I am not sure whether this would be inspiration to other people or not, but I decided to put it here anyway, hoping to be of some support for anyone who may relate to these experiences, feelings and thoughts.

I am currently 63 years old (September 30th, 1941) and have been sober for 5 years (as of 7-27-1999).

I work as a customer service representative helping people with installation & operating problems on computer hardware and software by telephone from a support call center.

I was born and raised in Johnsville, Ohio (no longer on the map) a small farming community in southwestern Ohio, about 15 miles from the closest town with a shopping center or theatre.

My parents were very religious people and attended church meetings 3-4 times per week. They were very loving and kind, very strict, but fair on their guidance as my 2 brothers, 1 sister and I grew up.

We were all 4 probably about average in school and the community, nothing outstanding as far as accomplishments or getting into trouble during our childhood years.

About age 11, I decided I wanted more than my parents were able to buy for me so I took a job at a small local grocery store sacking groceries and stocking shelves. I worked part time there until I graduated from high school in 1959.

After graduation I went to work for one of the nations largest supermarket chains and by the age of 22 had worked my way up to meat department manager at over $10,000.00 per year and was the highest paid meat manager they had in the area.

In 1968 I changed occupations and went to work as a life insurance agent working for one of the top 3 life insurance companies in the country. About 1975 I formed a general property and casualty insurance agency, with 2 partners, while still working for the life insurance company and enjoyed the income from both sources.

 In 1978 I decided that the only reason that I lived in this cold and snow covered part of the country was because I was born here and that was not a good reason to stay. So I sold my share of the insurance agency and moved to Houston, Texas where it was warmer and never snowed.

In Houston I went to work for an air conditioning manufacturer as a territory manager (salesman). By 1985 I had worked my way up to the sales managers job and again was making a very comfortable income. In 1988 the company that I worked for sold the franchise for their products to a local distributing company and closed the factory branch that I worked for.

Remember this as my first realization point in my very slow turn to recovery.

I will now go back and tell you how the alcohol began in my life and bring you up to this point as the habit grows.

My 1st experience with alcohol was about age 14, some of my friends and I went to a drive-in movie, when we got inside (we did not pay to get in, we had worked out a way to set across the street from the exit and time the guard inside, when he was on the opposite side of the drive-in we would dash in the exit with our lights off) we would always have a pizza from the refreshment stand and 1 of my friends got out some beer.

I had never seen or heard of any of them ever drinking before and I had never thought of trying it. By the end of that evening I had passed out from drinking and my buddies simply dumped me off in front of my parents house (remember their very strong religious beliefs).

I slept in the front yard until close to dawn the next morning and then came to and snuck into the house and acted like I had been sleeping all night.

I was mad at my buddies for just dumping me off, but, as I have thought about it over the years I don't know what else they could have done at the time. I would think they were not in the best of condition and none of us had much experience with this thing.

We continued this type habit through high school, never going beyond occasional weekends and it never seemed like a problem. I don't think that my parents knew until at least in the last part of high school, they never said.

As I said above, I was earning a good income and at the age of 20 I married my first wife, who was 19. We were married 4 years when we had our 1st child and had partied very openly with other young couples and all of the activities that we were involved in included drinking. Boating (I bought my 1st boat before I did a car at age 15) you can't drive a boat without a beer in your hand, Parties at each others houses (there was somewhat of a contest to see who had the best stocked bar), Dances with big name bands (mostly BYOB and we did), even work related (I got in trouble at the union hall when I ordered a non-union beer) and it seems like every boss or supervisor that I got along with or promoted by, until the "Alligator" above,  was also a drinking buddy.

At that time was the first time in my life that I ever wondered if drinking had any influence in my life. I had lost my job, even though I was hired by the company that took over the brand, but none of their supervisors drank. In fact, one of them had been treated for alcoholism and it was public knowledge. Had the whole world changed to non-drinkers?

This was 1988 and my 1st wife had divorced me in 1986, I thought because I was spending too much time working, getting promotions, etc. I was married to my second wife and was wondering down deep if my whole life was controlled by drinking. My second wife left one day and never did tell me why, it had to be because I disagreed with her way of life?

After 1 year with the company above, I quit and started my own company. I never to this day have told anyone, but I never sold enough to pay the 1st months rent. I had taken advantage of everyone who ever had confidence in me and sold them each shares of stock in my new company. When this money was gone I was setting on the loading dock of the warehouse wondering what to do next. (approximately 1 year after I started the company). I finally called my son (21 years old at the time and I had thrown him out of my house because he smoked pot). He came over with his wife and took me to his house.

While living at his house I was drinking everything I could buy and everything I found in their cabinets. My van that I had (about the only thing left that I owned) was repossessed by the finance company. I went to one of the people that had invested in my company and convinced him that the only way to save his investment was to move my company into his Air Conditioning business and put me into a company truck so I would have a vehicle to drive. (this along with a lot of other things I have done in my life are good examples of the cunning & conning that alcoholics will do to continue drinking). A short while after that (my short term memory and probably all of my memory was gone by now) he caught me stopping in a local bar on the way to work in the morning and took the company truck back and took me home. That was the end of my company and our relationship.

This was 1990 and I was married to my current wife who was the branch secretary for 9 years of the company that sold out above. We both always had a special feeling for each other and she has stuck with me through the worst years of my (and I'm sure hers) life.

She was working, I was not, then one day another very good friend called and wanted to know if I would like to go to work as a territory manager (salesman) for the air conditioning manufacturer that he worked for. I was very surprised that everyone in the world did not know what a big drunk I was and someone was still willing to give me a job.

For approximately the next 4 years I had it made, back in the same territory that I was in in 1988 above, a new company van to drive and a cell phone to keep me in touch when everyone thought I was working (most days I was drinking, only contacting the office and customers enough to keep an income coming in to pay the bills and buy beer).

In 1994 I was so drunk driving down a curvy country road that when the road curved, I did not. I drove a 6 month old company van straight into a thickly wooded area and woke up a short while later in the van laying on it's side. I didn't know at the time, but the van had rolled over, going into the trees sideways and ripping the top off from the drivers seat all the way to the rear. I crawled out of the van and walked to the road and flagged down a car. The driver had a cell phone and called 911. The state police, along with fire and rescue departments responded and I had to tell the police where the van was at, it was buried so deep in the woods they could not even see where it had gone in. I was arrested for "Public Intoxication".

The worst is yet to come, (yes, it does get worse) as soon as I am able to put the facts together they will be here.

The years from 1994 (Van crash above) and July 27, 1999 when I finally sobered up and began to live a REAL life, were spent in the deepest misery I could imagine, driving from 1 place to another so the same people would not see me drinking, buying beer from different carryouts so they wouldn't know how much beer I was drinking (minimum of 2 to3 12 packs a day).

I would get so tired of driving I would hide in heavily wooded areas (park area below the dam at a lake, parks, roadside rest areas etc.). I would be gone sometimes weeks at a time, traveling 300 to 500 miles from home, running from something, not knowing what I was hiding from.

All of this 5 year period is still somewhat of a large blur, I spent time in 4 or 5 treatment centers, always going back to drinking when I got out, getting a job and working for a living was never as important as having that 12 pack side of me for security.

I started to turn around when I was in the hospital from a condition of my body completely shutting down due to the quantities of alcohol that I had consumed over the years and the buildup of stomach acids in a growth on my pancreas. The doctor told me that if that growth broke they could not get me to the operating room quick enough to save my life, it would eat up the artery through my insides and I wood bleed to death internally.

As I'm able to recall more details I will add them here.

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