I'll Drink To That
You can always find a great reason to get loaded. In my case, I drank when I was happy. I drank when I was sad. I drank when I was angry. I drank when I mourned. I drank to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, business triumphs and holidays. In fact, you name an emotion or an occasion and I could find a reason to start drinking: and once I started, I didn’t stop until the bottle was empty or the nightclub closed.
I didn’t wake up in the morning craving a drink and I never drank during the day. No three martini lunches for me. No bottles stashed in the office. I could go for days without touching alcohol with no problems or withdrawal pangs. But once I sipped that first drink, it was: “PARTY TIME!” and there was no stopping. See, the thing is…in the beginning, I enjoyed drinking. I was a happy drunk. The way I saw it, if drinking didn’t make you feel better, what was the point. I remember over the years, seeing bunches of belligerent drunks: guys who would down a couple of drinks and turn really mean and nasty and try to pick fights with total strangers. Or the melancholy drunks who spent the nights drinking and crying about their lost loves, jobs or unhappy lives. Again, what’s the point? Why spend all that time and money to make yourself feel mean and miserable? It never occurred to me to ask myself why it took alcohol to get that “happy” feeling.
And then, the buzz started to fade. I became aware that it was taking more and more alcohol to reach that “happy” feeling and to prolong it. I had never suffered from hangovers before; now I did and they were brutal. I was no longer the guy who drove everyone else home; I was the guy being driven home because I was too drunk to drive. Reality was starting to penetrate; booze was really impacting my work and family in a bad way. More importantly, it slowly began to dawn on me that happiness from a bottle wasn’t happiness at all; it was a really dumb way to fill a hole in my soul that I didn’t know existed…until one cold dark night when Peggy Lee asked, “is that all there is?”
Fast Forward! Somebody kisses my inner frog…but instead of turning me into a Prince, a Prince turns me into a Believer. The Prince of Peace. Wow. I understood then what that name, Prince of Peace, meant. Suddenly the hole in my soul was filled with peace and real happiness. For years I had been trying to fill that hole with stuff: money, parties, success…and booze. And now it’s full to overflowing…with Jesus.
I dove headfirst into Jesus, trying to sop up everything I could find. The Bible, Christian books, Christian Radio teaching and preaching, and Christian Television (although I gotta admit, some of the big hair, heavy makeup and pleas for donations were a little off-putting for a new guy.) I became obsessed with Christ and I couldn’t get enough…and I was deliriously happy.
Then, an amazing fact hit me like a thunderbolt: I hadn’t had a drink in over a month! Or even thought about having one. It was like booze had just disappeared from my mind. I hadn’t asked God to deliver me or to take away the urges. He just did. It was gone. I didn’t have to go to meetings or see a counselor. It was just gone from my life. Don’t misunderstand: AA is a great program that has worked for millions and rehab centers have worked for others. That I was delivered without needing those things doesn’t mean that I had more faith than anyone else; it just means that for whatever the reason, that’s how God chose to do it. I haven’t had a problem since. Almost sounds like one of those frog kissing things, doesn’t it?
I’ll drink to that…with a big RC (Moon Pie optional)
Epilogue
A member of Alcoholics Anonymous once sent columnist Ann Landers the following:
We drank for happiness and became unhappy.
We drank for joy and became miserable.
We drank for sociability and became argumentative.
We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious.
We drank for friendship and made enemies.
We drank for sleep and awakened without rest.
We drank for strength and felt weak.
We drank "medicinally" and acquired health problems.
We drank for relaxation and got the shakes.
We drank for bravery and became afraid.
We drank for confidence and became doubtful.
We drank to make conversation easier and slurred our speech.
We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell.
We drank to forget and were forever haunted.
We drank for freedom and became slaves.
We drank to erase problems and saw them multiply.
We drank to cope with life and invited death.
Forward…Mail!!
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Thought for the Day
People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.
Turn the radio on
Listen to God & Ed’s Excellent Adventure on the Radio. Monday through Friday at 4pm on “The Word,” 98.5/99.3 FM. Or listen on-line at KLGO.net. It’s the place for Christians of all varieties to hang out and be loved, entertained and uplifted.
Semi-interesting fact
More than ten people a year are killed by vending machines.
