My name is Adam H. and I am a grateful recovered alcoholic.
Both of my parents are professionals. They were well educated and full of love for me and my younger brother and sister. They always looked after us and I can't say I ever experienced any neglect while growing up.
Regardless, I started drinking when I was 12. For 3 years or so I drank by myself, on most week-ends, without any trouble to speak of. I never got sick and never seemed to get hung-over. When my friends started to drink, I found that I had a much larger capacity for alcohol than they did.
So for the first 4 years of my drinking I never experienced any real trouble. Then I lost my memory for the first time. I "blacked out" at a friend's party one Saturday night. I lost several hours of time and was horrified the next day when I learned of the things I had said and done.
What on Earth was going on? I couldn't believe I was capable of doing and saying such things. The bus trip home was full of shame, remorse and self-pity. I saw clearly that I was going to have to watch myself.
Strangely, by the time Monday came around, the events of Saturday night didn't seem to bother me so much. By the end of the week I was looking forward to the next party so I could show everyone that I really was able to handle my liquor.
Over the next 10 years this pattern repeated itself over and over and over again. I lost friends. Relationships broke down. Opportunities seemed to keep passing me by. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't hold onto the misery and shame of the morning after. A day, a week or a month would pass and I would eventually convince myself that THIS TIME things would be different. I excelled at all the other areas of my life so surely I could control my drinking! This obsession for control seemed to touch nearly every aspect of my life.
One morning, in my final year of Medical School, I WOKE UP to the fact that I was never going to be able to control my drinking. Furthermore, I realized that, no matter what, I would go back to it because I had done everything in my power to stay away from the stuff and had failed. The stark reality of this situation bore me into a morass of self-pity which almost led me to make the ultimate sacrifice.
God had other ideas however.
For the first time in my life I was utterly devoid of hope. So I was able to do the one thing I had never before been able to do, I asked for help.
Help was in the form of a counselor. That counselor was a sober alcoholic in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. She got me in touch with another doctor in the fellowship and 3 days later I was at my first meeting.
Having done a psychology degree before medicine I had spent much time trying to diagnose what was wrong with me. Nothing ever really seemed to fit the bill. At that first meeting, through hearing alcoholics share, I realized for the first time in my life what was wrong with me. I was an alcoholic! With the certainty of that realisation I was determined to have what they offered.
Sadly for me and for many others in the fellowship, the solution I was offered almost killed me. I was told to not worry about the Big Book because it was old fashioned. I was told to not declare myself an alcoholic early but to wait around for three months, keep coming to meetings and then decide for myself if was one. I was told to not drink and to go to meetings and that eventually things would improve. I was told to keep it simple and to not rush into anything. I was told a lot of lies by a lot of people who truly did care about me.
For six years I "managed" to not pick up the first drink. Materially, things did improve as those in my first home group predicted but inside I stayed irritable, restless and discontent which seemed to get worse as time went on. I served as secretary for my group and district. I turned up at meetings early and left late so I could help tidy up. I tried to sponsor someone at one stage. I also asked four people to be my sponsor during this period, none of whom seemed to have any idea about the steps - "Just keep it simple and call me if you need anything. We can have coffee from time to time."
The last two years of this period were the worst of my life. Sober and insane, I prayed daily for the answer to my problem. Eventually one came, in the form of a recovered alcoholic. He made me realize how little I knew about alcoholism and left me in no uncertain terms about what the solution truly was, "A spiritual awakening as the result of these steps".
The next person I asked for help had found this solution. For the first time in sobriety I was not offered an opinion but a programme of recovery which is clearly laid out in our basic text book, Alcoholics Anonymous. He was from out of town and was leaving the next day. Realising my predicament however, he left me a gift to listen to and a phone number to call, twenty-four hours a day.
A few days later, alone in my room with my Big Book open, I started to listen to my sponsor's gift to me. The recording of Joe and Charlie's Journey to Recovery week-end finally unlocked the Doctor's Opinion for me. I discovered that I have a two-fold illness - of body and mind.
I am physically allergic to alcohol. The manifestation of this allergy is that when I drink I crave more. I can do nothing about this allergy. I will die with it. I will never be able to drink safely because of it.
Meanwhile, my mind is obsessed with alcohol. I am perpetually irritable, restless and discontent. After drinking, I am remorseful, ashamed and full of guilt. This fuels my irritability, restlessness and discontent. My mind knows that the only time it doesn't feel irritable, restless and discontent is when it is taking a drink. So it pushes and prods and cajoles, using emotion in every way it knows how, so eventually I drink again. This sets off the allergy and I crave more. But for me the clincher always was that sometimes I didn't ACT on the craving. So I tell myself I don't have a problem. So I drink again, act on the craving, blackout and am left with remorse and guilt all over again.
The fact is, for reasons yet obscure, I have lost the power of choice in drink. My so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. I am unable at certain times, to bring into consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. I am without defense against the first drink.
This realization hit me like a thunder bolt and I immediately e-mailed my experience to my sponsor
One week later he flew into town and over three days took me through to Step 5. One week after this I was part way through Step 9 and practicing Steps 10 and 11 on a daily basis. I found, for the first time in my life, that inner feeling of discomfort was gone. The obsession to drink had been removed. Delivered by the truth, I had RECOVERED from alcoholism.
From that point to this I realize that the key to peace and happiness lies in a simple programme of action gleaned from the experience of the first one hundred recovered alcoholics. I need only carry the message which was carried to me and seek God's will for my life on a daily basis to experience a peace and fulfillment which I had never dreamed was possible without the effect of a few drinks of alcohol. I have found a power greater than myself which solves ALL of my problems!