A New Beginning

“Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.”
A.A. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

I remember a few things about my first A.A. meeting. I remember my friend pulling up next to me in the parking lot that morning just before noon. We walked through the doors together, and sat in the nearest open chairs. I remember a whole bunch of stuff was said at the beginning of the meeting that I didn’t understand at all. I remember thinking, “Do they say this stuff every time? It takes forever, let’s get on with it!” I remember that I received a silver poker chip for choosing 24 hours of sobriety.

I remember hearing people talk about what it was like getting sober, and that I shared a sad story through leftover tears. I remember holding hands for a closing prayer, and getting hugs. I was given a phone list, and a book. A guy told me that there was another meeting at 5 o’clock. I remember coming back that very same day for my second meeting.

There were men and women from visually different backgrounds. Most seemed as if they had been around awhile. I don’t recall anything specific that was shared, but the feeling that I was somewhere I needed to be was warming the room around me. My palms were dripping with sweat. I’m sure some part of me was visibly shaking and uncomfortable to watch.

That night, I started reading the book I was given. Opening to the first pages, I felt the unbalanced weight and thickness in my right hand compared to my left. My journey was just beginning, and I was overcome by the immensity of this endeavor.

As I read, I immediately began to relate to what was said about problem drinkers, and questions were stirring as I underlined sentences that described me. Am I really an alcoholic? Do my fears and struggles in life stem from the amount I drink? Was I born with this? Can I actually change from who I have been into the man I want and envision myself to be? Do I even have what it takes to do that?

This was my new beginning. I was leaving my old life, and old ways, behind. There were many times I had tried to solve my problems throughout my past, but the week from hell I had just put myself through showed me that I had never really solved anything. Alone and in the dark, I came to terms with the fact that I could not change without help.

I started drinking when I was a teenager, but my first sip of beer was from my Dad’s can when I was 3-4 years old. I remember walking up to him with my outstretched arms and asking for it, I liked it, and can still taste it today. My first drunk was my freshman year in high school. There were five of us drinking from a friend’s parents liquor cabinet, and one of the boys went to the hospital that night with alcohol poisoning to have his stomach pumped. We had to wake up his parents. We didn’t know what was going to happen to him.

For some reason, that didn’t scare me about alcohol. I was just confused why he got so sick, and I didn’t. I just had a bad headache in the morning when my Dad picked me up, and he didn’t notice a thing. From that point on, any gathering of friends to drink, get high, or usually both is what I wanted to do. I had discovered how I wanted to feel. Suddenly, I found that I fit in with kids I looked up to. I felt I had arrived. I can, and love, to drink!

My drinking in high school probably looked like mere enthusiastic experimentation. By the time I reached college, especially when I became old enough to start tending bar, I became a professional. I managed my drinking well enough to get passing grades, but it took me thirteen semesters instead of the standard eight to graduate. As painful as it was to tolerate, it had to have been just as painful to watch. I wasn’t in school to learn, get involved, and get a degree. I was there to roam with the animals, and everything else just got in the way.

I was once pulled over, on a Wednesday, by the police for a missing tail light. Wednesday night was “dollar you call it” at a favorite college bar. I slammed three bottles of Bud, and three shots of Jack in about 30 minutes. It took one minute behind the wheel to get the cop’s attention. He held the breathalyzer through the window, I blew, and the machine lit up like a Christmas tree.

Apparently, I had blown too high for valid probable cause because the whiskey vapor was still lingering. He waited a couple minutes for back-up to arrive with a different machine, and the same thing happened. He told me to leave my car parked, and to walk the rest of the two blocks to my house. That wasn’t a wake-up call, it was just my lucky day.

I had quite a few lucky breaks, close calls, and countless insufferable hangovers over my drinking career. But, of course, the roulette wheel got me for a DUI in 2007. I turned the wrong way on a one-way, and a team of cops patrolling on foot stepped in front of my car. That lesson cost me a few thousand dollars and a whole bunch of time with probation and paperwork that lasted about a year. I stayed sober for close to three months, and I swore I would never drink and drive again. I never did get another DUI, but I easily could have, and probably should have.

I thought I was in control most of the time. I would make it to work no matter the hangover. I had strategies for my drinking to keep me, and everyone else, convinced I didn’t have a problem. Most of the time, I thought I was normal and getting the best out of life by working hard and playing hard. Eventually, after 25 years, my drinking got the best of me. My digestion was failing, my facial complexion was red and flaky under my beard, and my finger and toenails were beginning to show deformities. I couldn’t keep my dinners down, and I would dry heave regularly in the mornings, or out of nowhere in the afternoon.

