Keith Choitz:
CLASS OF 1978
Longmont High SchoolClass of 1978
Longmont, CO
University of North Texas - SociologyClass of 1999
Denton, TX
University of North Texas - CounselingClass of 1995
Denton, TX
Brookhaven CollegeClass of 1992
Farmers branch, TX
Keith's Story
I partied. I graduated LHS '78, and partied. Wrecked my car, (blue '70 Chevelle), fixed it, got married, had a son, got divorced, and partied. Joined the Army, learned how to party professionally, totalled my car, discharged honorably, and partied. Got a Harley, a couple more drunk driving tickets, and kept on partyin', sold the bike. Moved to Oklahoma, got another Harley, and kept on partyin'. Moved to Dallas TX in '88, started college at Brookhaven, and kept partyin', (finally totalled that bike, but I wasn't drunk then, and wasn't hurt too bad besides a ruptured disc in my neck). I founded a student political awareness society on campus and did some social justice organizing and peace activism and got an Associate Degree ('92), wrote poetry, and partied. Got a DWI, quit drinking and went to AA awhile, got colon cancer & had surgery and chemo, kept tokin' and trippin' and majored in counseling at the University of North Texas in Denton. Graduated cum laude in '95 and started graduate school, and started drinkin' again, (not much partyin', just maintenance drinking, and smokin' crack 'most every weekend). My weekends were in the middle of the week because I worked the overnight weekend shifts at a conservative Christian satellite radio news network as a sound board operator, and took a couple social psychology classes during the week, with a long ponytail down my back and long bushy beard down the front. I finally earned a Master's Degree hood in '99, but my grades were dropping like a ski jump, and I didn't have many hours toward a doctorate when I got busted for possession in 2000 and dropped out. I went to jail for 100 days and quit doing cocaine, cut my hair and shaved, but I didn't get sober and quit doing drugs and go back to Alcoholics Anonymous until May 2003, when I had a moment of clarity, surrendered, found a little humility, and started living the 12-Step Program.
Now I'm extremely active in the General Service structure of AA in my district and my area, and I'm chairperson ("head sick") of my home group. My sponsor is also active, he's DCM in our district, and he and his wife and I tape alot of speakers at conferences and workshops and group anniversaries here in the North East Texas Area, we sell alot of speaker CDs and know alot of the circuit speakers in AA.
I rent part of a townhouse in a Dallas suburb, with two cats to keep me company, and my housemate, the homeownwer, is also sober and lives downstairs. I read and study alot of spiritual literature, things like the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), the Tao Te Ching, the Sermon on the Mount, and authors like Ram Dass, Neale Donald Walsch, Eckhart Tolle, and Emmet Fox, as well as Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Carl Sagan. I don't watch TV for the last few years, (used to watch CNN and PBS and Discovery and History) but I watch classic movies on VHS (you know, Bogart, Flynn, and Schwarzenegger flicks, Kubrick, Spielberg, & Lucas films, Mad Max, Star Trek, Highlander, Lord of the Rings, even a few Kevin Costner movies. I have all the James Bond series, aside from the latest "Casino Royale" and #22 in production now.) I even listen to National Public Radio for the past few years (and I'm a paid member in good standing). I got tired of commercial radio (and commercial music, and everything else commercial). I used to go see alot of rock concerts, like I was pretty buzzed when I went to see the 21st Century Doors, but I've seen a couple of shows sober since then, like Deep Purple and Godsmack. I've got a couple dozen heavy metal/classic rock CDs in my car, but mostly I listen to AA speaker tapes, or sometimes nothing at all. I have a fairly extensive library containing thousands of great books, spent alot of my student loans as a member of science and history book clubs, (which I'm now finally starting to pay back), and I started collecting hundreds of video tapes from Half Price Books, many at a buck apiece, just in the last few ...Expand for more
years.
I'm a courier driver delivering all kinds of construction plans and stuff around the northeast Dallas suburbs, driving a 2007 Kia Rio5, (blue like my Chevelle was). I don't really have any kind of career to speak of, now that I retired from my drinking career, but somehow the ends keep meeting. I used to write poetry when I was in college, and before, but not much since I got sober. I wrote academic research and stuff in graduate school, and maybe someday I can write something people would pay money for.
I'd like to write a spritual exposition, sort of a memoir perhaps, an exploration of a place beyond our minds and bodies, a travel guide to eternity in the spiritual dimension. I aim to write about how I live now, in the present moment, (mostly) free from guilt and shame and anger and resentment and doubt and anxiety, cheerful and comfortable in my own skin. I have lots of ideas and opinions and theories, and much of it is well-grounded in fact and generally backed up by the latest social science research, but I've learned in AA that my personal experience is my greatest asset, and that's really where I want to base my exposition. Faith is hard to prove unless I'm moving mountains with it, and the mountains of madness in my own mind are the ones that matter most, so nobody else can really see the empirical proof of my mental gymnastics anyway.
I was not a very good father for many years, kind of absent emotionally as well as geographically, but I've begun to rectify that situation in the last 5 years. My son is 27, divorced, living in Longmont, with two kids up there, at least one of whom lives with him for now, and he's paying child support to two different women. He's had a DUI on his first Harley, which he then had to sell, so if/when he drinks now he's more careful to control it. "To control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker." (He's alot like me, if you know what I mean, still working on his story, and just hasn't had his moment of clarity yet.) I visited last October when I went up to Denver for an AA Regional Forum, also went up over Trail Ridge Road and through Estes Park and up and down a few of the canyons.
My retired parents live in Central Texas now, the Hill Country, about 50 miles west above Austin, in a neat little town called Marble Falls. They supported me through the worst of my addictions, and they are ecstatic now that I finally sustained my recovery and continue to practice the program. I lived with them off and on a number of times when they lived here in the Metroplex, and I've "bought" a number of hand-me-down cars from them, (a few I wrecked, a few I drove into the ground), and they're pretty happy now that I'm supporting myself finally and paying my bills, (even my student loans). I'll never make enough money to pay them back for everything I owe them, though I have paid them a little. It's not money they want from me, [and that's really become my mantra in all my relationships, except with my creditors]. We have a great relationship now, talk every week or two on the phone, every couple days by email, and I go down there and visit every long weekend I have a chance, or they stop by here when they're out traveling in their motorhome. They'll be off to Hawaii in November to celebrate their Golden Anniversary.
I found out I have a prior committment here in Dallas on the same weekend as our 30th Class Reunion this year, so I guess I won't be up there to see y'all in July. We started planning this event here last year, with a couple of important speakers, and I am the host since it will be at my home group, so I want to be there. It is my responsibility, as well as my pleasure.
I miss the mountains, I just don't miss the snow and cold. We don't get much of that down here---that's one of the reasons I moved down here, for the year-round riding weather. With the increasing desertification of the Southwest, we'll probably see even less. Oh well.
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