When I was 18 years old I was an alcoholic.

I lived on the Northwest part of town. I went to a party way over on the eastside because a friend of mine knew this girl having the party and she invited us.

I drove over there in my 1969 Pontiac LeMans with another friend of mine.

I got extremely drunk. So drunk that I couldn't drive home. My friend took my keys and he drove while I slept. At about 3:00 AM he woke me up and said "You have to drive, I can't drive anymore...and I'm Lost".

I looked around and figured out where we were. He had driven East and he went 60 miles in the wrong direction.

I started driving the car. I drove the sixty miles and it was about 4AM. I found the highway, went through the city and went North, I was two exits from our home exit when I fell asleep at the wheel.

My car was in the middle lane, late at night a tractor trailer was in the left lane travelling fast enough that it went past us. I woke up with the collision. I looked out of my front window, and the rear end of the tractor trailer was about 3 feet from my face. The car had gotten hooked under the back end of the tractor trailer and we were travelling about sixty miles an hour. I screamed and woke my friend up, or the collision woke him...don't know for sure.

The car suddenly came loose of the truck, spun out of control and wound up on the pavement on the right side of the highway. The front end of the car was destroyed. The truck never stopped, either not realizing what had happened, or not caring.

Neither of us had a scratch. We started walking to the exit of the highway (no cell phones back then). When we were walking down the exit ramp a cop car pulled up and asked if that was our car.

We explained what happened in the sense that we got dragged by a speeding truck and came lose. He told us he didn't believe us, but he could find no evidence that we had struck any guard rail or anything. He drove us back to the exit where he found us. It about 4 am. We both walked the five miles to our homes.

At 5:30am I woke my mother up and told her I had been in an accident and that my car was destroyed. She said, "God has a reason for you to be alive" and she went back to bed.

I've never figured out that reason. He still makes fun of the way I screamed.