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My story,
Well I didn't give up easy , I fought real hard for years, I didn't want to give up alcohol , I wanted to drink like a man!! and it damn near kill me, but today that's what I think I tried to do, I wanted to prove to the world that I could drink like a real man, Whatever the hell that means !!
Well, maybe you can relate, or maybe not, I think it is about our own experiences and really that's all there is, and this is how Sobersonny see it! Click here to go to Sonny's webpage!
When I was young. I didn't have a clue who I was, but I knew one thing, I didn't want to be me and I didn't know why either.. I know you will say to yourself, well, nobody at a young age knows who they are. I just know that all my life I wanted to be someone other than who I was. My earliest memories is wanting to be Elvis ,but I know that would probably be normal at the time, in the 50's but it didn't stop there for me. I tried to live a life base on someone else, I tried to be somebody else, I didn't want to be me!!!, from a early age I wanted to be what I thought I saw in others , I felt like I was incomplete and I had no idea why. I was truly the actor, Yes, the actor that the book talks about.(the book is Alcoholics Anonymous) I guess the point I am trying to make is: I am a real alcoholic and it didn't begin with my first drink, I had problems and drinking became my solution to them
I really don't want to bore you with my drinking log., although I have one, I just really think that you already know how to drink and I don't have to explain how much it took for me or anything else I am a alcoholic and that's that! I have spent many hours behind bars because of drunkenness, I was a drunk and the first time I drank, I got drunk!!!! and it happen every time I drank!! No doubts about Sobersonny being a drunk!!!
I found the fellowship in 1979 and I have been sober since, that sounds good, huh!, but that's not my story. I did go to my first AA meeting then, but I just failed to catch on to what it was all about and I still had allot of drinking to do, so I didn't really have time for the meeting and I wasn't as bad as these old men, was I ? , well, I didn't think so, but you know I never bother to ask one of those men if they were ever so drunk as to pull a gun on someone in a bar full of people. I did that and some how, I just pass it off as another drunk, but I knew that something wasn't right. I would later find out this was what was called active alcoholism.
I was back drinking and living the way I was before it had been introduce to me ,but that's what I do best, Drink!!!!, I am alcoholic!!! I didn't sober up again until about 1981 and once I had my first year, life was good and I was on my way to being a good AA person, who love to speak at meeting and was really fired up on this stuff call sober living!!! I thought that I was something , I had a full year of sober living, somehow I manage to get 5 years and I look back on it now and I never really know how I did it , because I was just saying all the right things, oh, you know how people do it, they just go through the motions and they never really do anything at all, I was one of them!!! I never really did anything for anybody else, I wasn't living this way of life, it was all a show!! and I was drunk again , and this time I lost family no. 1, we had been married for 11 years and had a beautiful daughter and wonderful son and alcohol would have its way we us!!! Well this didn't matter to a drunk like me, it was all her fault anyway , I didn't do anything, you know me , it wasn't my problem, My wife had all the problems. I blamed it all on someone or something else, it was never me.
My drinking was far from being over. After the divorce I decided I needed to go back to school. When I landed in a state treatment center , I learned from a counselor there that my real motives were to just drink, well I guess, but I did learn a few things. I just thought it was somebody miss the fact that I was genius and I needed to show the world how wrong they were, I made good grades for someone that cheated on the ACT scores and I have to say that even shock me and I loved the life style it was perfect life for a drunk. I love it .
I knew that I couldn't do this alone and sure enough , there she was!! what I had always wanted !!the girl of my dreams!! a English girl, in a English class and of course this was destiny, she drank and that was good and we had to go have a few!! I never really told Lesley my story, it just didn't seem to go well with the drinks and she might have taken a deeper look at someone like me ! Well as things sometimes go, we fell in love or would you really say love, lets just say we fell for each other, yeah, lets just say that!!.
Lesley was a exchange student from the UK and I was a non - traditional student at the University of Mississippi, Lesley had come to study in the USA, because she was majoring in American studies. She was to be here for one year or really under a year. Well , as fate with a drunk sometime goes , Lesley became pregnant and the plans for her schooling just got delayed. She freak- out!! I didn't know what to do so I left the deciding factors to her and told her that I would back her anyway I could!! She decided to have the baby and we called him Jake and he is the best thing that our meeting has produce.. Well this sure change her plans, and I promise her that we would go to England and finish her degree the next year. I got busy and made the needed arrangements so I could study there too!!
Our main problem was of course my being a drunk, but I really didn't think that at the time. I just wanted her to let me have all the control, I wanted her to let me handling things. I wanted to run the show and that exactly what I did, I just wanted to prove I could do something , I guess? We did make it to England , by the grace of God, and we manage to get through school and she finished her degree an I completed my studies. I did have to go to see a authority figure at the school for being drunk and disorderly at the school bar, yes that what I said School bar! Lesley knew things with my drinking were bad and she didn't really want to go to America at the time ,but I just wouldn't leave it alone and I had to have the control. When I return to US things got much worst for me and her my drinking was really out of hand, I had really lost it this time, but I still couldn't see it, it was still someone else's fault not mind , Lesley couldn't come to America with me in this shape so she stay there to fin for herself, in England , she had it tough, and I hope, I can make it up to her one day.
I got in trouble with the law in Oxford Mississippi , you know public drunk, contempt of court, the regular drunk things, I didn't want to go to jail ,so like a good drunk I made a bright drunk decision to go out west!! , You know " Go West Young Man" I was on the run. I don't really have to tell you what happen, I ended up in the streets and I really didn't like it at all, nothing is exciting about skid row !! I slept in the rough for a time, and I found my way to San Francisco it was there that I decided I wanted to get out of the streets, but I didn't really want to quit drinking. I ask God to give me some help, you know, get me out of the streets. I called a friend of mind for a 100.00 and he sent it and I drank it up too!! I did make it back to the south , New Orleans and I stay there for a spell drinking and living out in the rough somebody stole my shoes, my bag and all my belonging, so I had to go to a mission and get some shoes and such. I took the bus t o Jackson Mississippi and stay with my mother, God bless her , she has put up with so many drunks. I found my way back to the town I was running from. One night after another night's drunk I call my friend, to see if he could get me in a treatment center. I was willing to do anything it had beat me and I was ready and willing to do anything he said , he came to get me that night and I will never forget him for it.
I got Sober there and I started praying there, I didn't know what I believed in anymore and I was told to make my God "good orderly direction" so I did that. I started asking God to change the things that I couldn't and let me have the strength to change the things I could and he help me to do that. I started to put one foot in front of the other on a daily basic. Lesley and I talk to each other from time to time and she was glad I was getting help and living the AA way of life. I got a sponsor and started working the steps, and this made me start looking at me maybe for the time and I didn't like it, but I began to change and for that I am grateful.
Lesley and Jake came to USA this year and it was so good to see them, we are taking a look at where we stand with each other and I hope that we can get back together slowly, base on a new relationship with me sober and clean!!
At 16 months I had to deal with the unthinkable, I lost my 19 year old daughter Gabrielle Ivy Felts and my world became black, darker than dark without any light at all , but I didn't drink and for that I am grateful , I called out for help on the lamplighters AA online group. The group saved me and I will always be indebted. I was a member and I am glad that I had them to turn too , its what they do !!
I have been sober now 2 years and 10 months thanks to AA and a power greater than myself!!