Should We have Died? The House Fire Sobriety Extinguished

Have you ever cheated the alcoholic death you deserved? I have. I can tell you fuzzy, intoxicated stories about at least a dozen times when I should have died. So when I talk about my sobriety saving my life, I am talking about two things. I am talking about a return to health and the reversal of the long, slow, gradual slide toward my alcoholic demise. But I’m also talking about the fact that I no longer cheat certain alcohol-induced death.

That second one — the acute, not the chronic — that’s the kind of alcoholic disaster that we don’t think or talk enough about. That’s the kind of death that our friend, Cheryl Kuechler, stared in the face a couple of weeks ago. That’s the kind of sudden, tragic, immediate, heartbreaking death that Cheryl’s sobriety saved her from.

I hope you’ll stick with me. I’ll get to Cheryl’s story in a minute. First, I want to talk about you and me.

When I was in high school, I passed out in the woods behind our house. I came home from a party extremely drunk, and was waiting for my father to go to bed before I planned to slink into the house. I didn’t drive that night. That’s not the tragedy I avoided. I passed out in a driving, 35 degree rainstorm in a pile of leaves. I “slept” there for hours. When I awoke, I was so cold I was barely functioning. I dragged my lifeless…