On the night of November 17th, 2017 I found myself strapped 2 a board getting ready to be put into an Air Evac helicopter to be flown to St. Thomas hospital in the hopes that my life might be saved. 20 + years of drinking had finally caught up to my body. My pancreas was shutting down along with my liver and my kidneys because of the years of heavy drinking and abuse I had done to my body.

I started drinking the summer of my 8th-grade year and seemingly never seem to stop other than briefly now and again, but every time I started back it was worse and worse and worse. There towards the end, I could only be satisfied with liquor, and whiskey was my drink of choice. The thing is, it wasn't just a little bit of whiskey, I had to have a lot of whiskey in order for me to get the buzz that I was after every day. I knew I had a problem. I didn't know the extent of the problem until about 2 years before that fateful November night.

One Monday after work I found myself shaking uncontrollably and at that point, I asked God, "Please take this from me, please take this from me" and as soon as that whiskey hit my mouth the calm came over my body. I knew then that this was not just a problem, but was a really bad problem. But like most, I was too prideful to seek out professional help from anyone. I just prayed every day "God take this from me, God take this from me," and he did. After 10 days in ICU, and not knowing exactly how I would turn out after those 10 days was when I realized God had shaken me to the core.

He did take it away from me, He just did it in His way, not the way I expected. And that's the great thing about God. He created me, He knows me better than I know myself, He knew what it would take for me to stop drinking. He did answer that prayer, but he wanted to make sure that I was sure I didn't want to feel that way or rely on that anymore but just to rely on Him in every aspect of my life. It is only, and I stress, only by the grace of God that I am alive. He had mercy on me that I did not deserve. He loved me even when I didn't love myself and I made others around me not want to love me.

Now let me be very clear about this, no one forced me to drink. I did everything to myself. As an alcoholic, you can come up with an excuse for everything. It's raining, the suns out, this is awesome weather, let me have a drink. It didn't matter. Everybody was to blame but me until I realized nobody's forcing you to drink. Nobody's putting a gun to your head telling you "Hey, you've got to have a drink today." Not just 1 drink, you're going to be drinking a fifth of whiskey. That's not how it happened, that was my decision to do that so I blame no one but myself for the condition that I was in.

It was after I got out of the hospital and had gone to several AA meetings that one of the guys in there told me you need to find something to do with your hands and your mind. I had to learn to occupy myself and keep myself busy so I wouldn't even think about drinking. I can't remember exactly when it was, but I started playing around with woodworking.