I Trudged: The Road of Happy Destiny

By Sergeant Skid Row

The book I Trudged describes the author's life, going from a path of almost certain death to a life without complaints or regrets. The word "trudged" in the title implies that the journey was not an overnight event and that it wasn't always easy. His journey took him to eight countries and sixteen states. He describes the ups and downs in his recovery through a series of short stories. He ties together his personal experiences with the principles of recovery taught to him by those he met along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644681022

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

About the Cover

Acknowledgments

Preface

Before Sobriety

Road to Relapse

Painting Myself into a Corner

BASE Jumping

Everyone Knew

Road to Sobriety

Day One Sunrise

Day One

Who Is Responsible?

Expected and Exceeded

Attitude Adjustment

No Room to Complain

Ockham's Razor

You Might Be an Alcoholic

Old Tom

Disbelief

Passing through the Tunnel

If You Want What We Have

Never Go Alone

How Not to Read the Big Book

Follow the Path

Pleasurable Sobriety

Carry the Message

Why It Works

Step One—a Two-Edged Sword

The Alternatives

Made a Decision

Shutter Bug

Unstruggle

You'll Know

The Three Rs

Loophole

Higher Powered

Lacking Enthusiasm

The Holiday Season

Self-Doubt

I Am an Alcoholic

Comfort Zone

Elusive Amends

Catch-22

The Secret

Four Pages a Day

The Forgettery

Things Not to Say

The Gift of Removal

You Damn Well Betters

AA Blasphemy

Prayers Are Stayers

Off the Wall

Step Thirteen

Whose Hand?

Student and Teacher

Overcome

Unofficial Code of Conduct

I Had Questions

Peace or Consequences

Sometimes Slowly

Spirituality

Fake News

Honesty Is the Best Policy

Normally

A Saint Resigns

Stay on Message

An Accidental Sixth Step

The Bicycle

List, List, and List

Thinking about Alcohol

Willing to Go to Any Lengths

No Definition, Only a Description

Power of a Book

A Trail of Grace

Joined at the Hip

More Than Just Words

Mr. Serenity

A Man, a Book, and a Hope

Blind to Service

One Everything at a Time

A Winning Formula

A Most Memorable Meeting

An Accidental Non-Event

Mini Fifth Step

A Little White Lie

Pay Attention

Shortsighted

The Grinch

No Cookie Cutter

A Lesson in Humility

The Most Satisfactory Years

You Don't Waste Good

God's Will

The Longest Seven Months

Character Witness

Success Rate

Distractions

Two Brothers

Like Son, Like Father

Spirit of Rotation—Lacking Spirit

Group Conscience

My Lawn Mower

Fortune Cookie

An Angel Named Bruce

Mental Health

Turning It Around

The Drinking Dream

My Hard Times

I Have Fun

Joyous

Do Not Be Discouraged

Oil and Water

Originality

Procrastination Is Killing Me

The Christmas Present

Gift Wrapped

Five Relationships

To-Do List

It's a Wonderful Life

Time

Oldtimer

Available

In Their Own Words

Finding Myself

Phases

Growing Up

Choices?

Anonymity

Meetings and Meetings

Home Group

The Greatest Teacher

The Hardest Teacher

The Kindest Teachers

The Teacher's Teacher

Near to Him

My Pet Peeves

Multiple Paths

To Be, or Not to Be

Heartache

Home Sweet Home

Avoidance

One No More

Uniqueness

Denial

Trust

Integrity

Gratitude

Understanding

No Guarantee

I'm Different, Mostly

Emotional Sobriety

Long Road of Reconstruction

Lobster or Soup

Never Perfect

Brain Block

The Love of a Dog

Having Something

Back to the Future

Multiple Recoveries

Still Coming to Believe

The Business of Sanity

Wreckage of My Present

Stop Lighting the Fuse

Thirsty

If Wishes Were Horses

Counting Crows

Personal Success

Undefeated

More Ups than Downs

Continuing Education

A Written Daily Inventory

Storytellers

Atheist, Agnostic, and Other Believers

Keep It Simple

Evidence of God

Personalities

I Want It All

One Day at a Time

Thank You

Where's Wino

Old Name Tag

Let Them Eat Cake

Sponsors

Timeline

Rules

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

About the Author

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I Trudged

The Road of Happy Destiny

Sergeant Skid Row

ISBN 978-1-64468-101-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88851-072-8 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64468-102-2 (Digital)

Copyright © 2020 Sergeant Skid Row

All rights reserved

First Edition

The excerpts from the book Alcoholics Anonymous, Second Edition, and the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Please consult the Reference List for a complete listing of pages from the books Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions that are either referenced or reprinted in the stories and the name of the story where the reference may be found.

AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, and the Grapevine are registered trademarks of Alcoholics Anonymous World Service (AAWS) Inc. or AA Grapevine Inc.

The story Higher Powered contains a cartoon strip from the Wizard of Id, and it is reprinted with permission of John L. Hart FLP and Creators Syndicate, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

About the Cover

Most of my career, I wore either a patch or a badge representing either the unit I was assigned to or the organizational department I worked for. I am retired now, but I thought I should still have a patch representing me, even in my retirement. This is what I came up with:

The Lobster represents the state of Maine where my life began.

The Beehive represents the state of Utah where I retired from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and in all probability, the state where my life will end.

The upside-down Champagne Glass represents my sobriety. When asked how I got from Maine to Utah, I jokingly tell them, I drank my way there.

The Combat Boots represents my forty-six years of serving my country. The worn and torn appearance of the combat boots represents my journey.

The slogan, "I Trudged" (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1955, p. 164), simply indicates that I'm still going strong.

The slogan, "The Road of Happy Destiny" (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1955, p. 164), is the path I trudged.

The name Sergeant Skid Row is the name I was known as amongst my drinking buddies while I was still drinking.

Acknowledgments

(Anonymously)

First, I would like to thank God, as I understand Him, for His grace, His mercy, His patience, His power, His love, and His way of life.

Next, I want to thank and express my appreciation for my longtime friend and confidant, Dr. Grey Beard (anonymously), for his patience, encouragement, content review, editorial input, and frequent reality checks. Without him, there would probably have been only one story, An Angel Named Bruce.

A very special thanks goes out to my friend Bruce for bringing me back from the edge of disaster. You were the inspiration for the first story I wrote, An Angel Named Bruce. Your help and story started the ball rolling.

Finally, I would like to thank a couple of pigeons,¹ Frick and Frack, for their support. One suggested I write my story (rejected), and the other suggested I write short stories (challenge accepted).

Preface

When I celebrated forty years of sobriety, a friend of mine suggested I write my story. I rejected that suggestion with the rationale, I don't think I have the attention span to write my story. Another friend countered by asking if I would consider writing down some of my shorter stories. Henry David Thoreau once said, It's not that the story need be so long, but it will take a long while to make it short. With that thought in mind, I agreed to write a few short stories. As I see it, God gave me the gift of life, and these stories are my way of re-gifting.

I kept the stories short, based on the premise that I might not be the only one with a short attention span. Some stories are about a single event, others cover a number of years, and some reflect some of my thoughts I've picked up along the way.

I hope some of my stories are helpful, if not entertaining. Maybe someone can avoid some of the mistakes I've made along the way. It took me a year to find the easier, softer way. It took a year and a half to become willing. It took me two years to get into service. It took three years to be comfortable in my own skin. It took me five years to experience real serenity, a God-conscious serenity. It took about twenty-six years to complete my fifth step (letting go of the last secret). Hopefully, things will come quicker for you than they did for me.

May God bless you, and may you have blue skies and tailwinds for the rest of your days.

Before Sobriety

I was born in Farmington and raised in Wilton, Maine. My first experience with alcohol was at twelve years of age. One hot summer day, my dad gave me a beer at Dummer's Beach in Weld, Maine. I didn't like it at all. But I do remember how it made me feel. I knew that big people drank alcohol, and for the first time in my life, I felt like a big person too. I began seeking out alcohol wherever I could. I liked feeling big.

Then in the mid-'60s, along came a man named Timothy Leary who showed us how to see in Technicolor without buying a ticket. I began to drink less and smoke marijuana more. By this time, my idea of a mixed drink was a beer and LSD. At Wilton Academy (high school), I had lettered four times before dropping out of the band, quitting golf, basketball, and football teams in search of higher pursuits. Dropping out would become a habit. After high school, I enrolled in University of Maine in Farmington, Maine, where I promptly got in trouble. The dean of students literally made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I dropped out before they could kick me out.

