Thirty-three years sober: Yesterday was the anniversary of when I screamed out to God for HELP (I was drunk)

Miracles happen. 

Mine was a doozie, but, as my friend Suzanne taught me later,
woozie was/is a word, and woozie, doozie and extra boozie is exactly where I was when my moment of miraculous detox/liberation and journey into reality=sobriety began. 

It´s true. I was rolling around on the living room floor (having a cocktail or twelve with my dogs) in the late night/early morning trying to drink enough vodka to go back to bed when I finally thought I was a gonner because I´d never felt so lost and so sad.  I was going to kill myself (besides drinking myself to death) because I couldn´t take the emotional and physical strain of it ALL anymore. There was one problem, if I killed myself, I would be dead. 

I was ¨sick and tired of being sick and tired¨ everyday and then medicating myself with booze in the afternoon (lunch drinks didn´t count) to go out and play and play at night. I was very sick, but I went to work everyday, had a good job, lived in a nice duplex in a very ¨good¨ part of Los Angeles, however, I wanted to die and I knew that anyone that I may want to love wouldn´t ever want to love me (blubber, blubber, blubber)!  The fact was, although I was only 35years old I had been drinking heavily/alcoholicly since college daze/days and I was at the ¨dropping off place¨ (you´ll know it when you get there or if you´ve already slipped down, down, down near the edge) in my young life.

Somehow, and I don´t know why, I was reminded of a flicker of light place still blinking inside of me (but it´s battery was burning out).  I remember connecting to the deepest most ¨still alive¨ place and thinking ¨that is the good inside of me and I want it back¨!  I didn´t know why my innermost good was almost gone but it was running on empty...I was on empty but I wanted another chance to get me back and fill up with life again...I cried out to God to ¨save me from this¨ and God did.  That was early in the morning on December 13, 1978 and I didn´t drink anymore as I staggered up to bed.

Thanks be to God I was given the chance to let reality begin, and it did, reality gradually seeped in and I was given a seat in the very center seat of the front row of my life...it´s been a thriller (so far).

Leonardo Ricardo
Leonard Richard
Sacatapequez, Guatemala
Central America

· Thanks be to God
· Thanks to Ardythe and Leonard, RIP
· Thanks to Danny and Danny, RIP
· Thanks to Lillian E., RIP
· Thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob, RIP
· Thanks to Mary L.
· Thanks to Mary E. RIP
· Thanks to Jerry J.
· Thanks to Butch, RIP
· Thanks to Thomas P.
· Thanks to Ron W.