My Sobriety Date

My sobriety date (the date I got clean and sober) is October 10th, 2004. I stopped drinking on October 8th, although at the time I was spending the night/day in jail and could not very well drink, but I did not make a concious decision to get clean and sober until Saturday October the 9th.

I consider October 10th my sobriety date because that is the day I began to take action on my decision to get sober. The most important thing I did was attend a Sunday noon meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) at the Blind Pass group in Pinellas County.

At that meeting, I met the group of people who would help get me though the next few weeks, which turned out to be the worst of my life, and in retrospect perhaps the best based on what I had going into those weeks. What I had was "the gift of desperation", more on that later. I met a gentleman named Tom whose acquaintance, along with God's help, led me to the person who became my spiritual guide in the AA program, my sponsor Chris.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.