A man, late in life, discovers that his fifty plus years of 'social drinking' was really an alcoholic addiction. He often wondered why his children didn't let him take the grandchildren anywhere and was never asked to babysit them. Yeah, sure he got drunk. Hey, wasn't everyone entitled to do that once and a while? He never smashed up a car (well, a few dents and scrapes don't really count). Surely, he wasn't an alcoholic. He always had a job, always paid his bills, and always had a house for his family. One thing he did very little of: holding them and telling them he loved them ... though he did. After his second wife died of cancer related heart failure, he crawled into a bottle of one-hundred proof whiskey and didn't come out for six years. Trips to the ER and IOP programs didn't work. As his last gasp, he walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) - and the journey began. This book is a series of revised articles which were originally published in the Connecticut A.A. newsletter. They share the beginning years of his journey - from sadness to sobriety.