In the spring of 1971, I left my family behind and moved from Wilton, Maine, to New York. I was nineteen years old and living on the streets in Albany, New York. After all, that's where all the cool people lived. Two years after I got sober, I found out that I was on skid row and didn't even know it. The street I was living on was a long hill. At the bottom of the hill was a grey federal building with a sign out front saying, "Uncle Sam wants You." That was truly the nicest thing anyone had said to me that year. I enlisted in the Air Force and was sent to basic training for thirty days (without booze). I survived the delirium tremens (DTs) in basic training and managed to graduate technical school. I was assigned to a special operations unit at England Air Force Base (AFB), Alexandria, Louisiana.

In Louisiana, I met the love of my life and asked her to marry me. I think I would have married her too, had I only showed up at the wedding. I was deployed to Camp Friendship in Thailand at the time. While in Thailand, I discovered that heroin was cheaper than booze. As a poor E2, I did the economic thing. For the entire time I was in Thailand, I didn't touch a drop of alcohol. I was able to stay sober by ingesting small quantities of heroin on a daily basis. I am still recovering bits and pieces of my memory of 1973.

When I returned to the United States, I discovered heroin was too expensive. I had to quit. I was able to quit by drinking alcohol. Thus, I found heroin was a gateway drug for alcohol. In 1974, I was arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to sell. The charges were dropped because they lost the evidence. It should be noted that while in jail, we were smoking marijuana that tasted strangely like our own stash. I swore off all illegal drugs that day. I just didn't realize how much alcohol I'd have to drink to keep that promise.

In 1976, my commander recommended I go to treatment and AA. I was able to stay sober for six months. I would drink again but this time, with guilt. I knew I had a problem and that there was a solution, but I drank anyway; there lies the insanity of alcoholism. I couldn't have been more miserable. In 1978, I got a DUI. I was almost relieved. My two-year slip had beaten me into a state of reasonableness. My commander ordered me back into treatment and AA. This time, I was ready to listen and ready to follow instructions.

Road to Relapse

In 1975, I was stationed at Langley AFB in Virginia. My unit had a mobility exercise and I showed up very drunk. I was verbally reprimanded, and I thought that was it. By 1976, I was reassigned to Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, Nevada. My previous commander wrote a letter to my new commander, warning him about my drinking. My new commander suggested I go into treatment and then attend AA. I'm not sure if civilian readers can appreciate this, but in the military, when a commissioned officer makes a suggestion, we don't sit around debating the pros and cons of the suggestion. A suggestion in the military is more like Star Trek's Make it so, number one. In May of 1976, I went into treatment and started to attend AA. But in the back of my head, there were several other competing thoughts as to why I shouldn't be in AA.

First off, I was only twenty-four years old. I was too young to give up fun. There was plenty of time to quit later. My relapse and subsequent attempted suicide blew that dubious reasoning out of the water. I learned that none of us know how much time we have left. If you are young, an alcoholic, and reading this, then now is the time to take action. You may not get a later opportunity.

Another belief I held, especially after hearing some of the stories in AA, was that I just wasn't that bad yet. In AA, I heard about people who lost everything because of their drinking. I had lost nothing by my drinking. But how wrong was I? In my relapse, I lost my mind to the point that ending it all was an option. If you're reading this and are experiencing some difficulties with alcohol, and are thinking you're not that bad yet, then you should take action now because you really don't want to, nor can you afford to, be that bad.

In the few months of AA meetings I had attended, I learned of a spiritual solution. I was appreciative of the information and the spiritual solution, but I also rejected it. I was not going to be led down a rabbit hole by a bunch of handholding, chanting faith healers. I had my own beliefs that I thought had served me well. AA members were looking for God's will and the Power to carry it out, and I was content with my will and the intellect to figure it out. I had not lost everything through drinking, and I didn't intend to. But relapse proved that intellect is not more powerful than an obsession. If you're reading this and are trying to figure it out on your own and it's still not working, then now would be a good time to try something different, something beyond your intellect.

By November of 1976, I had quit going to meetings. I felt like I was hearing the same stories over and over again. I failed to ask for help (sponsor) to make sense of it. I falsely believed that I had acquired enough information from the fellowship that it would be different this time. One cold night, my former drinking buddies asked me if I wanted to go bowling. In the course of the evening, someone yelled out, Beer frame! I remember little of that night. There were beer frames until closing time.

