Sober 31 years since 11/5/1985, Jerry is a get-up-and-go character from the wrong side of the tracks. Though he never went hungry he always wanted more. He started drinking hard early.
"This disease progresses. It's gonna' get worse, worse and worser if you stay with it."
He quit high school against his mother's wishes to earn money for those Levis he thought he needed. He realized driving a feed truck would never get him that black GTO with "her" in the seat beside him and a fancy apartment in Atlanta with a bar.
So he joined the Army. He was one of the few in his generation that did not go to Vietnam. He spent the time using his typing skills.
He felt guilty for many years that he had gotten his first wife pregnant before marriage. He learned in AA they BOTH got pregnant. "It takes two to tango." With that went the GTO and "THE" apartment.
He went to work for the railroad and he and his much older, alcoholic brother did pretty well in the mobile home park business. But alcoholism started progressing in his brother especially.
Jerry got a house on the right side of the tracks with the swimming pool but working so hard, he went to the doctor because his nerves were bad.
Valium worked for a while. He could go to work and not worry about drinking on the job.
Ten years later, in 1983, alcoholism progressing, marriage in trouble, they had sold the business, Jerry went on the road with the railroad. Now he had to drink.
"The last three years of my drinking was hell on earth." He was doing things he ought not to be doing. A man was looking to kill him. His brother died of the disease.
"Alcohol was telling me when to drink....Alcohol will take away everything good in your life."
On 11/2/1985, he got on his knees on the locomotive in Cleveland, TN and said:
"If there's a God up there, please let something happen."
He was done and he didn't care what that "something" was.
"That was the most important prayer I ever said in my life."
But he had liquor in his case and knew he could not go eight hours without a drink.
Back home, 11/5/1985, drinking but could not get drunk, he looked in the mirror and saw his dead brother looking back saying:
"If you don't do something about this you're going to die."
He checked himself into Charter Peachford and has not had a drink since.
His Al-Anon wife Jeannette shared at this same event.
(1 hr 7 min) (11.6 MB) (id#1865)