Introduce Yourself

[john w.]

For over thirty-five years nearly daily drinking had not convinced me I had a problem with alcohol. Neither had two DUIs or the six-month separation from my soon-to-be [although I did not then know it] ex-wife in the summer of the past year. Although I had grudgingly started attending AA meetings in the winter, I clearly didn’t “get it”, for I was hung over at every 7 a.m. meeting for months.

First, Christmas would be the day I stopped for good, then my eldest’s birthday, New Years Eve, then the first day of the new year, the anniversary of my father’s death, my birthday, and even Valentine’s Day was a target, but each target was missed. So on March 8th, when my deceased father’s birthday arrived and my ex said she had finally had enough, no looking back, she was filing for divorce forthwith, you would have thought that would have caused me to stop--you would have been wrong.

As I whined about my misfortune, hung over again, the next day at 7 a.m., something different happened. While sympathy was offered by several, one guy just looked me in the eye and said: “I can’t say enough about the not-drinking part of this program!”

I don’t know how it happened, because I didn’t stop that day or even the next, but I did find myself in my favorite bar on my favorite day, St. Patty’s Day, not long thereafter. I had my newest favorite drink, soda with a splash of OJ, not once but twice and was heading back to the house, no longer my “home”, when it hit me.

I realized that for the first time in as long as I could remember, not only had I not had a drink yet that day, I had not even thought about having a drink that day, I had not even wanted a drink that day. I began to cry. . . . just as I am now as I remember the instant of that moment after many intervening sober days.

At my 7 a.m. meeting the next morning I reported in (for the first time over the previous two weeks I had actually been telling the truth about being a newcomer, I had lied about it for the first three months), that I hadn’t had a drink the day before. My “mentor”, a lovely woman with sixteen years at the time who was to die of cancer, sober, before her seventeenth birthday, gave me a Big Hug and said that St. Patrick’s Day was a great sobriety birthday, so I had to be sure not to drink in the day ahead.


Not realizing how I was tempting fate, and being a creature of habit, I returned that day again to my favorite watering hole. Again it was soda with a splash of OJ, then on to the house from which I was soon to be “kicked out” by the court. While driving home that next day, I was again struck by the fact that I had not thought of or wanted a drink that day, two consecutive days, that was a World Record or at least a Personal Best.

Not long thereafter I got a sponsor and starting working the steps. The family broke up, the divorce happened, the three children were alienated and did not want to be with their dad, the job got worse and my world seemed to implode around me, but I didn’t drink.

And time began to pass for me, as it does for all of us, in the wonderful way time passes in this program, One Day At A Time.

As the days without drinking slowly turned into months and then years without drinking, marvelous things began to happen to me. The children started to want to be with their dad again, not in the same way or all at once, but to be with him none the less. A new relationship with a woman in AA, herself with double-digit sobriety blossomed into my life. Other problems persisted or resolved, but I had found a way to get through them without drinking, at least for that day.

Too many St. Patrick’s Days past were forgotten due to blackouts or the manner in which I had comported myself during them, but the one which appears on my license plate, 3 17 05, daily recalls to me A St. Patrick’s Day To Remember.
John W.