Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps Saved the Marriage That AA Alone Could Not – Kim L.

About This Speaker Tape

Kim L. tells her story at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club. She grew up in Ohio in a house where drinking was normal — a keg tapped in the basement, her father's marijuana seeds she helped pick out at eight years old. A shy, chunky, awkward child addicted to approval, she found her first drink at 16 after the prom — cheap champagne that filled cracks she couldn't have named. At Ohio University she developed a full-blown college drinking life: six fake IDs, different drinking friends for different nights so nobody could see the whole picture, Quarter Beer nights that ended with her sleeping in the closet, waking up without pants in the dorm study lounge, wetting the bed, piecing together nights from the stamps on her hands.

Working as a dorm staffer her last year, she built a vicious resentment against a supervisor who threatened to discipline her underage drinking and spent weeks documenting bad behavior to get her fired — sober, fully convinced she was doing the student body a favor. Offered a transfer, she instead wrote a drunken self-righteous resignation letter, read it at a staff meeting, then drank five pitchers with a friend and could not get drunk. She went home, swallowed hoarded pills, woke up throwing up blood, and detoxed in the hospital. Thanksgiving 1988.

Treatment followed. She went believing she was there for her parents' alcoholism — told the circle 'my parents are in the hospital, I'm an alcoholic.' She stayed sober but miserable for months, sleepless until 5 a.m., certain AA wasn't working for her. In June 1989, walking out of a Columbus meeting planning a second suicide attempt, a teacher stood between her and the door and laughed her into a group. That was her real first step — the second surrender, to alcoholism itself, not just to the bottle. On her 21st birthday she battled the urge to drink, got on her knees the way her first sponsor John had told her to, and the obsession lifted.

The tape's gravity is her ninth-step amends to her mother's second husband, the neighborhood pedophile who lived in their house — a man she had fantasized about watching die. A woman at a meeting talked about marionette strings being cut by an amends to a cruel ex. Kim went home that weekend, walked into his workplace, said she was sorry he wasn't easy to live with and that she was doing this to stay sober. The monster became a thick, weak, frightened soul in front of her. She keeps the memories now with none of the pain. Married to Phillip — an alcoholic who wasn't really sober when they married and now has nearly ten years — she works Al-Anon's twelve steps, sponsors women through them, does a nightly tenth step, and stays close to newcomers because a shaking-handed woman at her home group can still give her the feeling her first drink gave her.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Blue Chip Speakers intro, page 29 reading, Tim introduces Kim L.
• 3:30 Skyland home group 60th anniversary; worst fear is throwing a party no one attends
• 6:00 Ohio childhood — keg in basement, picking seeds out of her father's marijuana at eight
• 9:30 First drink after prom at 16, cheap champagne 'filled the cracks' — breaks up with boyfriend drunk
• 14:00 Ohio University, Bong Hill, Quarter Beer Night at The Hanger, passes out in the closet
• 18:00 Six fake IDs, splits drinking across different friend groups so no one sees the whole picture
• 23:00 Sober resentment campaign against her supervisor — documenting, gossiping, plotting her removal
• 29:00 Drunken resignation letter at staff meeting, five pitchers, pills, throwing up blood — Thanksgiving 1988
• 38:00 June 1989 second surrender — walking out to a second suicide attempt, a teacher stops her at the door
• 46:00 Ninth-step amends to her mother's pedophile second husband — the sponge squeezed free of water