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My Story

as Told by Me

Nothing that's happened in my life has made me an alcoholic except the way I chose to handle life.

   I think the best place to start is the year 2000, I'm still drinking.

   I own my own business when I get a call. The woman is checking prices for a job and mine turned out to be the lowest. While making arrangements she stopped and asked what my name was. When I told her she asked me if I lived in a certain town to which I replied " I used to when I was a kid????"  Her response I will never forget, she said; "My name is Susan Curtain and I was your first grade teacher!" After 27 years and approximately 1,000 students she remembered me. When I got to her house her husband put his arm around me and said " Ken M......., your name came up at quite a few cocktail hours." I was an alcoholic at the age of six. Selfish self-centered and full of fear.

   Round about the time I was eleven came my first drink. New Years Eve my parents would have a gathering to teachers. Every year I would watch thinking how nice it would be to be older. To do the things that grown ups do, somehow drinking peaked my interest. My brothers and I managed to steal two gallons of Apple cider ( for some reason we knew that it would ferment and turn to booze ) from my mother and hide it in the attic. We figured we'd drink it during the party but went to check on it the day after Christmas Well.......After the fermentation the tops blew off spewing apple cider all over the ceiling of the garage. Which had my father believing the roof was leaking. Long story short we stole a bottle of Vodka and the next year we duct taped the tops on the apple cider.

    I grew up in a nice home on a two acre wooded lot, my parents were both teachers. My only companions as a child were my two older brothers and seven girls three next door and four two houses down. And from a very young age I remember a fascination with girls. I can remember the names first and last of all the girls I was infatuated with from Kindergarten on. God, I loved them with every one of my five senses. But I was fat and self will had me thrown out of middle school and placed in a school for troubled kids. I grew up a lot there inside a year the teachers and administrators all said I didn't belong and for tenth grade I was going back to public school.

   I made a decision, I was going to loose weight, find a girl friend and be good in school. And it happened. Things were going well I lost sixty pounds my grades were good and then it happened. She turned around and kissed me, that was 1 / 14/ 82 Wow, her name was Karen, Karen Joy and she became my everything, my world, my reason for living. We saw each other every day and shared our dreams for the future. We'd go camping, to movies out to dinner or to feed the ducks. We saw all the concerts worth seeing and had a great group of friends. Life was good we were both out of High school. She attending state school for culinary arts, I had a full time job and a growing business on the side. We planned to get married she wanted four children two more than I we were twenty one there was time to decide.

    Karen loved to laugh so to surprise her one day I bought tickets to George Carlin. It was going to be a special day, a day I will regret for the rest of my life.

     End of a Love Story

    They saw each other every evening after he returned from his job. They went camping and to soft music concerts. He bought her stuffed animals and roses often for no reason. She helped him shins pianos for a business he planed to start.

   They were young lovers the kind of courtship that makes life seem eternal. And in the six years since they met in High School only one day passed when Kenneth  didn't see Karen.

   He doesn't know that are occurrence will become the rule.

    G.... Died Monday at Huntington Hospital after the couple was involved in a car crash Sunday Evening. And Kenneth 21 in serious condition has not been told the woman he hoped to marry is dead. Barbara Karen's mother said she doesn't know who Kenny will live without the only girl friend he has ever had. Karen used to say " I am his whole life." I know he'll suffer, never mind the pain he's in.

   Something snapped in my steering column causing van to cross the double yellow line where I hit a man who was intoxicated. 5/1/88

  I was unable to live with myself, with what I had done. I was depressed, suicidal, disabled and full of rage. I was enraged with the other driver, I was furious with myself and I blamed it all on God. I wanted to F**n off myself, my future was gone I destroyed her family, I took her father's baby, I couldn't walk, I couldn't work, all I could do was sit there and think about what I lost. I was plagued with these dreams. I'd either dream the accident all over again, OR I'd dream she was alive and wake up elated only to understand she was gone and once more I was crushed. That was the point where drinking ceased being a luxury and became a necessity. I found when I was drinking I wouldn't have the dreams or wouldn't remember them. And the time came when I cursed the day she was born for all the pain she put me through.

