Alcohol Didn’t Cause My Alcoholism — It Treated It – Katie P.

About This Speaker Tape

Katie P. from Austin, Texas, sober since October 28, 1984, shares her story at the Design for a Living group's anniversary. She opens with warmth and humor about traveling from Texas into the New Jersey cold, then dives into her belief that alcoholism is a genetic illness rooted in self-centeredness, not caused by trauma. She lost her mother at eight, was raised by a World War II vet father and three stepmothers, started drinking at twelve from creepy strangers outside a 7-Eleven, left home at fifteen, and chased a boy named Joe into AA at age 26 with a five-year-old daughter in tow.

The heart of her talk is the danger of meeting-based sobriety and untreated alcoholism in long-term sobriety. She describes leaving AA for three years to do church, returning to oral AA without real step work, and the bedevilments creeping back in. When her first husband Joe was diagnosed with a fist-sized brain tumor, she drove a school bus for three years to keep insurance, including a story about gunning the bus over two humps and blowing all four valve stems off the back axle. Joe later relapsed after 23 years and died of a heroin overdose laced with fentanyl.

She then married her best friend Charlie, and through Mark H.'s teaching on the evening review and the 10th and 11th steps experienced what she calls a second surrender at seventeen years sober. She walks the room through the bedevilments on page 52, hammers that resentment and fear are the only blocks, and warns the younger generation away from clinical labels and back to the literature. She closes by reading aloud a love letter Charlie wrote her on their 13th anniversary, ending the talk in tears for the room still grieving him.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Jimmy alcoholic opens the Design for a Living anniversary, recalls 12 alcoholics meeting in his house in 2005 and 175 people showing up the first night January 22, 2006
• 3:30 Katie Parker takes the mic, jokes about the podium drink holders and Roger leaving her in sub-zero weather at the airport
• 6:00 Celebrates 40 years sober October 28, 1984, plugs the Primary Purpose group in Austin that studies the book line by line
• 12:00 Mother dies of kidney disease in 1967, father remarries three times in eighteen months, four live-in housekeepers
• 15:00 Started drinking at twelve, waiting in front of the 7-Eleven on her Schwinn for the creepy guy to buy Boone's Farm
• 22:00 Left home at fifteen, rented a $62.50 shrimp-boat shack, principal Mr. Phillips lets it stand if she keeps her grades up
• 30:00 Chases Joe into AA after a wild Halloween night dressed as Tina Turner, falls in love with the fellowship on day one
• 38:00 Three-year detour into a non-denominational church, Roland Hazard quote from page 27 about religious convictions not being the vital experience
• 45:00 Joe's brain tumor diagnosis, the ER doctor she instantly disliked, fourteen-hour surgery, school bus job for HMO insurance
• 55:00 Mark H., the second surrender at seventeen years, the bedevilments on page 52, closes reading Charlie's 13th anniversary love letter