I share here a story forwarded to me by the proprietor of cafeafricana. God  
bless.
 
 
Happy Thanksgiving!

An adoptee uncovers the risks of knowing
  


















Crossing the Atlantic to find his birth  parents, a reporter learns some 
painful truths. 
    _• 'I think I'm your son'_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adopt22nov22-web,0,6743362.htmlstory?coll=la-home-center#section1)    _• Meeting 
face to face_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adopt22nov22-web,0,6743362.htmlstory?coll=la-home-center#section2)    _• My inheritance_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adopt22nov22-web,0,6743362.htmlstory?coll=la-home-ce
nter#section3)  

By Scott Glover, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer  
November 22, 2007 

In some ways, the search for a woman I'll call  Marie was like countless 
others I'd done as a journalist.  
It began with a name and an old address. I surfed the Web and  worked the 
phones, and before long I was pretty sure I'd found her.  
So I bought a ticket, hopped on a plane and took a rental car to  her 
neighborhood in a small town outside Dublin, Ireland. I drove up and down  her 
street, looking for a good spot from which to watch and wait for the right  moment 
to introduce myself.  
The difference between this stakeout and the many others I'd  been on was 
that my quarry wasn't some corrupt public official or otherwise  newsworthy 
figure; she was the woman who gave birth to me -- and then gave me  away.  
Like countless other adopted children who are pulling back the  curtain of 
secrecy around their births, I had many questions. All of us adoptees  risk 
something in trying to find answers. My determination to satisfy my  curiosity 
would cause pain in ways I could not foresee. It would also change my  life 
profoundly.  
I was born in Scotland on Aug. 19, 1966, and adopted within a  matter of 
weeks by an American couple, John and Susan Glover. John, in the U.S.  Navy at the 
time, was stationed at a naval security base in the small town of  Edzell.  
We lived in Scotland for a year before returning to the States.  I grew up an 
American "Navy brat," moving from base to base as the Navy saw fit.  Though 
by no means perfect, my childhood was a happy one, filled with memories  of 
camping, fishing and baseball. I never felt that I was anything less than a  
full-fledged member of the Glover family.  
Though I was told at an early age that I was adopted, my first  realization 
that I was somehow different because of it occurred when I was about  10.  
My cousins and I were standing around a pool table in the  basement of their 
home near Saginaw, Mich., when the topic of adoption came up.  The oldest, a 
girl about 12, was attempting to explain to the younger kids what  it meant.  
I don't remember exactly what she said. But I do remember what I  took away 
from the conversation: that my cousins were blood relatives of my  parents and 
I was not, that in some fundamental way they were closer to my  parents than I 
would ever be. I didn't show it, but I was crushed by this  realization.  
I began to suppress the fact that I was adopted. I just didn't  want to deal 
with it.  
When I went to college, I began to think more about who gave me  away, and 
why. But by this time I had another concern. Although I was sure my  adoptive 
mother never would discourage me from looking for my birth mother, I  was afraid 
that bringing it up would hurt her feelings.  
So, for years, I did nothing.  
Eventually, I told this story to a friend and fellow reporter at  a party. He 
was struck by a contradiction that hadn't occurred to me: As an  
investigative reporter, I specialized in prying into other people's lives. Yet I  was 
ignoring a central mystery of my own.  
Through most of 2000, I watched my wife, Evelyn, go through  pregnancy and 
labor and wondered what it must have been like for my own mother.  When our son, 
Nicholas, was born on Christmas Eve, I looked at him and tried to  imagine 
what it would be like to give a child away.  
Then, in the spring of 2004, my parents came for a visit. Over  dinner, my 
inhibitions loosened by a couple of pints of beer, I began to poke  around the 
adoption question. Where did you say she's from? How old was she?  What did you 
say she did?  
My mother answered each of the questions. After a long pause,  she added, "I 
know her name. I'll tell you if you want to know."  
Tell me, I said.  
And she did -- not only my birth mother's name, but the one  she'd given me 
when I was born.  
How did my mother know these things about a supposedly closed  adoption?  
Thirty-seven years earlier, shortly after my birth, my parents  had received 
a copy of the adoption papers courtesy of a bureaucratic snafu by  the U.S. 
Navy. My mother said she had promised herself that she wouldn't say a  word 
about it unless I asked, and even then, only after I'd become an adult.  
