Interview with an Alcoholic #6

QUESTIONS:

What an incredible history. Usually most folks can handle one of those events every few years. But you had so much garbage dumped on you all at once, at such a young age, that it is not surprising you ended up an addict. It was just too much for one mind to process. After reading that I then think, "Well, duh! Of course there was depression. Who wouldn't have been depressed or suffered from any other mental illness!"
It sounds like alcoholism is in your bloodline. When you got sober, what kind of support system did you have in place?

ANSWER:

When I first got sober it was only going to be until I got out of trouble. I had full intentions of going back. It was out of the desperation and fear that I would go to jail for a year and a half, that I made a decision that whatever it took I was going to do it. Whatever anyone tells me to do to get sober, I’m going to do. The treatment center that I went into saved my life. It sobered me up and pointed me to AA. The denial that I went through that first month was so thick that I kept telling myself that I had a problem with alcohol, but I don't have a problem with drugs, Then I would remember that I did stop drinking but I couldn't stop smoking pot. So I would tell myself I had a problem with drugs but not alcohol, back and forth.

I am a big advocate of treatment centers. I thought that probation was keeping me sober to begin with. What I didn't know was that God was intervening in my life. See, I rode fear into drug and alcoholism and God was using it, "fear," to bring me out. The fear of going to jail gave me the willingness to take action.
Going into treatment, moving out of where I lived, going to AA meetings, listening to and doing what people told me to do, were all actions that I had been unwilling to do before. DESPERATION can be a wonderful thing. It gave me the motivation I needed to do whatever it took to change.

Pressing on with Excellence,

Keith