Sometimes i equate getting into AA to be like coming home from a war zone. My nerves were shatter, hadn't slept for months and the paranoia and flashbacks about the car wrecks and burning houses i escaped from were driving me insane!
Never thought suicide in my life until i quit drinking, then those thoughts plagued me for the first few months in AA until i drank again and almost died. It was then i found God, on a cold frosty night laying on my back on a patch of grass thinking the pilot light inside me was going out and something inside me desperately wanted to live!
I knew i was going to meet my maker if i did not change and i was too embarrassed to go in that condition.
The thought then struck me that if i was going to live at all then stopping drinking was one of the many things i had to do. So i scurried back to AA the next day, not to quit drinking but to stay alive.
Thankfully the straight shooters i met the day i came back told me how it really was for folks like me. Not what i wanted to hear then but i've never forgotten it.
I met one of those same guys last night, hadn't seen him in years. He spoke to me like dirt the day i came back then a few weeks later when he could see i was serious about staying sober this same guy offered me his nice new car to get to meetings when he was going away on holiday? Him trusting me taught me to start trusting myself. I never let him down and i've never gone back out drinking since that day. Now 17 yrs down the line if i can do the same for someone else i will have fullfilled a small part of Gods plan for me on this earth.
We may not he here for a long time so lets make it a good time!
God bless AA
