Steppin' Out Radio

Bob remembers his last New Year's drink. He remembers all the drinks he had that New Year's. He was a young husband and father, and attended a neighborhood celebration. He doesn't remember much besides the drinks, and the fact he became "very inappropriate." His taste for alcohol started in childhood, as his father was a drinker, and the family lived in what was rural land that often got cold in winter, and in a home with no heat or indoor plumbing. Alcohol helped him feel warm. In his teens, he started working with father painting houses. But one day. his father suffered a stroke. It was the same day the plane carrying three superstar musicians crashed, killing his heroes.

Ralph is enjoying a multi-year stretch of sobriety. But before his sobriety began, he spent 43 years using alcohol, being drunk all throughout the time he spent in the Navy, attempting to run a business, being married and raising his kids. But his sobriety came when his little grandson refused to kiss him goodnight due to the stench of alcohol; telling him he "stank." But Ralph's drinking started early on, watching his father consuming alcohol and being angry, and thinking he ought to follow suit.

Pete is an alcoholic who had his first drink at age 13. Despite being a child of alcoholics in recovery, who grew up surrounded by the precepts of the "the program" he still became one himself. His drinking was relentless, to the point he viewed it as a spiritual experience. He couldn't identify with other kids in school, and was increasingly alone and self-conscious. On an overseas trip with older students, he got drunk in order to please everyone with him. He would find himself kicked out of school and unwilling to stop drinking.

Growing up in South America, Anna was often offered tastes of alcohol at family gatherings when she was a small child, but even then she knew she wanted to drink. At age 13, she was able to buy a bottle of something and she drank to the point she was drunk, much to her friends' amusement. Her father, an admitted alcoholic, noticed the same in his young daughter. Anna spent her high school years fighting with her parents, who tried their best to stop her from drinking.

Jennifer didn't begin drinking until 18 years of age. She comes from a family drinkers, and while she never drank, she now knows she was a "dry drunk" – an alcoholic who wasn't drinking, even though she had never tasted alcohol. Her high school years were spent in depressive hazes and so therapists, which sent her brain into a tizzy, medicated her. Her first drinking experiences, however, came while Jennifer was in college.

Josh ended his drinking at age 15. But his first drink was at age 8 or 9, when he and other kids discovered a stash of alcohol in their church basement. He loved it from the very first taste. He was able to acquire alcohol, despite being so young, and because of his drinking, his life began to disappear. Josh couldn't be sober for piano lessons or little league. Heading into middle school, he was known as the kid who was constantly intoxicated. His parents, while aware, were powerless.

Irene is a "double winner" – part of a special group of people who are members of the fellowship of both Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. Both her parents and her brothers were daily drinkers. Her father, a police officer, was a believer in corporal punishment with her brothers. But eventually Irene's parents would divorce – her mother would take her to live with herself and the man with whom she was having an affair. And the drinking would continue. Irene herself began drinking at fifteen. She would eventually lose her oldest brother to alcoholism, and her parents would not admit the alcohol was a factor. When she and her surviving brother decided to get sober, her parents could not understand why they stopped drinking.

Barry McCaffrey served in the United States Army for 32 years. When he retired in 1996, he was the most decorated General serving in the United States Army, having been awarded 3 Purple Heart Medals for wounds received in combat, 2 Distinguished Service Crosses (the nation's second highest award for valor), and 2 Silver Stars for valor. He served overseas for more than 12 years —and 4 combat tours with the 82nd Airborne Division, the Vietnamese Airborne Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, and the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division.

Nobody drank in Dylan's immediate family, though alcoholism had wreaked havoc in prior generations of the family. And while nobody drank, Dylan's mother was in recovery for substance abuse. Though Dylan could swear she never actually abused drugs. His father, however, was emotionally inaccessible. All of this leads Dylan to believe his parents were so damaged by other relatives' addictions they never learned, or couldn't grasp, how to act any differently than people who were addicts.

Ananda entered recovery via Al-Anon after wanting to end her own life. Growing up in a home with alcoholic and drug-addicted parents, Ananda believes her "hippies" parents intended to love her but really couldn't deliver on that parental promise. They often left her alone in her crib as they smoked marijuana with their friends in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Fransisco. Both of Ananda's parents would later become cocaine users and eventually dealers, using an eight-year-old Ananda to traffic the drugs. Following her parents' divorce, Ananda's mother married a man who would sexually abuse her, and her mother would often be too high to care.