Financial Problems
Shortly after the birth of my daughter I hit my first bottom. I caught my building foreman, who was also a friend and my daughter's godfather, stealing from me. It then came out that he was doing this for awhile and also was streering business away from mine to the competition. I was very hurt and upset.
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I decided that shooting the friend that had betrayed me and the banker who was intolerable would take care of the problems. Then to get even with them for treating me so badly I would blow my own brains out in the living room of the bankers fancy home. That would show them, I would be even with them at last.
Ron later asked how that would make things even as they would have both been dead. Was that irrational alcoholic reasoning or what? I was in a black out, went home, loaded my shotgun, and went to the friends house first. I broke into his home but no one was there but in the alcohol induced haze thought I had actually shot him. I then was headed for the neighboring community to rid the world of a crooked banker.
I reached down to load a shell into the chamber of my shotgun and a spent shell ejected and landed on the dashboard of my pickup truck. That is when the reality sunk in. I am the type of person that would never leave a spent shell in the chamber of my gun or a loaded one in the house.
I went to another friends house and woke him up and explained that I believed I had shot someone. The police were summoned, there was no one home at the foreman's house, but signs of a break-in. After taking a breathalizer (which showed that I was not intoxicated, how I do not know) the fired shell was checked, the gun was checked and it was determined that the spent shell had been in the gun at least 6 months.
The Effect on Others
I was taken to jail for attempted murder, terroristic threats, breaking and entering, having a loaded firearm in my possession while intoxicated, and for my own protection and the protection of others. I to this day do not know how that spent shell came to be in that gun or how I avoided being legally drunk according to the breathalizer test. I credit that all to my Higher Power.
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After I had been sober for a few years the details of that night which were hazy or blacked out started to haunt me. In discussing it with my wife she finally told me that she tried to stop me when I came to get the gun but I roughed her up. She told me she thought about calling someone but decided not to as the plan that I had laid out would either get me to prison for an extended time or dead. Either way she felt relieved that it would finally be over and she would not have to put up with my drinking and the associated behavior ever again.
Now tell me that spouses don't get as sick as the alcoholic. I believe this was the first 5th step she had taken. We talked about this, cried for several hours, and then just held each other and thanked God for the programs of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.
Continue to Part III
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