I posted this on In The Rooms on June 15th, 2021.

I didn’t have my first drink until I was 17. Being in Texas I lived through the change in drinking age where it was 18 and then it changes to 21. But it really did not mean a thing to me because I was not a big drinker way back then.

When I was little, I remember my parents drinking occasionally. It was not until my father had an affair and moved out that I noticed that my mother drank much more. I never knew until my 40’s that I learned from my maternal grandmother that alcoholism does run in our family. My mother’s father had a problem with drinking, but he had the wherewithal to just put it down after my grandma gave him the ultimatum “You have until I come home at 3:30pm to decide between being at home with her and the kids and leaving for his beer.” As grandma told it, he never had another beer until they came to see us in Hawaii and we went to a baseball game and my dad wanted to buy him a beer and my grandma told him “You can have ONE beer” and that is all he had and never had another drop of alcohol until the day of his death April 2, 1976, at the age of 59.

I honestly did not become a big drinker until I got out of prison in 1990. I spent some time in a halfway house and then I got my own apartment and a job at Pizza Hut. I started making friends and then it happened that one night I had come home from the Houston area from seeing my family during Christmas 1990 when a man in a convertible offered me a ride home. As we were talking, he began to tell me how good looking I was and asked if I went out to the bars. I told him no, I didn’t know where they were. He proceeded to tell me that I would never have to buy my own drinks because of several reasons, but particularly one reason that is neither here nor there.

If I had known then what I know now and grew to know over so many years of relapse and recovery about how much alcoholism ran in my family, perhaps I could have derailed that train. That train was not derailed, in fact it took off like a speeding locomotive all because of how I was made to feel at the gay bars. Not only did the alcoholism and drug use grow exponentially over the years so did the sexual addiction to the point that I wreaked more havoc on my life by contracting HIV on a one night stand while in a long term relationship with my first partner in San Antonio.

At the same time, I saw my mother sinking further into the disease, not knowing what it was and being the biggest enabler for her because I used to take her out to the gay bars and help get her drunk. I bought her alcohol in my home and just did not realize how far down the rabbit hole my mother was and how naturally I came by this disease. Unfortunately, my mother’s drinking did not subside, and she passed away in part because of this disease on Mother’s Day May 10th, 1998. You would think that at that point knowing then what she went through, I would have gotten my act together. But, no, my drinking and using just got worse over the years even during my now over 21 1/2-year marriage to the most loving and caring individual that did not deserve my shenanigans over the years.

I am no longer ashamed to admit that I worked hard for sobriety from 2014 to September 14, 2016, and then threw that away when I quit doing everything I knew how to do. Today I am so proud to have over 28 months of sobriety because I now work and live “THE PROGRAM” of Alcoholics Anonymous – I no longer work and live “GREGORY’S PROGRAM” of Alcoholics Anonymous! I LOVE THIS PROGRAM and I will KEEP COMING BACK!

I now know that yes, this DISEASE is genetically acquired, and I have a choice today. I CHOOSE TO BE SOBER JUST FOR TODAY!!!!

That’s what’s in “My Rattled Cage”, thanks for stopping by!!