By John C.
In 1974, I was a young physician struggling with alcohol, baffled by my inability to live with it — or without it. One of my patients paid a house call on me — her hung-over doctor — and introduced me to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I was so thrilled to find a way out of my struggle that I seized upon the AA program without reservations. My life soon changed completely, and became manageable for the first time in years. As I recovered, I regained the trust of my patients, the respect of my peers, and the affection of my family. My life and happiness expanded a thousand fold!
I faithfully worked my steps and attended weekly meetings for the first five years but cut back to every other week during the next five years. My practice blossomed, and I became so busy that after my 10th anniversary, I only had time for meetings once a month.
After my 15th year, I only attended meetings on my AA birthday to collect my chip. It didn’t seem to matter: I “knew it all,” was busy, serene, and never thought of drinking. My life and business were entirely successful, and after 23 happy years in the program, I sold my practice to devote my professional time to medical charity missions overseas.
One day, it occurred to me that, since I was no longer “on call,” getting up at night to do emergency surgery, it might be safe to enjoy an occasional beer like normal people. So I hatched an experiment to test whether I had outgrown my disease: I would allow myself one beer a week. Just one. Cautiously, I tried it, and to my delight, it seemed to work!
Since that one beer hadn’t bothered me, I decided it might be safe to have a beer every day. Soon it was two beers a day with dinner. Later, I added one or two for lunch. After a while, I switched from beer to a more sophisticated bottle of wine a day. Before long, I allowed myself a bottle of wine with each meal — and maybe little brandy at bedtime. After all, I am retired, right?
I’ll spare the details of my descent into hell and my total inability to reach out for help. Before long, I had become a maintenance drinker: I needed 2-4 ounces of alcohol every two hours around the clock. Reduced to a pitiful wreck, I found myself completely powerless over alcohol — and far sicker than I’d ever been when I first found the program.
One night I awoke on a gurney in an Emergency Room 4000 miles from Hawaii, naked and confused, with a blood alcohol of 0.46 percent. The doc reminded me that 0.40 is the usual lethal limit: “You should be dead!” What happened to my one-beer-a-week experiment? Talk about being incomprehensibly demoralized!
I had no choice but to surrender. Following detox and rehab, I was discharged to return home to outpatient care at Hina Mauka in Honolulu. The rest is history. I’m now happy, serene, and productive, and thankfully have not found it necessary to take a drink in the past eight years. I’m in prison service, have a home group and sponsor, and attend several meetings a week.
An old timer at a meeting in my early recovery asked, “When you decided to try having one drink a week, how long had it been since you’d attended a meeting?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “Maybe five years.”
“Five years? You fool!” he snorted. “If you don’t go to meetings, you won’t hear what happens to us alkies that don’t go to meetings. You had the ‘Big C.’ Not C for cancer, mind you: ‘C’ for ‘complacency’. And that Big C damn near killed you!”
Yes, I’d received the Gift of Sobriety, but lost it through foolish complacency. Now I never take this Gift for granted: I’ve attended more meetings in these eight years than I ever did in the first 23 years. I call it my “complacency insurance.”
