My name is Charlie, and I'm an addict and alcoholic.  There are only a select few places I introduce myself with the aforementioned descriptor.  Often we meet in old buildings that are adorned with the triangle symbol of the oldest and most successful recovery program the world has ever seen.  We meet in church basements, and converted bingo halls.  What transpires in these rooms has transformed the lives of millions upon millions of people who suffer from a grave and indeed terminal disease if left undiagnosed and untreated.  In it's most basic form, one recovering alcoholic is able to share their own experience, strength, and hope with other others so they too might recover from a fatal and progressive disease of the body, mind, and spirit.  That's right, I said disease.  The disease of addiction is a real thing, and no longer up for debate.  Despite the overwhelming public opinion that addiction and alcoholism is the plight of the weak willed and undisciplined, science and research has proven otherwise.  

The majority of us addicts and alcoholics suffer mightily; and in silence.  My personal journey to surrender to my addiction and alcoholism is one marked with tremendous emotional pain and turmoil.   It has taken most everything I hold dear to me at one point or another in my life.  A life before my surrender that was littered with failed attempts to drink and use recreationally.  The problem is, I can't use recreationally.  My disease does not allow me to predict how much I will drink, once I start.  The road to my current state of recovery nearly killed me the first time I drank, and I was just getting started.  I was 14 years old, 3 years removed from the most traumatic loss of life to date.  At age 11, my mother died of another ruthless disease - cancer.  That was the day I lost everything dear to me.  I lost my mother which left me despondent and in a state of perverse grief and depression.  I also lost my father and two brothers to the same grief and trauma.  Yet the the thing I lost that haunts me to this very moment is not the loss of other people.  I lost myself, before I even knew who I was. I was a lost and broken little boy who desperately wanted to feel whole and good again.  Filled with rage At age 14 I was introduced to the one thing that fixed everything.  It made me feel like I thought I should feel, and then it gave me the power to not feel when it all became too much.

Yes, chemicals did for me what I could not do for myself.  I battled my disease with every ounce of willpower and might I had, and I lost.  I lost to a disease that many think is a weakness, a moral failing of sorts.  I was first diagnosed when I was 15 years old and by the grace of the God of my understanding I finally surrendered at the age of 36.  21 years of a knock down drag out fight that nearly killed me before I even began fighting.  You see, the very first time I drank, I nearly died of alcohol poisoning - and you want to know the first thing I thought of the next day?  How on earth was I going to be able to FEEL like that again?!  Drugs and alcohol were my eject button that I used for 21 years to deal with and cope with my disease - and in the process these very same life-altering substances systematically ejected nearly everything I cared about.  

I am beyond grateful for the God of my understanding doing for me what I could not do for myself - giving me the gift of desperation which allowed my to finally accept my disease and begin to recover one day at a time.  Now, 581 days in recovery I am on a mission to share the stories of lives transformed through utter despair and defeat into incredibly powerful living messengers of hope.  That is the essence of my podcast to share as many stories of those whom have not only escaped this insidious disease, but embraced their recovery journey with a vigor that spreads hope to those who still suffer.