Tom’s Story

I was born in a small farming community in the Ottawa Valley by the name of Almonte, Ontario. Our Miller family was a family of six, three boys and one girl in a small peaceful environment. I believe I had a rather typical childhood of the 40s and the 50s, growing up in a small town with all the advantages that it held. Two things I can remember very distinctively as a young man growing up in that town regarding alcohol, was the fact that there used to be a man who sat in front of the small grocery store drinking something out of a paper bag. People used to make fun and laugh at this man and I asked my Mother one day, why do they make fun of Mac? And she told me that he was a drunk, an alcoholic, and that concept of what an alcoholic was stayed with me until I was 40 years old and entered the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The other occasion that I can vividly remember regarding my feelings of alcohol was when Charlie Finner and the Hay Shakers used to play at the Almonte fairgrounds on Saturday night. I recall at about 15 years old I had an opportunity to drink two beers while waiting outside the dance hall and after the two beers I felt as if I grew about 6 inches and all the pimples fell off my face. I was able to go into the dance hall and dance with the girls, tell jokes and generally feel altogether different than what I previously felt. What a wonderful feeling. And it stayed with me until it left. I never really drank a lot during those early teenage years but when I was about 20 and began to work in the grocery stores I began to drink. Usually on weekends, usually beer and some wine. Things progressed to much higher drinking when I became a grocery salesman travelling throughout the Ottawa Valley and was left to my own devices. I was able find my way to bars and beer parlours. Drinking became more of an issue. It was at about 30 years old that my wife began to talk to me that this drinking was getting out of control and was becoming a bit of a problem in our lives. I believe that I hit bottom somewhere about 35 years of age when it became almost daily drinking and drinking to excess most of the time. I could not drink every day but I had to have the odd two days off to recover and get to feel better. However there would always be that nagging feeling that a beer would feel good. I would make all these great promises and vows that I would never drink again but somewhere around noon hour or two o’clock, the feeling would come. I feel so terrible, maybe a few beers would help. Again I would stop at the Scottsdale Inn in Delta on the way home. In most cases I would stay there until closing time. It became a vicious circle of trying to recover but not being able to, drinking and drinking more, coming home to the usual battles and difficulties at home. I knew then that Alcohol had become a real problem in my life.

One day in April of 1979 I was making a sales call on a man and I asked him if he would go to lunch with me, we could go to the Legion and have a few glasses of beer and the tomato juice. I had been suffering at the time of a severe hangover. He said to me, I don’t drink, I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It didn’t hit me right then but as I began to think about it, it began to come into my consciousness that this is probably my problem. I too am an alcoholic. On an occasion later on I visited the same man and he had a friend in his office and they were talking about the difficulties that they had encountered during their drinking career. Some of them had happened to me and I became convinced that my problem was now apparent, that I was an alcoholic.

On May the 24th weekend of 1979 I met with a friend and we went out to have a few drinks to celebrate the holiday weekend. After various attempts of getting back home I managed to arrive home June the 9th, 1979. My wife had my bags packed and at the front door telling me that she could no longer handle the stress and the difficulties that my alcoholic behaviour was causing her and the family.

After pleading and asking for some mercy and to be able to stay the night, I woke the morning of June the 10th, 1979 and phoned the man that I had known previously that had told me that he had a problem with alcohol. I asked him if he could help me with what I thought was a small problem with booze. He replied, “stay cool pal, the sun’s still shining, you’re still there and alive and I’ll be right over.” He took a considerable time to arrive and years later I questioned him about his taking so long. He replied that he had never done a twelve step and was reading the chapter in the Big Book,Working with Others.

