was doing every day. I don't want to get up for class because I spent all night drinking the night before. I don't want to,

umm, go into class and I'm paranoid 'cause I'm so messed up on the substances I'm putting in my body, You know, it just, it was constant, you know, and it was a fight for about a year. And finally I just gave up.

I, I, I found that I had skills in sales. And So what I did was I applied them to the negative side of life. I became a drug dealer

and I was very good at what I did and I made a lot of money doing it.

My business partner, however, was not very good at what he did

and all the money I made doing it I spent getting him out of trouble.

At some point, I'm sure I missed, I pissed somebody off. I did something wrong somewhere along the way and and somebody came to me and told me that the DEA was looking, watching me and that I was about to be arrested. So I chose to step away from selling drugs.

I made it a noble gesture and said I don't like the money. It doesn't mean anything to me. But the truth is I didn't want to go to jail. And so I stopped selling drugs. But I kept using and drinking the way I had been while I was selling them. And The thing is, is that by that point in time, I was using and drinking in excess and it cost a lot of money to continue doing the things I was doing and I no longer had the lifestyle to,

to pay for it.

I, I had my first run in with treatment in 1999. I, I had been awake for quite a few days and I've been drinking and using a lot and, and I had a psychotic episode. I don't really know what else to call it. My brain cracked. That's what I call it, my brain crack. I went from OK to not OK to the point where I could hear people talking that weren't talking and see things going on that weren't going on. And, and I knew that it was false. But when I can hear it and I can see it, I can feel it inside, like it was just not good.

And I went to treatment and I stayed for three days until I couldn't take it anymore. And I went home and I locked myself in a room for three months and raised the cats. I got a kitten and then raised them for three months. He was a very crazy cat, by the way,

and and I really desperately wanted to be able to drink and use like I had been doing before. There was no, I never thought maybe I shouldn't do the things that led me to this point. I actually, and it talked about it in the book about false

fancy to real resentments, fancy to real, you know, and and I can relate because I had a resentment against the last guy that I used with right before I went crazy because I believe that he poisoned me and that's why I went crazy. But if I look back at back on it from a truthful perspective,

you know, I was poisoning myself, you know, And so that was a fancied resentment because I just created it to be OK with what I was doing. And as soon as my mind allowed me, I went back to drinking and using the way I have.

I'm a Jack Daniels man.

Anytime I had the money and I could afford it and I could and I could drink the way I wanted to drink. I had 1/5 of Jack Daniels. That's what I had. That was my, I never left my side. I drink half of it. I buy another bottle because that other half going away sometime soon, you know, and that's, and I kept that standard up for a while.

The great thing about alcohol is where drugs are unreliable,

alcohol is always reliable.

If I buy a bag, I don't know if it's any good until I use it.

If I bought a bottle, I know it's good when I buy it. If I need to go to sleep because I can't come down off of high, I can drink myself unconscious.

Umm, you know, if I need to get to feeling better, I can buy a $3 bottle of cheap liquor and I know it's going to do what I need it to do.

Umm, uh, I went, I got arrested in, in 2002 because I wasn't very good at not selling drugs. And I started telling them to get to support my habits. And I got arrested in between Auburn and Georgia with a lot of money on me and I was on my way to pick up drugs.

I got charged with felony possession and trafficking. And I went home. Well, I actually thank the cop for resting because I was really tired, Really, really tired. And I made the people in jail really mad because when I got there, I just went to sleep

and,

and I, I got up and somehow convinced my family to bail me out of jail again because I've been in jail a few times between then and and that point in time somehow convinced him to drive up to this place and to pick me up. And I went home and I slept it off and I woke up and I started doing what I've been doing again. And I spent about 30 days in a pretty pitiful state feeling sorry for myself, using

thing about me is, and as I suffer from what the doctor and the doctor's opinion talks about, Doctor Silver talks about, I suffer from that allergy

and I very, very much suffer from the obsession. So

five days of not using, the thought pops into my head. Maybe I should drink and use. It'll make me feel better. I put one in and then I can't stop because that allergy set off and all of a sudden I'm running again, you know, drinking and using, drinking and using, drinking and using until something or somebody gets in my way and stops me. My first real experience with a higher power in my life, and I didn't realize it until I got into recovery, was in 2002.

