Preface

 

 

My name is Bobby and I'm an alcoholic. I didn't set out to be an alcoholic, or did I?

Actually, I'm a recovered alcoholic. I've been sober for just over thirty years now and enjoy a life beyond my wildest dreams, though it wasn't always so. I'm happily married with three beautiful children. My children are grown up now and my wife and I only have one still at home.

What makes me a "recovered" alcoholic? The fast and short answer is that I was able to get reconnected to God. And my hope is that within these pages I will be able to explain this in more depth. But before I can get there, to my present space in heart, soul and mind, I must go back. Way back to the beginning of it all.

At the outset of my drinking, and other vices picked up along the way, there were always underlying reasons, causes, that propelled me to a life of self-destruction. This is where my story must begin, hopefully giving you a clear picture and idea of how one can become so ill in spirit and mind.

Before we become intimately involved with one another I feel it's important to let you know at the outset of this writing a few things to understand about me. First things first, I'm not a writer. I did not graduate high school; I was too high to do that. So, I ask you for patience as you make your way through these pages. I may use some words over and over and will undoubtedly repeat some information. The repeating of information may be intentional at times to make a point. I will share with you some really personal details about my life. Some of these my own family may not know anything about. I do not have relationships with my family in that traditional idea of family and perhaps some of these family members are here with you.

Which leads me to my next point before we take a trip back in time. My intent for writing.

I have made absolute, yes full, peace with my past and all that was, and is, back there. I hold no one person, family or friend, in contempt for their own position in my life, past or present. I am not writing from a place of malice, anger or hate. I'm writing from a place of love. If you are a family member, or friend, and you come up in these pages know that all that is written here is based on my own experience, strength and hope which was mutually shared by and between us. I had a therapist that once said to me "Each time you begin a statement with 'I think, I feel, or I believe' it is authentically yours as your own experience. Not one person can argue with what is authentically yours."

The only argument I can make with what Peter said to me as I sat with him during a painful session a few months after my first child was born, questioning "How the hell am I supposed to be a parent?," is this. Each statement that begins with one of those identifiers is based on one's own perceptions by what was taught to them. What ideas, emotions, and attitudes that were derived out of those teachings ultimately setting up guiding forces that determine one's decisions.

This is why we must start from the beginning. An effort to go back in time to fully examine with you, in an open manner, how the guiding forces were set up in my life, right from the start, that brought me to begin drinking at the early age of 12. And then a look at how in just six short years I was forced to leave high school two weeks before my graduation as I just couldn't go on any further. Landing me in a rehab for 30 days that would begin to shift the direction in my life to the here and now.

The bottom line is that I experienced a separation from God, a God that I now know was innately installed in me. I tried with every ounce of my own self-will to live life, and it all ended in a severe failure, then a renewed relationship with my Creator.

I believe we all have an idea of God. That we are each born with it. I believe it either gets nurtured or is brutally removed from us through the circumstances in our lives. I further believe that whichever the case may be for you it is truly the way it was supposed to be for you and that we each have a path and purpose that needs to be fulfilled. If the idea of God sickens you or makes you uncomfortable, I get it. I really get it! The idea at one time would make me ill. And that would drive me further away from Him.

To make the writing smoother and without some sort of fanciness to try and rope you in by substituting different labels for God such as Creator, Sunlight Of The Spirit, Spirit, Nature, Grand Architect or whatever makes it palatable for you I will go with just plain "God" as I type. If I deviate and become forgetful, I'll be sure to give Him a big letter at the front of His Name.

Our circumstances and experiences may not be the same yet perhaps you will relate to some of what I have experienced, or more pointedly to how those guiding forces were set up in your own life. I wish you peace and love as you read and maybe even a bit of uncomfortability if it is meant to be that way for you.

I will start at the beginning and try my hardest to keep it all in line. Yet on occasion I will deviate. When this happens, I'll clearly define when by mixing in chapters titled "Intermezzo," a break in the drama.

 

It would be wise to touch on that perspective a bit to give you a clearer point to ponder, or perhaps to share with you where this writing comes from. I shared that I am clean and sober and have been for over thirty years. I got sober at the age of eighteen just two weeks shy of graduating high school. I had the fortune of two choices when I hit that bottom as a crack appeared in my shell and mask. Truth was allowed into me, and it was at this point that I admitted complete defeat, with regard to the drinking and drugging. I had two choices. A stay on the grounds of what we grew up knowing then as the IMH. The Institute of Mental Health, also known as the prison grounds within Rhode Island. The other choice afforded to me, only because my father had great health insurance and at the time these plans covered a thirty-day stay in a rehab, was a country club treatment facility. Given the choice I went with the logical, human-inspired easier road. I chose the rehab. Besides I knew something about this place which I will share about later as we journey.

As a consequence of that mini vacation from life I was exposed to many others who were also clean and sober. And their chief method of gaining recovery and staying sober was through a program called Alcoholics Anonymous. This book is not entirely about that particular program or fellowship, yet my perspective today was reached through it, the people who are members of it, and more importantly the actual program. The program being its twelve steps. A miraculous set of principles if one has the actual strength and willingness to fully follow.

I will not get into the details of my journey through the work at this point, but I thought it wise to let you know that it was my experience through them that allowed me to gain freedom and release from all those things that can bind us to that destructive self, ego.

This book is not solely about Alcoholics Anonymous, that is for another time and place. It is about a journey that I believe each of us begins when we are shot onto this scene in our meatsuits, our physical bodies. It's about a journey home to God.