Seed Being Planted

I was introduced to AA in Houston Texas when I was 18 I realized early that I liked drinking or better yet I loved drinking and drugging.  I could forget I was not popular in school I could be anybody then.  I could be a big bad drug dealer I could be a gang banger.  Which thank God I wasn’t either.  I did not even fit in with this crowd.  When I was 18 I wanted to join the Army and be an Airborne Ranger infantry took 4 years, later joined as a Chemical Specialist.
Well I was living with my father (minister of a small town Saint Paul Neb Methodist church and member of AA for 25 years this year 2010) he gave me the ultimatum quit drinking or move out.  The budding alcoholic that I was I picked moving out. I moved in with a young man (we will call him Ted) that was the tough guy in town.   I was working in a truck stop the owner an alcoholic in his own ways also.  Moving in with Ted  allowed my drinking increased tenfold. I was too busy to go to school because drinking became an occupation and school was a nuisance to my drinking career.  Even work was a nuisance to my favorite pastime.
Drinking was everything I had then. My mom sent me up to live with my father because I was too out of control for her, and my father knew I was living with Ted.  Ted was old enough to go to bars and clubs in Grand Island, Neb.  So I figured out I had to get a fake Id.  I would be 26 with this fake ID so I could hang out with Ted who I thought was my friend who I realized later he only was using the fact I had a job and made some money.  That was heaven I could drink and be around beautiful woman at least I thought so, too young to know what a beautiful woman was.
Well one night at the club Ritz in Grand Island like any other night I was drinking screw drivers and bud lights all night long.  About midnight this girl Angie was like Derek you want to go to a party I was like sure.  Ended up at somebody house no idea who’s it was.  I had to act tough everybody else was older I was a really drunk and I should have quit like 5 beers before and pass-out on some body’s couch.  I was violently  woken up this guy punching me in my head.  I roll-up and blood rolling down my head I have no idea what was happening besides being punch and being dazed people are surrounding me and this guy and he is like so you and Angie are having sex.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  He came at me punched me like three times in the head in the stomach and in the shoulder.  I tried to fight back but I was to drunk and somebody pulled him off of me and said dude he is only 18 an year old kid and then Angie came up and he cussed at her and slapped her.  Some reason that really pissed me off I grasped a bottle then hit him in his head with it knocked him out.  Through all the noise and violence cops showed up.  Blue lights rotating on the wall somebody was like dude get the F out of here.  People started to split.  I grabbed a half full 12 pack of beer that was on the ground knowing I was going to need them later.
I went to my car and knowing I was drunk and the only way to get out of trouble was escape in my car.  Started driving away with-in a block I was pulled over and for some reason I remembered to bury the Id in my seat.  Within minutes of him pulling me over and me getting out of the car I was in the back of his squad car and was being hailed off to jail.  I was booked for DUI I blew a .2. I served a week in jail during that week my dad visited me and he told me he was not going to bail me out and he was not going to tell my mom unless my mom called. He knew she would have bailed me out like every other time I’d been in trouble.  Went to court a week later and when everything was done I finally called my mom and she sent me a bus ticket to come to live with her.
Part of getting released to her I had to go to 6 months of AA.  I Was in Houston, Texas was trying to be sober.  The seed of AA was planted I remember walking in there and old crusty man looked at me and said “son are you done yet or do you need more time out there and lose much more“.  In 1990 I needed much more pain and today after being around the program for about 5 years now I always feel for those young men and woman out there coming in and being introduced to this wonderful thing that has changed my life. In every aspect I cannot imagine not being sober.  If you are a young person and wondering if you’re alcoholic, chances are pretty good you are because non-alcoholics do not wonder if they are or not.  There is only one thing I can promise you if you’re an alcoholic and you continue to drink It will only get much worse.  Take it from a man whose career has been crippled by DUI’s and life has been mangled by alcohol.  I took AA to have a relationship with God and learn how to change and mold my life into something I can be proud of for my kids I am not a drunk I am a dad.
A single father of a 12 year old girl and 7 year old son with 2 years and a few months of sobriety with almost 17 years in the Army and work at Warrior Transition Battalion one of my greatest things I have done in the Army up to this date.  My duty is working with mentally and physically injured soldiers.
I had been thinking about this prayer and want to live like this.  “Lord, make me a channel of thy peace-that where there is hatred, I may bring love-that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness-that where there is discord, I may bring harmony-that where there is error, I may bring truth-that where there is doubt, I may bring faith-there were there is despair, I may bring hope-that where there is shadows I bring light-there were there is sadness, I may bring joy.  Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort that to be comforted-to understand, than to be understood-to love, than be loved.  For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.  It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.  It is by dying one awakens to eternal life amen…”  take care SSG Dimond, Derek