My insane thinking was that finding the right girl would change my life, and I would pull it together because a relationship would make me happy. Obviously, as I came to find out, that was not the answer at all, even sober. It was revealed to me that I could no longer differentiate the true from the false in my life, and I had lost control by trying so hard to maintain control. The chapter on alcoholism in the Big Book described me all too well. It was undeniable. It was scary. It was real. I knew then that this program, and this book, were going to change my life forever.

Reaching my bottom had taken its toll on me. I put myself through a wringer of emotional outbursts and binge drinking for almost a week. I was a shell of a human the entire time. I had done a lot of damage, not only to myself, but those around me. I felt guilty for all the years of blaming I had done.

For the longest time, I would stare at the ground or the walls in the meetings. I tried to listen to what others were sharing, but it wasn’t long before melancholy cloaked my mind, and I would drift into emptiness. Each day felt like a week. The first three days without a drink felt like a month.

People from the room would make sure to talk to me before or after those first few meetings. They could sense how lost I was, and were empathetic to my physical and mental condition. Suggestions were given on how to sleep better, deal with cravings for a drink, and how to spend my time between meetings. Sleepytime tea was a go-to sleep aid. Squares of chocolate hit the spot when I needed an instant sugar rush. Listening to A.A. speakers in my truck were the most effective ways to get out of my head. I picked up four spiral notebooks from the store, so I could journal and take note of key ideas I picked up in the meetings.

I began reading in the morning, or at night before bed. I would carry the A.A. Big Book and journal with me to work, so I could always read or write something down if I had a thought or a question. I attended two meetings a day for as long as I could. There are so many meetings in my city everyday that there is no excuse to miss a day if you need to be going on a regular basis. In the beginning, like most, I needed to be at the meetings.

My urge to drink wasn’t really something that I had to struggle with. Insomnia, night sweats, and anxiety were my worst symptoms of detox. It was the nervous vibration of anxiety that was the hardest to cope with. It resonated just under the surface of my skin, and drove me crazy. The feeling made time move like an ant crossing the freeway. I was constantly on edge, and even though I knew a drink would calm me down, I didn’t want one. I didn’t even crave it. I was going to face the insanity once and for all. I was going to go to any length necessary to solve my problems without a crutch. I had always felt this kind of anxiety when I wasn’t drinking, and even before I had ever started drinking.

For the longest time I thought I was born feeling this way. Maybe I had been, but something inside of me told me that I could change. I knew, somewhere inside of me, the chicken was just a confused eagle. The message I had wanted to hear my entire life came out of those early meetings. “There is a solution.” The stories people were sharing were the first in my life to hear anyone, besides myself, say the thoughts inside my head.

Never before had I been surrounded by people that understood my struggle, my pain, and my confusion. This was a room of people searching for truth and seeking a better way of life. They would share how they used to feel like I felt, and now, through the program of A.A., life looked and felt much different. They talked of the 12 steps, and the Big Book. Of fellowship and service.

They also spoke of a Higher Power, one that has made all the difference. This group of people had such conviction and gratitude for this program that not only changed, but saved their lives. I had never witnessed anything like it. I was hearing people talk of miracles in and around their lives because they “got into action,” “did the work,” “sought the will of a Higher Power,” “gave up trying to control everyone and everything,” and “gave up drinking so they could get busy living.” It is offered at no charge, no fees or dues.

The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. Come to as many meetings as you like. Find someone in the group you may or may not get along with who has been doing it for a while. They will help you understand all that you need to know to keep coming back, and get through the steps suggested to change your life, as countless others have already done.

It was during that first week that a man came up to me at the end of a meeting and handed me his phone number. He was gray in years, but not so silver like Mr. Miyagi. He was a little shorter than me, and had the look of a ski bum I would have drank beers with after a day on the mountain. I shook his hand and we exchanged names. Let’s call him, Ed.

Standing there, both paused in silence, we had an awkward moment. He had a look on his face that suggested I should ask the next question. “Does this mean you are available to be a sponsor?” was the first question that came to mind. “Well,” he said. “We can talk about that. You do seem to have the determination.”

We set up a time to meet one-on-one. I looked forward to having a conversation with just one person, rather than tell my story to the carpet and walls in a room of strangers. Ed and I met early on a Saturday morning at the building of New Beginnings where A.A. meetings were held. He made a pot of coffee, but I brought my own thermos of decaf because I didn’t need anything to increase the intensity of my nervousness.

