Waking up in a hospital bed, diagnosed with alcoholic dementia, he found his way out of the fog with the help of his Higher Power
One spring day, I was admitted to a large general hospital in a major city. When I woke up the next morning, I recognized a hospital room but didn’t know how I’d gotten there. I was pretty sure alcohol was involved, but didn’t think there had been an accident or an arrest. I was diagnosed with advanced dementia and was in an assisted care ward for people with the same condition or the even worse Alzheimer’s disease. Their cases were due to natural causes; mine was attributable to decades of alcohol abuse.
After a week in the psychiatric unit the doctors concluded that I was about as good as I was going to get and recommended a nursing home. They said less than 10 percent of people in my condition ever recovered.
What did it feel like to me? Imagine your worst drunk ever. Mostly I didn’t know where I was and could barely stand up. I couldn’t walk without assistance and wore a restraining belt. I had a staggering gait and was at constant risk of falling down. I couldn’t take a shower by myself. Cognitive abilities barely existed and my awareness and memory fluctuated between fantasy and reality. My sleep was interrupted by vivid, disturbing dreams. After a second week I was taken to a “dementia house”—a private residence with two nurses on duty around the clock.
I began drinking alcoholically in 1963, meaning that once I took the first drink I didn’t want to stop. Of course I did stop most of the time, but never because I wanted to. Either the alcohol ran out, I passed out, or there was an obligation or place I had to be. My life went on like that for 50 years. In the weeks leading up to the hospital I had stopped eating but I continued to drink, mostly four-packs of little wine bottles instead of vodka, which had become my drink of choice. Of course I knew this was a recipe for disaster, but I wasn’t hungry and just didn’t care anymore.
After a period in the dementia house, I was well enough to be taken to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I agreed to go. Astonishingly, as I look back now, I had been going to AA meetings off and on for nine years without ever staying sober for more than a couple of months. What I did was go to meetings and drink, sometimes before and almost always afterwards. Strange as it sounds, I honestly thought I was trying to do something about my alcoholism and was entitled to a reward. Throughout this whole period, people at the meetings told me to “just keep coming back.”
My last drink was on May 14th. Yes, even though I was living in a dementia house I was able to sneak drinks on a few occasions when I was taken out to lunch by family or friends. (Once I even bought a bottle of wine in a drugstore while shopping for toiletries and candy.) On June 10, 2013, I got an AA sponsor and I’ve continued to go to meetings at least once a day ever since. Since that time I’ve taken all 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. On my knees and holding my sponsor’s hand, I recited AA’s Third Step prayer, turning “…my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him.” When I did that the most amazing thing happened: I actually believed the words as they were coming out of my mouth. I can’t explain it other than to say it was a spiritual experience. The Third Step, so long the barrier to my recovery, had become the gateway. It was a psychic change.
Today I am fully recovered from dementia and the obsession to drink has been removed. That is a miracle!