As I sit and ponder my youth (which has long past me by) there are times in my life were it not for the grace of God I would not be here today. Let me introduce to you an element in my past life that I had some control of, and at other points I had no control.
Let me begin with a story……
There was once a couple who loved each other, but intermingled with their love there was another love that they both shared even more. This other love that they both shared was for a drink. Their love for alcohol made all other issues secondary to this, their first love.
Into this perfect love that they both shared came and unexpected surprise. It was me....
With my arrival came unexpected problems, I cut into a budget that was so carefully setup. My parents were faced with a decision, do they rearrange their priorities to be parents or do they abandon themselves to their first love. A choice had to be made, and it was made. I lost; I came in a dismal third to their first love. Let me say this in their defense, they did love me, but not enough.
You see both my parents where alcoholics. Their dependence on it overcame their desire to be parents. Their lives centered on sharing a drink, then another, then another and so it went. There was not enough money for both me and the bottle.
As you see, alcohol played a big role in the shaping of my early life. My self esteem was affected by this. But it does not end there; it also affected my later years.
As a teenager I knew what alcohol had done to my real parents but I gave no heed to what it could do to me. Surely I would not make the same mistakes they did. I drank with good friends (and with no so good friends) thinking all the while it was just a single drink.
For more that four years this was my pattern till one day I stopped. There came a moment in my life when I took a look around me and asked; “What is it that makes me feel good about myself?” I had to admit there were times the alcohol made me feel good, but afterwards, not so much so. So to get past the bad feelings, I took another drink to make me feel better.
Now to bring this point even closer to home, I was a Christian. When people questioned my drinking I would argue the Bible does not prohibit the drinking of alcohol, so I was spiritually free to use it. But was I?
I looked about me and saw the crumbled and shattered walls of lives that surrounded me, which included my own, and as I thought about this, in my hand was a drink. I had become the person that my adoptive parents had warned me about. At that point in time I sat down my drink and have not picked one up since.
I had finally realized with the help of some medical personnel, family, and friends that I had a really good likelihood of becoming that which destroyed my parents.
So why write this diatribe? It is because I see many others that surround me both young and old drowning. Alcohol has been used in the past for both medicine, a drug, and as a poison. For some like me, we have seen the poison side of alcohol. It poisoned my family; it poisoned my youth, and almost poisoned my adulthood. For you see, I could have easily been my parents all over again…..but for the grace of God.
To end this discourse let me tell you another even shorter story. I got to ask my real mother about drinking and her love for alcohol. I asked her if she had to do it all over again, would she have taken that first drink, and her words came home. Her answer was, ‘No, for the simple reason that after that first drink there was born in me a desire for another, then another, then there was no end in site.’
She now understands the consequences of that first drink some 45 years later, and to her credit she has not had a drink in over 14 years. As she stated she can never recover those 45 plus years she lost. She can not recover the lost love of a son or a daughter that was poisoned by her sickness, which was alcoholism. I know for a fact that I walked a thin line for far too many years. Even today I have to be vigilant in where I go and who I hang with because there is within me that which I loathe, a weakness that with one drink waits to escape. Though you may not sub come to this sickness yourself, those who you encourage to join you in that simple drink may be ensnared by it like my real mother and father. Personal weakness has nothing to do with it. Like any other drug many who try once may have propensity to be ensnared by it after that one drink.
God Bless:
