How I Got to AA

Doctor Bob and Bill W Co-founders of AA

I was born and brought up in a small mining town in Fife, Scotland, the only child of a middle-aged couple. My earliest memory is that I always felt different, cut off from everyone else, and somehow on the outside looking in.
The town where I lived was very much a working class area in the 1950s and 1960s, and most people took their recreation in the pubs and clubs that filled the centre of the town. From a very early age, I looked forward to the day when I could join in the drinking and then I would be the same as everyone else.
I had my first drink when I was thirteen on a school trip to Bavaria. We were taken on a tour of the local brewery, which culminated in a meal of sausages washed down with jugs of beer. I loved it immediately. I loved the taste and the feeling it gave me,that wonderful glow. No one else at my table liked the beer and that meant there was plenty for me. Everyone watched in astonishment as I consumed jug after jug and that made me feel very important, the life and soul of the party. On the way back to our hostel, lots of the other boys seemed to be drunk, staggering along the street and giggling foolishly. I felt just fine and dandy, very cheerful and very superior to all those around me.
I didn't drink again until I was sixteen and then I didn't stop until I was almost forty-one! When I started to drink at sixteen, all those good things happened to me again and even more so. I always had a tremendous appetite for booze and could consume more than anyone else around me. Drink changed me into the person that I thought everyone wanted me to be. I could sing, I could dance, I could chat up women, I could argue, I could fight, I could do anything! My shyness and insecurity just evaporated; yet the fear never left me, it was merely masked by the new persona provided by my drinking.
When I was twenty, I joined the Royal Navy and I loved it. Here my drinking was quite acceptable, most people seemed to drink like me and we had a great time. I've travelled to many places all over the world and seen very little apart from the first two or three bars outside the dockyard gate. Sightseeing was for tourists, sunshine was for posers and I just wanted to sit in a dingy bar and get sozzled. I didn't drink at sea, because we only got three tiny cans of beer a day and that wasn't enough to fill a tooth far less satisfy the capacity I had for drink.
At the end of my nine years in the Navy, I wanted to sign on again, but I was no longer fit enough and had to leave. I took the first job that was offered to me, as a club manager with NAAFI. That's when my drinking really took off. I was drunk every night. There were occasions when I would get into bother or fall over but mainly, however, I was a stand-up, top-up drunk who did not have a sober day for the next ten years. As my superiors had never seen me sober, they didn't know that I was drunk all the time and thought that all was well.
Of course, all was not well and eventually my befuddled brain was overcome with thoughts of hatred and paranoia. I hated the world and everyone in it and I was convinced that everyone hated me. The good times had gone. I no longer drank because I enjoyed it, I drank because I had to and booze had taken away my soul. I was a shambling wreck with not a good thought for anyone, including myself and I was spiritually dead.
In 1989, I was posted to RAF Leuchars. It was my first time back in Scotland, (except for visits on leave when my parents were alive) for almost twenty years. Within a few months of my arrival, I started to admit to myself that there was something wrong with my drinking and there was something desperately wrong with me.
I knew I would have to do something about it and somewhere in the back of my mind I even knew what that would be. Years previously, I had often heard my father, when he was drunk, saying that he was an alcoholic and that, "tomorrow I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous." Well, the next day would come and although Dad felt terrible, he would have forgotten about Alcoholics Anonymous. He just had a wee bit of a drouth (a very descriptive Scottish word meaning "thirst") and needed a curer. So my dad never did get to AA, but he did plant a seed, which led to my coming to AA all those years later, when I needed it.
I first contacted AA by phone and was told that someone from St. Andrews would phone me the next day. Someone did phone and they suggested that I go to a meeting and asked that I try not to have a drink before the meeting. I promised that I wouldn't drink and I didn't, not because it was easy but because I'd given my word and I'm stubborn.
The time for the meeting arrived. It was the Tuesday Step Meeting in St. Andrews and I hadn't had a drink for two and a half days. I was shaking like a leaf, I couldn't talk, and I could hardly walk, but I got there. I didn't get into the meeting. The good people who were there that night, thought that as it was a Step meeting, it would all be well over my head. Outside in the churchyard, I spent a good hour and a half talking and listening with one of the group members. The talk did me a lot of good but I still wasn't sure I was in the right place. I was told that there was another meeting on Thursday night. It was a "bread and butter" meeting and everyone was sure I would enjoy that.
I did go to that Thursday meeting. I was made very welcome but I still felt a wee bit out of place. I'd come along here to find out if I was an alcoholic and no one had yet told me I was! All they'd done was welcomed me and said that they were alcoholics. I was beginning to wonder what all this had to do with me, when this big bearded old Yorkshireman started to tell my story. I was certain that the guy I'd been speaking to before on Tuesday had told him all about me before we got there and I wasn't very pleased. I thought that this was all supposed to be confidential and here they were talking about me behind my back!
Very soon I realized that Les wasn't telling my story, he was sharing about himself and I got instant identification. I knew that if AA worked for him, it would surely work for me. What was this, though? He was twenty-eight years sober and still going to two or three meetings a week. I thought he must be a very slow learner. I'm a bit brighter than that. I'll just need to come to the meetings for about six weeks! I can learn to live without drinking and I'll go on my merry way and enjoy all the things I've missed in life.
I attended one meeting a week for the planned six weeks and I don't think I listened to anything that was said. At the end of the six weeks, I felt quite confident and I decided to go to Germany on holiday where I stayed with some friends. On arrival I informed everyone that I was an alcoholic and that I had stopped drinking. My friends weren't too sure that I was an alcoholic, but if I'd stopped drinking that was fine. Eventually toward the end of the first week, someone said that surely a couple of bottles of German beer wouldn't harm me. I quickly agreed and that was it. I was drunk for the rest of the holiday. That first drink got me drunk. When the holiday was over, I resolved to never drink again and I wouldn't go back to AA, either. I would have to admit to Les and the others that I couldn't stay sober without them and I was far too arrogant to admit that!
So for eighteen months, I tried on my own to stay sober, but I could not. Sometimes I lasted a week or a fortnight, but eventually I would take that first drink and that was it, another night on the booze and another morning of regrets. The end of this eighteen months self-imposed solitary struggle culminated in another holiday. This time I was in Jersey, in the Channel Islands.
After three days, I went to a folk club. As usual the folk club was held in a bar and when I went in, I wasn't sure whether I was going to have a pint of coke or a pint of Guinness. Fortunately I asked for the cola and had a very enjoyable evening. The next day I felt very agitated and as I walked around St. Helier, I started to feel very thirsty. I knew I wanted a drink. I didn't know what to do. Just then I looked in a gift shop window and I saw the Serenity Prayer engraved on a glass dish. I had only ever seen or heard the Serenity Prayer at the AA meeting. I knew that I had to get in touch with AA right away.
I went to a phone box intending to get the AA phone number from directory enquiries. Inside the phone box however, someone had put a card with the AA number on it. I phoned straight away and within five minutes I was at a meeting which just "happened" to be starting in a church hall yards from the phone box I was using.
That day I believe I had a spiritual awakening and that my Higher Power led me back to AA. For that and the contentment I have been given, I am very thankful.


PS: I've just re-read this story which I originally wrote about ten years ago for publication in the Scottish Alcoholics Anonymous monthly magazine, "Roundabout." In 2005 I altered some of the language and geographical references to make it more accessible to an American readership and it was published in America in the AA international monthly magazine, "Grapevine." Now I've tweaked it a little bit again and I hope it helps everyone to understand me better and if it helps anyone else along the way then so much the better.