What It Was Like

I acted out. I practiced hard at it. I started at a young age. I lived my life in fear and fantasy. I did not know how to live in the real world. I wanted to be any place but “here.” Fantasy would take me over “there.” I acted out to feel better; I liked it, and I pursued it to the gates of insanity and death.

I did not come to my first SA meeting to get sober. I came because I wanted to feel better. My sponsor later told me, “You were scared to death. You were done.” When I came to my first meeting, I was given the pamphlets and phone numbers and told to use them. It was a Fourth Step meeting. I just sat down and started reading.

I started with a meeting a week for four weeks. That was fine with me. I acted out every day, but one meeting a week was enough for me. At 28 days sober, I couldn’t comprehend how to get up in the morning, go to work, make a living, pay the bills, and act like a normal person. But I thought I could give my wife advice. That’s how sick I was.

I went to a meeting and thanked the group. “I’m on my Fourth Step; I found God through the Third Step, and I’m grateful to be here.” After the meeting, one of the members came up to me and said, “You’ve got to stop patting yourself on the back so hard. You’re going to die.” Who did this guy think he was? He didn’t know who he was talking to!

I killed that guy 15 times in my head on the way home that night. I got home and had a huge fight with my wife. When she left, I went straight for pornography. It was my favorite delusion, that this would make me feel better when all else failed. I could feel the madness all around me. There has never been a time that I could start acting out and then stop, including that night.

What Happened

I called the next day and asked for help. I found a sponsor. Withdrawal was awful. My whole body went crazy. No one told me about the tunnel vision, the humming in my ears, the nausea, and the cold sweats. I felt like I was going crazy. That was the last day I found it necessary to act out.

My sponsor suggested that if one meeting a week didn’t work for me, I should try two meetings a week. He didn’t yell at me about doing lots of meetings. I couldn’t do ninety meetings in ninety days, seven days a week, but I could do two meetings a week. Sometimes I did four or five. Sometimes I skipped meetings. I had a lot of different reasons why I couldn’t go to meetings: my wife didn’t want me to go, the kids wanted me home, it was raining, or I was tired. Funny, none of those reasons ever kept me from acting out. Never. Would anything keep me from going to see my favorite porn queen?

I was hanging on to four months’ sobriety and thought I was doing okay. I thought I was the one holding the group together. Then a member named Lloyd pointed out that I couldn’t string two coherent sentences together. He offered to be my sponsor. I started working the Steps with him. I told him it was his responsibility to keep me sober. He said I had it backwards, that I would keep him sober because Higher Power would be with the two of us.

I worked with Lloyd for four years. I watched this deadly disease kill him. If not for him, it would have killed me, too. I still think about him a lot.

My sponsor now is a beauty. He taught me how to love. He helped me learn to love my wife. I thought I could change things somehow. I stayed with her because she was my drug. I had to learn to love her so that she could leave me. My wife served me with divorce papers and my first thought was, “Wow, no more sex in my life, ever.” My sponsor had told me that everything I did revolved around, came down to, and eventually ended up being about sex. He thought I might get somewhere if I could realize that. That, and to stop complaining about everything. “You want some cheese with that whine?” he would ask.

What It’s Like Now

I get up in the morning and go to work. I’m a bass fishing guide. Yeah, that’s right, I fish every day—and get paid to do it! My sponsor helped me to become self-supporting through my own efforts.

I made changes in my life. I can talk and relate to people. I can do that without making up fantasies in my head. My head was full of lies. I could not comprehend the truth. If I am alone, I hurt people. I am a liar, a cheat, a thief. Alone, that is who I am. With the help of other SAs, I have learned love, how to give and receive love. I did not know I was capable of that.

My sponsor taught me how to love and raise my kids. My daughter gave me a seashell the day I left the house. I carry that around to remind me where I have come from and where I am today. For me it represents the physical aspect of the Eleventh Step. My sponsor taught me about the Eleventh Step. My disease is threefold; my meditation has to be the same—physical, mental, and spiritual.

I was dying. Now I go to meetings, I go to work, I raise my kids. I don’t have to focus all my attention on myself. I have a bunch of crazy people I sponsor. I can focus on them. God sends me just the right people at just the right time. Sobriety is about responsibility. I have a role. I have to carry a message for my Creator’s purpose.

I do what I do every day, God, for your grace and glory alone. That is why I am here. I am sober today and very grateful. Thank you.