Two years later, I crawled back into AA. This time, it wasn't a suggestion of my commanding officer. This time, it was a direct order. The rocky road to relapse took me to dark places. Now I needed to do something different. I needed to take the path offered by those that were successful not only in staying sober, but also successful in life. I needed the Road of Happy Destiny.

Painting Myself into a Corner

I lived in the country between two small New England towns. My dad worked at G.H. Bass & Co. shoe company. If you wore the Bass Weejun penny loafers in the '60s or early '70s, then you helped pay my dad's wages, pad my allowance, and finance my next drink. To you, I say thank you.

Like Mayberry, we had our obligatory town drunk. He would walk the streets talking into a World War II olive green walkie-talkie. Everyone in town knew there was only one walkie-talkie in town, and he had it. I remember thinking once, If I ever get as bad as him, I'll quit!

As my drinking progressed, I found myself getting into some embarrassing situations. My ego, being what it was, did not care to be embarrassed. So I began to keep an unofficial mental list of things not to do while drinking.

I embarrassed myself at an office party. On the list went, Never drink at an office party. I was a manager of a softball team. It was my job to tend to the equipment. One day, I got drunk and showed up to the game without the balls and bats. On the list went, Never drink at a sporting event. I embarrassed myself at the University of Maine. On the list went, Never drink in a frat house, administration building, or women's dormitory. I left school before embarrassing myself again and ending up in the dean of students' office once more. My driving under the influence was embarrassing, often because I was driving off the road. On the list went, Never drink and drive. For a normal person, this can be accomplished by not drinking and driving. But for me, the alcoholic, my solution was to sell my car. Clearly, the car was at fault, not me.

As time went by, the list got longer. Eventually, some very obscure items ended up on the list. There was, Never drink in a bayou with a red-headed woman, or Never start drinking until after you put your pants on. And Never talk on the phone while drinking. Finally, If you're going to drink, never leave the house if you can't get back.

The scope of my life kept getting narrower and narrower. My life once consisted of work, play, golf, swimming, travel, school, church, friends, family, and home. Then there was only work and home. My mental list of things not to do while drinking was so long that I never left my apartment. I sat in my apartment alone. The drapes were drawn closed lest someone would look in and see me doing something embarrassing. The phone was unplugged to avoid risking a conversation that might go south.

Life at home was quiet and without public embarrassment. I could still embarrass myself in the privacy of my own home, but at least the problem with public humiliation was solved.

I would sit in the living room next to my thirty-five-gallon aquarium and drink to my heart's content. All was right with the world. My drinking got so bad that I had to make some budget cuts to fund my drinking. One of the budget cuts was stop buying fish food. That meant getting rid of the fish. My solution was to replace the live fish with plastic fish.

I now found myself drinking in my living room next to my aquarium and talking to my plastic fish. While I wasn't talking into a lone walkie-talkie, I had become just as bad as the town drunk. My denial was so strong that I justified that because I wasn't on the streets, because I still had a job and a place to live, that I still wasn't that bad yet. I would drink for two more years.

BASE Jumping

The first time I came to AA, I was willing to go to any lengths to get out of trouble. I can't say I wanted sobriety. For me, sobriety spelled the end of the parties, the end of fun and life as I knew it. One of my problems was, regardless how dark things looked, I was still having a certain amount of fun. I was unwilling to give up my last gasp of fun. Another problem I had was I was lazy. To me, the path to sobriety looked difficult and a lot of work. I was unwilling to do the work to get sober. Trading in fun for work didn't seem like a good deal. I returned to drinking, having never taken the first step.

During my two-year relapse, I did many of the things I heard in the stories in the few AA meetings I had attended. It was during this two-year period that I'd sit at the bar drinking, and in my head, I heard the voices of those AA members. Those voices were saying, You don't need to have another drink if you don't want to. Or the voices would scold me saying, Look around you. You could be happy, and this is the life you chose. The bewilderment of my earlier drinking years was slowly turning into despair.

