I guess you can say that a series of events conspired to get me to sobriety. I was heading in this general direction for a few months before I had gotten sick and tired of being sick and tired. I came off a long and terribly painful slip, I was trying to rebuild my life from nothing once again, and I found a land lady who decided that it was her duty to try and help me heal my wounds. She gave me a place to live and added to that she gave me a job when I really needed it the most. Little blessings…

I was a binge drinker then and so I was drinking for the entire week in one night. I had a job that paid me well and over those last few months I always tell this story about Troy. Troy was a boy who came into my shop looking for work. I hired him, and every day he would come into work and say “I did not drink today!” Well, I clapped my hands and said well done.

I had prayed for that last hangover, which came. The second prayer was that God put an alcoholic in my path. Over the few months that Troy worked for me he would say every day that ‘he didn’t drink’ until 4 months later we were on a delivery and he said that he was taking his One Year Cake and that maybe I would like to join him at a meeting, which I accepted his invitation. The third prayer was that I get to a meeting. I was ready for God to make his move. I was waiting for the signs to come together and they did.

I never took another drink. December 9th 2001 was my first meeting back. Which is the day I picked up my white poker chip. My sign of surrender. Getting sober in the same city “Again” that I got sober in the first time was a challenge, because I was ashamed and I did not want the many people I got sober with the first time, to see me crawl back into a meeting sorrowful and beaten down as far as I had been during my slip.

I had a month to clean up. Miami is a big city and sober people come and go, and news traveled fast in those days, and on Christmas Eve 2001, I went into the city for a midnight meeting and everyone I knew in my first recovery was there, and they clapped and cheered as I walked in the hall that night. I think it was one of the best nights in my sober life. I was free, and forgiven, and loved and that made all the difference to my sobriety that none of my friends judged me because I was doing a terrible job judging myself already.

I started working my steps. I starting reading the Big Book. I had a meeting every day at the same time in the same place that served me well. That 10 p.m. meeting did wonders for me because I was a late night drinker and I partied at night and I could not party any more, and all my friends I made at that home group helped me immensely.

Five months into sobriety I came to visit Montreal, I liked it so much I decided to move, and get my citizenship. I went home to Florida and packed up my little life and pulled up stakes and set off for the promised land. And that’s what it has been like for the last almost seven years. I would not have changed anything as it came to me – God blessed my life, God blessed my sobriety because this has been a wondrous life and I am truly grateful.

I did my homework. I went to meetings, I found my way into this beautiful city and I did not look back. The hard work here in Montreal is that there is only 2 meetings in this city (on the English side) that meets every day at the same time every day. If you are going to get sober in Montreal, you are going to have to work your ass off because there are over 500 meetings in the city every week, and you must travel to get to these meetings. There is no luxury way to do it. You find the time, You make the time, and you schedule your life around your meetings, and that is what I have done for the last six years and four months.

Thank you for my sobriety…