Chapter 1: Worshiping Alcohol
Chapter 2: Drunk Feeling Were the Only Feelings
Chapter 3: Alcohol Conquers the Mind
Chapter 4: Pickled in Alcohol
Chapter 5: Unhappily Unmanageable
Chapter 6: Powerless - The Last Drink
Recovery
Chapter 7: The Beginning of a Spiritual Awakening
Chapter 8: Cleaning the Dirty Brain
Chapter 9: An AA Sponsor

I met an old friend who was a severe alcoholic and addict like I was. I was hanging out with him one day during the Spring Break from college. He was detoxing very badly. He had convulsions and nausea. He was in real bad shape. I really wanted to help him.

We went down to the city to get his drugs and my booze. We then went back to his apartment. I felt his pain when I saw him lying on his couch complaining that he didn't have enough to stop his nausea and shakes. I wanted to help him so bad because I could not stand to see him suffer like that.

The only thing that came to mind was the AA meetings (Alcoholics Anonymous) I had been to. I knew those people were living happily. I thought of some of the things that they had told me at the meetings. I wanted to pass the information onto my friend so he, too, could get healthy. But there I sat, in the middle of it all, with a drink in my hand. I was just as bad as him on many occasions. I, too, looked like that but I could not see myself. I sat there with a drink and could do nothing but be on display as a bad example of someone who tried to quit drinking.

I had very little alcohol left to keep me going for that day. I mixed my vodka with water and tried to cure some of the shakes and anxiety from the withdrawal of the earlier drinking spree. I sat there in my room alone and drank my last drink. It was vodka and water. It was 8 years, 11 months, and 2 days after my very first drink.

Both the very first and the very last drink were mixed vodka concoctions, both were alone in my room, and both were on a Spring break from school. Was this coincidence or something to start me thinking along the lines of "spiritual awakening"? After all I had been through with the police, the jails, the courts, the withdraws, the rehabs, I still did not hit my bottom.

Only now, I finally hit bottom when I saw that guy on his couch just as sick as I was and I could not help him. I was worthless, useless, helpless, hopeless, and powerless!! But I knew there was a way out. I went to an AA meeting by myself for the first time. I walked through the doors and when I did, I took that first step. STEP 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.

next: Chapter 7: The Beginning of a Spiritual Awakening