The adoption papers listed an address in Ireland, not Scotland,  where I'd 
always presumed my birth mother lived. A few days later, after  receiving the 
document in the mail from my mother, I typed the address into an  Internet 
search engine and found a phone number. I dialed and a young woman  answered. I 
told her my name and explained that I had been adopted and that I  recently 
learned that my birth mother was from a small town outside Dublin and I  was trying 
to find her. Then I spoke my mother's maiden name.  
"You don't mean Marie?" asked the woman, clearly stunned by the  disclosure.  
As it turned out, my birth mother still lived in the same town.  The woman 
knew her well. What she hadn't known was that Marie had given birth to  an 
illegitimate child and put him up for adoption.  
Marie was now happily married, I was told, with grown kids and  
grandchildren.  
"Are you sure this is the same woman you are looking for?" she  asked. "You 
must be mistaken."  
But there was no mistake, and we both knew it.  
At first, I was thrilled to have found my birth mother so  quickly. But that 
soon gave way to a feeling of dread. She'd been keeping this  secret, and now 
it was out.  
I called the woman back. I asked her not to tell anyone about  our 
conversation. She and her husband, whom she'd already told, agreed.  
But with this new information, a topic I'd ignored for the  better part of 37 
years became a near obsession. I could think of nothing else.  
I thought about writing a letter, but decided against it. I  pictured Marie's 
husband sorting through the mail one evening and seeing a  letter from some 
stranger in the United States and asking questions. A telephone  call presented 
similar problems. How do I get her on the phone without arousing  suspicions? 
And even if I did, the idea of launching into such a delicate topic  over a 
transatlantic phone line seemed absurd.  
Within a week, I decided I was going to Ireland. My plan was to  find her 
house and "sit on it," like a cop on a stakeout. I'd wait for her to  run an 
errand, and follow her. I'd approach her when she was alone, but in a  public 
place. This was the only way I could protect her privacy.  
Virtually everyone I knew, including my parents, supported my  decision to 
search for my biological parents. But they were also dead set  against the way I 
was planning to go about it. They felt I was being brash and  not taking into 
consideration the many things that could go wrong or the many  people who 
could be hurt, myself included.  
"Scott, what can I say to you that will make you reconsider your  approach to 
this," my mother wrote in an e-mail a few days before I was due to  leave. 
"Everything inside of me screams 'No, not that way!' " 

'I think I'm your son' | _Top_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adopt22nov22-web,0,6743362.htmlstory?coll=la-home-center#top)   
As the Aer Lingus jet reached the coast of  Ireland, it was low enough that I 
could make out the waves crashing onto the  beach below. The land was a lush 
green. It was beautiful.  
It was quiet on the plane. Evelyn was asleep, with Nick  stretched out on her 
lap in the row across from me. Most of the other passengers  were sleeping, 
too. I pressed my face against the window to take in the view,  and I felt 
tears rolling down my cheeks.  
Is this where I was supposed to grow up? I wondered. Is this  where I'm 
supposed to be from?  
A friend from my college days was in Dublin for a wedding, and  he met us at 
the airport. As Evelyn and Nick napped, my friend and I went to a  bar. We 
were in the middle of our third pint when he told me that he'd brought  up my 
little adventure in the boozy wee hours of the wedding reception he'd been  to. 
There wasn't a single woman there who thought it was a good idea, he said.  
That night, due to a combination of jet lag, alcohol and  anxiety, I hardly 
slept. In the morning I walked over to Ireland's general  registry office and 
pulled the birth and marriage records for the woman I  thought was my mother. 
The signature on the marriage certificate so closely  resembled the signature 
on my adoption order that I was all but certain I had  the right person.  
So Evelyn, Nick and I piled into a rented Volkswagen Golf and  headed for a 
small town in the Irish countryside. It quickly became apparent  that my plan 
was flawed. For starters, all I had for an address was a street  name, with no 
house number. It would have been easy to ask which house she lived  in, but I 
feared that doing so would trigger questions by her neighbors.  
After two hours driving up and down the road, we left. I went  back on my own 
the next day and repeated the exercise before deciding it was  futile. Back 
in Dublin, I decided to try the number listed for my mother in an  online phone 
book.  
"Hello."  
I called her by her married name.  
"Yes," she responded.  
I asked if she'd gone by the maiden name I'd found on the  marriage record.  
"Yes," she said again, a bit hesitant this time.  
At this point my heart began pounding, and the words I'd  rehearsed so many 
times were nowhere to be found.  
"Well, my name is Scott Glover," I think I said. "But that's not  the name I 
was given when I was born."  
I told her what that name was.  
There was silence.  
"I think I'm your son," I said.  
