Drinking to Escape the Feelings That Were Always Underneath – Joanne C.

About This Speaker Tape

1981. A seventeen-year-old girl weighing 101 pounds, broken and chasing the dragon, enters the rehab system. Joanne C. grew up in a house where the streets were safer than the home, fleeing to Florida as a hitchhiking teenager to outrun an abusive father and a void that wouldn't fill. For years, she operated on a sexual level, using sex for power and money, drinking to numb the feelings that were always underneath. She spent a decade bouncing in and out of the rooms—white-knuckling five years of "clean and dry" without doing the work, only to crash at a dam with a four-pack of wine coolers.

It took a near-death motorcycle accident and a coma to introduce the idea of a Higher Power, but true sobriety didn't arrive until she found a sponsor who refused to let her hide. Through the wreckage of a fourth step and the secrets of a fifth, she stopped being a victim. Today, she finds peace writing in a cemetery journal and making amends to a broken father.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Joanne C. discusses her childhood in an alcoholic home and her early start drinking at age nine.
• 3:15 Details on leaving home at twelve and the progression of the disease in Florida.
• 6:20 The experience of entering rehab at seventeen and the early struggle to identify with older members in AA.
• 8:40 A near-fatal motorcycle accident and the subsequent three-month coma.
• 11:10 The 'dry drunk' period: five years of sobriety without working the steps, leading to misery and suicidal ideation.
• 14:30 Relapse story: drinking wine coolers and the attempt to commit suicide off a dam.
• 18:10 The struggle with sexuality and the internal conflict that contributed to her relapse.
• 22:40 Finding a sponsor who insisted on a rigorous Big Book study and the rejection of her pre-written steps.
• 26:15 The experience of the Third Step prayer and the 'bondage of self'.
• 29:30 The transformative Fifth Step and the moment of carrying her sponsor's baby up a hill.
• 33:10 Making direct amends to her father and moving from victim to daughter.
• 37:45 Discussion of the Tenth Step and the removal of the obsession to drink.