^{"My name is Annie and I am an alcoholic"}

I’m not going to sugar coat this, I’m not a sugar-coat-kinda-gal. I am not a grateful alcoholic, and you will never hear me say that. I am grateful to God and I am grateful for AA and the people who have helped me along the way, don’t get me wrong, but if I had the choice again to be or not to be an alcoholic; I’d choose not to be. This is life and death for me, it’s that simple. I’m a realist and just as sometimes life sucks, so does sobriety. I want to prepare you for that, because it’s true what they say, that just because we get sober doesn’t mean that life stops happening, we just learn to deal with it better. I’m dealing with it now as the last few years have been pure Hell, way worse then my first year on the program ever was!

I drank a lot! I drank anything and everything, though I prefer the wino shit, MD 20/20, Everclear, thunderbird wine, you know the rotgut shit. I lived to drink, I could drink guys three times my size under the table. I would win every beer ramming contest I entered. I loved to drink until some where I crossed over the line into an on coming Mac truck and trying to kill myself became part of my normal routine. Now I’m not talking about an attempt here and there, it became my passion. I would drink myself into paralyzation for Christ sake and beg my friends to give me more. I don’t puke, never been a puker. You can stick your finger down my throat and nothing happens, well except for that fact that if I wasn’t totally paralyzed yet I might try and rip your face off for trying to screw up my death, but I won’t puke. Funny thing was that my mouth never became paralyzed so the trips to the emergency room really didn’t do much because I could say "you can’t do a God damn thing to me." So we’d just sit around, the doctors waiting for unconsciousness that never happened. Once I was partying so hardy I played the waiting game in a straight jacket! Yeah, I was having a real good time.

It only took 10 years for this behavior to kick my ass. By age 23 I was drinking alone because people stopped telling me what I did when I blacked out, and they could no longer watch my path of self-destruction. I added things like Nyquil, cough syrup, cold pills to my list of favorites. I Didn’t go anywhere as I could no longer control what would happen when I drank, and no one asked me to party’s any more, or even called. I was so depressed that I was no longer violent and I had been suffering with a kidney infection for over a year. I became nothing, lost in a black hole of total insanity; life became endless, I didn’t even try to kill myself anymore. I also kicked the last friend out of my life that I had left, I got tired of her circling the 40% alcohol on the Nyquil bottle, and leaving AA literature on my bed. I was informed by my Doctor that if I didn’t stop a kidney machine wouldn’t help me in another few months, and then he moved away to another state and I got a new doctor and I haunted my new doctor for over a year, because I didn’t come back after 2 visits and he just knew I had killed myself. He was afraid to pick up the phone and dial my number to find out, but then that’s another story and I didn’t know that till I came back to see him after I had a year on the program, and he saved my life then and I still have him for my doctor today.

On May 20, 1983 I wanted out, and this time I made up my mind that I was going to do what ever it took to die. My kidney’s were going to make sure of that. . . . the phone range, silly me I answered it. It was my last friend Tammy, you know the one I kicked out, the AA literature freak. "I still don’t like to go to meetings alone, I’m going to a candlelight women’s meeting, do you want to come?" she asked me one more time. I’m thinking, dark, dark is good. Women, I can’t stand listening to cackling hens. I'll tell her maybe next time, but that wasn’t what came out of my mouth. "Yeah," I said in almost a whisper, "Can I come up to your place right now?" I left the pills and the booze there and I went to that meeting and I sat in the dark and shook thinking no one could see me, and I listened. I am grateful for candle light meetings, I had lived so long in darkness, that this was the only way I could sober up.

When I branched out I found Freemont hall a wild place. Think of the most low life, vile bar you have ever been in and image it 100 times worse, that’s Freemont Hall, and I felt right at home. I could throw things, mouth off, pour coffee while shaking, and they just let me work it out there, and they made sure they ingrained the program in me till it was my life. They did love me until I learned to love myself, and I will forever be grateful for that, one moment at a time, and sometimes one day at a time; like I said I’m a realist and that’s how it is for me right now. Keep coming back, it does work and I’m "living" proof of that through the good, bad, and indifferent. I hope and pray you will be too.