This book is the story of my 41- year (and still counting) journey in

sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. It focuses primarily on my early

years that began with meeting a very handsome, smart, accomplished

man, I'll call him Hal, at dinner one night with a mutual friend. I'd

bridled at the notion of going to dinner with "an alcoholic." There

was only one alcoholic I had ever personally known, a man who was

a mean, angry drunk who'd call on the phone late at night when I was

a child, drunk and yelling about talking to my father, snarling: "you

better get your damn father to pick up this goddam phone, if you

know what's good for you, girly." To me, back then, he was what an

alcoholic was-a "drunk" as my dad called him. So you can imagine

that the thought of going to dinner with a guy like that was astonishing

to me.