1985...Coming back from my trip to Mexico and with a new realization that I had experienced an alcoholic black out when I went back to Wisconsin I started considering the possibility that I was indeed an alcoholic. A few months passed, I had what AA's literature calls "vague religious feelings" and a desire to make a change in my life. Like many of us, I started thinking of a "geographical cure" meaning I would move back to Mexico and "fix things".

In preparation for that, I needed to renew my Mexican passport. The closest Mexican embassy to me was in Chicago so I traveled there. On route to Chicago I met Anthony. I didn't know it at the time but he would become my daughter's father.

Unable to renew my passport I went back to Wisconsin and Anthony tagged along. We started and on/off relationship which lasted a couple of years. The thing u he was different than the rest of the guys I hung around. Mainly he didn't drink or did drugs. I attributed this to his belonging to a particular religion and since I was looking still for a change in my life, I started attending his church.

Anthony and I parted ways but I remained in church. I was baptized and became very religious. I stopped drinking and doing drugs. For the next 20 years or so I thought I was "cured" from alcoholism or more accurately I became convinced I was never an alcoholic in the first place.

In spite my religious involvement and in spite having an adorable daughter during those 20 years I continued feeling miserable inside. Eventually feeling as dissatisfied with life as when I was active I took the geographical cure I had planned when I met Anthony and my daughter and I moved to Mexico. She was only a year and half old. To this date she does not know the town where she was born.

My daughter does not think I am an alcoholic because she has never seen me drunk but I know better now. It's true she never saw me drunk but that doesn't mean I did not crave alcohol. Being around my family made it hard not to want to drink. But I was so self righteous then that my ego did not let me "succumb" to the low levels of my drinking relatives. That's why I didn't drink not because I didn't want to.

On the other hand it's not totally true I didn't tasted alcohol at all during those years. Once in a while, I did "succumb" to temptation but again my pride stopped me from going off the deep end.

AA's first step states: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable".Well for those many years I never really admitted anything but I knew my life was unmanageable. I was 29 when I had my daughter. When I moved to Mexico I left all responsibility for my daughter to my parents. 

The "geographical cure" did not work. I was still miserable inside. Complained about my lot in life. (Still do). But with the help of a friend who knew about alcoholism and who belonged to the same church I did I started to see that if I wanted to change it had to come from within me.

I started to think of others ahead of myself and realized I had placed a great burden on my parents by leaving all responsibility of my daughter to them. My father showed signs that he was getting tired of the stress of working to support all of us and if I ever wanted to see my father retired I had to start taking the responsibility for my life and my daughter's.

So I did it again. I tried to fix by moving back to the U.S. and in 1997 I moved to Texas. My daughter remained with my parents so I could find a job and become stable. But six months after I moved I was still not stable and my parents had a car accident in which my daughter had a broken knee. As soon as the school year was over my mother flew to Texas to bring my daughter to live with me.

I was still in church and not having the pressure to drink from my family helped curve the obsession but the emotions were still out of control. I was depressive and irritable. I yelled to my daughter for any little thing and dumped my negative emotions on her. 

When she turned 13 my daughter went to live with Anthony who had come back into her life. Again, it was easy to dump the responsibility for her on somebody else. My daughter was tired from the emotional abuse I inflicted on her.

Hi. This is the second blog I've started in the past week and I am planning on starting a third one. I  finding very uplifting and therapeutic to write. When I was young I used to journal and write narrative poetry. Due to a medical practice injury to my right hand I cannot do handwriting but thank goodness for the Internet.

My first blog is on my journey through breast cancer and you can see it at mybreastcancerroadtriplog.blogspot.com. I will let you know the name of my third one as soon as I create it.

This one will be one where I will share my experiences as a recovering alcoholic and former addict. Yesterday we celebrated one of my AA friend's third year anniversary as a recovering alcoholic. It was wonderful to see him surrounded by his children.

As pretty much everyone knows alcoholism is a lifelong disease and it affects not just the person with it but their families, friends and community. I started drinking independently from my family when I was sixteen. Until then, I had tasted a little alcohol here and there during family reunions but nothing big.

Then in 1976 I had my first heart break when the boy that had been courting me decided I was not his type. Enter Frank. He was in one of my classes at the private high school I attended and until then I had not noticed him at all. Oh but he had noticed me and when Alejandro (the other boy) rejected me, Frank took the opportunity and swept me off my feet.

With him I had my first drinks, my first marihuana joints and my first sexual experiences. I do not blame him for me becoming alcoholic, as I have learned in AA I already had the disposition in me to become one all I needed was a little push.

 The push came when in 1979 Frank wanted to break off the relationship and I reacted by taking low level overdose of valium and drinking a bottle of wine. I took off in my parent's brand new car and drove off to an area close to my high school known for teenagers attempting to commit suicide. I purposely drove straight into a contention wall and lost consciousness.

I don't remember what happened at the site of the "accident". Someone must have stopped to aide me and somehow Frank's family was called to the scene. I barely remember driving in Frank's parent's car to their home. What was said there I don't recall. The next memory I have is arriving at my family's home. Frank's parents drove me there but took off without facing my parents. It was around 6 a.m. the following day.

I entered the house and found my parents in the living room after spending the entire night up trying to find out what had happened to me. Once again I don't recall what was said but I do understand that I let out all the resentment I had accumulated and for which I blamed my parents. (Note.- for a long time I held on to that resentment but after years in therapy and now in AA I realize now that my parents had nothing to do with my misery).

In 1980, Frank and I moved from Mexico to the Midwest in the US. We both drank excessively but the difference was while he did it with friends at parties I did it at home and in local bars. Eventually I joined him at the parties and made new friends. One of them, her name is Martha, we became drinking buddies.
The marriage ended but by then I had become a heavy drinker on my own right and started experimenting with cocaine and amphetamines. But it was the early stages of the disease and I was still highly functioning, attending college, working, keeping physically fit.

The thing about alcoholism is it evolves. After the divorce I started a four year run of continuous bar hopping, drug use and sexual promiscuity. My friend Martha was in and out of rehab and I attended a few AA meetings with her. But like many of us I was on denial. My friend was an drug addict, my relatives were alcoholics but me? Oh no, I was fine thank you very much.

Then around 1984 I went back to Mexico for a month visit with my family. That's when I had my first recorded black-out. (At least it was the first one I admitted to). I arrived in my hometown on a Friday, I remember getting off the plane and driving to my parent's home. The next thing I knew I woke up on Monday, in my parent's front porch, surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol and no recollection of what had happened over the weekend.