In the early eighties I was bottoming out on drugs and alcohol. My drinking had been the shameful habit I had carried from the age of fifteen, a straight A student with many achievements, I was a teenage alcoholic and knew I was exactly like my father. He was who I called to ask for help. I told him if he allowed my mother to come forward with her incredible denial, you are perfect, you are wonderful, stop drinking, I would kill myself. He met me at the airport, and we drove home in the silence of understanding. We are the same. Later, instead of becoming violent I allowed someone to hurt me until it became clear I would have to get help or die. Again, my father stepped forward, this time with a broken heart as my eldest sister Catherine, had been killed by a drunk driver several months before. This time it worked. On December 22, 1984, I stopped drinking and stayed sober. This year it will be thirty-eight years of continuous sobriety.
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