Welcome to my little serene cyber sober space online. It is always so good to meet new friends who join me here, I'm sure you will come to love it here as much as I have........
I'm an alcoholic, My name is Rudy.
My first drunk was when I was 13 years old. Four of my friends, and I got a wino to buy us a case of wine. Gypsy Rose wine to be exact. We had put together our lunch money for the past week to buy it. This was around 1963 and a case of wine only cost around 13 or 14 dollars. We took this case of wine and three bags of reefer to a basement boiler room and the five of us drank the whole case of wine and smoked the three bags of reefer. All I remember of that first drunk is waking up at home the next morning, no headache, no praying at the porcelain altar, none of the ailments that were waiting around the corner. All I knew was that I remembered going down that basement, and that I must have had a good time, because I couldn’t wait to do it again!!
Well I was only thirteen and could not afford to do this sort of thing regularly. Every chance I got to get drunk I did. By the time I was in High School, I had made enough drinking friends in the street that going to school was not that important anymore, so I dropped out in the tenth grade. That last year I only went about a month of the school year and that was a day here and a day there. It had become such a pain in the neck to go there. I was 16 years old when I left school. I got a job working for Western Union that lasted for about two months. For some strange reason they "let me go". I didn't know why. I was only late three or four times a week. I never took off more than four or five days in the month that I was there. Other than that I was a great worker. I only threw away one or two wires when I couldn't find the address. I really didn’t think my drinking had anything to do with my losing the job. I thought that they should have been more pleased that I even showed up when I did.
Life just kept on going this way for many years, everything that went wrong was always "their" fault, never ever mine.
Just before I turned 19 my grandmother who raised me passed away, I was devastated, I had lost my greatest enabler. How dare she!! Who could I rely on now. I found plenty of enablers, I learned how to manipulate people. I perfected it to an art. I started to wonder why so many of these people were never home when I came around afterwards. "Their fault again"
Any way I drank and drugged this way until I was thirty nine years old, at that point I had been living on the streets of New York City for three years, I had made New York my Ponderosa. I dined at the better garbage cans of the city regularly, I also got drunk at these same emporiums every night. I have to tell you all the truth it was very hard for me to get SOBER because I refused to be an alcoholic, I was addicted to crack cocaine for those three years that I spent on the street. My days were spent going from doctors office to doctors office getting prescription for whatever controlled substances I could get. My afternoons were spent busting these scripts. My early evenings were spent selling these pills. I did things this way so that I could buy as much crack as I could at one time.
Since I’ve been sober I finally realized that no matter what drug I did, I did them alcoholically, I didn’t want to have to run back and forth, so I would patiently wait until I had enough money to buy great quantities. So that I could just sit and smoke myself into a stupor. But as I mentioned earlier my friend booze was still waiting for me, when the crack ran out. I really looked forward to getting drunk from the garbage every night.
One morning I woke up in the 79th and Broadway subway station and I cried out to God "Help me God I can't live like this anymore" This was January 5th 1989, I got on the train and went downtown to St. Vincent’s Hospital on 12th street. When I got there it was about 6 in the morning so I sat there outside the hospital until the place opened. When I finally got to speak a doctor he asked me "What can we do for you". I started blubbering all over the place. I told him how I had been living for the past three years, and how I felt that I was going to die if I didn’t get some help.
I can't tell you how many times I had stood at the edge of a subway platform and stared down the tunnel trying to get the courage to jump in front of a train. But I've always been a chicken at heart, And I guess God was with me because I could never bring myself to jump.
So I was accepted into the rehab at the hospital, I can't relate to you the relief I felt. I think now that the relief was more that I would have somewhere to sleep that was clean, and have three meals a day. I was in, and so willing to do whatever they asked (Manipulation again). I didn’t get a counselor right away so there lots of meetings and groups to attend. Then I got the counselor, and she told me that I was an alcoholic! How dare this woman say such a thing to me, I was not an alcoholic, I KNEW how to drink, where did she ever get such an idea. I had forgotten completely the questions the doctor had asked me downstairs before I had been admitted. I would not even think about the idea of being alcoholic, alcoholics were bums, and lived on the street. Talk about denial!!! I stayed there for twenty eight days, and by the time it was time for me to leave I suddenly remembered that I was still homeless, and I realized that I had a problem, not with alcohol yet, but they told me about people places and things. I couldn’t go back to the streets. I knew that I would end up doing the same things again. I asked if there was somewhere else they could send me and they sent me to Manhattan Psyche Center, another rehab. And from that rehab to another rehab in Middletown NY. Now mind you all this time, I'm still going to drink. Drinking had never caused me any problems, the fog was still very heavy.
