Ascension with Baron Blaze vs Blyss Lockhart & Gordon Fury - RP #2

Molly Reid: “Hey Bill, I guess I made it to the right spot then”

Bill Stevens: “You did indeed. Thanks for coming Molly, it means a lot”

Molly Reid: “Yeah don’t mention it. I had nothing better to do tonight anyways”

Bill Stevens: “Oh I’m almost certain that isn’t true”

Molly Reid: “So how long has everyone here been sober?”

Bill Stevens: “Oh it’s different for everyone. Some people have been sober for over thirty years. Some only a year. Some people here aren’t even sober at all”

Molly Reid: “Explain?”

Bill Stevens: “Well we’re a bit different than most of the other AA groups. We don’t necessarily focus on getting rid of drinking immediately and permanently. Instead we just meet once a week and talk about what’s going on in our lives. Some people come here to fix their alcoholism. Some people just come here to control it. They find that talking about it and getting our support helps them cut down. They still drink, but it doesn’t ruin their lives anymore”

Molly Reid: “That’s cool. I’ve never heard of anyone else who does that”

Bill Stevens: “Me neither. As far as I know, we’re the only place that does it”

Molly Reid: “Why do you guys do it?”

Bill Stevens: “It was something that Anna thought up”

Molly Reid: “Who’s Anna?”

Bill Stevens: “Anna Baxter. She runs the meetings. That’s her right there”

Anna Baxter: “Ok everyone, as you know, today is a very special day. Today is Bill’s fifteenth anniversary sober. Before we let Bill talk, I’d like us to all give him a big round of applause. Going a week without alcohol is hard enough, fifteen years is something to be very proud of”

Bill Stevens: “Hi everyone. I tried planning this speech, but I really got nowhere with that. So I figured I’d start from the beginning. Hi. My name is Bill, and I’m an alcoholic”

Bill Stevens: “Fifteen years ago was when I first came to one of these meetings. I was twenty eight years old. I was scared, I was alone, I didn’t know what to do. See I grew up in an alcoholic family. My daddy was a big drinker. And I don’t mean that he just liked to drink the occasional drink here and there. I mean he would drink until he was passed out every single night. And he wasn’t a nice drunk, oh no. Far from it. I saw the problems drinking could cause first hand, but somehow it still appealed to me. I don’t know why, but it did. My dad was violent. Every time he drank it always ended the same way. But that didn’t stop me from learning about it myself. I think I really started drinking heavily in high school, when I was about sixteen years old. It was real easy to steal from my dad. He always kept so much booze, and he was always too drunk to know how much of it he had actually drunk. So I would try all these different types, and I liked them all. They tasted like shit, but the feeling I got after drinking them, it was the best.”

Bill Stevens: “It became a habit for me. No, more than a habit. An addiction. I was drinking all the time. Skipped school to get drunk. Show up at work drunk. Sneak out at nights and get drunk. It was controlling my life. At the time, I had a lot of friends who liked to drink too, so there really wasn’t a problem with it. None of them drank nearly as much as I did, but when you’re that young, you don’t notice these things. You only notice the good times, none of the bad times.”

Bill Stevens: “But eventually, I got tired of my friends. I would always want to drink more, and none of them ever did. So I’d get mad and move on to new friends. Looking back I have no idea why I got so mad. I guess deep down I was more mad at myself for letting it get this bad. I didn’t realize it at the time obviously, but now I do. But I let it control me, control my life. Nothing I did that wasn’t drinking ever felt like enough to me. I just had to keep doing it and keep doing. Eventually it got to the point where I knew that if I kept doing it, that I was going to die”

Bill Stevens: “But I didn’t stop. I just kept doing it. Maybe I thought I was superman, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I would still go out to bars, I would still get drunk off my mind all alone. And then I’d wake up and go out and do the exact same thing the next day. Rinse and repeat. My life never changed, it just went progressively downhill. I dropped out of college. My girlfriend left me. My family stopped talking to me. But none of that mattered. As long as I could still go out and get drunk, that was all I needed in my life. I just hid all of my depression with drinking”

