Do You Want Temporary Sobriety — That’s What My Sponsor Asked Me First – Meredith M.

About This Speaker Tape

Meredith got her first taste of alcohol at ten — champagne at a family holiday, where her siblings disliked theirs and she ended up with four rounds. She loved the warmth, the personality change, and the cherries left in grown-ups' glasses. She grew up in a Mad Men living room in the New York suburbs, youngest of five, until the family moved to the Adirondacks and her father's commute to the city turned into a divorce. Her mother drank warm Budweiser in bed and cried into a mirror; Meredith, in sixth grade, swore she would never be that weak.

She compensated by being number one on the outside while collapsing on the inside — valedictorian, JV cheerleader captain, then valedictorian again, and also mouthy, megaphone, tramp, and eventually Nightmare and Cujo as a tourist-town bartender. She geographic-cured to Atlanta, kept finding dive bars where she could reign supreme, and developed blackouts, suicidal flashes, and a boss-stuns conversation in Myrtle Beach after she danced on a bar in front of every employee of her company's four restaurants.

Her bottom came in pieces — a diabetes diagnosis with a martini-glass X on the prescription bottle, then a barbecue where her new boyfriend Norman showed up late because he was coloring his hair, and a weekend blackout at a Page and Plant concert that convinced her she had ruined the relationship. A week later her friend Patty told her Norman was gay and using her as a beard. She came to AA to save a relationship that did not exist and stayed long enough to figure it out.

A clear-eyed woman in a meeting agreed to sponsor her but asked if she wanted temporary sobriety. Meredith read the Big Book with her, diagnosed herself, cried on her sponsor's porch through a fourth step while her sponsor napped, did a fifth step, and called a Luann she had not spoken to in fifteen years. Twenty-eight years later she has buried three of four brothers — Jeffrey and Matthew during COVID — and become an aunt to her late brother Jeff's son Gunner, who now has a nightly call time with her from college. Her message: a Higher Power becomes fact through honest seeking, and forgiveness is a thing you do, not a feeling you wait for.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Kat introduces Meredith; Meredith gives her sobriety date as May 30, 1998 — nearly 28 years, one year short of out-drinking her drinking years
• 2:30 First drink at 10 — grandmother pours the grandkids champagne; siblings don't like theirs so Meredith drinks four ounces and loves the warmth
• 7:30 Parents' divorce in sixth grade; mother drinking warm Budweiser in bed, staring into a mirror and crying; Meredith vows not to be that weak
• 13:00 The nickname progression as a downward spiral — bossy, mouthy, megaphone, tramp, and eventually Nightmare and Cujo behind the bar
• 22:00 Diabetes diagnosis — the martini-glass X on the pill bottle; her future vision of a barstool, prosthetic leg, and Coke-bottle glasses at sixty
• 28:00 Myrtle Beach bar-dancing blackout; boss flies to Atlanta on a Sunday morning and tells her to clean it up
• 33:00 The Norman story — the barbecue, the hair-coloring, the Page and Plant blackout, and Patty telling her Norman is gay
• 41:00 Sponsor asks if she wants temporary sobriety; they begin reading the Big Book together and Meredith diagnoses herself as alcoholic
• 48:00 Fourth step on the sponsor's porch — Meredith crying her guts out while the sponsor naps; fifth step unburdens secrets she had planned to take to the grave
• 54:00 Losing brothers Jeffrey and Matthew during COVID; staying in Gunner's life — nightly call time with her late brother Jeff's son, now in college