More silence.  
Oh, my God, I thought to myself, she's going to deny it!  
Then, softly, she said: "I guess I've got some explaining to  do." 

Meeting face to face | _Top_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adopt22nov22-web,0,6743362.htmlstory?coll=la-home-center#top)   
As I had suspected, no one in her family knew  about me. If her secret got 
out, she feared it would cost her her marriage and  maybe even alienate her from 
her children. More than once she asked: "Can we  keep this between 
ourselves?" I agreed. That meant that in any retelling of the  story, including this 
article, I would have to change or leave out the names of  many people and 
places.  
We agreed to meet the next morning in the lobby of my hotel. As  I walked 
into the room, I realized that we hadn't described ourselves to each  other.  
Moments later, as I stared into eyes indistinguishable from my  own, I knew 
no description was needed.  
"You must think me a demon," she whispered, clenching my arm as  we walked 
toward the hotel lounge.  
I told her I thought nothing of the sort.  
When we were seated, a waiter came by to take our drink order.  
"Just water," she said, too nervous to eat. She told me her  hands were 
trembling so badly on the steering wheel on the way to the hotel that  she was 
afraid she was going to run off the road.  
I was thinking about ordering a pint to ease my own nerves, but  decided on 
water, too.  
I was soon glad I had.  
"Your father was a horrible drinker," she said. "And he was  totally 
irresponsible."  
I'd yet to ask a question, but we both knew what we were there  to talk 
about. Marie explained that I was conceived while she was on a visit to  Scotland, 
but that by the time she learned she was pregnant she was no longer in  love 
with my father.  
He offered to marry her, but she told him no. Not only did he  drink, she 
said, but he gambled, was careless with money and couldn't hold down  a job.  
A Catholic, Marie turned to the church for help. She went to  live in a 
convent until she gave birth and agreed to give the baby -- me -- up  for adoption. 
Her only condition was that I be placed in the home of fellow  Catholics.  
"What life could I give you?" she asked, a pleading tone in her  voice.  
I handed Marie a letter I'd written before our meeting. It  contained a brief 
biography and an explanation of why I'd come to find her.  Aside from mere 
curiosity, I said, I wanted to thank her for giving birth to me  and to free her 
of any guilt she may have been feeling. I assured her that I  didn't come to 
Ireland looking for a mother -- that I had one at home whom I  love very much. 
She briefly scanned the letter, smiled and tucked it in her  purse.  
We agreed to meet for dinner the next evening, but left the  details to be 
arranged over the phone. When she answered her cellphone the  following day, she 
was much more lively and outgoing, as if sleeping on the  situation had eased 
her mind.  
We met for dinner at a hotel in Dublin. For the first 45 minutes  or so the 
conversation flowed. I felt almost giddy looking across the table at  this 
woman who for so long had existed only in my imagination. It was precisely  the 
kind of reunion I had imagined.  
But then I broached a subject I'd been avoiding. I told Marie  about that 
first phone call, to the couple who knew her. I had sworn them to  secrecy, I 
quickly added.  
It was as if a waiter had dropped a tray of glasses.  
Her face went pale.  
These people would never keep quiet, she said. Her marriage was  over, she 
feared. Her husband was a good man, but how could she explain keeping  him in 
the dark all these years? He would feel horribly deceived, she said.  Though she 
tried to reassure me that she understood how this had happened and  that it 
wasn't my fault, the mood of the evening had been killed. Her appetite  was 
gone. She began fidgeting with her jewelry and her eyes darted around the  room.  
After an awkward goodbye with Nick and Evelyn, I walked her to  the garage 
where she'd parked her car. Her hands shook as she tried to feed  coins into the 
machine to pay for her parking.  
She gave me a weak smile as she drove off.  
I walked back to our hotel and flopped on the bed, depressed.  The many 
warnings about the unpredictability and potential danger of my plan had  suddenly, 
sickeningly, been realized.  
I'd careened into this poor woman's life to satisfy my own  selfish 
curiosity, and now she quite possibly was going to pay the price.  
I didn't hear from Marie the next day. I wondered if I ever  would.  
Before the disastrous end to our dinner, I'd asked Marie whether  she thought 
my "father" was still in Scotland.  
When she left him, she said, he was sitting on a stool in his  favorite pub 
in a small town outside Glasgow.  
"If he's still alive," she said. "I'm sure he's still there."  
She'd given me his name -- for this story, I'll call him Ian --  his 
approximate age and what he did for a living: He was a tailor.  
