Emotional Sobriety Means Thinking About My Thinking Not About the Drinking — Permelia H.

About This Speaker Tape

Permelia grew up on the south side of Atlanta — College Park, Hapeville, East Point — in what looked like a normal household until her parents divorced when she was 11. The same year, she took her first drink with some neighborhood boys and came home and told her mother about it nonchalantly. That moment locked alcohol in with boys, romance, rebellion, and excitement. After the divorce she felt like an outcast, stopped talking about her feelings, and learned to cover up. At 17 she married to escape her mother — "I took my first hostage at the age of 17." At 19 a car wreck left her with a permanent speech impediment, and she focused on that one loss instead of what she still had.

She drank and used through 38 years of nursing, including a stretch where she worked the night shift at the Fulton County Alcoholism Treatment Center — drunk, medicating detox patients, then cursing them when they woke her up on the couch. Instead of firing her, they intervened. The nurse who ran the intervention became her first sponsor with one year sober. A halfway house (Breakthrough in Decatur), a fifth step done crying in someone's arms, and the Dogwood Club followed. A New Year's Eve dance at the Tarragon Club in Hapeville brought her home to the south side, where at nine years sober she bought a house.

The bulk of the tape is about what came after the drinking stopped. Her sponsor told her to go downstairs and tell her mother, "I'm sorry for everything I've ever done to you." Her mother answered, "You have done a lot to me" — and something shifted anyway. After 20 years sober she started sending her estranged father Father's Day cards and calling him. A book about letting go of anger at men taught her to repeat to herself: men are loving, men pray, men are kind. She drove her aging sponsor Helen Moore from the assisted-living facility in Smyrna to meetings once a month until Helen couldn't come anymore.

She's coming up on 30 years in September. She doesn't think about drinking; she thinks about her thinking. She can call the bank without a PIN because they recognize her voice, and that's the speech impediment she used to hate. She found the Navajo Club when she quit smoking, and she still takes what she hears there back to the Tarragon Club and pretends she came up with it herself.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — 'she'll tell you what the problem is, but she's always got a solution'
• 2:00 South side Atlanta childhood — 'the more I stay sober, the better my childhood looks'
• 6:30 First drink at 11 after parents' divorce — associating alcohol with boys, romance, rebellion
• 12:00 Married at 17 to escape her mother — 'I took my first hostage'
• 15:00 Car accident at 19, speech impediment, and the man with the hand-held voice box who humbled her
• 22:00 Intervention at Fulton County Alcoholism Treatment Center — the nurse who caught her becomes her first sponsor
• 30:00 Amends to her mother — 'I'm sorry for everything I've ever done to you' and the reply that changed things
• 38:00 Father's Day cards after 20 years estranged — learning her dad is a human being who prays
• 46:00 Driving sponsor Helen Moore from Smyrna assisted living to the Navajo meeting once a month
• 52:00 Approaching 30 years in September — the speech impediment that now lets the bank recognize her voice