Ed’s Story

Ed’s Story 

I was born in Vancouver, BC in 1944.  Neither of my parents were alcoholics, but my dad’s brother was one.  So I guess all this is his fault.  I believe that alcoholism is a disease and I believe I had it from the minute I was born.  My father was an electrician and my mother was a stay at home mom.  We lived in a very small three bedroom house which my dad built next to his mother’s house on 45th Avenue.  His brother lived on the other side of his mother.  There wasn’t a lot of drinking but my mother and father threw a few parties and I remember sneaking a few drinks when they were partying.  I don’t remember at what age this was happening.  We didn’t have a lot of money so luxuries were few and far between.  Later in my teen age years we had a cabin at Lindell Beach at Cultus Lake and spent our summers at the cabin.  We had a boat and I did a lot of water skiing.  My father built the cabin and the boat.  He was a good provider, but he was also very physically abusive to both my older sister and me. There were lots of kids my age to hang out with and we pretty much did what we wanted to do.  One night my buddy Doug and I got hold of a Mickey of dry gin and we drank it straight.  It tasted like gasoline but we drank it all.  We were hanging out at the beach that night and Doug got into a fight.  We both didn’t feel so good the next day but we both thought we had a great time and laughed about it all.  This was the start of the whole thing I believe.  Doug was from Chilliwack and one weekend we both went to a party in Chilliwack.  Everyone was drinking beer so I drank way too much and got sick.  The next day I felt lousy but it still didn’t deter me.  Lindell Beach is at the South end of the lake and we used to hitch- hike to the north end of the lake to go to dances on Saturday nights.  If we had some money we would get some older guys to buy us some beer.  Getting home late at night was not easy and quite often we would have to walk.  It’s seven miles so it took us a while. 

After high school I got a job at H.A. Simons as a draftsman.  It was located at the corner of Carol and Hastings.  I took the bus to work from Joyce Road loop down Kingsway to the office.  Most mornings I would sleep on the bus to work as I was hung over from the night before.  I was already a daily drinker.  There were two Hotels on the corner of Carol and Hastings.  One was the West Hotel and the other was the Roger Hotel.  They were both dive bars with beer parlours.  My friend Mike and I used to go in for a couple of beers at lunch time.  Sometimes we would lay off the beer and play snooker at the International Smoke Shop and Billiards at lunch time.  I was still living with my parents and my mom would pack me a lunch.  I was making $1.02 an hour and my pay check every two weeks was $75.10 but a glass of beer was only 20 cents. A case of 12 bottles was $2.52.  Mike had a car, a 1953 Chevy and we would usually drive to the Kingsway Motor Hotel after work and drink beer until closing time.  The Kingsway Hotel is across the street from where AA Head Office is now on the corner of Tyne and Kingsway.  Sometimes we would change things up and go to the Eldorado Hotel and Nanaimo and Kingsway. Back then the beer parlour would close from 6:00-7:00 PM so some of the guys would go home for dinner.  Not Mike and I, we would go to the cocktail lounge and sometimes go back to the beer parlour when it reopened.  Then beer parlours then were segregated.  They had a men’s side and a ladies and escorts side.  After some time another guy Mike knew from Gladstone school, Gary started working at H.A. Simons and he got into our routine.  Now there were 3 of us hitting the beer parlours after work.  In 1965 Gary and I made the geographical cure and moved to Toronto.  Nothing changes if nothing changes.  We still drank a lot every day but we drank at home.  We had a one bedroom apartment on the tenth floor and we would get out beer delivered.  We would buy 10 cases at a time and a case is 24 in Ontario.  We would stack up the empties in the kitchen.  Then we found out that the delivery guy would haul away they empties and pay us for them.  The poor delivery guy could only carry 4 cases at a time on his hand truck.  One time we ordered our normal 10 cases and after he delivered them we asked him to haul away the empties.  We walked into the kitchen to show him the stack of empties we had 3 columns of cases right to the ceiling.  Thirty-Two cases all together. You can imagine how long it took him to haul them away at 4 cases at a time on his hand truck. 

Lots of our friends that lived in the apartment would come to our place to drink.  We always had a fridge full of cold beer.  We put a box beside the fridge for beer money.  Anyone taking a beer put a quarter in the box. In September I turned 21 in the apartment and Gary decided to move back to Vancouver.  So we threw a party one night to celebrate.  The police arrived 3 different times to tell us to shut it down.  It’s lucky none of us got arrested.  I’m pretty sure there were several people there under 21 which was legal age for drinking then. I got a new roommate Don, also from Vancouver and he liked drinking hard stuff so we backed off the beer a bit and started drinking Whiskey.  Eventually Don and I decided to move back to Vancouver.  I had acquired a Mini Cooper which we loaded up with all our worldly possessions and headed for L.A. via route 66.  There was a TV series called Route 66 that we sometimes watched. 

