Dangerously Antisocial Without Alcohol: Dangerously Social With It – Cathy B.

About This Speaker Tape

Cathy B. from Penrose, North Carolina, speaks at the 31st Oceanfront Conference in Virginia Beach in 2007. She opens by declaring that Alcoholics Anonymous is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in her entire life, and that nobody has ever loved her the way AA has loved her. A self-described total redneck, she came to the program after multiple white chips, with her sobriety date of April 28, 2000.

Cathy's drinking started young — before she even knew the word for it, she was poking holes in the bottom of her father's Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, sucking the beer out, and putting them back. Her dad thought he had defective cans. She was seven or eight years old. By 13, at her friend Janet's sister's wedding reception in a trailer park, she felt the effect produced by alcohol for the first time and went from dangerously antisocial to dangerously social overnight.

By 14 she was a runaway, by 15 in a psychiatric facility, by 16 in treatment, by 17 in juvenile prison for robbery. A daily drinker by 17, needing a morning drink by 18. Her story captures the rapid progression of the disease in someone who had all the isms before she ever picked up a drink — stealing, manipulating, isolating. The only thing she had when she came back was willingness, beaten into her by the disease, and from that one small thing her entire life changed.

Topics

Timestamps

• 00:00 Nobody has ever loved her the way AA has loved her
• 08:00 Poking holes in dad's Pabst Blue Ribbon cans at age seven
• 16:00 The trailer park wedding reception at 13 — from antisocial to dangerously social
• 24:00 Runaway at 14, psychiatric facility at 15, treatment at 16
• 32:00 Juvenile prison for robbery at 17, daily drinker, morning drinks by 18
• 40:00 All the isms before she ever picked up a drink
• 48:00 Multiple white chips and the sobriety date of April 28, 2000
• 56:00 Willingness beaten into her by the disease changed everything