One Day at a Time

I still remember the morning of August 3rd, 2021. Not because it was remarkable to anyone else, but because it was the first morning in fifteen years that I woke up without my hands shaking. The first morning I didn't reach for the bottle hidden behind the toilet tank. The first morning I looked in the mirror and recognized the man staring back at me.

My name is Nathan Zamperini. I am fifty-seven years old, a retired postal worker from Dayton, Ohio, and today I celebrate five years of continuous sobriety. If you had told me back in 2019 that I would ever write those words, I would have laughed in your face. Or more likely, I would have been too drunk to care.

"The only way out is through. And brother, I went through hell to get here."

My drinking didn't start as a problem. Like most folks in the rooms will tell you, it started as a solution. After my wife Linda passed from breast cancer in 2012, the loneliness was unbearable. A few beers after work turned into a twelve-pack. The twelve-pack turned into bourbon. By 2018 I was drinking a fifth of Jim Beam every single day and hiding bottles in the garage, the basement, even the glove compartment of my truck.

The Bottom

The bottom came on a Tuesday. I had called in sick to work -- again -- and was drinking on the porch by 9 AM. My daughter Jessica showed up unannounced with my grandson, little Marcus. I was so far gone I didn't even recognize the look of fear in that child's eyes. Jessica didn't yell. She just looked at me, tears streaming down her face, and said: "Dad, Marcus asked me if you're going to die like Mom did."

That was the moment. Not the DUI I got in 2017. Not the time I fell down the stairs and broke my collarbone. Not even losing my job at the post office. It was the look on my grandson's face. A six-year-old boy shouldn't have to wonder if his grandpa is going to die.

My First Meeting

I walked into the basement of St. Anthony's Catholic Church on a humid August evening, shaking so bad I could barely sign the attendance sheet. A woman named Dorothy -- she must have been eighty years old -- took one look at me and said, "Honey, you sit right here next to me." She didn't ask why I was there. She didn't judge the sweat pouring off me or the way my knee bounced like a jackhammer. She just handed me a cup of bad coffee and said, "You're home now."

That first year was the hardest thing I have ever done. The physical withdrawal was brutal -- night sweats, hallucinations, the whole nightmare. But worse was the emotional avalanche. All the feelings I had drowned for years came rushing back like a dam breaking. I cried in my car after almost every meeting. I called my sponsor Tom at 2 AM more times than I can count. He always answered.

The Promises Came True

They say the promises come true if you work for them. I didn't believe that for the longest time. But slowly, imperceptibly, things started to change. By year two, I could sleep through the night without waking up in a panic. By year three, Jessica started letting me take Marcus to the park alone. By year four, I got a part-time job at the hardware store downtown -- the first steady work I'd had in years.

And now, five years in, I have something I never thought possible: peace. Not happiness every moment -- life still throws its punches. But peace. The kind of peace that lets you sit on your porch at sunset with a cup of coffee and just... be. Without needing anything else.

"We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." -- Bill W.

If you're reading this and you're still struggling, please hear me: there is hope. I was a broken man. I lost everything that mattered to me. And today, by the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have it all back. Not the same as before -- better. Because now I know what I have. Now I fight for it every single day.

Keep coming back. It works if you work it.

-- Nathan Zamperini
Dayton, Ohio | 5 Years Sober