I haven’t made a blog post in quite a while but nothing much has happened around here. I’ve been wondering what I could write about and this morning I decided I should write about a few things but mainly about what November 17th means to me and my family.<\/p>\n
As most of you who read this blog know I used to drink quite a bit. That’s an understatement. I used to drink a LOT. I always knew I was an alcoholic but I kept telling myself I was a “functioning alcoholic” because I was able to keep a job.<\/p>\n
Of course I kept ignoring the fact my 2nd marriage ended because of my drinking and I was fast approaching my 3rd ended marriage and then something happened that made me realize I needed to change my life.<\/p>\n
That thing was a DUI in August of 2003.<\/p>\n
The really sad part of this story is that I believed I was innocent and actually took it to trial. Predictably, and thankfully, I lost the trial but the judge was smart enough to know that I needed help and sentenced me to a treatment center and 100 AA meetings. I am a firm believer that he and the people who helped me during that time saved my life. I believe if I had just pleaded guilty that I wouldn’t have had the epiphany that losing a trial caused.<\/p>\n
The day I lost the trial and the day I stopped drinking was November 17th, 2003.<\/p>\n
I spent a few months going to a treatment center and about 100 days going to AA meeting and during that time I came to realize that many of the bad things in my life were caused by my drinking.<\/p>\n
I also came to realize that the woman I was married to was a saint. Thankfully she didn’t leave me although looking back I wonder why.<\/p>\n
Last night I went to an AA meeting and took a cake for my 8th birthday. As I told my story to the group it hit me that I really wasn’t embarrassed about being an alcoholic anymore and this morning when I decided to write a blog post I decided it was time to share this publicly.<\/p>\n
The last 8 years have been so much better than the previous 30 that I spent half in a fog.<\/p>\n
I apologize to everyone that I hurt during that time. I wish that I had been able to see what I was earlier but I can’t change that, I can only learn from it.<\/p>\n
Today I have no compulsion to drink. I thank my higher power for that. Today I can think much more clearly and I try to treat people better. I still have a long way to go but I’m taking it one day at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I haven’t made a blog post in quite a while but nothing much has happened around here. I’ve been wondering what I could write about and this morning I decided I should write about a few things but mainly about what November 17th means to me and my family. As most of you who read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":781,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donlafferty.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}