Fourth and Fifth Step Dreams: When the Stargazing Turns into a Memory of What I Did Drunk – Lou F.

About This Speaker Tape

Lou shares his story at the Central Orlando Saturday Night meeting, introduced by his longtime friend Suzanne who chairs. He traces his drinking from age five, when his father let him finish beers, through college at the University of Buffalo where he blacked out during finals week yet somehow scored an A-plus on an exam he does not remember taking. Thinking he had flunked out, he joined the Air Force, where five-cent beers at the NCO Club accelerated his drinking while his first wife grew increasingly frustrated.

After leaving the military and moving to Lakeland, Florida in 1971, Lou built a successful insurance business bringing home over three thousand dollars a week. At 32 he made a conscious decision to drink every day and did not draw a sober breath for twelve years. He consumed two cases of beer nightly and a bottle of whiskey on top of that on weekends. His children learned to count his drinks and leave the room at eighteen because that was when he turned vicious and verbally abusive. Twelve years of blackouts erased most memories of his sons growing up.

The bottom came in rapid succession. His oldest son pressed a shotgun into his belly and called him a drunken bastard, and Lou found himself praying the boy would pull the trigger. Three days later, shaking and crying uncontrollably, he called the 2720 Club in Lakeland where Don Cody told him to pour a big glass of booze and come on down. He arrived in a 27-foot motorhome, shook with DTs for over three weeks, and at 25 days sober learned he would develop throat cancer if he did not also quit his four-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Within months his wife left, his mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, his business partners pushed him out costing over a million dollars in future income, and his annual gross dropped from a 49-thousand-dollar tax bill to ten thousand dollars total.

Lou describes the slow rebuilding: a golf-course equipment sales job, meeting his current wife at a mobile home park gate in 1991, marrying in 1993, landing a national sales position in Baton Rouge, and eventually starting a business together that they still run side by side. He emphasizes that today is always the best day of his life since yesterday, that he no longer even notices alcohol billboards, and that the fellowship has given him back relationships with both sons and grandchildren that his drinking had destroyed.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Suzanne chairs and introduces Lou, shares that a friend with years of sobriety recently died after picking up a drink
• 5:30 Lou begins his story — first drunk at age five drinking from his father's beer bottles
• 9:00 College at University of Buffalo — blacks out during finals week after drinking scotch with his uncle, gets an A-plus on an exam he does not remember taking, joins the Air Force
• 14:00 Air Force drinking with five-cent beers at the NCO Club, marriage tension, moves to Lakeland FL in 1971
• 19:00 Insurance success at 3K per week, party stories including ambulance drivers with sirens at 2 AM, at age 32 decides to drink every single day
• 25:00 Twelve years of daily drinking — two cases of beer a night, kids count to 18 drinks then leave, verbal abuse of his wife, massive blackouts
• 31:00 Son puts a shotgun in his belly — Lou prays he pulls the trigger. Three days later calls the 2720 Club, Don Cody tells him to pour a glass of booze and come down
• 37:00 DTs for three weeks, doctor warns of throat cancer at 25 days sober, quits four packs a day simultaneously — wife leaves, mother gets brain cancer, partners push him out
• 45:00 Rebuilding — meets his current wife at a mobile home park gate, marries in 1993, gets national sales job in Baton Rouge after employer asks if he stopped drinking
• 52:00 Reflections on sponsorship, the Big Canadian who said he would never drink again, Publix manager with 22 cases of Natural Light, dumping five trash cans of whiskey bottles from his home bar