I remember the evening very clearly. I was riding around with my cousin Tony and his friend Gary in the back seat of gary’s Fairlane?The boys were up front putting them down and joking about as young men often do. And all of a sudden I came to the realization that I was going to die! That life on this planet as I knew it, and all the experiences would someday seize-along with me. It scared the hell out of me for the hour-and-a-half or so. I’m not quite sure what all that was about. I’m not sure if it’s a common thing to all human beings -I only know what happened to me at that age.

Sidenote: The thought came to me a number of years ago that alcoholics being self-centered in the extreme, highly intelligent… The thought of their own mortality’s got enough to drive anyone to drinking. 🤷‍♂️

Sidenote #2: Alcoholics have a tendency to use a magnifying glass in many of their situations. We take certain things of our own choosing, and and magnify them. We take certain other things, turn the magnifying glass around, and minimize them. One of the hardest things in the world for an Alcoholic to do is see things right sized. The two hardest things for an alcoholic are to do the next right thing and do nothing at all.

Sidenote #3: A lot of people in the world suffer through traumatic experiences both as adults and as children. Using the metaphor above regarding the magnifying glass… While in counseling 20 some years ago, or perhaps doing 12 step work with my sponsor -Granville (a notable mention -post-mortem), I began to think what it must be like to deal with such issues as molestation, physical abuse, Alcohol parents, abandonment, trying to form one’s identity moving from home to home, city to city, state to state, trying to acquire a consistent set of values and beliefs and based on so many different ones (oh, lettuce not forget diet)*. In any event, trying to see the reality of, behind all these events and with an Alcoholics’ brain which has aversion towards the aforementioned… All I can say is that it took a hell of a long time to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again -decades! Well I guess I could add one more thing lol -people like myself in Alcoholics Anonymous who fail to stay sober…. I don’t blame them one bit!

*I think one of the worst things that ever happened to me as a child was living with grandma and grandpa heard. They’re standard of living in quality of life was so high that everything and everyone else seemed to pale. I think most people are lucky to know that they are not necessarily well off or bad off by living under one roof they’re entire childhood. Perspective was something that was thrust upon me very early in life.

Sidenote #4: I know this may sound crazy -but I sometimes get the notion that satan had it in for me. That he foresaw the development of “this reaching out to and imploring of others”. I had a very interesting conversation with a brilliant gentleman by the name of Ramon some 24 years ago. He said the molestation that took place with my cousin was in part due to my powerful presence in his home. All of it, the molestation, the meanness… All designed to counter, to neutralize, to disrupt, eliminate… … What did I know, I was 4 years old. And what do I know looking back? It was just a perspective I had never considered to that point. One other rather profound experience I had with Ramon was that at about 7 years sober, beleaguered sense-or-worth and all -in some of our discussions together, Ramon started building me up and telling me things I’d never heard from another human being before. It changed forever my outlook on who I was -it planeted a seed in me that has continued to grow, and flourish to this day. God always gives us what we need – and He is always on time!