I had a set, a set of events happen in my life where I was forced into a situation where I had to ask for help. And it wasn't that I was in a in danger, it was that

I kept having the same thing happened in my life. And it kept saying you don't want to be like this. You hate the way you are, this part, this is not the person you want to be. And it's just over and over again going on. I went downstairs one morning. I've been living in this loft in my family's house for about 30 days, just locked up in there. I'd have people bring me whatever I need and I just stay there

and

and I went downstairs and I was in my my father looked me square in the face and he said, you're drinking and using again, aren't you? I said yeah

and for whatever reason I was willing to be honest in that moment and ask for help. They probably saved me 10 years in prison. I went to a 30 day treatment facility in South South Alabama called First Step. It's in red level AL Red level is so small that the PO boxes in red level are A through Z. There's no numbers.

Umm, the treatment center I was in was in a house and it was right next door to the Police Department, which was a mobile home. And I don't mean like stationary mobile home, I mean like it was on wheels ready to move when they needed it to move.

And and it was a good, it was a good place. I mean it was half prisoners and half non insurance people

and and I and I did my 30 days and I came out knowing that to use was to die. But I didn't think I was an alcoholic.

I didn't take into account that on New Year's Day 1998, I woke up and drank an entire 5th of a Guardian 15 minutes because it seemed like a good idea. I didn't take into account that I drank at every possible means when I didn't feel well, that I used alcohol to solve my problems. I didn't take into account all that. I just noticed that I'd gotten arrested for this drug charge. And so that drug was my problem.

I became a very good alcoholic for the next few years, trying not to go to prison. I got got a good lawyer because I didn't have any prior criminal history or convictions. Anyway, Georgia has this thing called First Offenders Act. And if it's a nonviolent crime and I never liked guns, not that I wasn't around them, I just didn't like them. So I didn't carry them on me. Nonviolent crime and it's A and it's your first offense. They, they give you a very stiff probation

and mine said you have a two year intensive probation. If at any point in time you fail during these two years to comply with anything that we ask you to do, we'll send you to jail for 10 years, no reduced sentence. And of course I don't want to go to jail at all. So I said yes.

I lucked out quite a few times over the next couple years avoiding the UI about passing drug tests that I shouldn't have passed. Just things that

little things that I look back on now and see that I was guided sort of in a direction, you know, I apparently jail wasn't where I was meant to be.

Um, I, I became a daily drinker. I would drink a half 1/5 of Jack Daniels and then go to the bar. That was my daily routine. I had a job that paid a lot of money and I could get away with it.

Occasionally I take a day off here or there and usually what I do is I'd substitute some pill or something to get me by until I could get back to having time off so I could drink and and it started showing. It started wearing on me

in 2005. I was on the verge of losing this job

because when you go to the bar, when you have to be at work at 10:00 at night and you go to the bar at 8, usually 10:00 at night doesn't workout real well.

And, and I've been missing work and I've been slacking on my duties. And this is the job that paid a lot of money. I worked in industry for a while and, and I had a, an X-ray tech job making, you know, near $20.00 an hour. And I was making good money and I just couldn't hold it together. No matter how bad I wanted to, I couldn't hold together. It was getting to the point where I couldn't go

an hour or two without drinking and using. I couldn't do it. I couldn't make it that long, you know. So to be at work for 12 hours, I mean, I was sneaking out the back door and drinking out the back on smoke breaks. I was going out to my car and taking breaks and doing stuff in the car like I was, you know, I mean, it was getting bad. And in 2005, I, I met a girl, Well, she met me and she decided that I was the one she wanted. So who was I to argue? And,

and she was like me, she was an alcoholic. She was drinking her stuff to death. So we were, we were perfect fit,

you know, umm, she was OK with me doing what I wanted to do and I was OK with her doing what I wanted to do. And, and we, I lost my job. Actually, I, I got up one night to go to work and she said, why don't you just stay home tonight? And I knew if I missed one more day of work, I was going to lose my job. So I

I just stopped going to work

and we packed up. We moved to New Orleans to help with the hurricane relief effort after Katrina.

