15 Years Later

For the past 15 years I have been a drinker, and it has cost me most of the relationships in my life. The people around me have been scared both of me and for me. When I drink, I often lose control, and no matter how many times I’ve tried to moderate, when I’m in, I’m in.

I realize that if I keep drinking for the next 15 years, I won’t live another 15 years. Like my father before me, and my grandfather before him, I will have a heart attack in my 40s, and likely will not survive it due to the organ damage caused by years and years of additional drinking.

I’ve had many realizations in my life, but this one came to me clear as a bell. I have to stop, and I have to stop now.

Drinking has cost me, in total, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve been arrested and gone to jail, been hospitalized, wrecked multiple nice vehicles, gotten into physical fights, and said horrible words that I can’t take back to the people that I love.

In the 12 Steps program, you must, Step 5, admit the exact nature of your wrongs to God, yourself, and to another human being after a searching and fearless moral inventory (Step 4).

I’m ready to make amends.

One day at a time.

—Wyatt Torosian, September 26, 2023

last day of drinking: Saturday, September 23, 2023