Roger (not his real name) never thought of himself as an alcoholic. It just never occurred to him.
He thought becoming an alcoholic took 30 or 40 years and you had to end up homeless on a park bench before it was really a problem.
He believes he was always going to be an alcoholic. It was in his make-up.
As a young man he was socially inept and felt he was an outsider. A move to a new town where he knew nobody and there was no family support compounded his feelings of loneliness.
After a break-up with a girlfriend in his mid-teens, he was in despair and when some friendly people invited him for a drink, he joined them, mostly out of politeness. As he was drinking, a light came on in his mind.
"One minute I was normal, the next a switch flicked in my head and suddenly I understood everything. I had the key to the universe. And I didn't stop."
Thereafter followed seven years of heavy drinking.
It has been nearly three decades since Roger had an alcoholic drink, but he can easily recall its wonderful effect of making him feel invincible.
"Alcohol just did it for me. My mind and soul had been opened up and suddenly I was bathed in this beatific light."
For a long time, it was easy for Roger to ignore his addiction.
He was alone, he had no girlfriend, had trouble holding down jobs, he would drink with anybody who was at the pub.
"It's not called the lonely disease for nothing."
If he looked all right on the outside, that was misleading.
During those dark years not a day went by when Roger did not drink alcohol.
"I was always doing things like getting hit by cars, passing out in public places, or getting into punch-ups and being picked up by the police."
His drinking pattern was to drink all the time, as much as possible and as often as possible.
"Drinking was just me. It was like breathing."
In one incident he got drunk after work one night, filled his pockets with rocks and smashed all the windows on the ground floor of his work building before running away.
The crunch came when he saw a documentary about alcohol abuse and the story of a woman who had lost her short-term memory because of her drinking. She could not remember her own grandchildren.
"It was when that woman said: 'When I drank I was looking for oblivion. and when I found it, it was nothing like I thought it was going to be', that I looked at her and I thought: That's my fate.
"And it scared me to death."
But it was still another three years before he would admit to himself he was an alcoholic.
It happened after he was fired from yet another job. He took to his bicycle, completing a "lunatic road trip" from Wellington to Auckland, via the east coast of the North Island.
On the way there he discovered he was an alcoholic.
It was one night when he asked a farmer if he could pitch his tent, and the farmer invited him in for a drink.
"I took it and before I knew it was plastered. I woke up the next morning in my tent. I couldn't remember how I got there.
"I knew then that I could go anywhere, no matter how lonely the country road, and I'd always find a drink at the end of it.
"That's when I realised I was stuffed."
He told a friend in Auckland, and she gave him the number of someone in AA, who introduced him to the 12-step programme.
"He said: 'I belong to AA and here's what happened to me.'
"When you are dying and someone throws you a lifeline you don't argue with whoever's on the end of it you just grab the damn thing.
"I grabbed it 27 years ago and I've never let go."
Today, Roger is a recovering alcoholic.
It took hard work and an intense effort to beat addiction.
Sobriety has not been easy. He has struggled with himself and the meetings. He was in pain at the start and tried to keep his old friends and still go to the pub.
It was finding his spirituality that finally helped him on the road to healing, in fact it was the key to his personal journey of recovery.
"But everyone's journey is different," he said.
Identifying his alcoholism as a disease helped him, as did realising he could rely on others and himself to help him recover.
"I didn't need to impress anyone, I just needed to be myself."
He stills struggles to go to meetings sometimes, but his wife urges him on, sometimes even driving him there so he attends.
Today, after 27 years of sobriety, when Roger thinks about alcohol he is reminded of what it did to him.
"I was dying."
And he knows what he does not want.
"I would sooner drink Drano than touch booze again."
WHAT IS ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS?
In Dunedin, 13 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are held each week.
One is held each week in Mosgiel, Wanaka, Alexandra, Hawea, Cromwell, Ranfurly, Queenstown and Frankton.
Those who attend them are among 4000 New Zealand members of the organisation which celebrates its 75th anniversary this month.
Known as AA, the movement started in the United States in 1935 and now has an estimated two million members in 160 countries.
Related websites say the movement is solely concerned with the recovery and continuing sobriety of alcoholics and welcomes anyone who has a desire to stop drinking to go along to meetings.
Members are known only on a first name basis and cannot be identified in the media or named in medical records.
The premise is that if drinkers think their identity might be revealed, it might stop them from seeking help.
The organisation does not offer counselling services or assessments, people just attend meetings and talk.
At the core of the AA's philosophy is the well-known 12-step programme in which members admit powerlessness over alcohol, accept a higher power, take a moral inventory, make amends to those harmed, and seek direction, guidance, and power from a God "of one's own understanding".
Next week is AA's annual public awareness week, which is not aimed at fundraising, rather at making people aware that the AA is out there to help people who want to stop drinking.
AA accepts no money from outside sources, using only money donated by members.