Now I wanna explain something. If you're an alcoholic and you're drinking yourself to death, New Orleans is definitely not the place you want to go.

Umm, I found out real quick that you can buy a $7.00 gallon of Canadian mist in New Orleans, $7.00. You know they have drive through daiquiri shops in New Orleans. Drive through. The only law is they can't put a straw on it for you, so they just set it on top and hand it to you.

That didn't last real long because I followed me wherever I go

and we found out that she was pregnant. And

I'd like to say that I chose better actions than I did, but I drank and used with her almost the entire time she's pregnant.

Umm, we came back to Auburn live with my family. I didn't have any money, you know, I drank it all up down in New Orleans

and I got a job working at a printing shop making next to nothing. And she stayed home and was pregnant. And we, we went about our lives like we do. And when money got scarce, we, we found ways to get money to get what we needed. She introduced me to

to paint those and that worked real good for a little while. But as with everything else in my life that's ever changed or altered my mood or my mind, it stops working.

And with the type of alcoholic and addict that I am, it stops working fast because I tend to use it up as quick as I can.

Umm, when my son was born, he was healthy, thank God

and, and I started pulling my stuff back together. I got a good and I got another good job doing the same thing I was doing for the other company. It was actually, The funny thing was, is they were facing each other. So the place I used to work, I now worked at the place facing it.

So, uh, making about the same amount of money, umm, I started out a little bit lower, but I quickly worked my way up. I'm good at that. I'm good at picking the pieces back together and putting and building my shell back up and making everything look pretty. I'm real good at that. I'm just not good at keeping it together. It always falls apart on me.

When my son was five months old, about four and a half five months old, he started having seizures. And he had one one day, he had two the next day, he had four the next day and he had eight the next day

until he was eventually having about 80 grand all seasons a day. And we tried all, we went, we, they flew him by jet to Children's in Birmingham and they put him in intensive care and they were pumping him full of anything they could think of to try to get him to stop season. And they just couldn't get it stopped.

I, I got, we got a hotel room near the hospital and I remember trying to drink my son's sickness away. And I don't know if y'all have ever experienced that before, where something hurts so much you just want to make it go away,

you wanna make it stop. And I couldn't make it stop. I couldn't make, I couldn't make it stop. I couldn't. No matter how much I used or drank, I could not make the thought and the pain go away. Couldn't do it.

I, my son, spent about three or four months in intensive care. We have a priest come to our room. And I told you all earlier that that I'd never prayed to God until later on in my life. And he asked us if we'd like to pray and I said I would. And I prayed probably the 1st

and for a while the only honest prayer I've ever prayed. This is God. Please let my son be OK

and looking back on it now, I would say that my prayer was answered. But what happened was my son got very sick and he stayed very sick and when he came out of the situation he was in and got sent home, he was not okay. Not not by my standards anyway. I wanted him to be that five month old Perfect Key was before he started having only seizures and that just wasn't going to happen.

It wasn't going to happen. I don't, I don't claim to know anything about the brain,

but I know that if you have that many seizures a day for that long, damage can happen. It just can, you know,

umm, my uh, drinking and using got just worse. We got her two step kids in to my house and now I had three kids and uh, and I just couldn't stop. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't do enough and I couldn't stop and I wanted things to be different and I couldn't make them be different. And it just, it was just miserable. I lost that job.

I,

I didn't want to leave Birmingham, but I needed to go back to work. And and then I started just lying to try to get out of situations and using my son's illness, illnesses and excuse to get money out of people to go and get things that I wanted and needed, you know,

just manipulating the way that we do. And, and I continued and you do what I'm doing. And at the worst points of my drinking and using when I couldn't get what I needed to be OK. And when I couldn't get out of the house to get alcohol, I would steal my son seizure medication to get me to a point where I could be OK with being, being around and be OK. You know, and it's a terrible thing, but it's, it's the truth. It's, it's where I go when I do this stuff.

