For the benefit of those of you who don't know me very well, I've been coming to MIP on and off since 2005. I'm what is known in program lingo as a double winner, meaning I am in both Al-Anon and AA. I only mention that in case there are newcomers in here who may be confused by my outgoing outspoken and often outrageous disregard for personal anonymity.

I'm not sure if you're going to like this share but I read a lot of shares on here about why alcoholics drink the way they drink or why they think the way they think and being one myself I might be able to shed some light on that.

I remember telling my sponsor once that I was lonely. My sponsor told me to get cat. I said I didn't want a cat. I wanted something like a cat, but taller. He said he didn't care what I wanted and then he said the cat thing again.

At the time I was talking quite a bit with a lady I had met on the internet. One day she said the magic words - i love you - so I did the only thing I could think of. I moved to Wyoming. (I live in Canada by the way). I mentioned my plan to my sponsor and he said it was a geographical cure and that changing my location wouldn't change my situation. Then he muttered something about getting a cat.

I don't like to fly and taking a boat didn't seem like it would work, so I went by train. back then, in 1997, the only place you could smoke on a train was in the bar car. I smoke a lot so I was in the bar car a lot. Everything was going well until the waiter went by with a tall can of alexander keiths india pale ale with a little water droplet running down the side of the can. Smack, smack.....yum yum. those who drank it drank it a lot.

Suddenly the thought occurred to me that they probably didnt make keiths beer in wyoming and I should probably have one to celebrate my new beginning. The only problem with that is I don't know how to have one of anything. I have a philosophy of life that says if one works this good, just think what ten will do. I had already had 38 relapses. My doctor had diagnosed me as a chronic alcoholic. The local AA group had a Bernie Protocol in place. When they seen me coming they hid all their desire chips.

So why did I think I could have one drink and stop. Because alcoholism is the only disease that can convince you that you dont have a disease. Real alcoholics like me suffer from an obsession of the mind. An obsession is a thought so powerful it blocks out all thoughts to the contrary. When a real alcoholic gets the thought of drinking into his or her head there is no room in their thoughts for love or duty or responsibility, there is only room for one thought - drinking.

So I had my one tall can. And then I had two. And two turned into ten and ten turned into twenty and before long they were thinking about throwing me off the train becaause I had become dangerously and disgustingly anti-social. Imagine someone as cute and adorable as me being thrown off a train because I had become an animal.

I did manage to get to Wyoming but the man who arrived there was not the man she had fallen in love with. Because I had taken one drink I had become the man that nobody wants to be with. And in my paranoid drunken stupor I perceived that life with her would be about as calm and idyllic as being in a Stephen King movie.

So I came back home. On the first of december in 1997 I was sitting in an internet cafe on East Dundas Street in London Ontario, eating a sandwich and having a beer and chatting on the internet like I was an executive on my lunch break when in reality I was a homeless drunk with no job, no friends, no family, and no options. So I made a decision. Its like when one of us al-anons makes a decision to take a stand and fight back. I decided not to drink that day. Not stop drinking forever. Just for that one day.

I can tell you it was 1:10 pm in the afternoon. I can tell you the young lady who served me was 5'9" with strawberry blond hair, a turqoise shirt and black shorts. She had a tattoo on her left shoulder. it was someone's name but I could only see two letters. I remember all that because she is the lady who served me my last drink. that was well over 5,000 days ago.

Three days later when I was hitch-hiking through a blizzard in New Brunswick because I had run out of money I had a meeting with the man upstairs and it was at that meeting that I surrendered my alcoholism and my life to a Power Greater than myself and I have never looked back.

I realize this is more of an AA share than an Al-Anon share but there is a moral. Whoever your A is, no matter how bad it is or how hopeless it may appear, there is always hope for a brighter day. I am living proof of that.

well have a great day.