Children of Alcoholics Are Drinking Before They Can Read – Vanessa W.
About This Speaker Tape
Vanessa opens by thanking her Higher Power and the old-timers, welcoming the newcomer as the most important person at any meeting. She admits she's not a podium speaker and tells the tape she'll speak up so it catches her.
She came into AA certain she wasn't an alcoholic. Her story starts in a family of bootleggers — as a little girl she cleaned cups at the bootleg house, drank what was left, and danced for dollars when the grown-ups yelled "dance, baby." Her father had alcohol seizures; she stood over him with something in her hand thinking he needed help, not knowing she did too. Her mother got drunk and beat the kids, and the next morning it was just a bruise and nobody spoke of it.
Hustling ran in the blood. Her parents ran numbers out of a fish market and sent her school-to-school dropping off fish and bet slips. She moved from Now and Laters and stick Jolly Ranchers to blow pops to harder product — alcohol to other things. She didn't know how to cope with her own thoughts, and she kept coming back to the rooms because every time she did, she got a little clearer.
The recording ends abruptly: a woman named Amy goes into a seizure in her chair mid-share, an ambulance is called, and the meeting closes with the group singing "if the river keep on rising, water's gonna overflow." The tape is short and cut off by a real medical emergency.
Discussion
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