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The Miracle of “No, Thank You.”

“Would You Like a Beer?”

Neal Hemphill
2 min readAug 29, 2023
Photo by Diego Indriago on Pexels: https://tinyurl.com/499kby5e

Last week, my wife and I took a mini-vacation for a few days. We went to a hotel that’s near to beaches, good restaurants, shopping, and parks. It also has a pool that we love.

It was a gorgeous day, and we were encamped at the pool for the afternoon. My wife and I were swimming when a couple toted in a cooler, sat down and cracked a couple of beers open, and turned on some music, kind of loud.

Oh, brother. Here comes the idiot intrusion.

Well, not quite. The gent, Eric, asked us if the music was OK. We said it was a bit loud, and he quickly turned it down to a very fair level.

My wife got out of the pool to read in the sun, and I ended up wandering over poolside as Eric had engaged me in conversation. He follows professional tennis closely, and we talked about that for a while. We talked about the area, a little personal history, and then, Eric said:

“Would you like a beer?”

Eric doesn’t know me from Adam, so he had no idea he was giving me an invitation to Hell. He doesn’t know that a single beer could be the beginning of my downfall. Or that it could be the trigger to an insatiable craving that would lead me to drive drunk, looking to score some cocaine, and setting off my psychological…

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Neal Hemphill
Neal Hemphill

Written by Neal Hemphill

Writes about Sobriety/Recovery from Lived Experience of 35+ years. Filmmaker telling stories about the struggles of addiction/recovery @ straightaheadfilms.com

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