Recovery elevator episode 56.

This disease goes by inches in taking your health away and without your health, you know you've got nothing.

Welcome to the Recovery Elevator podcast. My name is Paul.

Thank you so much for joining us.

According to the Recovery Elevator, sobriety tracker on my phone,

I have been sober for one year six

months and five days on today's podcast I've got Bill he's been sober since

October 22nd 2015 and he was at the top of his game in this esteemed position with the United States government.

In previous podcast episodes I talk about how I went to Peru in 2014 as a chaperone with my buddy who was a social studies teacher for a high school

in Denver.

I went back and I checked some calendar dates.

I read a couple journal entries from that time and I came up with this timeline that demonstrates the insanity of this disease called alcoholism.

Saturday, March 29, 2014, I depart for Peru, telling myself that I need to be fully rested after not being able to sleep on the airplane the overnight flight to Peru, I get a glass of wine. It's going to help me sleep.

Well, I don't know about you, but after I start drinking, drinking I can't stop I had one glass of wine

followed by about 25 more and I continued to drink till about 30 minutes before

meeting the kids high school kids I'm a chaperone. So I get my shit together, shall you say, and I'm sober from March 30th to April 7th, 2014.

After that trip on April 7th, when the kids departed and I was still going to stay in South America for another month and a half,

I was not an alcoholic. Hell, I just made a week, no alcohol.

How could I possibly be an alcoholic? But looking back while doing the Inca Trail I didn't see too many pit stops where you could buy booze. In fact there wasn't any.

Okay, so in my new life of sobriety, April 7th was going to be my new sobriety date.

Guess what happened?

No joke, two hours after I said goodbye to the kids, went to the hostile bar, I was drinking, and

...