I remember it as though it were yesterday. It was a lovely early autumn afternoon in downtown Fort Worth, Texas – warm by New York standards, but I’m sure quite chilly for the locals – and my cousin’s wife was giving me a grand tour of all the hotspots. I was visiting them and this was to be my last day before returning home. Up and down the streets we walked, occasionally stopping into a clothing store to check out some threads. I can’t remember if I bought a hat or not that day, but I’m sure I tried on one or two.
After about an hour or two we happened to come upon a local club called Billy Bob’s, which to this day still refers to itself as the world’s largest honky tonk. There’s no disputing its enormous size; in deed what struck me most about the place was how cavernous it was when we walked inside for a brew. With the exception of Sue, myself, the bar tender, and some guy in the corner sweeping up the floor, there wasn’t a soul in the joint. In fact, given how nice a day it was outside, I though it weird that we would even be in a place like this.
It had been only two nights earlier that my cousin and I got so lit up that his wife had to drive us both home. I have very little recollection of what happened that night other than we just wanted to go out and have a good time. That had been the story of my life. I was always just going out to have a good time. What was so wrong with that? The problem was that having a good time had long ago passed. Over the last few years, the truth was I was just going out to get drunk, pure and simple.
So there I was in this dank, dark, cavernous bar in the middle of the afternoon of a beautiful day, and what was I doing? Drinking, that’s what. Except something seemed different this time. Suddenly, something felt out of place. I was acutely aware that something was wrong with this picture. Two people in the middle of an empty bar drinking. Hmm. I finished the beer – a Budweiser I think – and suggested to Sue we should split, which we did.
I did not know it then, but that would be my last alcoholic drink. October 2, 1990, in the middle of the afternoon, in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, at Billy Bob’s. Who’d have thunk it? Not I, that’s for sure. I loved beer; it had become such a part of my life that if you had blindfolded me and gave me samples of each of my favorite beers, I could tell you which one was which.
But the problem was, though I loved beer, it did not love me back. I had long ago lost control of my drinking to the point that it was no longer fun any more. I was no longer taking the drink; it was taking me. I was an alcoholic, and I drank to get drunk, period, not because I was thirsty, like so many other “social” drinkers. To this day I still don’t know what a social drinker is.
It would take some time before I would find a program of recovery where I could share about my drinking and learn to live a sober life, but I will never forget that early autumn day lo those twenty years ago. Much as happened in my life in the years since. I have found God, gotten married, bought a house, and quietly built a life for myself. The hardest thing I have had to do in this journey was grow up and become a man. Putting down the bottle proved easy; living life one day at a time became the tough job. All that I have today, I owe to that decision I made back there in that bar to stop killing myself and join the human race.
It has not been easy living this life. I had become quite good at running from my problems. Alcohol doesn’t just deaden nerve endings in the brain, it stunts your emotional and spiritual growth. Though I was 29 when I stopped drinking, intellectually I was more like twelve. Twenty years later I still sometimes feel like a kid. The difference is I don’t act like one; and if I do step out of line and screw up, I can be a man and own my part. I don’t run from my problems anymore; I meet them head on. I’ve learned there is nothing I can’t handle, if I don’t take a drink and I rely on God’s guidance.
My faith in Jesus would’ve been very unlikely had I not found the rooms of recovery. I came across a man in one of my meetings who recommended a church to me. Two weeks later I attended my first service in almost a decade, with the exception of weddings and funerals. I stayed and within a couple of months had made a decision to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. The rest, as they say, is history.
It's funny how things work out sometimes. While I have never subscribed to the wildly held belief by so many Christians that everything in this life revolves around some master plan, pre-ordained from the beginning of time, I do believe that God provides us with sign posts along our journey to nudge us along the right path. All we have to do is follow them to know the peace he has in store for us.
The journey, I hope, is far from over. There is still so much left to do. The last five years I have been developing my skills as a writer. The first fruits have been this blog and the progressive one I started earlier this year. I fervently believe that God is using these blogs in some way to speak through me, and it is my hope that I have done His will justice.
No matter what happens or where this journey leads I will always look fondly back at that fateful day in 1990 when I made a decision to close one door and open another. Life is like that, isn’t it? One door closes and another one opens. All we have to do is choose to trust in God that the door we are walking through is a safe one. He hasn’t lead us this far to abandon us, and he has personally never let me down. My worst day in sobriety is a thousand times better than my best day before it.
There is a reading from a book that all of us in the rooms know by heart. It goes like this:
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations, which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
“Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
Amen!
