My story is a simple one and one that’s all too common. The whole thing can be condensed into two words—"I drank."
I remember that as a boy, my father and uncle used to give me a small taste of beer, but I didn’t like it. But I did like the feeling it gave me, the feeling of breaking a taboo and doing something that I shouldn’t.
My story isn’t one of a teenager gone bad. I stayed sober through high school. My downfall began when I joined the hometown boys in college.
I was one of those young men you read about in the Hollywood tabloids. I had no self-confidence. I felt that everyone around me knew something about life that I’d somehow missed in the instruction booklet.
And then I was introduced to the awful power of all-out, uncontrolled ridicule. Young college men are a hard-living lot, wild and reckless. They engaged in keg parties, drunken dances, and X-rated movies, and they laughed at me when I chose to stay in my apartment listening to The Supremes and Simon and Garfunkle.
Eventually, I gave in to their raucous urging. The next time I was offered a drink I accepted. Immediately, they treated me as a member of their club. They initiated me with a complimentary nickname.
The Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola we drank made me drunk, but the sudden popularity and their wholesale acceptance of me completely intoxicated me.
How vividly I can recall the next morning! Those merry faces that had partied with me the night before, and the slaps on the back convinced me that I was the life and soul of the party. It was too much for me to ignore.
I was addicted to the attention that I found only while drinking.
At first, considerations of health didn’t trouble me. I was young and strong, and my constitution quickly threw off the negative effects. Gradually, I began to feel worse. I was losing my grip. I had trouble concentrating on my work. I became anxious. In what seems like a very short time, I lost everything. My car, my home, my job, my family.
What Happened
Eventually, I met a man. I’m not sure how it happened but it doesn’t matter. All that does matter is that I met him. He knew something about my problem.
"If I am to help you," he said, "you must tell me everything. Hold no secrets.” He gave me hope and he gave me a long list of instructions. I did everything on that list and I began to be transformed.
I soon found other people who suffered from the problem that plagued me. They had also met someone who gave them a long list of instructions and we joined together to help each other stay on the straight and narrow.
And then, one day, I met Ms. Wonder, the girl who effected my reformation. She was a clergyman's daughter, no not really, I joke about how she was the opposite of me, when in reality she’d earned her amazing wisdom by living a life as difficult as mine, although under different circumstances.
What It’s Like Now
We began to see a lot of each other and, somehow our differences seemed to mesh into something like a musical comedy.
I remember being so overjoyed at the prospect of spending time with her that I often sang, “Oh Joy! Oh Pep!" Maybe not that song. I sang a lot of happy songs that all carried the message of "Oh, Happy Day!" As we spent more time together, our acquaintance ripened, and one night I asked her out to see “Moonstruck.”
I look at that moment as the happiest of my life. We had time to spare before the movie started and we drove round and round Clear Lake talking of this and that. Eventually, we parked and when I couldn’t unbuckle my safety belt, she declared, “And I thought you were a live one!"
Our time together that night began my transformation. I experienced joy for the first time without alcohol.
It was hard at first. Something inside me tried to pull me back to my cravings, but I resisted the impulse. Always with her divinely sympathetic encouragement, and her mysterious ability to work wonders, I gradually acquired a taste for life on life’s terms.
We’ve been together for a lifetime and the joy increases daily. Someday, I hope to be able to show her how much I appreciate her and how grateful I am for all she's done.