Recovery (part four)
The treatment center encouraged me to enter a halfway house upon my “graduation”. My counselor, a young woman maybe three or four years my senior, said she had connections in L.A. and could get me in a house there. The staff really didn’t think it was a good idea for me to return to the South for reasons they didn’t elaborate on. Sometimes I wonder how things might have turned out had I stayed in California. From my vantage point, L.A. looks like hell on earth. On the other hand, things have exactly been stellar here in Dixie.
Anyway, I was in love with Becky, so California was out. I wound up in a halfway house in Anniston. It was awful. I don’t remember exactly how the hustle worked, but they were somehow making money from food stamps they got on all the “residents”. They also took half of any money we managed to earn. They farmed us out to a variety of businesses. It was little more than slave labor. Of course they didn’t make us work, so if I didn’t like the gig, I’d just pass. Southern machismo being what it is, the staff and inmates thought I was crazy actually passing on the opportunity to be exploited like a refugee. What was the worst, though, was the house was at least in part little more than an overflow container for the criminal justice system. Quite a few of the resident were convicts, and were about as crazy anyone who’d been locked up in prison is apt to be.
So I split after a month or so. By then I was back in good with Becky, and while Jesus wouldn’t permit our living together for an extended time, she did let me stay with her for awhile. Ultimately, though, I couldn’t find suitable employment. I really didn’t like Birmingham anyway. So I went back to Memphis.
There I got involved with what today I realize is finest group of folks I’m likely to ever meet in my life. One of the 12-step communities there is absolutely first rate. Lots of members count their sobriety in decades. And while I tended to stay on the fringes, I benefited immensely from my association with them. I got a sponsor. He was an old guy who had just retired and I’ll never forget asking him to be my “temporary sponsor”. He agreed, and told me to ask God every morning to keep me sober and to thank God every night for having kept me sober.
“But I don’t believe in god” I told him.
“I didn’t ask you to. I just told you what you need to do” he replied.
So I did and it worked, at least for as long as I did it. After about a year, though, I moved back to Mobile. I wasn’t getting ahead, or even on my feet, financially, and thought I might have better luck elsewhere. Additionally, I was thinking about going back to school, and was already established at one of the local universities.
Back in Mobile things rocked along for a time. Becky and I were having a long distance relationship, so I was relatively happy in the sex and love department. Something was missing though. At some point I quit reading the Big Book and praying. And while it was probably weeks or maybe even a couple of months before the inevitable relapse, my emotional state was deteriorating from about that time. There was a depression component involved that I’ll elaborate on later. When it was all said and done, I managed to stay sober for about 2 1/2 years. In hindsight I think it’s entirely possible that while I’d made a very good beginning, I was, on some level, probably doing it for the wrong reason. That reason was Becky and when we had problems, I got drunk.