   Twenty two found me a daily drinker. Six months after Karen died so did my grandmother followed the next year by my mother. Dead at the age of 54 from alcoholism. I can't begin to describe how forgotten I felt, how lost and alone the utter despair and self loathing And like many, when there was no one left to blame, I blamed God. Beer stopped working vodka would fix that, two bottles and oblivion At twenty four I knew beyond a doubt that I was an alcoholic. Convinced I would die like my mother and my uncle I plodded on.

   But you know mentally I pulled out of it and if it weren't for the alcohol there isn't a doubt in my mind that I would have killed myself. I felt those feelings of being alone and I was never enough for just myself so I sought after what I thought had made me so happy in the past. I met a bevy of miss right now's, but no Mrs. Right until one night. I swung the secret Santa for Stephanie, a girl who worked in the office at work. Man she was beautiful and fairly sought after by most of the single guys. So being the "smoothy" ( I thought ) I was, I bought us two tickets to the Luther Vandross Christmas show. That night was magical and not in any way i would have ever guessed. I could tell Stephanie and I were from two different planets so I dropped her off and stopped in local watering hole to finish off the night. A member of my home group ( which is twenty five miles from this bar ) said "It's the type of place where you'd want to wipe your feet on the way out."  Little did I know that night I met my wife. That was 12/21/91

    Wow what a smile, we hit it off. She made me feel important, and whole. Like I mattered. And I thought one day if I didn't marry her I wouldn't meet anyone like her again. I asked her and she said yes, I realized then I needed to control or do something about my drinking. We moved in together and my drinking went underground. Still drinking every day I did it before I going home continuing in " moderation " after I returned. She became pregnant and it was time for the new life.

   We bought a house and moved thirty miles away from where I grew up and lived my whole life. That was it a home, a son, too much responsibility to drink like I did. I'd straighten out and we'd be livin Lavida Loco.

   But when we moved I came along with my old behavior. I couldn't stop drinking, I started hiding it all over my house just "in case". I remember one of my favorites, buying two bottles of the same thing driving home and just around the corner tossing one into the woods. I'd go walk my dog returning home twenty minutes later completely drunk. My wife would look at me, look in the cabinet at the bottle, look at me again and wonder how I got that way. And every day with the two questions. " Have you been drinking? " we all know that answer......... " NO!" the other I never knew........." Do you remember what you did last night? " I knew if she was talking to me it couldn't have been that bad. Sometimes she' say " Nothing, you passed out and spilled your drink. " Other times she would just cry. And it killed me, I loved my wife so very much, I just didn't do it very well. She'd say " Can we not drink this week? " Since half of we was me it was highly unlikely. I could only last one or two days tops and I'd be falling apart. I remember thinking one night if this house burns down I doubt she'd pull me out. And if I lived until my son was eighteen I did my job. It went on that way for two years.

    And one day, it was a Sunday, July 8, 2001 to be exact I get a call from a friend of mine Bob. Big Bob we call him 6 foot 8  he looks just like Paul Bunion and he drinks just like me. He asked me what I was doing..... nothing he said " I'm coming over."

   He picked me up and we drove about a mile to a shopping center. That's when I knew something was up, there wasn't any alcohol in the whole mini mall. He put it in park and started to tell me about my drinking. He said " Your wife's calling my fiancée telling her about the yelling and fighting. And your partner's calling me, telling me that you're taking calls and forgetting about appointments you're making. That you reek of booze every morning....."  I said  " Wait a minute......that SOB drinks just like I do!!" and he looked at me and he said " I'm not talking about him......I'm talking about YOU!!" And as he said that he stuck his finger right in may face ( 6 foot 8 people have really long fingers ) then he said something I will never forget, he said " I haven't had a drink in about four months, but I think I'm going to..............Would you go to AA with me?"

  I don't know why other than I didn't think I had any other choice, I said yes. I went home and finished the quart of Vodka. The suffering I went through the next three days was almost unbearable without going into details I wouldn't wish the D.T.'s on my worst enemy. I often say I didn't go to AA to stop drinking, I went to AA to get my wife off of my back. I stopped in AA on my way to the cemetery and I've been here ever since. I could probably write as much about what's happened since I've stopped drinking but I've taken up too much space already. My family is whole, I'm a positive influence in my community and I have a relationship with the universe I never imagined.

   Thanks for thanking the time to read my share......................Kenny

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