Now there was a rehab romance that had it's beginnings at St.Vincent's, but I will leave that for real recovery when I get there. From Middletown I went to a halfway house in Binghamton NY. The halfway house pushed AA meetings big time. What was wrong with these people and this alcohol thing????
SOOOOOOOOO now I’m recovered, aren't you all happy for me!!! Just wait it gets better.
So I’m at this halfway house in Binghamton NY, and I really don't want to be there. I don't want to go back to the streets either. This is the only way that I know of establishing myself again. I stay and I go to those AA meetings. It seemed like there were AA meetings around every corner in Bing. I get in touch with my sister who lives in Peekskill to let her know that I have been sober now for four months. I am all well.
My sister had about 1 1/2 years in the program at the time and a better grasp on "how it works" than I could ever hope to have at this time. She tells me that it is wonderful that I haven’t used for four months. BUT it has all been in a protected environment, lets see how well you do when you come out back into the real world. A CHALLENGE - don't we just love challenges?? Before you can say "I'm Back" I’m back in Peekskill, staying with my aunt, and going to meetings. AA meetings. I still feel that I can drink someday.
I stay "dry" for three months. Then I found the rehab romance. I find out that in between the time I last saw him and now he has been in three rehabs again, so I decide that I will twelve step him. Away to the city I go. We go to a meeting. We go to the movies. We have dinner. We talk about recovery. He walks me back to the train, on the way to the train he asks for ten dollars. I give him twenty. He doesn't finish the walk back to the train, he goes back (very fast) up the block and as I watched him I said to myself he's going to get high with that money. And that lived in my head all week.
We still have not consummated our (or my) love for each other yet, and I say to myself well if you want him so bad you'll just have to get high with him!! The next week I did, and every week after that I did. For three months. I would come back to my home group and still give my original sobriety date. After all I wasn’t drinking. I was smoking crack so I didn’t feel that I was doing anything wrong.
Then one day a group member that had three years in recovery came to the Monday night meeting and said that he had a new sobriety date, that he had drank some beer over the weekend. Shamed me completely. Still I refused to give up my sobriety date. I left Peekskill and went back to Binghamton, figured I would just start over again in a new spot with the same sobriety date.
Well I moved in with a friend from the halfway house who had gotten his own apartment. I really didn’t go to any meetings, nor did he!! One day he came in with an ounce of reefer and asked me if I wanted a joint? SURE I said and I was off to the races again. I did not do any crack in Bing. Too expensive. I drank more beer and whatever they had to drink, wherever I was hanging out at. I had a good Job, A nice Apartment and a fridge full of beer. No food, just beer. In no time I lost the job. Lost the apartment. I was back in Peekskill again. This time I was not going to those AA meetings, no more. I was going to drink and smoke reefer like in the old days.
The day I hit Peekskill I think I smoked all of my aunts food money up in one night. I came home begging her to let me stay. Now I knew I had to go back to those meetings. Needless to say, all was forgiven. I went back to the rooms this time I got a sponsor and I thought everything would be okay. But I still had this idea that I could drink, and only drink someday.
I wasn’t honest about the first pick up before I left for Bing. So you know what happened!!! As I said in the last part when I got back to Peekskill I got high smoking crack again so I went back to meetings once more. This time I did not go whole heartedly, I was so ashamed that I couldn’t get this recovery thing. I only went because there was nothing else that I could think of doing. I stopped trying to be around my old friends, instead I hung around with my family. Family including my father, who I knew had been smoking crack, Now he claimed that he had stopped getting high, and I wanted to mend old bridges that I had burned with him. So I ended going to the city with him one weekend on the pretense of helping him to move some things back up to Peekskill. We had a few beers on the way down to the city. The next thing you know he was going to cop some crack. And me the phony that I was, said to him " I don't do that anymore"
Well later on in the day the fact that he was getting high while I sat in the car was eating me up with a passion. So this time when he said to me "This stuff is really great, why don't you try just one?" I was more than eager to take him up on it!! But I told him just one!!! and that is all I did. But like before, all I could think about the whole week was to get high again the next weekend after I got paid. This started another three month run.
