Hello everybody, I hope you all are doing well and all your teams won during March Madness.

I was asked to do a story about dealing with recovery from alcoholism and addiction. So first of all, let me just say how grateful I am to be alive today and to have some walking-around sense (depending on who you ask). Believe it or not, I am a sinner.

Let’s start from the beginning. I was born nearly 60 years ago to loving parents. We were in the upper middle class. I am a middle child of four children. I have two brothers and one sister. I grew up in a loving home with grandparents living next door. I went to school at the first United Methodist Church right off the Square, then on to Campus School, Central Middle School and then Middle Tennessee Christian School, Riverdale High School, summer school at Holloway High School and, finally, MTSU. I should be a doctor with all the schooling I’ve had.

From about age 15 to 25 I was under the influence of something. My drug of choice was alcohol. I don’t know why I drank, other than I liked the effects produced by alcohol. After taking a drink of alcohol, suddenly I was more attractive, 10 feet tall and bulletproof.

As a kid growing up, when asked in class to explain what I wanted to be later in life, I assure you it was not an alcoholic.

My goal as a child was to be the governor of Tennessee; however, later in my adolescence I would end up being a trustee at the jail that my grandfather had built when he was sheriff of Rutherford County. Isn’t that something? I’ve got story after story that would qualify me being an alcohol addict. The problem was, once I began to drink I truly lost the ability to stop.

Thank God the American Medical Association qualified alcoholism as a legitimate disease in 1950.

Alcoholism and addiction are mental illnesses, which carry the stigma of being crazy. It’s not like having cancer, where the patient often gets a lot of understanding and compassion. At times I felt I was alone, and I just didn’t understand the consequences that went along with that drinking.

Old Murfreesboro Hospital; Young Bill Wilson; and General Electric Plant,
photos courtesy of Bill Wilson

It was early autumn in 1991, and I had been working at General Electric here in Murfreesboro. Prior to this I had been in a treatment center and in and out of the local jail. On Sept. 21, 1991, I woke up at my parents’ house deathly sick. I was vomiting profusely, until finally there came blood and bile. I saw a white light come over the room. I call this my spiritual experience. A voice from above, which I believe was God, said, “Bill, you have to stop. You have to quit now.”

I’d always been a believer, but I’d never had a white-light experience like that prior to that morning. I reached into the pockets of my blue jeans and pulled out two pink tickets. I had gotten pulled over at the old Bill’s Carpet Mart between Murfreesboro and Smyrna on Broad Street while coming back from Smyrna. One of the tickets said I had an open beer container. The other said I was going 60 in a 45. I was in a blackout and didn’t even remember that. How did I get home? That Carrie Underwood song “Jesus Take the Wheel” must have applied to this situation.

I have not had a drink since that day. Today, at age 59, I am 6 feet and 4 inches tall and weigh 208 pounds; that day in 1991 I had gotten down to 122 pounds. Wow, I really was on death’s doorstep. The Lord saw fit to keep me around. Like I said, since that day, I’ve not had a drink. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had other issues, but I’m able to treat my disease by abstaining, hanging out with folks like me trying to follow the steps in my recovery, and following my doctors’ instructions. I should not be alive today for many other reasons—I broke my back in a car accident, I’ve had bullets fly by me in a barroom fight, I would wake up with my face stuck to the pillowcase from dried blood. But today is a much better day and I have a much better outlook on life.

I have a host of friends who have suffered and recovered from the disease of alcoholism. We are all children of God, and, Lord willing, this Sept. 21 it will be 34 years since that dreadful day. As the book of James says, I have persevered through all the trials and tribulations, and I am so grateful to the Lord, and to my family and to my friends.

Life is so much better today. I am a father, and hopefully a better son, brother, boyfriend, partner and friend. I had to hit bottom before I reached out for help. The first treatment center I went through was called New Beginnings in Lebanon, Tennessee. The final one was chemical dependency services at the old hospital here in Murfreesboro. [pictured below, photo by Bealer Smotherman]

I was in the cycle of addiction for 10 years, but after that day in 1991 I finally got rid of the compulsion to drink. It was quite the journey, but today I am a free man, able to walk around, work, play and contribute to life.

I’d like to dedicate this to a dear friend of mine we lost in the first week of March: Larry Cothron. He was such a good man who helped thousands of people just like me. Rest in peace, Larry.

Now, everybody go out and do something nice for somebody. God bless you all.