OPINION
Bill Wilson, in the world of recovery founded Alcoholics Anonymous, now known as AA, and one of the codes to know a fellow alcoholic was to ask them; “Are you a friend of Bill’s?” Bill Wilson set the stage for so many of us afflicted by the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction, always remembering that alcohol is a drug.
I had my first drink when I was 13 years old. I’ve written about it off and on over the last 37 years. I was playing baseball with some older guys and when the game was over, we went to this girl’s house. I had my first drink and first-time sexual experience. I personally believe I was born alcoholic, cultural alcoholic, and genetically predisposed to alcoholism.
I had my last drink following the murder of my best friend Alan Berg, who by the way, was the first real in-recovery alcoholic I’d ever known. I was in a Chinese restaurant on Hampden Avenue three weeks after that and that’s where I met the followers of Bill.
I literally turned myself in to a pair of great physicians who helped me. I went to my first AA meeting at the Air Force Academy Officer’s Club. To illustrate how bad I’d become, until recently I believed there were four people in the car, one a woman who was a very dear friend. But she took me aside later and said, “Peter, I wasn’t in the car.”
Alcoholism is a disease and that’s why cities like Denver and others around the country can’t come to terms with the alcoholics and addicts who have now become the unhoused. They treat them like they have the plague and you’ve seen some of the results.
Having set that stage, recently on talk radio and Denver television news, is what I would dub the smearing of an Aurora police officer. His name is Nate Meier. He was found drunk on duty in March 2019, armed, as officers are. I have developed great sources in the Aurora Police Department. They tell me stories about what happened with their brilliant previous chiefs, the amount of true support they feel from a ridiculous City Council, and how they’ve generally been screwed over by their own government.
Now I know this factually. The officer has been sober, went into alcohol treatment and has nearly three and a half years of sobriety. He speaks at the police academy, shares his story with employee groups, and went on to say something I find myself saying, he saved his own life. A life he could have lost.
He took the test to be promoted and he scored high on the Career Service test, and that I believe is very competitive. Now he is being attacked principally in talk radio and alternative press. And one of the charges that was made by the uneducated self-righteous is that he should be fired, he should not be promoted, and that being in recovery is untrustworthy.
That’s quite an alarming accusation for all of us in recovery, including federal judges, district attorneys, airline pilots, doctors, nurses, people in positions of responsibility, people who carry guns and badges and make decisions on other peoples lives. I’ve met people from these professions in recovery, and that is why Bill decided there would be no last names.
I chose to break my own anonymity to talk about my disease, alcoholism. But now it shows you exactly why we don’t use last names, because of people like the media and elected officials.
My hope for them is they never have a family member or anyone they love and care about go through the darkness of alcoholism into the light of recovery. This is 2023 for heavens sake, finally learn something.
— Peter Boyles