Starting Over

This is an e-mail I sent my friend "Maggie, Dammit" earlier today. We both began a similar journey last winter but as you will read timing is sometimes everything:

Basically the subject speaks for itself. It's a long story that began in late January of this year but I had to wait until the time was right before deciding that I am indeed an alcoholic. I finally quit Christmas Day. My family thinks this was a wonderful present for them. The fact is that it will be the best present I will ever give myself.

The details of how I arrived at that moment, the one where an alcoholic finally decides he or she is too weary to continue being a slave, are not that important. For that I truly thank God because no one was injured, my family is still in tact, and I am still alive. What is important is the epiphany of realizing that were I to keep living within the insanity I would soon be dead. God made that perfectly clear to me on Christmas Eve. As I told my brothers, I now have a new appreciation of the Ebeneezer Scrooge story.

For now I have the Big Book at hand and meetings to attend. I met with a counselor today to begin the work of peeling away the layers of this onion which I shall call My Life. At the moment I'm not too fond of it but I think enough of what is left of it to salvage those layers in hopes that they will finally season the lives around me with something other than pungent and tearful.

Don't get me wrong! I am very happy and content with this decision which is a far cry from the previous two attempts to quit. For the first time I am not grieving over the absent bottle of wine. There are moments that I seem lost because that daily ritual must now be replaced with something more worthwhile. Instead I look forward to the freedom which my chemically altered mind cannot fathom that which I already have. So I live day to day now with simple goals. Don't drink. Go to a meeting. Read the Book. Say my prayers.

I hope this e-mail finds you well, my friend...

Love -

Bennie