Doctor Asked If I Abused Drugs — I Told Him No, I’m Organic 🥴 – Sharon B.

About This Speaker Tape

Sharon B., sober since August 20, 1975, tells her story at the 16th Rocky Mountain Roundup in Ogden, Utah on October 12, 2001. She grew up in Iowa in a non-alcoholic family and was the lone alcoholic. By 19 she was being seated at the children's table at Thanksgiving because the adults feared she'd pass out in her turkey. She drank through an art scholarship, got drunk at a White House tea with Lucy and Linda Bird at 16, joined a carnival, did 31 days in jail in Bogalusa, Louisiana, danced at the 500 Club in the French Quarter, and lived above a biker bar with a man who kept a pet skunk and gave her knife fights for love.

Her bottom came in Palm Springs when two men beat her unconscious and dumped her in a ditch. Jaw broken in three places, nose broken, concussion, bleeding face-down in the sand, she heard a voice say "get up, I want to live." Weeks later, jaw wired shut, drinking cheap wine through a straw pushed through a missing-tooth gap, she called her mother for $20. Her mother refused. The next call was Chris — the girl from Barney's Beanery with the Big Book under her arm. Chris connected her to a woman named Suzanne, and two shiny-haired California girls in a bright yellow Volkswagen picked her up and waited for the liquor store lights to go off before sending her upstairs.

She came in unable to speak for three months — the wires kept her listening. The Pacific Group and sponsors Janet, Ginny, and later Clancy walked her through the steps. A sponsor named Ginny directed her to call her father to pay back money she owed him — three-line notes sent with every check on time. Four and three-quarter years later, between Christmas and New Year's, her dad called and said, "Merry Christmas, Sharon. I don't want your money anymore. But don't stop sending me your notes." She and her father walked into a guilt-free relationship before he was killed suddenly on April 19, two years before this talk.

Her teaching centers on sponsor-directed amends, living in the now, and being a force for good. She speaks of her 17-year-old son who has never seen her drink, her mother who sleeps through the night knowing her daughter is safe in AA, and Mary Reagan's prayer: please Higher Power help me become half the person my dog thinks I am.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens in Ogden thanking Julie, Max and Debbie; frames AA as the language of the heart
• 2:30 French Quarter split-shift story: fishnets, platform shoes, cobblestone fall, champagne bottle unbroken, cops impressed
• 8:00 Iowa childhood as the only alcoholic in a non-alcoholic family; seated at the children's table at 19
• 15:00 Drunk at the White House tea with Lucy and Linda Bird; later protesting with the one-finger peace sign
• 22:00 Organic farm in northern Wisconsin, frisbeeing Pete Seeger records, gallbladder and pancreatitis at a young age, 'I'm organic'
• 30:00 Bogalusa jail, father flies down, they sit inches apart at the lawyer's desk without speaking; 31 days and a big fine
• 38:00 Palm Springs beating: voice says 'get up, I want to live'; hospital, jaw wired, no airline ticket home
• 45:00 August 20, 1975: mother refuses $20, Chris from Barney's Beanery, Suzanne says put down your drink, the yellow Volkswagen arrives
• 55:00 Chuck and the score-keeping notebook: 'pass it on — that's how we want to be paid back'
• 68:00 Sponsor Ginny directs the amends to dad: page 78, three-line notes with every check; years later dad calls Christmas to say the debt is free and clear