The Monday afternoon is sunny and warm, but the grass in Dolores Park is still damp from the morning dew. Dogs of all shapes and sizes run around, little ones barking madly at big ones. Sitting on a hill, surveying the scene with dark, warm eyes and laughing is Charlie. “I would love a Border Collie,” he says, sipping on his Diet Coke. He could be the boy-next-door—standing at 5’9”, with a muscular build, and dark hair framing his strong, tanned cheekbones. His smile is shy but genuine...and he does it often. Seven months ago at this hour of the day, his drink would have been mixed with Smirnoff. Today, Charlie is a sober man.

“When I would really drink, it was by myself, which is dangerous,” he admits, his shoulders heavy with the memory. “I didn’t drink around people because I didn’t want them to know. There was a lot of guilt and shame I felt because the way I was brought up.” Raised Mormon in a Mexican/Irish home, Charlie’s Texan family was strict to the point of not allowing chocolate or caffeine in the house.

Being gay had a lot to do with Charlie’s drinking. He was the youngest of eight and did “girly things” as a kid like cooking, sewing, and helping his mom dress. When he “came out” to his family about his sexuality, they were un-accepting. The Mormon church excommunicated him, and his mom told him he was going to hell.

The social drinking started with one cocktail on the weekends with friends. Unlike many people who first experience alcohol from tasting it in spiked punch bowls at high school dances or stealing from their parents’ liquor cabinets, Charlie hadn’t touched it until he moved to San Francisco at age thirty-one. Once it started, it escalated behind closed doors.

The bar scene was exciting. His first years in the city made up for lost time from his early twenties. “I was around people who were having a good time and I was part of a group,” Charlie, now thirty-seven, says of his first times drinking. “To me it was fun because I never did that as a kid and didn’t have a lot of friends in Houston. In San Francisco I could be open and free and myself," he says. "It was a way to not deal with my family and how my mom and brother thought of me being gay—It was a way of not dealing with life or with myself.”

Although his clean-cut appearances may not show it, Charlie is an alcoholic. Charlie’s drinking was a daily habit and was never ending, something Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) calls “maintenance drinking": in the morning, after noon, and at night. “It was like having a coke with fries or a hamburger. It got to be something normal.”

For him, normal was being at the movies and going to the bathroom to take a couple swigs of vodka from his backpack, then returning to the film. During that time, Charlie admits, he doesn’t remember the movies he saw—it is a grey area for him. He did the same thing at work. While on a shift or during break, he would go to the bathroom and take a few swings, in this way, maintaining his level of drinking throughout the day without every being completely intoxicated or out of control.

Charlie also became emotional when he drank and would cry about the way his family felt about him. At that point, he realized he wasn’t doing what he wanted to do with his life, and instead of making things better, the drinking elevated his problems. “It made me more depressed because I was no longer present.”

After three years of struggling with alcoholism, Charlie joined AA. With help from his sponsor who told him drinking is “cunning, baffling, and powerful,” Charlie is finally sober.

AA is a program that helps alcoholics form a fellowship or support system with others who suffer from a drinking problem. The only requirement for membership with AA is the desire to quit drinking. With seven hundred meetings being held weekly in the San Francisco/Marin County areas, there is a something for everybody all the time.

It’s important for any alcoholic who has accepted his or her disease to attend meetings regularly, so for Charlie, he goes six days a week. “It’s about people who you identify with, who went through the same thing, and who get support from you,” says Charlie. “You can’t do this on your own. This is something that controls everything you do, every waking moment. It’s very scary and it can kill you.”

Even after seven months of sobriety Charlie still gets the shakes every now and then. He wakes up every morning at five a.m. listening to Heather Small’s “What Have I Done Today to Make You Feel Proud,” and sometimes his hands will shake. His body, which was used to the sugar it received from the alcohol, can’t get it that way anymore so he’s substituted chocolate for alcohol—Snickers bars are his favorite.

During an AA meeting, no one is required to share a story unless the alcoholic is ready and wants to. It’s a safe place for people from all different backgrounds, whether it is someone who is gay, a homeless person off the street, an actor, a transvestite, a business owner, a musician, or even a leader in the community. In AA it doesn’t matter who you are, but that you came. Sometimes showing up for a meeting is the hardest part of an alcoholic’s day, but if they can push themselves to attend, recovery is attainable.

“The program is about empowering each other,” says Charlie. “What I get from other people in sharing is empowering. That’s what makes the world beautiful—people and their stories.”