Feeling Everything Since Age Five and Building an Entire Identity to Prove You Feel Nothing – June G.

About This Speaker Tape

June G. shares her story at the 1986 Congressional Luncheon in Washington, DC, describing a childhood defined by an obsession with suicide beginning at age five, growing up in an alcoholic home in Venice, California, and using drugs and alcohol from ages seven and eight. She joined a gang and built an identity as a "tough broad," putting out cigarettes on her bare feet and wearing motorcycle chains, yet underneath was a person terrified of emotion who weighed 87 pounds and had no family, no home, and no friends by the time she found AA at age thirteen.

Her early sobriety was marked by resistance and defiance — she smoked cigars at meetings, wore a jacket reading "Do unto others and then split," and was made the greeter at her home group where newcomers' sponsors would whisper "keep drinking and you can end up like that." She found two unlikely sponsors: a tough ex-convict who grabbed her by the neck when she got out of line, and Gail W., a genteel Kentucky woman so embarrassed by June that she asked her not to sit nearby or tell anyone about the sponsorship. They met secretly after meetings to discuss AA.

From a seventh-grade education and a typing speed of 17 words per minute with nine errors, June earned her GED, a community college degree (graduating third in her class of 485), a university degree, and was accepted to law school. She failed the California bar exam on her first attempt, interpreted it as Higher Power telling her to be a waitress, then passed on her second try — and was sworn in on June 13, what would have been Gail W.'s 21st AA birthday. Gail had died of cancer weeks before June's law school graduation, never having believed June could succeed but always believing Alcoholics Anonymous could.

June closes with a powerful story about the night she planned to kill herself after a breakup, only to be pulled out the door by a friend for a Twelfth Step call at a high school. She met a woman in the parking lot who needed help, took her to meetings, and found the truth of the Big Book's instruction: when all else fails, work with another alcoholic. She urges newcomers to wait for the miracle, noting that the life AA gave her was one she never would have wanted — and it turned out to be the best life she ever had.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Chaplain of the US House gives invocation, Ed Chandler opens the 5th Congressional Luncheon
• 7:00 Congressman Rod Chandler welcomes the crowd with a story about Higher Power's will and an apple empire
• 14:00 How It Works reading by Alma
• 18:00 Hal introduces June, recalls meeting her in Palm Desert in 1975 with three years sober
• 20:00 June begins her story — suicide obsession from age five, drugs at seven, alcohol at eight
• 28:00 Growing up in Venice as a tough broad — the gang, fighting groups of five to fifteen, putting out cigarettes barefoot
• 38:00 Arriving at AA at 87 pounds with nothing, the overdose that changed everything, Tradition Three saving her membership
• 48:00 Early sobriety — motorcycle jacket, cigars, two sponsors, stealing the Big Book from the library
• 58:00 GED, community college degree third in class of 485, accepted to law school as one of 300 out of 3000
• 68:00 Gail W.'s death, failing and passing the bar, sworn in on Gail's AA birthday, working with others when suicidal