Somebody else's pants

I was at a downtown Boston A.A. meeting listening to a speaker who was a sixty year old man, looked to be in pretty good shape, currently living in a sober house.  He was an excellent speaker.  He was the type of person you find who has lived in a subculture where going to A.A. is a part of a lot of peoples' lives and then not going to A.A. is also part of their lives.  Its a subculture where people understand the chaos and violence associated with alcoholism and drug addiction and often resolve "never to be like that" and then find themselves "just like that."  Then they go to A.A., or perhaps N.A., and they get a life back and they feel so good that they forget what produced the improvement in their lives and they leave A.A. and they're back in the chaos and dysfunction and can't get out.  People say things like, "Yeah, I stepped out for a drink and I got back ten years later."  Anyway this guy was like that.  He was quite appealing in his own way.  One thing he said, describing how bad it gets stuck with me.  He said, "When I woke up in the morning and put my pants on, if I had four bucks in my pocket I was wearing someone else's pants."  This is the life of the alcoholic and I could identify with the emotion he was describing.