As bad as I felt about the way things turned out in Ireland, I  knew I 
couldn't fly home without attempting to find my biological father. To do  so would 
leave me as curious and distracted as when I'd begun. Also, I was less  
concerned about disrupting Ian's life. I had a gut feeling that he wasn't  married 
and, based on what Marie had told me, might not even be alive.  
I bought a ticket to Glasgow, and Evelyn and Nick headed home as  planned. 
But not before Nick threw the temper tantrum of his 3-year-old life in  the 
Dublin airport. I cringed at the thought of Evelyn having to deal with him  by 
herself on the 12-hour flight.  
Seized by uncertainty, and with several hours to kill before  boarding my own 
flight, I headed for the bar.  
Early the next morning, I walked a few blocks to Scotland's  official records 
office. Operating on a hunch, I gave the clerk Ian's name and  asked if there 
were any matching death records for someone born around 1940.  
She came back a few minutes later and handed me a slip of paper  with 
information about a man who was born in 1939 and died in 1997. Another  document 
listed the decedent's occupation: tailor. There was no doubt: The  father whose 
name I'd learned just days earlier was dead.  
The second document listed Ian's home address. I took a cab  there, thinking 
that whoever was living there might be able to help.  
A woman who looked to be in her mid-20s answered the door. I  told her whom I 
was looking for. I had the right house, she said, but Ian had  died years 
ago. She stood in the doorway, waiting to close the door -- or for me  to say 
something else.  
I told her I was from America, but that I was born in Scotland  and put up 
for adoption. Ian was my father, I said.  
A smile spread across her face.  
"I was adopted, too," she said. "Come in."  
Her name was Sharon, and she decided to help me. She began  knocking on 
neighbors' doors and making phone calls. I was introduced to a  neighbor who'd 
known Ian since he was a boy. The woman insisted I watch a video  of her 
daughter's wedding. Ian was on the tape. It was surreal watching the  stranger in the 
video, to whom I bore no resemblance. He was taller than I am,  and heavier. 
Though well into his 50s at the time, he still had a full head of  hair, I was 
happy to see.  
Back in Sharon's living room, I met a woman named Angela who had  been both 
Ian's neighbor and his bartender at the local pub. As it turned out,  Marie was 
wrong about Ian still frequenting the same bar where she'd left him.  That 
place had gone out of business. And when it did, Ian began drinking at the  pub 
across the street. I'll call the place the Red Lion.  
Angela said Ian was a kind man who never forgot her children at  Christmas 
and seldom had a bad word to say about anybody. But he did like "a wee  drink," 
she said.  
Was he an alcoholic? I asked.  
"Oh, no. I wouldn't say so," Angela said, shaking her head.  
Well, how much did he drink? I asked.  
On an average night Ian might knock back six or eight shots of  whiskey, each 
followed by a pint of beer. Maybe a bit more on weekends.  
This answer didn't seem to surprise anyone in the room. By their  standards, 
"alcoholic" was a term reserved for hard-core drunks who sleep in the  gutter. 
 
A few minutes later, Angela led me to the nearby home of Ian's  Aunt 
Margaret.  
Margaret was a tall, thin widow with white hair and a warm  smile. She inv
ited me in and introduced me to her niece, also Margaret, who  happened to be 
visiting from Glasgow. The Margarets, though clearly stunned by  my sudden 
appearance, were wonderful. They made me feel at ease as they told  story after 
story about the father I had never met.  
He was a highly skilled tailor. He had a small shop in the  center of town. 
For a time, his business thrived. Some of the area's wealthiest  residents were 
clients.  
But the pub was just a short walk from his shop. He'd pop in for  a quick 
drink at lunchtime, come back around 4 in the afternoon and wouldn't  leave until 
closing. He would periodically announce that he had quit drinking,  only to 
start again a few months later.  
"It was really quite sad," said the elder Margaret.  
Ian eventually lost his shop and began working out of an  upstairs bedroom in 
the house he shared with his mother until his death in 1997,  at age 57. The 
cause of death was lung cancer, but friends and relatives say his  decline 
started when he slipped and fell outside the bar. He landed hard,  cracking some 
ribs.  
After he died, some relatives were cleaning out his bedroom and  work space 
when they found an envelope full of photos. Inside were pictures of  him and 
Marie together in the '60s, before I was born.  
"I'm sure he was still in love with her," the younger Margaret  said. "I 
don't think he really ever got over her."  
