Random Big Book "Alcoholics Anonymous"

– This young alcoholic stepped out a second-story window and into A.A. I got sober while I was still in college. Once, outside of a meeting, I overheard a conversation between another sober student and a woman who lived in the town where I went to school. She was explaining why so many local residents disliked the students. She described the common perception of students as arrogant and self-centered, and went on to tell the following story. “I am a nurse and I work in the emergency room. Two years ago a student was brought in by ambulance in the middle of the night. He had gotten drunk, walked through a second-story window, and fallen twenty feet headfirst into a concrete window well. He was brought in covered with blood. His head had swollen the size of a watermelon. He kept swearing at the nurses and doctors, telling them to keep their hands of of him, and threatening to sue them. He was, without a doubt, the single most obnoxious person I have ever met.” At that point I interrupted her. “That was me,” I said. “That was my last drunk.” I had walked through that window when I was nineteen years old. ~ WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY - p. 421