This is a blog with a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous language. I apologize to those who are reading this, that don’t attend a Twelve Step program, it’s just that AA saved my life and it’s doing so for those close to me. In AA, which took me a long time to digest, time means a lot. We all want to be able to say, “Yeah, I’m working on my second year.” Sometimes, doing time is just that – accumulating time. What’s important is HOW you do your time. For me, waking up, having a chat with God, reading from my 24 Hour book and setting a goal to be a better man today than I was yesterday,...

A twenty year study of the drinking habits of our senior citizens reveals some interesting factors. Aside from the fact that life gets lonely when your partner passes away and a drink or two helps pad the pain, it’s important to keep an eye on yourself, or your mother or father. The study found that older adults are more likely to engage in high-risk drinking, which is defined as more than three drinks per day or more than fourteen per week. Good grief, I used to down 14 drinks in one sitting on a regular basis. I spilled more than three drinks a day! I’m not bragging, I’m just sayin’…....

Hello my friends…. Recognizing you’re an alcoholic doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the road to sobriety. For many of us, like me, it took years of living in and dishing out misery. So I’ve decided to give you an opportunity to hear firsthand what happened on the day I finally came to grips and found sobriety. On the front page of my website www.mynameishoot.com click on the opening chapter of Drunk & Disorderly, Again – My name is Hoot, I’m an alcoholic. It’s a FREE three minute audio of me reading Chapter One. Drunk and Disorderly, Again - Chapter One Alcoholism is not a...

My beautiful friends from around the world. For the past several years, we at the Hooten household have been enjoying what has become an annual tradition in Germany. You’d think that a website dedicated to sobriety would take a dim view of this kind of behavior, but we don’t, because it’s a comedy skit. Every New Year’s Eve, half of all Germans plop down in front of their TV sets to watch a 1963 English comedy sketch called Dinner for One. Even though Dinner for One is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most frequently watched TV bit ever, it has never been...

I was cruising up the 101 this morning, on my way to play golf with my buds enjoying the beautiful cliffs of Pismo and Shell Beach, reflecting on how much I have to be grateful for. As I looked in my rear view mirror, there was a bone-head in a jacked up pick-up truck, about 20 feet off the ground. He couldn’t have been more than three feet behind me. I could barely see the middle of his grill in my rear view mirror. I pulled over and let him pass; ever grateful for the two jack-ass rule I learned from a friend in the program. (Allow two jack-asses a free pass across your path, per day, without any...

Or… maybe I’m crazy or did I hear right. Several college presidents across the U.S. have gotten together and think it would be a good idea to reduce the drinking age to 18! My thoughts? Oh, hell no!! Let’s just take a quick look at maturity. In the United States 14 % of our population is between the ages of 16 to 19, yet this age group accounts for nearly 30% of all motor vehicle accidents. In a recent survey, it was revealed that 12 teenagers die in accidents each day, mostly, boys. The primary reason for these astonishing numbers is lack of maturity. Our brains are just not fully...