by Carmelo Piparato

Created on: July 07, 2008

Over the past couple of months I've been able to look back at my early childhood, even before I picked up my first drink or drug.
I think back to when I was like five and can vividly remember hiding on the back porch behind my old mans reclining chair playing with matches. I was lighting them and throwing them into a hole in the back of the chair. I knew what I was doing was wrong but I chose to do it anyway. I really knew that something bad was going to happing but kept right on throwing those matches into that damn hole.

Wellthe chair caught fire and I ran out of the house into the back yard and up into the tree fort my sister Mona and I had built. It was just a piece of old plywood with a couple of boards on the sides.

I hid up there scared and frightened. Not for my mom or my older sisters in the house but scared and frightened that my mom would figure out what I had done, tell my dad and I would have to face the belt when he got home.

Half the house burnt to the ground. I was never questioned. No one knew what happened or how the fire started.

Thinking back I'm glad none of my sisters or my mom died but at the time I was just glad I didn't have to face the belt.

When I was ten my mom and dad bought a bar.
I was miserable. I missed my friends and did not like my new bedroom (above the juke box in the apartment above the bar) there was no one to play with and my mom and dad were very different.

Before I turned eleven years old I hade found the liquor closet in the basement. Almost died of alcohol poisoning and had my first black out.

For the next 22 years alcohol and drugs were my answer to all the problems that I ever came across. I was able to change my perception of reality when ever I needed to. It was the answer to any thing that went wrong, anything that went right and everything in between.

In 1991 my wife of fourteen years filed for divorce after I lost my job. I was asked to leave and I eventually did.

I remember thinking to myself, I've got a problem. I thoughtmaybe I've been drugging and drinking too much. I need to fix this.

I put myself into a rehabilitation program for drug and alcohol abuse. It was my first introduction to AA.

In retrospect the next 16 years was spent like similar to how a mad dog chasses his tail. Thinking I just had a problem with alcohol and drugs, looking back was my real problem.

I knew I could not continue using but I could not stop using. Wait... I could stopfor a whileeighteen months, nothing. Two years on the pot only method. But

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