On our trip we drove in 10 hour shifts and when we got to Chicago we were both tired so we got off the freeway and checked into a hotel for the night.  We put our gear in the room and decided to hit the bar.  Ron was 6’-3” tall with red hair and I am 5’-8” with dark hair.  We walked into the bar and we were the only white guys in the room and of course everyone knew we were in the wrong place.  The bartender immediately asked us where we were from and we told him very loudly we were from Canada so everyone in the bar could hear us.  Everyone settled down and we spent the evening drinking and playing pool with these guys.  When we got to L.A. it was pouring rain and the streets were flooded.  We were planning on staying for a week or so and soaking up some sun.  We got a hotel and slept like the dead and when we got up it was still raining so we took off for Vancouver.     

     Back in Vancouver I moved back in with my folks, got a job with Wright Engineers at Pender and Thurlow and went back to the old routine of drinking every day.  I also went back to my other addition of playing pool at lunch time.  I also started dating a girl I had met at Cultus Lake.  One night I was an hour late to pick her up for a date.  I had been at the pool hall playing for money and just couldn’t leave.  When I picked her up she was furious and was yelling at me as we drove down Kingsway heading for the beer parlour.  I decided it was a good idea to stop driving with her yelling at me so we pulled into Sears parking lot, which is now Metro Town.  It was pouring rain and she was on a rampage.  Unfortunately my pool cue was laying on the back seat of my car not in a case.  She reached in the back and grabbed my cue and got out of the car.  She ran over to the corner of the building where there was a 6” drain pipe secured to the building.  The cue was a two piece model but in seconds it was in numerous pieces as she wailed on the drain pipe with it.  So what did I do?  I married her.  Needless to say it was a stormy relationship and didn’t last very long.  My drinking was curtailed somewhat as I attended BCIT and got my diploma of Technology.   

I graduated from BCIT in 1969 and from then on I had numerous jobs and moved around a lot.  I met my second wife in Eugene, Oregon in a bar of course.  Within a short time we were living together and drinking together.  The company I was working for went into bankruptcy so I was forced to move back to Canada.  I told Donna I would have to move and that if she wanted to come with me we should probably get married.  She said yes and we got married in Eugene.  We moved into a shack on Holly Street in Burnaby with her one daughter Collene.  The drinking continued of course.  We took over the management of a pool hall in New Westminster for a few months.  We did not have a liquor licence but we still sold beer and other things anyway.  The customers would come in and order a milkshake so I would pour a beer into a milkshake container and hand it to them.  One time a guy came in and said “I hear you sell beer here”.  He didn’t have the password so I said “No”.  He was quite disappointed.  An old drinking buddy of my used to come into the pool hall and I knew he wasn’t drinking and was a member of AA.  I watched him handle himself in the room and started to notice that his life and my life were totally different.  He was working out at Gold’s Gym quite a bit so he was physically in good shape.  I on the other hand was drinking every day and not doing anything for my health.  Donna and I decided to sell the place as we heard the Sky Train was going to be coming right through our building so it was time to get out. 

Donna decided to go back to Oregon for a while and visit her parents and see some old friends.  I didn’t even know she was unhappy as I was so wrapped up in myself.  So here I was left alone with myself and my dog, a hundred pound male Doberman.  The handcuffs were off and I drank steady for about three or four days but it just wasn’t working.  I had tried many times on my own to quit drinking but it never worked.  Quitting is easy.  I have done many times.  It’s the staying quit that I could never accomplish.  So I phoned my old drinking buddy, Eddy and asked him about AA.  He explained a little bit about it and asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting.  I said I would give it a try.  I had bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle when I was in Oregon so I rode it to Eddy’s place and he got his motorcycle and we rode to the meeting.  That was April 2, 1985.  It was a Tuesday evening and the meeting was at Scott Road and 75A Avenue.  It was called the North Delta Group and I believe it is still in operation today.  We parked the bikes and walked into the church.  There were a couple of guys standing just inside the door to greet us.  We shook hands and Eddy introduced them to me.  We grabbed a coffee and found a couple of seats.  I was very suspicious about the whole thing because the meeting was in a church and they had these plaques on the wall with the word God in them all over the place.  I was thinking “This is just another religious organization and they are probably going to want 10% of my salary”.  I don’t know why I was worried about that as I was unemployed at the time.  The meeting started and they did the usual stuff.  They read How It Works and had announcements.  Then people got up to the podium and shared how God had got them sober and great their life was now.  I didn’t hear that part in How It Works where they say we shared in a general way what we were like, what happened and what we are like now.  Anyway my suspicions seemed to be supported these guys were a bunch of religious whack jobs.  After the meeting Eddy asked me if I wanted to go for coffee at Fresco’s.  A bunch of them were going there.  I declined and thought this is where they are going to ask me for money.  Once again I don’t know why I was worried about that as I was basically broke. I remember I roared out of the parking lot mad as hell.  I Don’ know what I was so mad about all they did was to ask me to go for coffee.  