The elder Margaret recalled a night in the 1980s when Ian  arrived at her 
home late, unannounced. He had been drinking and was visibly  upset. He wanted to 
talk with her husband. That night, she later learned, Ian  confided that "he 
had a son out there somewhere."  
He was devastated that he had no way to find him.  
As I was leaving, the elder Margaret handed me a ring. She told  me it had 
belonged to Ian, and that I could have it if I wanted it. I held it,  rolled it 
around in my fingers for a few seconds, then handed it back.  
"No, thanks," I said.  
I'm not sure why exactly, but I remember feeling that taking it  would have 
somehow been disloyal to the father who actually raised me. 

My inheritance | _Top_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adopt22nov22-web,0,6743362.htmlstory?coll=la-home-center#top)   
Though it was early on a weeknight, the Red  Lion was doing brisk business. I 
edged up to the bar that had been my father's  second home and ordered a 
pint. Then another.  
I didn't speak to anyone at first. I just looked around and got  a feel for 
the place.  
It was a beautiful room, with high ceilings and lots of light.  The long, 
U-shaped bar looked as if it was made of oak. Everyone seemed like a  regular.  
Almost everyone knew Ian. Or thought they did, anyway.  
All they really seemed to remember was an affable and generous  drunk who was 
always buying.  
"I felt sorry for him," said Tracy, a woman who once tended the  bar. "People 
would take advantage of him. From behind the bar I could see what  was 
happening. When he was drunk, he couldn't."  
That night I hit it off with a couple of guys about my age, and  I began 
putting away the pints until I stopped keeping track. At one point it  occurred to 
me that, had I not been adopted, there was a better-than-average  chance that 
I, too, would have been a regular here.  
I got back to the hotel after midnight. There was a message from  Evelyn in 
Los Angeles. It was marked "urgent." I reached her at work, where it  was late 
afternoon. She told me she had received a call from a priest in Ireland  early 
that morning. Apparently, she said, Marie could no longer bear keeping the  
situation to herself. She called a meeting with the priest and some of her  
children. With the priest's help, she told them what was going on.  
On the phone with Evelyn, the priest wanted to know "why in  God's name" I 
had shared my mother's secret with one of her neighbors. What were  my 
intentions, he wanted to know. As if I were some sort of extortionist, he  asked: 
"What's his next move?"  
Evelyn explained that the disclosure had been inadvertent. She  told him I 
was in Scotland looking for my father, and that I was scheduled to  return to 
L.A. the next morning.  
The priest told Evelyn that he had to get in touch with me  before I got on 
the plane home.  
"The girls would like to meet him," he said. He was referring to  Marie's 
daughters -- my half-sisters.  
I returned to Dublin, and with a pounding headache from my  "research" the 
night before, I rented a car and drove to the same small town  where I'd met 
Marie. I checked into a hotel, crawled into bed and took a nap.  That afternoon, 
I reached the priest.  
He said three of Marie's daughters would meet me in the lobby of  my hotel in 
half an hour.  
I was sitting in a leather chair sipping coffee when a  fit-looking woman 
with dirty blond hair and angular features walked into the  lobby. I somehow knew 
she was one of my sisters.  
We extended hands, as if to shake, but ended up in a hug. We  were joined 
minutes later by two of her sisters.  
All three were warm and wonderful. We sat by the fireplace in  the hotel bar 
and talked for about an hour. I apologized for having disrupted  their lives 
and upsetting their mother. They told me that they didn't blame me  for 
anything and that they were happy to get the chance to meet me. They were  afraid I'd 
already gone back to California. They'd spent the previous night at  the 
airport with their mother looking for people getting off of planes from  Glasgow. 
Though I was sorry they'd wasted their time, I was elated they'd gone  to the 
trouble.  
For the next several days, we had lunches and dinners together  and talked. I 
heard about husbands and kids and work and vacations. They asked  about my 
life -- my adoptive mom and dad specifically, saying how grateful they  were 
that they'd taken care of me.  
We talked about how difficult it must have been for Marie to  give me up. 
They often seemed on the verge of tears. We agreed that she had done  the right 
thing, and that we were all happy with the result.  
It occurred to me then, as it does now, how much more difficult  this 
situation might have been for someone who did not have the good fortune of  having 
been adopted by parents as loving and supportive as mine.  
In the time since our meetings, my sisters and I have traded  e-mails and 
photos and talked over the phone.  
But distance and the fact that my existence remains a secret to  some members 
of their family, including their father, have made it hard to  really stay in 
touch.  
