Bob Dempty AKA Humpty Dumpty

Hi, my name is Bob and I'm an alcoholic and an addict. "Hi Bob." These meetings always start the same way. I try to go at least a couple of times a month to remind myself that I hit bottom once and could easily go right back down. I've been sober for ten years now but I still remember vividly the event that turned my life around.

I had been drinking since early that morning, cheap beer because I was fired from my job earlier in the week. That was my third job in a month and I really needed a drink in order to stop thinking about how I was going to pay the bills. The beer really wasn't doing it, but I had no cash, so I called my friend Boy Blue who brought over some Jim Beam and a little weed to smoke with it.

Well, we threw back shots all afternoon and by the time Blue left, the house was so smoky I couldn't find my way to the bathroom. I needed some air so I went out for a walk. The kingdom is pretty small, so soon I was at the edge of the moat surrounding the castle. I climbed up on the wall to see the castle more clearly and the next thing I knew, I was looking up into the faces of several guards shaking their heads at me in disgust.

I fell off the wall and broke my shell in several places. The story that went around the town that afternoon was I fell off the wall and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put me together again. Well duh! First of all, whoever heard of a horse being able to practice medicine? And the king's men aren't any more capable in that area; they're guards, not doctors! But they were able to take me to a very competent physician who fixed me up and transferred me to a rehabilitation center.

I spent several months in rehab, learning the things that triggered my drinking and how to avoid them. It's been rocky. I've almost fallen back several times, but thanks to close friends and my sponsor, I've managed to stay on the straight and narrow.

I changed my name because the rumor that I was dead spread so quickly nobody would hire me, fearing I was a ghost. So now I'm Bob Dempty, an insurance salesman who specializes in accident insurance. Oh and in case you're wondering, Boy Blue fell into a drunken stupor under a haystack and smothered to death.