Meeting At The Meeting

Robert and Tish are an engaged couple who are both in recovery. They met while attending a twelve step meeting. Robert drank and drugged for 36 years. His family comes from cultures that embraced drinking alcohol. He was an anxious child whose parents divorced when was young. And at age 8 he learned alcohol could relieve him of fears. Growing up in south central Los Angeles, he eventually found himself joining a gang. Tish also had her first taste of alcohol as young child; her father gave her sips of his gin and tonic starting at age 3. Her first drunk was on Easter Sunday at age 7 with her father’s encouragement. At age 13 she was sent off to boarding school where she also could find access to alcohol but also started abusing amphetamines. Tish’s kidneys failed by age 19.