Hello, my name is Craig, and I am an alcoholic. On June 14 of this year, I will have 20 years without a drink.
Always a creative soul, I started studying and copying animation at age 4, I created cartoon books at age 12 and submitted them to publishers. In high school, I sent single-panel cartoons to many different magazines and made animated cartoons with my parents’ 8mm camera.
I tell you this because I am a creative soul. I think all alcoholics are. I think alcoholics have a different gene in our DNA than the normal drinker. We accomplish more than the normy, we are not satisfied with the status quo. This brings many problems to our lives. We’re restless, irritable, and discontent but we are also amusing, highly intelligent, and driven. Look at how many entertainers die by overdoses.
The point is that we are amazing people and we should embrace this quality about us.
My first drink was to get enough courage to call a girl. I knew where the liquor cabinet was above the refrigerator. I got a bottle of something and had a few shots. Finally I had the courage to call the girl. I did and the line was busy. Then I passed out.
In college my drinking accelerated. In college I started to do rotten things I thought I’d never do. I thought I had graduated but later learned that I was 4 credits short. Screw them, I already had plans to go to Hollywood.
I moved to Hollywood and within 48 hours I had a job. I was a page for the show “I’m a Big Girl Now” that starred Danny Thomas. I didn’t know I was too small to talk to him so I walked up and talked to him.
After the pilot was over, I had to look for work, started to sneak on to studio lots and pass out my resume. There I would work during the day and drink at night. I’d go to parties and I’d make a complete fool out of myself. I also started to get involved with pornography. It was a secondary escape.
As my drinking escalated, instead of cultivating relationships (which is what Hollywood is all about) I began to burn bridges. I did have a steady job at Aaron Spelling Productions. I was assistant to the Director of Business Affairs. I was living at the beach and seemed to have a great life but I was miserable. I became more and more lonely. I remember living in Playa Del Rey (where for a short time I became a bartender) I would buy a six-pack, walk to the beach and just cry because I was so lonely.
There I met an Australian girl and I thought I was in love. We traveled the world for 20 months and I drank constantly. We came to the Santa Cruz mountains and got married. About a month before the wedding, we got drunk, got in a fight, and she stabbed me. I still married her. Now that’s insanity.
Life with my first wife was dysfunctional, crazy, and abusive. She was nagging me about my drinking. I met a guy who was a part of the polocrosse group, Lou. Lou was funny, crazy, and sober. I kept trying to get him to drink and he wouldn’t. I asked if he was religious. He said no, he was sober. I couldn’t fathom that idea.
One night at a kegger, I drank all night and passed out somewhere. I woke up at dawn and immediately went to the keg. I drank, puked, drank, puked. It was the first time I knew I needed help. I prayed for God to help me stop drinking. The funny thing is, I hadn’t believed in God for years, probably since I started drinking. The amazing thing was that God answered my prayer.
I think God gave me that gift
so I wouldn’t kill myself.
I stopped drinking. I started to go to AA. I got a sponsor and lied to him. I didn’t know I was lying but I was. He asked me to do a 4th step, and I could not think of one thing that was wrong with me. I’m serious. This white knuckling lasted 4 months. During this time, my wife hated that I was sober.
The next time I attempted to get sober was going to be New Years Eve 1992. That was the last time I was going to have a drink. New Years Day came and I kept drinking. I realized that I couldn’t stop drinking even when I wanted to. I got a little more serious about AA and started reading the big book. My wife would be abusive. Instead of reacting, I’d ignore her and just go read my big book. This would make her go even crazier. In March or April, I filed for divorce. Then I got a job writing in Hollywood so I left Northern California for LA. Before that, I went to Taiwan to escape for a week. There, I started drinking. I was in a bar. Someone bought me a beer and I drank it. I couldn’t stop. I flew home to learn that my father died. I went to Texas for the funeral. Kept drinking. I was such a mess, I brought a prostitute to my mom’s house. My mother intervened and had her sleep on the couch and sent me to the room with my brother. My brother who had been sober 5 years by this time told me to either stop drinking or go home. Mom didn’t need my crap. My brother took me to an AA meeting in Freeport Texas June 14, 1992.
Of the 10 most stressful things that you could go through, I had gone through about 8 of them: parent died, divorce, new location, new job … and I just lost my best friend, alcohol. Looking back, the only good thing that happened was that I was finally being paid to be a writer. My writing never went anywhere but I think God just gave me that gift so I wouldn’t kill myself.
But I needed that pain to get sober. If all that change didn’t happen, I would probably be dead by now. So I got sober. I went to meetings. I got a sponsor. I did my steps. In my home group, which is a men’s group, I met a group of men who would do anything for me. Before then, men were a threat – competition. But now I learned how to be a man and understood the power of iron sharpening iron. I learned to scuba dive in the Smith and Wilson dive club.
I did about a step a month. The fourth step took me about 6 months but once I did my 5th step, I was amazed at the freedom I had. It was like all this terrible awful stuff I was going to take to the grave was out in the open. As of this moment, I do not have a secret. Someone knows all the terrible stuff I’ve done. Surprisingly, they have done this terrible stuff as well.
And as of my first year, I had done all my steps and there was something special. As though I was finally connected to this program. How it works, I don’t know. But those steps are tools to live life and they can be applied to any problem.
After getting sober, I had
a worship hole in my gut.
After getting sober, I had a worship hole in my gut. I found this little nondenominational church and started going, not believing in Jesus or the Devil. Well, after sitting there, fighting Jesus for 2 years, I finally said that sinner’s prayer along with the preacher one Sunday. My life was changed again.
A year or two after that I met Shawne, my current wife. She was going through a divorce in Oklahoma and went to her parents in California. I was in service, a GSR and I went to a meeting to elect the district offices. Well, low and behold the only seat left was directly across from Shawne. Her mom is an alky and her dad was running for district secretary. We were married 10 months later. That was definitely a God thing.
I put my dream of writing on hold and knew I had to support this woman so I started cleaning carpet. It was the worst period of my life. Working late nights, back-breaking work in downtown LA skyscrapers. It broke me. Here I was; this great writer and I was on the floor getting a gum spot out of a high-rise.
Well, God blessed my efforts, and by the year 2000 we had eleven employees and we started to buy rental houses in Ada, Oklahoma, where Shawne was raised. In 2004, we sold our business and house and moved to Ada. Now, we own The Carpet Medic and own real estate here.
So, if you’re new. Don’t fight the program, it works. If you can’t stay sober, stop drinking and do the steps. AA gives us incredible tools to be the amazing, creative people God intended us to be.
