treatment

How Many Times?

“My name is Angie, and I’m an alcoholic,” she said to a group on the recording I played in my car. “As I was talking to God this morning in my prayer and meditation time, I looked out the window at the beautiful bay and said to God, ‘I am amazed – still — after 19 years of sobriety, that I get to be used by You when all I did to deserve it was get drunk and basically screw up my life.”

I listened to Angie’s story of being the daughter of a Baptist minister and drinking her way through her former life, serving prison time repeatedly, bearing two illegitimate children, stealing her mother’s heirloom ring to buy liquor, waking up next to strangers and sleeping on a park bench for weeks at a time without a shower or a memory. Now she is addressing other recovering alcoholics for free as an act of service, telling her story because she was asked. Angie…