One morning, I decided to drive out to Lake Mead to watch the boat races. Unfortunately, I had the date of the races wrong. I was a day late. It was a beautiful day. I was at the lake and had a case of beer that was rapidly getting warm. The course of action seemed clear to me. I drank. On the way back to the city, I turned on a dirt road that led to an overlook at Sunrise Mountain in North Las Vegas, Nevada. I was sitting there in my truck, drinking my beer, looking at the city below me, and feeling jealous that the city was full of happy people having fun while I was getting more and more depressed by the hour. I wished I were dead. Discouraged and thinking, What's the use? I pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The truck spun out on the dirt surface. I pointed the truck at the cliff, and off the cliff I drove. For those who have never seen a cliff in real life, let me explain that a cliff does not come to an abrupt end like in Wiley E. Coyote and the Road Runner. A cliff ends with a slow and gradual transition made up of eroded material. That's exactly where I came to rest. All four wheels touched down at the same time on the transition. I made Evel Knievel proud that day. My truck came to a rest in a small gully. It didn't look too bad considering what it had just done. There was a rock that it scraped coming to a halt, stripping out my emergency brakes and poking a hole in the gas tank. I got out of the truck and sat down next to it, gas draining out of the tank. I lit up a cigarette, angry that I didn't die. In hindsight, I don't recommend BASE jumping in a pickup truck.

After trying to kill myself, and after I found my way back into Alcoholics Anonymous, my attitude had changed. I wanted to live. I was looking for solutions instead of excuses. I finally understood being sick and tired of being sick and tired. For the first time, I was interested in the steps of recovery. Not to take the steps was certain death. Taking the steps was no guarantee. More people have failed than have succeeded. But I had no other choice. I just needed a little courage to move forward. It reminds me of a quote from the movie, Return of the King. The heroes are getting ready to attack the evil wizard, when Gimli, the dwarf, speaks up and says, Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for? I needed that spirit.

Alcohol brings a certainty of death. Steps have a small chance for success. Steps, what are we waiting for?

Everyone Knew

The dean of students at the University of Maine knew. After numerous antics on campus, the final straw was parking a VW bug in the lobby of Purington Hall women's dormitory. He politely told me to complete my education at another institution of learning or be sent to an institution of incarceration.

My fiancée knew. In 1972, I was engaged to a woman from Queens, New York. For my birthday, instead of getting me a card, she got me a Hallmark booklet titled Shakespeare on Drinking. I thought it was a cute book and often comical. Then I came to a page that hit me where I lived. It was a man drinking from a beer mug that was taller than he was. At that moment, I knew that she knew I was an alcoholic. On that page, it referenced Shakespeare's play, King Henry the Sixth, Part 2, Act 4, Scene II, where it says, "I will make it a felony to drink small beer. She gave me an ultimatum, and I would later give her the heave-ho."

My brother knew. From 1970 until his death in 1993, my brother knew I was an alcoholic. During that period, he would call me every Saturday at 1:00 p.m. Once I got sober in 1978, our conversations changed. He'd call me, and while we were talking, he'd pass out. Knowing I was an alcoholic and knowing I was sober, he began asking me how I managed not to drink. I told him I had joined AA. From 2,300 miles away, there was very little I could do to help him, so I sent him a meeting list for Salem, New Hampshire. He managed to get four years of sobriety before he died.

My parents knew. In 1978, when I got sober, I wanted to make amends with my family immediately. I called my parents. I had both my mother and father on the call at the same time. I announced that I was an alcoholic. Both parents said they knew. I asked how they knew, and my mother began giving me her version of my fifth step, listing my indiscretions as they had been observed over the years. Then I announced that I was sober. I can still remember the sound of my dad's stern, cold voice saying, That's another one of your lies! They knew I was an alcoholic but didn't believe I was sober. They probably didn't believe me because I had told them I was sober in the past, only to extract money from them.

My commanding officer knew. In 1976, my commanding officer called me into his office to inform me that I was being enrolled in a treatment center. As it turns out, my previous commander had written my current commander, outlining my drunken antics at my last duty station. After observing me for a while, he quickly diagnosed me as an alcoholic. What was so clear to him still eluded me.

My friends knew. In the later years of my drinking, all of my drinking buddies had nicknames. There was Bill a.k.a. Wild Bill, Doug a.k.a. Under Dog, and Paul a.k.a. Louie the Snake. They simply referred to me as Skid. I liked the nickname. It was short, one syllable, and easy to say. I would later find out they called me Skid as a shortened reference to Skid Row. Even the drunks knew I was an alcoholic.