At the end of the three month period I was interviewed for an apartment here where I live to this day, I had gotten my rehab romance to move in with me, who at this time was on the recovery trail again, but not me, the date was August 10th 1990, My birthday We had just moved in and I didn’t have enough money to buy crack with after I bought food and rented furniture for the apartment, so I bought a quart of Bacardi 151, and no matter how much I tried to get my friend to drink with me for my birthday he wouldn’t. So I got drunk all by myself, I made it last until I had to go to work that night, I am a home health aide so when I put the elderly gentleman to bed I finished the bottle, and got very horny, so since I only worked a block away from home I went home and tried to seduce my friend, but he would not give in, and then "KING BABY” took over, I got angry turned on the TV as loud as it would go, and sat there pouting "I’ll show you who's the boss here" I turned and looked at him in the bed and he had tears streaming down his face, all he said was " why are you doing this?" he had been asleep when I got there, after all this was about 2:30 in the morning. I was all of a sudden so ashamed of what I was doing, that I apologized and went back to work.
Now all I could think about when I got back to the job was, When is all this going to change, I sat down in the living room, and all of a sudden I knew the solution, I was an alcoholic!!! and I didn’t have to drink anything ever again.
The counselors at the rehab had told me that I was an alcoholic. That if I got rid of the alcohol problem, I would get rid of all the other problems. It wasn’t the blinding light that Bill W. saw, but it was a light that shone bright in my soul. All at once I knew. I knew like you know your mother loves you. That all I had to do go to meetings and not drink. And from that day to this, the need for a drink has been removed.
Now I don't want to leave you thinking that everything from that point on was great. My friend who continued to live with me picked up twice while living with me. I put him out both times, and took him back both times, all within a year of my first anniversary. He then moved out to his own apartment, I was devastated, what would I do without him in my life, "Don't drink and go to meetings" He picked up again a couple of months down the road, I got the call while I was at work, What would I do?? My sponsor was at work, I could call him there, But he would say not to do anything, Uh uh, not me. I called his answering machine to let him know that I was going to the city, to save my friend. Can't you just hear the co-dependency in all this. I then called him at home when I got to the city, he wanted me to come back at once. I lied and said that the last train back had already gone, I found my friend the next morning and he cried and said he was sorry, and I brought him back to Peekskill, he stayed with me for two nights, of course you know I had to reward him with sex, he then went home, took his V.C.R and sold it went back to the city and got high again. No I did not run after him again, but I did call all over the place to find someone who would get him back to Peekskill. That was his last pick up, it was July 4th 1992. I realized that I needed to work on myself, and not on him!!
I spent the next year building a relationship with my Higher Power and building my spirituality, I became G.S.R of my home group, I was asked to speak at the New York State convention in Olean, NY. I have widened my scope of AA friends beyond belief, I have learned to let you all help me, not try to solve problems that baffle me. I've been in two more relationships since then, the second one because I thought we would be very happy in recovery together, until he picked up too. I ran with that one out of lust, no other reason, I wasn't trying to save him, Until I just could not deal with him anymore, and I let him go. My last lover I got involved with even though I knew that he drank, I have since realized that this relationship would not work either and I recently put an end to it.
I now take life a day at a time. And I believe In God And All of you wonderful AA people.
Thank you all for being here for me. I Love You All.
May Gods Grace continue to be with you all!!
"I'm now complete, not cured but complete"
Rudy Today
On to something I hope will start some discussion and thought provocation
To a favorite poem written by a very dear friend
This Way to Some Pictures Of My Dearest Friends And Some Really Cute Jokes
Check here for something very special to me...
If you looking for a little inspiration check here
Just incase you need something to Lift your Spirits..
My newest Award for 1999
I am giving this award to you Rudy based on the incredible
courage it took for you to reveal your story to the Internet in hopes of helping another
"Friend of Bill W." somewhere in the world. I wish you many years of continued
Sobriety and Serenity.
Hugs and support always,
Skeeter
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