Holy Heck! A couple of weeks ago I went on a spiritual retreat to continue to change and grow so that I never have to use alcohol or drugs again. It was over in Casa Grand. Casa Grande is just far enough away for you to feel like you are out of town without it being a long drive. It was an awesome trip. I met a bunch of other guys like me and I learned a lot. The really crazy part happened when I got home.
So I get home from this awesome men’s spiritual retreat and I start doing chores. I ran the dishwasher before I left so when I got home I had to empty the dishes. I was putting them away when I heard on the news that there was a triple stabbing in Scottsdale. I then hear them mention my old drinking buddies name. Now I’m thinking it cant be. No way. But then they show his stepdads house on the news. What they said was that my old friend went over to his stepdads house and murdered him with a hunting knife, then he went over to his grandparents house several hours later. Once he got there he tried to murder them in their sleep. Somehow they fought him off (I have no idea how because they are 85 years old and he is about 6 ‘4’ and about 240 pounds) and he ran outside into the alley. When police got there they found him in the alley trying to slit his wrists with whatever he could find in the dumpster. Holy Heck!
This friend was the only person who would still drink with me in Tucson. I had no other friends left. Two days after I decided to quit drinking he drove me to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting so that I could pick up a copy of their “big book”. Unfortunately for him he started doing Meth about 6 months later. Think about it, he was the last person I really had any contact with at that point in my life. Had I not gotten sober when I did, chances are I would have started to use Meth with him. Holy Heck! I believe that is what happened that night, that he was in a Meth delusion. When you use Meth you stay up for days at a time and you lose touch with reality. You start having paranoid delusions like aliens are trying to get you and stuff.
Now, why was I the one at a spiritual retreat that weekend while he was murdering his family? What I mean is, why was I the lucky one to get sober when I did and he was the one who started doing Meth? It could very easily of been the other way around. Holy Heck! The answer is I don’t know why I was the lucky one. But I do know that it will be a long while before I take it for granted again.