It was really love addiction that brought me to my knees and got me to take sobriety seriously.
My experience is that when God sends a message he sends a man, but when he has a big message...he sends a woman.
On March 20, 1987 I returned home from a 5 day Delta Blues research trip in Mississippi, and I could suddenly play lead guitar, rhythm guitar and carry the bass...all at the same time, by myself. Just like Robert Johnson at the Crossroads!
It was great! But weird! I never would ever have to depend on singers again...and that was a blessing.
But the Devil was about to take my soul as his due...or try to.
The very next day, a buxom, petite lass, and the also the girl who was the first love of my life when I was the tender age of 15 years old, called me, after not hearing from her for 11 years.
I was married to someone else and had a five month old daughter. She was married to someone else and had a young son.
For four months we started obsessively calling and talking to each other...intriguing romantically.
This was before cell phones when long distance calls were expensive...and traceable.
I was completely crazy with “love addiction”. I had never even heard that expression before!
Finally, she had enough of my craziness and said “I don’t love you, I don’t care about you, I don’t want to talk or see you, again.”
So, on Friday July 24, 1987, being a drama queen, and having a really crummy program, I drank alcohol again, after 5 years, 7 months and 2 days of sobriety. AA frowns on that kinda behavior...
It was not pretty.
Being drunk wasn’t that fun, full, warm, carefree, playful, fast and easy experience it had been anymore, though.
It felt more like having a fever: sweaty, clammy, headachy.
I would go on to drink a beer or two, every week or so, for 8 more months.
That was hell...not having sobriety and having to hide it from everyone, and yet not having fun either, just a dark fever.
There was a 19 year old boy, with 8 inch spiked orange hair, that I was teaching to play bass (The Dead Kennedys and Black Flag) who was having trouble with drugs.
I couldn’t help him, because I was using alcohol and couldn’t be honest with him.
That shame brought me back to AA on April 4, 1988, 32 years ago when I stopped drinking.
Four months later I would join SLAA and start my long road to sexual recovery.
I want to thank Carol M. She carried the message that brought me to my knees and broke me...and I finally reached out for God.
Thank you, really.
Steve D.