The only person who didn't know I was an alcoholic was me. I was incensed that no one had the courtesy to tell me. Yet one by one, each person close to me said they tried to tell me many times. I just wasn't listening. Today, I know. I attend meetings so I don't forget.

Road to Sobriety

They say that The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I had already been to hell, a personal hell designed to either get my attention or take me out. I was fortunate. But to stay sober, it was going to take a lot more than good intentions. The road to sobriety is paved with change. But change doesn't come quickly; it comes in steps (pun intended).

I took Step One while I was still drinking. I admitted I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. But I saw no hope for me, so I continued to drink. Even so, I was willing to listen to anyone who could help me. I found myself back in AA again, by the grace of God, a DUI, and the direct order of a very caring commanding officer. Lucky for me, my commanding officer believed in second chances.

I had believed in God all my life, I just wasn't happy with Him, particularly what I believed was His harsh treatment of me. I had to come to believe in a Power greater than myself all over again. Coming to believe was a long and slow process. But coming to believe that I wasn't God was immediate, and that was a very good start. Eventually, I called that power God. It was three letters, one syllable, and easy to say. When I used the word everyone in the room had a general idea what I was talking about, even my friend Ken, the atheist.

My belief in God was not necessarily the same as me having a relationship with God. Having a relationship with God requires me to get rid of those things that separate me from God. The major ones are resentments, dishonesty, guilt, impatience, intolerance, self-centeredness, pride, jealousy, envy, laziness, procrastination, and greed. Thank God, AA has some steps for that. I discovered that nature abhors a vacuum. As my defects were removed, they began to be replaced with virtues. Serenity replaced my resentments. Honesty replaced my dishonesty. Service to others replaced my self-centeredness.

As I took the steps, I became more acceptable to God and the people around me. I had begun the process of developing a relationship with humanity. Unfortunately, not all of humanity was as accepting of me as God was. In order for me to walk this planet, head held high, looking eye to eye with the rest of humanity, I had to fix a few things with those I had harmed. AA came through again; they had steps for that.

Now I had to cut out a sober life of my own. I had to make myself useful. My new life could not take on the shape of the selfish life I had before. I had to be of service to God, myself, my family, my friends, my employer, and my fellow alcoholics. I had to constantly check my progress; make sure I was still on the path. I had to reaffirm God's will for me and my willingness to go in that direction. I had to take the wonder of sobriety, put it into words a drunk can understand, and plant the seed. Once again, AA had steps for that.

Recovery is the long and winding road that leads to God, sobriety, and a fulfilling life. AA provides the means to staying on that road. It's so much more than Antabuse treatment, electro shock aversion therapy, and old-fashioned abstinence. It is a way of peaceful existence with God and the world around me. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Day One Sunrise

This picture was taken of the sunrise on the morning of May 22, 1978. This was the first day of my sobriety. The mountain in the distance and to the left is Sunrise Mountain, North Las Vegas, Nevada. The photo was taken from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

A wicked thunderstorm had ripped through Las Vegas that night. As the sun came up, the clouds began to part, and it turned out to be the bluest sky I have ever seen in Las Vegas.

Four hours after this picture was taken, I was standing before my commanding officer, awaiting my fate. I was afraid that I was an alcoholic, but there was help for me. I was also afraid that I wasn't an alcoholic, and there was no help for me. I had one foot in hope and one foot in hopelessness, and this is the sunrise that God gave me—a sunrise of hope.

Hope overcame hopelessness; The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).

Day One

I was never exactly sure of my sobriety date. I didn't really know I was supposed to have one. Every now and then, someone in AA would mention their sobriety date, and I'd think, Boy, they had the wherewithal to write it down on a calendar. After a while in AA, someone approached me and asked if I was coming up on my birthday. I now had a need for a sobriety date. I needed it to determine my birthday. It was suggested that since almost all alcoholics leave a paper trail, that I should review my records, looking for an anomaly that would indicate when I got sober. It didn't take long to find it.

I was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. In early May 1978, I wanted to go out on the town. There was one small problem; my car was in a garage. It was being repaired due to the damage done when I had driven it over a cliff in a suicide attempt. In order go to town, I had to borrow a car from my friend Wild