After a brief conversation about how I was feeling, and how this meeting was going to go, Ed lowered his tone, and mindfully said, “Let’s pray,” so together we said out loud the Serenity Prayer.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I had been to about a dozen meetings by this point, and had memorized the Serenity Prayer. I didn’t have much feeling or conviction behind it, but I had learned it. The first time I saw the prayer in my life was a framed version on the wall in my sister’s bathroom.

At the time, I remember thinking how lame it was, and asking myself who actually believes in this kind of foofy garbage. That was twenty years ago, and I was in my mid-twenties, a couple years before I got my DUI. My self-approved arrogance was pretty well developed by then.

After we prayed, Ed said to me, “So, tell me about your drinking.”

Our conversation went pretty much like this:

“Well, I have been a daily drinker for quite awhile. It has progressively increased in frequency, duration, and quantity over the last few years. I drink when everything is going great, or to celebrate. I drink when things are boring, or I drink when I am stressed, but I only get scared about my drinking when I am freaking out. I don’t typically drink in the morning, unless it’s a holiday, camping trip, vacation, football tailgating, golfing, or I have an unexpected day off work. I guess 10 drinks is the minimum after work before I go to bed, on a normal day.”

“Ok. Would you say you are powerless over alcohol?”

“Umm, I guess I would definitely say that as of late. I was completely out of control over the holidays, and I was having to drink to settle my mind prior to that. I did stop drinking for two weeks in December, but that didn’t seem to help anything. Everything just got worse.”

“Yeah, that makes sense to me…so, would you say, your life has become unmanageable?”

“Let’s see, I can pay my bills, but I am in a pile of debt. I just lost my shit for a week over a girl, I ruined Christmas with my family because I lost control of my emotions. I own my business, but it is unorganized and in constant need of repair. And if I kept drinking the way I was I would probably be in jail, or the hospital within a month or two. That’s what I’ve got off the top of my head right now.”

“And do you believe that drinking plays a part in those problems?”

“Yes, I am here now saying these things to you.”

“Congratulations, you have just completed Step 1.”

Just like that, I was in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The stark realization was that I felt entirely committed to something I knew nothing about. I didn’t feel trapped or caught in any way, but I did feel like I had no outs. The honest fact was that I had played all my outs prior to going to that first meeting. I am typically an “all-in” kind of person, but just knowing what that first step meant was a bit overwhelming.

I had just admitted for the first time that I am powerless over alcohol, and that my life had become unmanageable. For me, there was no going back. The commitment was real, but the thought that I was making a mistake did cross my mind. Was sobriety really what I needed? Did I even trust my decision to make this declaration? What would it mean if I tried to take it back? If I truly wanted my life to change I had no other choice.

My life had led me there. Right there, right then. Everything I had ever said or done put me in that room with that man I had known for all of fifteen minutes to confess that I, Peter Larson, have a disease called alcoholism. I cannot stop drinking when I drink, and life, as functioning as I made myself out to be, was slipping from my strained and weakening grip.

It was time for me to let go, not of life, but of control. If I wanted to give up drinking, I had to surrender my ego’s pride. If I wanted to change, I had to take the first step, and the first step humbled me to the core.

Sitting in my chair physically, I was on my knees spiritually. Ed and I still had the rest of the hour to fill. I stretched the skin of my face back with my hands, and let out a deep sigh.

“Okay,” said Ed. “Let’s keep going…”

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Author’s Bio: About Peter

Even though addiction is part of Peter’s story, it is by no means what defines him. He began writing prose and poetry in the second grade and never stopped. Peter also has a love for sports, the great outdoors, art, and music.

He grew up in the state of Iowa, and after graduating from the University, Peter moved to Colorado to begin a career as a golf professional and ski bum. That didn’t last forever.

He went back to tending bar, and eventually, started his own lawn care business, which he still operates today.

Of all things he has experienced in life, sobriety is at the top of the list. In giving up drinking, Peter writes about how sober living has improved, through challenges, his spiritual relationship, relationship with the important people in his life, and the relationship with his true self.

Writing in the present moment with a new perspective on the past, he explores connections between the mind, body, and spirit. Taking photographs along the way he shares his story on his adventure blog, www.secondwind5280.com and on Instagram @secondwind5280. He hopes to see you on a hike, fly-fishing on a creek somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, or for a high-five on the street. He loves the opportunity for a cup of coffee.