Joke du Jour
There were two men shipwrecked on this island. The minute they got on to the island one of them started screaming and yelling, "We're going to die! We're going to die! There's no food! No water! We're going to die!"
The second man was propped up against a palm tree and acting so calmly that it drove the first man crazy. "Don't you understand?!? We're going to die!!"
The second man replied, "You don't understand. I make $100,000 a week."
The first man looked at him quite dumbfounded and asked, "What difference does that make?!? We're on an island with no food and no water! We're going to DIE!!!"
The second man answered, "You just don't get it. I make $100,000 a week and I tithe ten percent on that $100,000 per week. Trust me.....my pastor will find me!"
Cool Music
We’ve added more cool songs you’ve never heard on radio. Check the player on the upper right, click and brighten your day.
Questions I ask myself:
If you learn from your mistakes, then why shouldn’t you make more mistakes?
Really?? Actual News Stories
Man serenades blind elephants Elephants never forget, according to the saying – and these ones will always remember when Briton Paul Barton serenaded them with Beethoven.
Mr Barton, 50, dragged his piano up a mountain in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, to help raise money for blind elephants. He said: 'It was a 50th birthday present to myself. My wife and I have been working with blind elephants for many years, and I thought it might be something they would enjoy to listen to. 'I sat down and thought, what do you play to an elephant? 'You only get a short time, so I started trawling through my books and then Slow Movement 2 from Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata just stuck. 'I had to drag the piano up a mountain - I have a really bad back, but I wanted to make the effort so I could feel like I had undergone a personal challenge.' Yorkshire-born Paul now hopes to put on a concert with the elephants to raise funds for an electric fence for the sanctuary where they live.Here's a first: A passenger charged with drunk driving. Wait, what? Yes, this woman was sitting in the passenger seat after celebrating her birthday, and she was, they say, "really drunk." She was SO drunk that she reached over and yanked the steering wheel, causing the car to crash into the center median. The driver was below the limit, and so they determined that the passenger was the culprit. That's how it happened.
Dead: Judy Lewis, at 76. Who? Actually, she had trouble with that question herself. See, she was the daughter of Clark Gable and Loretta Young, the product of an on-set affair while Gable was married to another woman and Young was a 22 year old starlet. And because of that, and since it was 1935, the birth was hushed up, the girl bundled off to an orphanage, then "adopted" by Young as a baby and not told the truth until she was an adult. Young did not admit the situation until her book, published after her death. Imagine growing up to find out that your "adoptive" mom was your real mom who wouldn't admit it, and your dad was a famous guy who was never in your life?
Most Popular Baby Names Of 2011 Sophia repeated as the most popular name for baby girls in 2011, one year after knocking Isabella out of the top spot, according to the latest rankings released by babycenter.com. Aiden, meanwhile, ruled the boys' list for the seventh year in a row. Others making up the Top 8 for girls include: Emma, Isabella, Olivia, Ava, Lily, Chloe and Madison. The other Top 8 choices for boys this year are: Jackson, Mason, Liam, Jacob, Jayden, Ethan and Noah. According to the babycenter.com survey, cellphones and social media are playing a larger role in baby names. Forty-seven percent of moms surveyed used their cellphone to decide on a name, up 40 percent from last year. Half of moms revealed their child’s name to friends and family using their mobile phone, and two in five moms shared their baby’s name on a social networking site within minutes or hours of giving birth, according to the survey.
Are you kidding me???
The Bible was the first book ever printed in 1456.
Groaner
Did you hear about the shoe factory that burnt down? Two hundred soles were lost.
Point to Ponder
NO DIFFERENCE
Small as a peanut, Big as a giant,
We're all the same size When we turn off the light.
Rich as a sultan,
Poor as a mite,
We're all worth the same
When we turn off the light.
Red, black or orange,
Yellow or white,
We all look the same
When we turn off the light.
So maybe the way
To make everything right
Is for God to just reach out And turn off the light!
-Shel Silverstein
Remember, Christianity is more about walking than about talking
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1 Comment:
Thanks Ed. I've been enjoying reading your posts. It sounds like you left an interesting
trail. I can understand some of your trials. I
listen to the show on KLGO when I can. The
good folks there and I have had a fun
relationship over the years considering that
I'm an atheist. I love everyone there.
Needless to say, I have an interesting
story, too
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