A Grateful Lady in AA Jersey.: TRUE STORY LIVING RECOVERY

When I was drinking I was thankful every morning that I was still alive. Now I’m thankful every morning for being alive.

I have heard it said in AA meetings that alcoholism is the only illness that will convince you that you haven’t got one. This was certainly true for me in my last days of drinking. Like a whirlpool, it affected everyone around me. First those dearest to me and then the circle widened with me in the middle. It was no longer a pleasure for me to drink but a necessity. Loved ones and friends suffered as the desire to drink became stronger and more important. Alcohol had taken over completely making even the simplest of tasks impossible. My main concern was how to get enough booze to get me through the day. I was selfish and intolerant, I lied and cheated and anything I had to do I did just to get a drink. DT’s, shakes and alcoholic fits were a daily occurrence and were accompanied by a great fear of something but not knowing what. This was tearing me apart. Self confidence was non existent and, without doubt, my life had become unmanageable. I knew my drinking was destroying me and my family but I was powerless over it. I was beaten, life had nothing left to offer me. I had reached my gutter.

Then came a glimmer of hope, for AA had entered my life. There I found people who had suffered as I did, who knew every thought I was thinking and who had been to where I was now. But, more importantly, I had met people who really cared about me. The next four years of mylife were spent in and out of mental hospitals, being treated for my alcoholism, suicide attempts, and my newly developed drug addiction. Still drinking, still sick. Eventually, my sponsor, who had stuck by me over these years, helped in getting me admitted to a treatment centre. By which time I had been given just six months to live. Taking one day at a time for seven long months I came back to Jersey on April 30th 1982. I went back to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous with a different attitude and with a faith in God whom I thought had deserted me. I believe today that he had always been there. How else could I have come through those last years without him? Just being able to walk down the street without feeling any shame was wonderful. The whirlpool had gone. AA has given and shown me a new way of life and, to keep it , I have to give it away. I have to give back the love I’ve been shown, to care and share for new members the way they did for me. Sobriety has been a mixture of good and bad times, happy and sad times, throughout which I have felt grateful to always remember what it used to be like. For someone who prayed and longed for death for so long, to now hold on to life and the fellowship with both hands. I now have something to live for. My alcoholism has been arrested, one day at a time. From my family and I, with gratitude too great for words.