He arrived at our house with his Big Book, sat at the kitchen table and explained to my wife and I his difficulties with alcohol and how he was able to go to meetings and overcome his problems. I agreed to go with him that night to a meeting in Richmond. I did not tell him that I had these great fears and anxieties of going under tunnels or over bridges. But that night I imagine I was able to go under the Dea’s Island Tunnel to attend my first meeting. I was able to hear the message of recovery, and that there was hope here and I too could recover from this seemingly hopeless disease of mind and body. That started my journey in recovery. However, travelling to Richmond to go to meetings was just getting very impossible in my early days of sobriety. I still had these fears and anxiety and shaking and recovering from the shakes. I had to find a meeting closer to home and I did that at the Surrey Easy Does It Club, which at that time was located at 96 and Scott Rd. My first meeting there was the Introductory to Alcoholics Anonymous meeting held on a Monday night where they had an introductory meeting and then the step 1, Step 2 and Step 3. It was a major miracle for me to be sober on my 5th week going to those meetings. I explained to the man who was chairing the meeting the great fear I had around Step 2 and Step 3. I always thought it was a punishing God and I would pay a terrible price for my misbehaviour throughout life. He suggested that I join the Novalco 18 week step study that was happening coincidentally on the following Thursday night at the same location. Not knowing any better I showed up at my first meeting and my whole world changed through that series. I learnt and heard and talked about things that were in my life but was not ever able to talk about them, discuss or analyze them. I knew they were the problems dwelt within me and had to be resolved if I was ever going to achieve sobriety. I did all the steps. The 4th step was difficult, the 5th was almost impossible, but I did it and of course all the rest. I am still working on a day at a time. I have continued to do the steps. I was able to, after two years in the program, begin to chair the Novalco series. In my time in AA I have chaired 53 Novalco series, where I’ve taken both men and women through the steps in the Surrey-Delta area. The man that I called for help, his name was Harry L from Richmond. And while I suppose he might have been my sponsor (he still is for that matter), you become more of a friend at this stage of our development. I don’t know who sponsors who but I know we both help each other and talk constantly of our alcohol problems and how we solved them and live life one day at a time. When I first came into the program, there was maybe in Delta-Surrey area 10 to 12 meetings and they were really a lot different than they are held today. People arrived early, usually dressed up, the meeting started at 9:00. A lot of people smoked and one of the jobs was to clean the ashtrays after the meeting. Occasionally we would travel to other meetings but most of us had to get a job and get back into work, so attending meetings that started at 9, ended at 10, and usually a coffee afterwards, we were getting home at 11 or 1130. It’s almost the same routine as it was when we were drinking. The format was much different than it is today. There was not a lot of discussion nor a lot of step meetings. Most of them were just meetings where people would go up and tell their story of how it was, what happened and how it is now.

It was not until near the end of the 1980s that the meeting structure had more discussion meetings and more step meetings, tradition meetings and meetings other than the previous type. I sobered up in the Delta-Surrey area. There was a lot of people that were instrumental in my early sobriety and most of them were members of the Easy Does It Club on Scott Rd. One of the people that was of great influence in my sobriety was the Dr Elmer Ratzlaff who had a practice in Vancouver specializing in helping Alcoholics or people with other addictions. He asked us if we could be a resource for him. He had four of us located in various places in the Lower Mainland that he would refer patients to and we would have to do a 12 step on them and get them involved in a local meeting in my area. This caused us to start a new meeting called the King George Men’s meeting and at one time grew to about 70 members mostly from Dr. Ratzlaff’s referrals. It was a very exciting time.

Over the years I have sponsored at least 40 men and women and have found it a privilege to be able to help take them through the steps and to grow in their sobriety. I was also involved in setting up twice a year a retreat to Westminster Abbey which would begin on a Friday evening all through Saturday and finish on Sunday. This has gone on for over the past 40 years and still continues today. One of the other things that I did was we had a fishing group of 30 men that used to travel from the Lower Mainland tracheal in the Okanagan area every year on Labour Day, spend four days fishing and having fellowship with plenty of meetings and companionship at the lake.

I have gone through the service structure of Alcoholics Anonymous as a GSR, DCM and had done a great deal of work in public information committees in Delta. I arranged for Delta TV to produce and broadcast a TV Show covering 4 weeks with different categories of people attending AA. Men, women, youth and seniors. It was an interesting experience that I think hopefully helped other people. I enjoyed service work and now I’m involved in a Saturday morning group in Langley. My wife and I have attended 5 world conferences across North America. During my years in sobriety I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous has changed drastically, much to the good. I’m enthused that many younger people have got into the program now, both men and women. The one major change is that when I came to the program there appeared to be maybe 10% of the people in the program that were female. Now it seems to be 50% and it’s done much to improve both the behaviour and the topics presented at meetings. The other great change has been the time. They’re starting so much earlier and nobody smokes in the meeting which is also good for our health. One of the great changes that I’ve noticed in Alcoholics Anonymous over the years is the conversation and the discussions regarding the 12 steps which is a very good thing. You want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, these are the steps that we took. And we’re now talking about that on a regular basis. As far as change goes and as far as AA has changed me, I guess I could just finish this by saying I’ve found this true, that the rewards of a good life is a good life. And Alcoholics Anonymous has given me that good life.