As I searched for a deeper meaning in what I'd discovered, I  found myself 
thinking more of my dead father than my living mother. Meeting  Marie -- just 
seeing her, actually -- was a tremendous relief as far as  satisfying my 
curiosity goes. But it did little to change my understanding of  myself. She was 
young and scared and did what she had to do. And then she moved  on.  
Ian was a different story.  
Though I'd enjoyed my evening at the pub, I was also saddened  and scared by 
what I'd found. Here was a man -- my father -- who had quite  literally drunk 
his life away. All the sadder was the realization that, despite  decades of 
sitting together at the same bar, his drinking buddies barely knew  him.  
The scary part was the voice in my head telling me that if my  father left me 
nothing else, I did inherit a healthy dose of his drunkard DNA.  
Alcohol had been a ubiquitous presence in my life: I associated  it with 
meals, sporting events, parties, family gatherings, vacations, travel --  
everything.  
My first experience with alcohol began not with my own drinking,  but with my 
dad's. He began drinking heavily when he returned from Vietnam in  1971. He 
would sometimes come home stumbling drunk -- one particularly memorable  time 
in front of a group of my friends, some of whom then mimicked his  inebriated 
state.  
His drinking nearly caused my parents to divorce before he quit  in 1982 
after wrecking a truck while drunk at work. He hasn't had a drop since,  an 
accomplishment of which I am immensely proud.  
Though I used to pray that my father would quit and sometimes  went as far as 
pouring his remaining Old Milwaukees down the drain the morning  after a 
bender, I did not shy away from alcohol myself.  
I drank my first beer, which I stole from a neighbor's garage,  when I was 
14. It was a can of Michelob -- warm, no less -- and it tasted  terrible. But I 
liked the way it felt to drink it. By the next summer, I was  getting drunk 
regularly on weekends, though my parents didn't know it. I was  arrested for DUI 
when I was 16 and spent a long weekend in jail. I had to crawl  into the 
corner of my bunk and pull the covers over my head when nuns from the  Catholic 
high school I attended came by to cheer up the prisoners.  
My college years and early 20s were awash in alcohol, beer  mostly. I lived 
the bohemian life in San Francisco, working as a waiter and  bartender as I 
slowly made my way toward a journalism degree at San Francisco  State. I drank, 
often to excess, several times a week. But so did pretty much  everyone else. 
Or, looking back, pretty much everyone I chose to hang around  with.  
Work hard, play hard always made sense to me.  
After I got my first newspaper job, I generally limited my  drinking to 
Fridays and Saturdays but was happy to make exceptions. If I had a  few on a 
weeknight, I'd just make sure to pop a couple of Alka-Seltzers and get  to bed early 
so I'd be "fresh" in the morning.  
I'd get a good buzz on once, twice, sometimes three times a  week. Few people 
knew how much I drank or how drunk I was. I didn't drink at  work or come to 
work drunk or crash my car or have an affair.  
I was, in my estimation, a very good drunk.  
But after learning about Ian, it occurred to me that maybe I  needed to quit. 
 
That I was nowhere near "rock bottom" actually made my decision  all the 
harder. I mulled this over for more than a year. I drank in spurts, a  few months 
on, a few months off.  
Once I started drinking, I came to realize, I didn't want to  stop. I really 
had no interest in one or two. Seven or eight was more like it.  That, I 
realized, was a sure sign of alcoholism.  
But it took months more to decide what, if anything, to do about  it. I had 
never understood people who didn't drink. Or, for that matter, people  who 
didn't drink a lot. I thought they took themselves too seriously. At 38, I  was 
beginning to wonder if maybe I wasn't taking myself seriously enough.  
I had the sense of inching up to a ledge, getting close, but not  yet ready 
to jump.  
I took my last drink on the night of June 30, 2005. It was  either scotch or 
expensive brandy. I can't say for sure because I'd had so much  to drink 
earlier in the evening.  
Either way, it was the sort of liquor that simultaneously shocks  and soothes 
as it burns a path from your mouth to your stomach like some hybrid  brew 
that's part ambrosia and part paint thinner.  
As I was feeling this sensation on that night, I somehow knew it  would be 
the last time I ever would.  
In the two years since I quit drinking, I've come to discover a  whole range 
of emotions that, looking back, had been suppressed since I was a  teenager, 
including my feelings about having been put up for adoption.  
Drinking kept me at arm's length from everyone, even those who  wanted 
desperately to be close. This is one of my deepest regrets.  
Facing life stone sober isn't easy, as many before me have  discovered. But 
it is one of the best decisions I've ever made.  
And, in some way, I've got Ian to thank for it. 
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