I kept thinking I'm drinking because I'm depressed as opposed to realizing I'm depressed because I'm drinking.

Mark is a 60 year old alcoholic who found that out about himself later in life. He walked into the rooms of AA 8.5 years ago and was sure of two things: that he wasn't an alcoholic and was also positive he was not going to stay in the program. For decades he had drank from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep and no one had ever said tp him that he was an alcoholic. Not his wife, not his kids, not his friends. The first time someone mentioned something to him was a psychiatrist that the couples therapist he and his wife were seeing referred him to. It was 10 in the morning and the first thing out of the doctors mouth was 'you smell like a brewery.'  You have two options- you can go to an AA meeting or you can go into a rehab. He started drinking at age 16, after having grown up in a very religious household where no one drank. Once his sister passed, he began using alcohol every single night to get to sleep and by the time his kids were born, he was waking up and drinking. 6 months into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, Mark experienced the most crippling headache to the point where he was laying on the floor wanting to die, because his marriage wasn't working, he couldn't drink, so what was the point. At a meeting later that day, someone mentioned that what he felt was an aneurysm, and as it turns out, they were right. That saved his life and he considers it a spiritual experience. Hear more of Mark's story on the podcast!