Alcohol and Recovery

This is a follow up to Donald’s blog.  I used to drink alcohol since I was about fourteen.  I remember my first drink I could not even finish the first bottle.  After that I could never get enough.  I used drugs although I would quit them and drink better than drugs.  More friends would pitch in for alcohol.  Every crime I committed I was drunk.  I never was put in jail because of something I did when I was sober.  A person does not think when he is drunk.
My first DUI came when I was nineteen and few months later I received my second DUI.  I was put on antibuse and probation.  The day I was off probation I proceeded to get drunk on my favorite Bacardi 151.  The police tried to stop me as I was driving again.  I did not want to go back to jail.  So I attempted to elude them and they chased me even through Lincoln Park and they set up a road block on Speer and 14th and stopped me.  I received thirty more days in jail and put back on probation.
It costed a lot for the lawyer to get me that deal.  I was always paying the government to keep myself out of jail with fines and lawyers.  They asked me if drinking and the life I was living was so rotten why I did not just quit.  The answer I knew no other way of life.  I would drink and be angry at the way life was going, never had anything that I did not destroy.  I had been to AA meetings with a friend although was always drunk going to them so I never heard the message.  My friend when he finally did quit it was too late because he had developed cirrhosis of the liver.
That is eventually where that disease lands you in prison for life or a medical disease.  I’ve had two good friends that were heavy drinkers that passed away young.  Again I can say I am lucky, mental illness brought me a stop to my drinking.  I cannot say AA did even though I believe their message.  My last drinking that brought me to the state hospital was my bottom.  You can put all the alcohol in front of me and I will not drink.  I know what kind of life it will lead to and I do not want it.
I remember attending an AA meeting in college and this new person came in and he told me when I first saw you here and I was running the meetings at the time.  He said “he is not a drunk, until you told your story”. He became a good friend.  It is like I lived two lives.  This second life with my daughter and grandkids I would not give up for the world. I do not put blame for those that started me off so young.  It would have happened anyway. I am just happy with life as it is and the problems I have that I do not have to drink or drug to still be the same problems tomorrow.
I can deal with life and it is a lot better.  I do not destroy my stereo or possessions no longer.  I can enjoy them.  I do not make a fool of myself.  It is going on twenty four years sober in April. I do not have any old friends from the old days because in the past they were my trigger.  When I try and get sober they did not know what to do with me.  They are from my other life.  I cannot forget the ways life was then and them.