The very next night I decided to go to Legion 83 and play some snooker, my other addiction.  I wasn’t going to drink so I ordered a ginger ale.  Everyone else was drinking and they got more obnoxious by the minute.  After a few ginger ales I had had enough.  The only way I was going to tolerate these idiots was to start drinking myself.  I was way behind them so I ordered a double Bacardi and coke.  I continued to drink doubles till the place closed I guess.  I woke up in the morning in a bed not mine, without any close on.  Where was I, and what had I done?  I got up put my close on and walked out of the bedroom into the living room.  I was in a one bedroom apartment somewhere near Middlegate Shopping Centre.  There was an older lady sitting on the sofa knitting.  She asked me if I would like some breakfast but I declined.  I had left my poor dog in the house the previous evening around 8:00 PM.  It was now 9:00 AM.  I walked outside and located my truck and drove home.  When I opened the door to my house my dog just about knocked my over to get outside and the phone was ringing.  I answered the phone and of course it was my wife.  She asked me why it took so long to answer the phone.  I of course couldn’t tell her I just got home so I told her I had been drinking last night and was pretty hung over and probably couldn’t hear the phone.  She told me she would be home in a few more days. I felt terrible. What was I going to do?  My dog came back in the house after he was sure everything was OK outside and wanted my attention.  I got him something to eat and made sure he had some water then tried to get myself together.  After I showered and got something to eat I decided to go see my buddy Jeff who lived at 16th and Oak in Vancouver.  Holly street is in Burnaby near Edmonds.  So I fired up the motorcycle and rode to Jeff’s place.  We had a few beers and smoked a couple of joints.  I don’t remember what we talked about or if he had any suggestions.  I was riding home down Kingsway near Sears when I had a moment of clarity.  What was I doing with my life?  I was forty years old and had been working most of my life and making fairly good money.  The extent of my wealth was a 6 year old GMC pickup truck and a 6 year old Harley Davidson.  The house we were renting should have been condemned as it was falling apart.  Most of my BCIT buddies all had good jobs, nice cars and nice homes and families.  Where was I going wrong?  Of course it was the drinking and drugging.  I phoned Eddy back and we had a little talk.  I told him I wanted to stop drinking but I didn’t like AA and all the God stuff.  He explained a few things to me.  He said the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.  Don’t know where he got that from.  Then he said you are an AA member if you say you are.  Then he told me there are no dues or fees for AA membership.  So he basically read me the Preamble.  He also told me if I didn’t like what someone was sharing I didn’t have to listen.  I thought I can do this.  In fact I’m very good at it.  I have been not listening all my life.  When someone gave me a good suggestion I would do the opposite because I knew better.  He told me there was a good meeting the next night at Pike Road.  I was desperate so I said I would go.  That Friday was Good Friday and it sure was for me.  We rode together to the meeting and parked the bikes.  Basically the same story as Tuesday but something was different.  The meeting was in the basement of this church and as before everyone was smoking.  It had a low ceiling and I could hardly see across the room. When the meeting started it was different.  Instead of the people at the podium talking about how God got them sober they were cracking jokes about their drinking.  A fellow named Murray and his buddy Jim Irvine were the funniest.  I don’t think I had ever laughed so hard in a long time.  Then my suspicious mind started to work.  What’s going on with this meeting?  Then I figured it out.  Eddy has told these guys “I have a new guy with me tonight so don’t talk about God”.  I was still self-centered in the extreme. I thought the whole world revolved around me.  After the meeting a bunch of people went to Frescos for coffee and I went with them.  I figured I might as well jump in with both feet.  We all sat at a long table and I ended up with a woman named Marion across the table from me.  She was about 4 years sober at the time and this was my second meeting.  I explained to her that I had this whole thing figured out.  It was the 12th step that was the key to this deal.  I had nailed it all right but I had no idea what I was talking about.  When I see Marion or talk to her we still laugh about that evening. 

Donna came back a few days later and she told me she was leaving me.  I explained to her that I had started to go to AA and that I had stopped drinking.  She changed her mind and decided to stick around and see what was going to happen.  A few months later she joined AA and stopped drinking.  That was July 19, 1985.  She is still sober today as far as I know.  We separated in 2018 and just got a divorce last month. 

