My struggles really started...
When I was just a kid...
Running the streets and getting in trouble...
For everything I did...

I wanted people to like me...
To have friends and be really cool...
But I always felt like a outsider...
Alone, every day after school...

Drinking made me feel popular...
Or more hip when I was a boozer...
But when I wasn’t drinking...
I felt like such a loser...

I dreamed of finding happiness...
Fancy cars, girls and wealth...
But the bottle became my way of hiding the pain...
From everyone, including myself...

The more I drank myself...
Into that sad and lonely place...
The more depressed I became...
Longing for something or someone to embrace...

I arrived at a point where I felt...
Nothing but loneliness and pain...
No one wanted anything to do with me...
They treated me with such disdain...

No longer lived a life of happiness...
After losing my family and pride...
Finally looked at myself in the mirror...
Became so empty deep inside...

Realizing I hit my bottom...
Feeling my life was out of control...
The thought of death approached me...
Hopelessness took over my soul...

I found a book about sobriety...
For building a new life with a proven plan...
Written by a guy name Bill W...
Offering a chance to be a better man...

Feeling like I had lost everything...
My world had turned so grim...
I decided to turn over my life...
To the care of God, as I understood Him...

Trying to avoid the happy hour...
Realizing I needed a new me...
Started praying to my Higher Power...
Began the search for my serenity...

Finally some deep soul searching...
A moral inventory of myself...
Finding hundreds of resentments...
Sitting on my emotional shelf...

Admitted to God and my new sponsor...
The exact nature of my wrongs...
Threw out all the old wine glasses...
Stopped singing my old sad songs...

Begged God to remove all my defects...
To place my shortcomings far, far away...
Asked Him for His forgiveness...
To remove my addiction each and every new day...

Made a list of all I had caused harm...
Became willing to make amends to them all...
Followed this 12-step program...
To avoid taking another drunken fall...

Continued to take my personal inventory...
Promptly admitted when I was at fault...
Took responsibility for my own actions...
Put my bad attitude away in a vault...

Now that I have had a spiritual awakening...
The result of this 12-step plan...
Carry this message to other alcoholics...
Try to be a better man...

Understanding my addiction is forever...
Accepting it as a fact of life...
My children have given me a second chance...
My attitude is no longer strife ...

When you’re tired of Hotel California...
You think that you can never leave...
The way out is through these 12-steps...
In your Higher Power you must believe...

One day at a time...
Two weeks without the glooms...
Ninety days and you’ll be fine...
If you can only make it back to the rooms...

© 2020 Jeffrey Pipes Guice