For the first time in my 31 years as a recovering alcoholic, I missed a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous to celebrate another year of sobriety and receive my coin to mark the event.

The last year has been a horrific one, marked by a severe leg wound and infection that threatened my life. I’m still living, still have the leg and have one more treatment that has restored my eyesight

The coming year brings more medical challenges, including replacement of my left shoulder, corrective surgery on the right, knee replacements and attempts to correct massive hearing loss.

But I slowed down enough Friday hight to thank God for the sobriety that saved my life, thanks to the efforts of a loving wife and partner along with good friends,

I began drinking at age 15, when a teaching assistant at Floyd County High School gave me my first alcoholic drink, a shot of moonshine from the still of local moonshiner Cleophus Sowers. The drink was a prelude to things that far surpassed drinking.

In 2006, shortly after returning to the county after 50 years as a photojournalist who covered news worldwide. She still lived in the area when we moved back to Floyd and we have lunch, saying she felt I deserved a apology for her actions.

“I can and will accept your apology for giving me my first drink and the ones that followed,” I said. “But you have nothing to apologize for anything else.”

Drinking and the activities that followed helped me overcome shyness. I left the county at age 17 to join The Roanoke Times as the youngest full-time journalist in their history, I worked hard, partied even harder and began a career that included 12 years as a reporter, columnist and photographer for The Telegraph in Alton, Illinois, part of the St, Louis metro area. With a new wife, we moved to Washington in 1981.

I continued to drink and cover news around the world until a long night in June, 1994, when I woke up in a hotel in San Francisco with a pounding headache and no how gotten there. A flight back to Washington ended with a first visit to an AA meeting a church basement across the street from our condo in Arlington the 50th remembrance of D-Day and the first day of of sobriety that extends to this past Friday, 31 years ago. and must continue one day at a time. In the coming week, I will attend an AA meeting, tell my story, and accept my 31 year chip.

More than a few years ago, I covered the summer music serives, The Mississippi River Festival at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and photographed Jerry Carcia of The Grateful Dead when the band introduced the “Truckin'” with the this verse “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

Yes it was. It still is.