Eddy and I started going to meetings together and I met some more people that were sober and rode motorcycles.  We used to go to meetings together as a group sometimes.  Big Dave, Jim O, Al J, French Jerry, and quite a few others I can’t remember.  Eddy was my first sponsor.  I started watching people at the meetings and I noticed that the people that seemed to be the most content were the ones working on the steps and had some belief in a higher power.  Eddy suggested that we go through a Novalco together so we signed up with an older guy named Dick V who ran a Novalco in the board room of his office.  There were about 20 guys in that Novalco when we started and about 12 when we finished 18 weeks later.  I had a problem with the 5th step.  I had made an appointment with the minister of the church on Victoria Drive just South of 54th Avenue.  The appointment was for 8:00 PM and I got there a little early.  The church was closed and I was a bit anxious and the bar up the street was starting to look appealing.  The minister finally arrived and we were walking into his office in the church when he told me that he had never had a drink in his life and that he thought AA was a cult.  He also admitted that he thought that he didn’t see any improvement in the people in the AA group that met Friday nights in his church.  I thought Wow this isn’t the guy I want to do my 5th step with.  So I went to my default setting and told him a bunch of lies.  I wasn’t prepared to dump all the juicy stuff with this idiot.  Funny when I left the church I didn’t feel I had this piano lifted off my back like everyone else said.  Once the Novalco finished I signed up for another one just so I could complete step 5. 

None of the meetings at that time gave out chips for different months of sobriety.  We didn’t get anything until we were a year sober.  That’s one addition that is really helping new people stay sober in my opinion.  Everything was going along fine but I still had a lousy attitude.  Then I saw this add on TV for Honda motorcycles.  The add claimed you meet the nicest people on a Honda.  Unfortunately my Harley was made by AMF which is a company that makes bowling equipment. It wasn’t a very well made motorcycle and I was tired of fixing it.  So I traded in my Harley and got a 1985 Honda Shadow 1100.  A little while later Eddy traded in his Kawasaki and got a Harley.  So I fired him as a sponsor and got Newton Bill for a sponsor.  The first time I met Bill he was about 35 years sober and when I shook hands with him I looked him in the eyes and he seemed to be looking right through me which I think he was.  He was looking right through all my BS and seemed to be reading my soul.  Bill, Eddy and I all belonged to the Newton Group which was one of the largest meetings in Surrey at the time.  The other large group was the Wally Group which met on Thursday evenings.  Newton met on Wednesday nights and it seems to me both meetings were at 9:00 PM and then we would go to Frescos after for more coffee.  The Newton group had two 100 cup coffee makers and quite often we would go through three hundred cups of coffee in one meeting.  I was about 5 years sober when I started to feel a little complacent.  I had been through 3 Novalcos and was attending lots of meetings but I just started feeling like what am I doing all this for?  Well the best thing that could happen was that I got elected secretary treasurer for the Newton group.  I took over from a gal who had the position for one year and had probably pocketed about $1200 from the group.  We normally contributed about that much to the four levels of service every year but for the year she was treasure nothing got given away.  After she turned over the books to me she disappeared.  When I discovered what had happened I told Bill about it and he said there is nothing we can do about it.  It’s an outside issue.  I feel now I was lucky to have Bill for a sponsor.  We went on all kinds of 12 step calls together and I learned how to be a sponsor myself.   

The last Novalco I went through as a student was in New Westminster.  The guy that was chairing it went to prison for some unknown reason so one of the older guys in the group volunteered to take over as chair and then he died.  The group asked me to take over as chair and I said no way do I want to go to prison or die but I did take it over and since then I have chaired many of them. Now that I have been sober over 41 years I own an 8 year old Harley Davidson and a 15 year old Cadillac so my financial wealth has not improved very much, if any.  But my physical and spiritual wealth has improved tremendously.  Not much can upset me now days as I just try and go with the flow.  I have pretty much stopped fighting everyone and everything.  I just try and be a better member of the human race and treat people with kindness. 

 About 1991 we moved to Salmon Arm as I got offered a job with a sawmill machinery manufacturer.  It seemed like a dream job so I took it.  We were only there for about 3 years when Donna’s father died.  We moved to Oregon to help her mom. The meetings in Oregon are run somewhat different than what I was used to in Canada.  They don’t ask people to share.  They ask who wants to share next.  A lot of groups open with the Serenity Prayer and close with the Lord’s Prayer.  One group I belonged to, I convinced them to stop saying the Lord’s Prayer and some members quit that group.  In 2000 we moved to Kelowna and then in 2013 we moved to Cloverdale and then in 2018 Donna and I broke up and I moved to Langley and she moved back to Oregon.  With all my moves I have belonged to many groups and held all kinds of positions with these various groups.  I have been a GSR, a Secretary, an Intergroup Rep and a treasurer.  Now I belong to probably the most fun group I have ever belonged to, Soberider.  We have more fun at our meetings because we have got rid of a lot of rules that other groups have.  We also try and help new people every chance we get and we donate a lot of money to the four levels of service.  Our primary annual event the pig roast in Keremeos is always a fun event for new people to attend.  This year will be our 36 annual pig roast.  Come join us August first long weekend if you want to have a some fun.