Gunshots And Dynamite

November 30, 2005, 8:00pm

Photo by Tim Barber

I liked alcohol right from the start, and I got drunk off my very first load. I was 12 or 13 then. I guess it was around 1973. Liquor really clicked with me, and I was drinking pretty heavily from 13 until about 23 years of age. I got to the point where I was wet-brained—I mean, I had about two brain cells left. So I started going to AA. I’d been having problems with my mental health since I was a little kid—mood disorders and depression mostly—and it turned out that my alcoholism was self-medication for all that stuff.

My first sober day was Christmas 1983. After about three years or so of being dry, I moved to live with my brother in Tucson, Arizona. I was there for about five and a half years. That’s where I began to work the 12 steps. I was having experiences out there that were really meaningful to me. I think I was making some real progress. But then I had an opportunity to work for my cousin in West Palm Beach, Florida. I headed down there in the spring of 1992. It was landscaping work. My cousin ran the office. The first or second week I was there, my mental illness came creeping back up. I was working 12-hour days, five or six days a week. I didn’t have a car, and sometimes I had to walk miles to get to an AA meeting. I think all the pressure started to get to me.