Umm, my I, I kind of started the piece of my life back together again, put that little shell back on, you know, and I got us into a new apartment and my wife came home and she said I can't beat them anymore. And, and then she brought a guy home with her, um,

to say that she'd been seeing somebody else. And that was pretty much the last reason I needed to try to act normal and to be OK anymore. I was done. I didn't wanna, you know, I had no more. I didn't need to put my life back together to take care of my kid. I didn't, I didn't want to fix anything. And I went into a three-week blackout.

And as in these other instances of my life, I had a moment of clarity. I got a phone call. A guy had approached me about programming, and I'm doing a aluminum work for another company. And I turned it down to stay with the grocery chain that I was with. I was the assistant department manager for Kroger and,

and in the middle of this three-week blackout, I got a phone call. And apparently the guy that they had chosen to take the place that I was going to take had follied somehow or fallen out of this position. And they were desperately seeking

help. And I'm in the middle of broke birds of homelessness. Like things were not going real well. And I managed to get this call and it was like a, a hand reaching out and pulling me out of the desk, you know,

But

you know, it was not see, I went and got the job and I passed the drug test miraculously. And, you know, got, got on to working and moved up and, and I'm an isolationist when I'm drinking and using. In the end, it was all about me being by myself, doing what I wanted to do and don't get in my way. And so all of a sudden I'm making a lot of money again, and I'm living in a new city, and there's no one within miles of me that I know.

And what it turned into was literally me drinking myself to sleep every night, waking up two hours later, drinking to go back to sleep two hours later, drinking to go back to sleep and then get up and go to work the next day.

And it got real bad because I started having to use and drink at work like I had started to have to do with that other job. And you know, I made an ill-fated trip to Atlanta to visit a friend of mine and I tried something I hadn't tried in a while and that allergy was set off. And all of a sudden, three days later, I turned my phone on and Atlanta metro homicides looking for me and all these everything's crumbling back down again. You know, because when I black out, I do crazy stuff

and I lost my job and I had to come back and live with my family

and I just get, I just gave up on life. I spent three months,

two of which homeless, doing what I had to do to get by and and at some point my family got so sick of watching me kill myself that they kicked me out, you know, told me not to come back. I couldn't stop stealing from them

and they came to me and they offered me one last chance and they said, and again, moment of clarity, in the middle of a blackout,

we'll renew your insurance and send you to treatment. And what they said is we'll send you to a detox, We'll send you to a three to five day detox and then you come back home. And for whatever reason, and I've only been to Bradford once, for whatever reason, I said if you send me somewhere to detox and I come back home, I'm going to end up doing exactly what I've been doing.

I need to go somewhere longer

and they got me into treatment.

I blacked back out and when I came to I was in treatment. I literally woke up on the 27th day of June 2009 in a bed in Bradford with clothes next to me that I've never seen before. And

I felt kind of peaceful, to be honest with you, because I woke up that morning and I didn't have to go back. I didn't have to run anymore. You know,

I had gotten to the point in my life where it just

every day I woke up, I was hoping I could drink and use myself to death that day. And then I'd wake up again and I'd have to do it all over again. And it was like that for a while. And that book talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I did things for drugs and alcohol that

I just never thought that I'd do. You know, I never thought that I would go to the depths that I went to

and

and you know, it is what it is. So what do I do with it from there?

I, I spent the 15 days in treatment, had a kind of a God moment sitting to a halfway house.

I did 82 days and I did what a lot of people in a, a called the a, a waltz. I did. I accepted I'm alcoholic and my life is unmanifest manageable. I think I believe that there's a higher power out there. I will tentatively turn my will in my life over to that higher power. I will work half four steps and I'll get drunk. And I got a hotel room at 82 days clean and sober. And I got a girl I really was interested in and

I had her at the hotel room. And then I went on God's room. And which is funny because I didn't have anywhere to go, you know, I had to go back to the halfway house.

You know, now I've got the the allergy on me and I want to do more and more and more. And I put myself right back in that same boat. I actually called a friend hoping that they could hook me up with some way to keep going, and they pointed me back to the halfway house. So wound up back in the halfway house and started over again.

