Almost Drank Rather Than Take Step 6 Because I Liked the Defects That Were Killing Me – Avery S.
About This Speaker Tape
Avery sobered up on January 30, 1982 and tells a full arc from Chicago childhood to 43 years sober. Born to two alcoholic parents, she grew up as the oldest at home of ten kids after her mother would drink and leave them, sometimes without food. Her grandmother was the saving grace — hiring housekeepers, signing her mother into county institutions against her will, and telling Avery and her siblings they could come over for anything. At eleven Avery visited her mother in a state institution and chose not to tell her grandmother her mother wanted out, because at least she knew where she was.
Avery did everything she thought would keep her from becoming her mother — finished school, married, one child, bought a house before 21, took a corporate job on the 39th floor overlooking South Shore Drive. A week-long drinking bender, a blackout where she forgot a friend was inside her house, and a missed day of work pushed her into a 28-day treatment center purely to save her job. A counselor handed her the Big Book, told her to read the first 164 pages, and she cried because the book was about her. She still drank after treatment — intellectual admission was not the same as the innermost-self concession — and for roughly three years she kept one foot in AA and one in the club. A man chased her down after her first meeting and told her he didn't want to be her sponsor, he wanted to be her friend in the alcoholic phenomenon, and that kept her coming back when she wanted to surrender to the disease instead of the program.
At six months sober her corporation relocated her to Houston, where an AA friend handed her Lloyd B.'s number. Lloyd took her into a maximum-security women's penitentiary to carry the message once a month on six-hour drives. There she met Princella, who she resisted as a friend because she only ever gravitated toward men. In a health-club jacuzzi Princella asked if Avery had ever taken her fourth and fifth steps and announced they were going on a retreat. On the drive back from the prison Avery took her fifth step with Princella in the car. Later, after a beer she pulled from her own freezer when someone made her mad, she called Princella and said, "My life is hurting," and took steps six and seven. At 20 years sober she finally told Princella — in a Denver coffee shop called the Tattered Cover — that Princella had been her sponsor all along.
Everybody in Avery's immediate family died of alcoholism. When she learned her only daughter had a drinking problem she dropped to her knees and gave her back to her Higher Power rather than speak to her. Her daughter now celebrates alongside her; her two grandsons have never seen either of them drink. One Friday in the car eight-year-old Avery leaned through the bucket seat and said, "Grandma, you raised a good mom." She works at the Central Office of Alcoholics Anonymous after sending back $10,000 she had lied to get for a beauty salon — and calls it the best job she has ever had.
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