Acting My Way Into Right Thinking Because Thinking My Way Into Right Living Never Worked – Patty O.

About This Speaker Tape

Patty shares her story with raw humor and deep emotion at a time of profound personal loss — her sponsor of 21 years passed away just the day before. She opens by honoring that relationship and the simple instruction her sponsor always gave: "Just tell them your name and tell them the truth." Despite her grief, she shows up because that is what AA taught her to do.

Growing up in an alcoholic home with a drunk father and a controlling Al-Anon mother, Patty learned early to put on a show for the world. She describes a hilarious family picnic scene that became a metaphor for her entire life — always performing, never authentic. Her first drink at 13 on a camping trip led to a catastrophic night involving a bottle of vodka, a toilet seat, and crawling through the sand, which she declares was the most "marvelous, incredible, fabulous, magnificent, wonderful spiritual experience" she ever had. From that day forward she put every substance she could find into her body, with alcohol always first.

Her drinking career included 12 drunk driving assault charges, blackouts in Las Vegas, stealing cars she thought was "alternative transportation," and a newspaper career where she once wrote an expose on a man's affair — forgetting she was the woman he was having it with. A judge sentenced her to 10 years but offered an alternative that included AA. She drank three more months before walking into her first meeting on October 4, 1975, where she stole the Big Book looking for "the answer book."

After eight and a half months of not drinking and not recovering, the pain drove her to her knees and she began working the steps. She walks through each step with humor and insight — discovering through her fourth step inventory that she was the dysfunction, not her family; finding through her fifth step that one brick came out of the wall she had built to keep people out; experiencing the miracle of steps six and seven where she "walked through the archway to freedom." She shares the heartbreak of her son choosing drugs over her home, her mother's death after 15 years of mended relationship, and her discovery that she had earned a master's degree during a blackout. Twenty-one years sober, she still shows up, still human, still afraid — but no longer paralyzed.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with gratitude, reveals her sponsor of 21 years died the day before
• 5:00 The family picnic story — propping dad against a tree, the dog who didn't know what a frisbee was
• 9:00 First drink at 13: vodka on a camping trip, paralyzed to a toilet seat, crawling back to the tent
• 15:00 Bar drinker life — sleazy bars, mouthwash, perfume, Taboo as her after-dinner drink of choice
• 20:00 Drove 66 miles toward Chico, ran out of booze, found a bar and never left
• 25:00 12 drunk driving assault charges — fighting cops at every stop, never remembering the friend with the radio
• 33:00 Moment of clarity in the courtroom at 26, came to AA on October 4, 1975
• 42:00 Eight and a half months of not drinking and not recovering before finally taking Step One
• 52:00 Walking through the steps — fourth step inventory, fifth step removing one brick from the wall
• 62:00 Son's addiction, mother's death, the 12-step call she charged $100 for, closing with 21 years of sobriety