Children of Alcoholics Repeat What They Swore They’d Never Become – Carlos S.
About This Speaker Tape
Carlos S. shares a vivid, emotionally raw story that begins in Puerto Rico and the South Bronx. Born in 1951, he watched his father — a district manager for Bacardi Rum — drink himself into the VA hospital by the time Carlos was seven. His father spent nearly a decade dying of cirrhosis, shrinking from 330 pounds to 120, and Carlos was snuck upstairs by a nurse the day before he died to see him toothless and curled in a fetal position under a thin sheet. That image of his father became a mirror Carlos would eventually recognize in himself.
Growing up a latchkey kid in a South Bronx neighborhood defined by heroin and alcohol, Carlos learned to cook, sew, and fend for himself by thirteen. He married his first wife Shirley at seventeen, became an elevator mechanic, and drank steadily for decades — starting with Saturday screwdrivers with his cousin and expanding into a daily habit fueled by out-of-town work assignments. He describes passing out nightly at a dive called Bob's Steakhouse in Tupper Lake, New York, where the barmaid had to wake him each morning and wind blew through holes in the wall. He stole from the register of a pizzeria he co-owned with his friend Tony to fund trips to the bar across the street. Through it all, he insists his worst damage was not physical but emotional — walking all over his children's lives, especially his youngest daughter Jenny Lee, who would sob in a corner begging him to stop fighting with her mother.
In 1997, Shirley arranged for Carlos to see an addictions counselor named Jim McSweeney, a former Catholic priest and recovering alcoholic. That encounter cracked something open. Carlos found his way to Open House on Fayette Street in Syracuse, where an Irishman named Gene Mack became his sponsor and told him the only thing he had to do was keep the plug in the jug. Carlos threw himself into meetings — six, seven, eight a day between elevator service calls — detoxing in his chair, vibrating, drinking coffee, and chain-smoking. He began sponsoring at three months and speaking at three months because Gene told him to just do it and stop overthinking.
Carlos moved to Atlanta in 2000 with his second wife Suzanne, who has over 31 years of sobriety herself. Now 21 years sober and 67 years old, he has repaired his relationships with all three children, survived a heart attack and prostate cancer, retired from the elevator trade, and still attends four home groups. He is candid about his character defects — his anger, his ADD, his tendency to embellish stories — and equally candid about what keeps him alive: daily prayer, meetings, and the men he stays sober with. He closes with Gene's simple instruction that has carried him for two decades: just keep the plug in the jug.
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