Today marks 39 years of sobriety. This is not a statement of pride, but rather a statement of amazement. I did not set out to attain 39 booze-free years. I only wanted to stop the pain—my own and that of everyone around me, although I failed to recognize how much I  hurt them until later. 

People often ask how I became an investigative reporter. My answer is I staggered into the business, which has some basis of fact. Late Wednesday evening, Febuary 3rd, 1971, I sat on a curbside on Decatur Street in the New Orleans French Quarter holding on to an empty bottle of wine. Much of the day had been spent sipping juices of grapes with a band of young folks in a one-room hippie pad following my rescue from an ass-whipping outside a grimy bar where I was mugged the night before. Refreshments had been provided with proceeds from a check I bounced at Antoines Restaurant.  

By nightfall, the extended binge started taking a toll on my alcohol-saturated system. I was displaying symptoms of delirum tremens, a condition caused by an imbalance of alcohol in the blood stream. My hippie friends didn’t want their peace and serenity interrupted by me battling imaginary snakes and insects. And besides, I had run out of money. Instead of kicking me out on the street, they dug in my pockets and found the Baton Rouge telephone number of my girlfriend, Patricia. She drove 75 miles to my rescue.

Meantime, I was escorted to Decatur Street, given a bottle with a few swallows of wine remaining, and told to await her arrival. It took Patricia an hour of driving around the Quarter before finding me perched on the curbside. She took me to a hospital emergency room, but the wait was so long that I suggested an alternative treatment—a six-pack of beer.

The beer calmed me during our return trip to Baton Rouge, where I asked Patricia to take me to a facility called, “Recovery House.” I had previously been treated there. The treatment consisted of a shot-glass size cup of paraldahyde—a foul-tasting sedative that knocked me out until late Thursday afternoon.

After coming out of a semi-coma, I stumbled downstairs to the dining area. The last meal I could recall had been slices French bread and freebie appetizers Tuesday evening while stashed out of sight of customers in an Antoines store room during a check-kiting expedition to the elegant restaurant.

Recovery House was a private treatment facility operated by an ex-drunk named Bill Jumper. It was on its last legs, mainly because Bill allowed people like me to freeload. On this day, there were only two other guests and me. While I chomped on sandwiches, they joined me at the dining table and we played a game of “can you top my misery.” Bill looked on. As we finsihed our tales of woe, he compared the whining to an unusally downbeat AA meeting and suggested that we recite the Lord’s Prayer—a custom of the 12-step fellowship.

I was willing to do just about anything to end my anguish. Except pray aloud. I wasn’t smart enough to be an athiest, nor I given any though to declaring myself as an agnostic. On infrequent visits to church, I was so uncomfortable with religious ritual that I even resisted singing hymns. Nonetheless, I was freeloading on a Bill Jumper, who had been an occasional guest on my radio show. Therefore, I took the leap. 

I don’t have a rational explanation for what happened next. Immediately following “Amen,” I had a sudden rush of well-being like nothing I experienced before. I sensed that my life was going to change. Maybe it was the paraldahyde, or the alcohol still in the blood system that caused my overload of endorphins. I don’t know. But in the years since, I’ve chosen to believe it was the Higher Power that I now call God offering me another chance to redeem my life—the last opportunity perhaps.

And it would be a challenge. Upon checking out of Recovery House on Friday, I learned that I was fired from my job as News Director and talk show host at WJBO radio. The manager accepted the resignation I tendered during my drunken two a.m. telephone  call on Tuesday inwhich I told him to cram the station up his ass.

I had other reasons I could have used to justify another drunken spree. I faced eviction from my apartment for non-payment of rent, bad checks were floating and I was behind on child support payments. But it all eventually worked out. Bills were paid, child support brought current and Patricia—soon to be my second wife—gave me place to live. And following a year in exile, WJBO rehired me. Within months,  I began an odyssey that subsequently led to my career as an award-winning investigative reporter.

But my most important decision was made a few hours after leaving Recovery House. I made another return visit to a Twelve Step fellowship that teaches principles designed to bring about a “spiritual awakening.” I’m not a holy-roller kind of guy. However, I have faith that a power beyond my human understanding has kept me sober for 39 years.

To re-enforce my faith, I only need to look at today. It has been an amazing journey.