Alcoholism is not amusing, but this story is.

Many a night during those first few summer weeks that we lived there Mike and I would get home from an AA meeting to find the two of them out on their front porch, drinking heavily and sitting in their favorite chairs. Glen had a ratty old over-stuffed chair that he loved to slip into while he slipped into a coma, and Belinda had her swinging love seat and would be rocking herself unconscious, staring off into the distance.

Glen worked for his brother in construction which I guess was lucky for him because there were many days when he never made it to work. Belinda, as far as I could tell, hadn't worked for a while and so could indulge in her drinking a bit more often. It wasn't unusual to find at least one if not the both of them passed out cold in the morning, birds chirping and sun rising and them snoring. Usually they were in some sort of screwed up fetal position which I'm sure wasn't good for their backs.

As the summer turned to fall Mike and I noticed that they actually seemed to be drinking even more, which didn't seem humanly possible. When we first moved in we used to see them in the mornings more or less sober, but now that the leaves were falling they appeared to be falling also. Falling completely off the wagon that is.

My girlfriend Laura and I ran into them in the local K-Mart one Saturday morning and it was truly an awful and pitiful thing to see. Belinda looked like she had just been rescued from the swamp with her hair a ratty mess and her eyes nearly crusted shut. When she saw us she gave us a big 'HI!' and her breath almost knocked us over. Glen didn't look much better and they both smelled like they had taken a ride through the sewer and had forgotten to hose themselves off. Laura was in AA too and we both looked at each other with that 'thank god that's not us' look in our eyes.

Mike and I used to occasionally leave AA material and booklets on their porch but we stopped because Glen knew it was us and would, when he saw us, yell at us for trying to 'tell him what to do with his life'. I've found that there's nothing worse you can do to a raging alcoholic than to tell him or her that they are an alcoholic. There's some sort of primitive defense mechanism that kicks in and tries to block off rational thought from their brains because their bodies are so dependent on the alcohol.

What was truly eye opening for me was that, only a few years earlier, I was on the same road to self destruction that Glen and Belinda were on. Luckily I had family and friends that loved me and had rescued my sorry ass, but it made it that much harder for me to watch as they sank slowly and slowly into an alcohol induced fantasy world. Actually I imagine that it was more of a 'house of horrors'.

Still I had my own sobriety to consider and, as they say in AA, you can't force somebody to stop drinking. It's only when you 'hit bottom' that you can truly start to recover, and that bottom was different for everybody. The fact is, some people hit bottom and, through luck and lots of help, made it back. Others never did. They hit bottom and the bottom fell out.

I don't know if Glen and Belinda ever hit bottom, but I witnessed something while living there that made me believe in karma, and proved to me that yes, it can be, well, not nice. (This is a G-Rated lens after all.)

Christmas was approaching and the small farmers market across the street from our house had a large sign out front advertising a Holiday Raffle. To enter, like most raffles, you needed to pay a dollar for each ticket and could of course purchase as many tickets as you wanted.

Mike and I were leaving to go to an AA meeting when we first saw the sign, and we both laughed out loud when we saw what the 'Grand Prize' was. My thoughts instantly turned to Belinda and Glen when I saw that sign. If anyone was going to buy these raffle tickets, I thought to myself, it would be them.

I was right too, as a few days later Belinda giddily told me that she and Glen had bought $20.00 worth of tickets, or twenty tickets. She looked so happy while she was telling me, like a kid telling you in great kid detail about that special gift that he hoped would be delivered by Santa on Christmas day.

The Raffle was to be held on New year's Eve at the Farmer's Market, and they were planning to have a party there to bring in the New Year and pick the 'lucky winner' at midnight. I didn't pay it much attention after the first time I saw it because Mike and I were already planning on going to an AA sponsored party with all of our AA friends and wouldn't be around.

Well, New Year's eve came and Mike and I did go to our party. We had a great time with our girlfriends and other AA friends dancing through the new year and ended up getting home quite late. It didn't even occur to me to ask who had won the Raffle because the market was closed when we got back and, since I had no interest in the prize, I completely forgot about it.

The next morning at about 11:30 I was awakened to the sound of excited yelling and whooping in the back yard. It was Glen and Belinda's voices but, to my surprise, they weren't yelling obscenities at each other but rather seemed deliriously happy.

Mike was in his room as I threw on some clothes and ran out onto the back porch to take a look and find out what all the fuss was about.

When I leaned over the porch railing to take a look I couldn't believe what I saw. They had won! Glen and Belinda had actually won the frickin Raffle!! Not only had they won, they had won the grand prize!! It was sitting there, in the backyard, as they both jumped around it like 2 little kids screeching and squealing.

When they saw me looking from the porch they both waved and told me to come down and take a look, both of them smiling from ear to ear.

I did of course, shaking my head and rolling my eyes as I looked at what they had won, and wondering to myself how these two drunks could possibly have deserved to win this particular raffle.

Read the ending below....

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William Griffith Wilson was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), an international mutual aid fellowship with over two million members belonging to 100,800 groups of alcoholics helping other alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety. The 12 Steps of AA have been used by millions of suffering alcoholics worldwide not only to recover from alcoholism but also to stay sober, which many believe is the hardest part of sobriety. .Following AA's Twelfth Tradition of anonymity, Wilson is commonly known as "Bill W." or "Bill."

Bill's sobriety began December 11, 1934 and he was sober for the final 37 years of his life before passing away due to complications from emphysema in 1971

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The Grand Prize, the one that had been advertised on the sign that had made Mike and I laugh and was now sitting in our back yard, was a Brand new Dodge RAM Pick-up Truck filled to the brim with 'Holiday Cheer', it's bed stacked, higher than the cab and from front to back with cases and cases of booze! Dancing around it, like drunken and deliriously happy idiots, were the town drunks who had won the whole goddamn thing!

I couldn't believe it myself. There were cases and cases of alcohol piled up in the truck bed. There was whiskey, rum, bourbon, and scotch. There were specialty drinks like Couvoisier and Sambuca, and red and white wine. I saw at least 6 different brands of beer too. I figure there must have been 60 to 70 cases in total because the truck's bed was HUGE!

Mike finally did come out to see what was going on he was just as tickled as I was at the whole crazy scene. I mean, who could ever have imagined that the biggest alcoholics in town would win a truck full of alcohol?!?! Who could have ever conceived such a twisted twist of fate?

That night I went at my AA meeting as usual, but I had a lot more on my mind than usual. I raised my hand and was eventually picked to talk to the group.

"My fellow recovering alcoholics', I started, 'boy do I have a story to tell you tonight!"

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