And

you know, I hate, I hate to say the things that I say that are involved in my life because I feel like it's a big tragedy story, but I'm going to say something. It's the biggest God moment I've ever experienced in my life. On October the 12th of 2009

I I was 1415 days sober off this relapse and my parents show up at the halfway house and I'm a little

confused. One, they're not supposed to show up and two, they were supposed to few days before that

and and they come up and I have a little brother

and my little brother is very much like me. I always wanted to be like me. In the end we started running and gunning together

and what he did to solve his problems was he goes overseas, he joined the Army. So what happened is every time he get arrested or get a felony DUI, he didn't list again or reenlist to go back over there again. He did three tours overseas, two of which he did in Afghanistan and Iraq, and one of which he did in Germany and Kuwait.

And my parents show up at the halfway house and,

you know, there's some moments you just go into and you look up and you just know something's not OK. I knew it wasn't OK. And I, and I got real nervous, like the butterflies inside. And I wanted to keep talking real fast. And I wanted, you know, I just didn't want them to talk because I knew as soon as they talked, something bad was coming out. And what they what they told me was that my brother had gone to sleep and he had not woken up. And you know, that confused me.

It confused me because my brother didn't go to the desk that I went to.

You know, my brother didn't do a lot of things that I did. Now he did a lot don't get me wrong. He just didn't do a lot of things I did and and you know who's ever ready for that? You know, no ones ever ready for that and especially me at 14 days and crazy, I wasn't ready for it.

So my parents, the trick of it was that was that they drove up there, they drove all the way from Auburn to Birmingham to tell me this because they were afraid I would go out and do the same thing when I found out.

So they drove to Birmingham after finding their son dead to tell their other son what had happened because they didn't want to find him dead too. And that kind of breaks all those boundaries about us not affecting other people with our actions.

It kind of breaks down that barrier that we have that says I'm just hurting myself because here are two people who their second child, they just let the corn and take them away and they're going to drive 2 hours to make sure that their other son doesn't do the same thing.

And I felt very small

and I let them leave. And I went into my apartment in the halfway house and I hit my knees. And for the second time in my life, I prayed an honest prayer. And the prayer was simply help me, God. I don't know what you want me to do with this.

He did.

I went home. Two days later, I wrote the eulogy for my brother's funeral, which I keep in my big book.

Umm. I got to experience that time with my family. I got to be there for my mom and for my dad, for my little sister.

I got to see the people that I had run with who were friends of his also who came to the funeral and I got to do it sober

and that was big for me.

I don't,

I, I think that in, in all honesty, experience wise, that's the most powerful experience I've had in recovery so far is that moment because here I am. I can't stop drinking and using. And if you're going to use over something, what's better to use over than someone in your family dying, right? Some big tragedy happened in your life,

or at least that's how I would have taken it before. And yet, by simply asking for help,

I was able to get through the situation and not only get through it, but be useful to the people around me.

Umm, it's a big, that's a big deal for me. Umm, I would love to tell you that that was enough to keep me sober. And it wasn't.

Umm, I did a very thorough four step. I had a good sponsor. I had a sponsor I needed at the time. I sponsor that was gonna lead me to that relationship I needed with a higher power to help me feel OK. Because when I don't drink and use, I feel worse than I do in the end. When I was drinking and using, I get restless, irritable, discontent, Life starts getting too hard, my emotions get on me and all of a sudden drinking seems like a good idea again

out of nowhere. And the most insane act I will ever commit is taking a drink

because I'm sober when I do it and I know what's going to happen when I do it.

I worked a thorough for step 5th step. I did six and seven fairly well.

You know, who's to say how well you do six and seven? I don't really know. I don't think I figured that one out yet.

I made a great list and I began making my amends and I got about five or six of them in

and I just stopped.

You know, I've gotten some of the promises coming true in my life and I got feeling good again, and that was enough, or so I thought. And at the time came when

life became too hard and because you had a girlfriend and I didn't, or because you had the job and I didn't, or because you had the money and I didn't. And I started judging myself by where y'all are at. And it's a terrible place to be because I can never judge myself by where anybody else is at with me. And