Bill Stevens: “One day, when I was twenty seven, I woke up in some hotel with three hookers, had no memory of the last four days, and had absolutely no money or identification or anything. I realized then and there that I needed to change something. But I still didn’t have the desire to really change. I went out and joined AA, and went to meetings every week. But my heart was never in them. I would go and sit and listen to everyone tell their stories. I would laugh to myself at all these people’s sad pathetic lives, and then go out and drink in my own sad pathetic life. I’d go back to the meeting and lie about how I was sober all week. Now I know that everyone could see through my bullshit. But nobody called me on it, because they knew that this was something that I needed to figure out on my own. Looking back I owe this all to them, because without them, I never would have come to the realization that I did”

Bill Stevens: “About a year later, I finally decided to call up my dad. He had left my mom years before, and I hadn’t talked to him in even longer. But sure enough, he was happy to hear from me. We met up at a bar, and I told him that I was trying to do the program. He laughed at me, called me pathetic, and told me to be a man and drink with his old man. So, being the idiot that I was, I agreed. We drank until last call, and I mean we drank. Shot after shot, drink after drink. My old man and I, we got about as drunk as I had ever been before. And so when he told me that he would drive me home, of course I agreed.”

Bill Stevens: “So I got in the car with him. Many people would say that I made the biggest mistake of my life by getting into the car. But getting in that car saved my life, albeit at the expense of another. Something I will never truly get over, but something that I know happened for a reason. My dad drove off an off ramp going eighty five miles per hour and hit a hydro pole, not to mention a young girl walking home. My dad died instantly. The young girl broke her leg, but lived. I still talk to her to this day, and she has since forgiven me for what happened. I can never change what happened, but I can try to change myself. That was all she wanted. And my dad showed me that. The doctors said that he was so drunk that he wouldn’t have even felt a single bit of pain. That was how he lived his life. Pain free. Numbed by alcohol. That was how I was living my life. When I finally awoke from my drunken stupor, as a traumatic shock accident will do to you, and I looked over and saw my bloody and mangled dad beside me, I saw myself. I knew that if I kept this up, that I would be the one in the driver’s seat next time.”

Bill Stevens: “That was when I realized that I had a problem. For the first time, I could admit that I was a problem drinker. My eyes were finally opened. So after I was released from the hospital for my injuries, I immediately went back to Alcoholics Anonymous and vowed that I was going to change. I told everyone there my story. Everyone was supportive. I finally felt loved, like I actually had people in my life that cared about me. AA was my family.”

Bill Stevens: “And so here I am now, fifteen years later. I visit my dad’s grave once a year. I bring a bottle of whiskey, and I leave it there for him. I don’t hate my dad for what he did, or didn’t do. My dad was the reason I got sober. My dad is the reason that I’m now happily married with two kids and a job that I love. I can never thank him enough for teaching me the things he did.”

Bill Stevens: “Thank you all for being here for me. You have no idea how much it means to see all of you here, my friends, my family. Without any of you, I wouldn’t still be here today. So thank you. All of you”

Anna Baxter: “That was beautiful Bill. Everyone, we’re going to take an early break to congratulate Bill and talk a bit amongst ourselves”

Bill Stevens: “Molly, where are you going?”

Molly Reid: “That’s why you brought me here isn’t it? You wanted me to listen to your speech and realize that I was an alcoholic and that I needed to change. You’re no different from all the rest of the people trying to tell me how to live my life!”

Bill Stevens: “Molly, honestly, I just wanted you to come and be with me. This is a very special day for me and I thought you being there would make it even more special”

Molly Reid: “You don’t tell me any of this stuff in the two years I’ve known you and been training with you. I didn’t even know you had a wife for god’s sake. And then you bring me here just to drop all that on me?! The day after you get that video of me drinking and call me on it? Fuck that, you’re just using this to get me to change”

Bill Stevens: “Molly, I’m serious, I just wanted you to hear my story and know where I came from”

Molly Reid: “Yeah, and what did you think would happen after I heard it? That I would just feel fine going out and drinking again knowing what happened to you? Fuck you Bill, that’s not fair to me. I’m out, congratulations on your fifteen years.”