First Second and Third Step on Anything I Can’t Put Down — That’s How My Sponsor Keeps Me Sober – Tammy S.

About This Speaker Tape

Tammy, sober since December 25, 1997, tells her story at the Monday Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club. Raised in Atlanta in a perfectionistic middle-class home with an unstable father picture and a mother she adored, she compensated for a bedrock feeling of not being good enough by overachieving in school — track, cross-country, cheerleading, honor society, drama, chorus. Food was her first addiction; she describes eating a whole box of cookies before a drill team performance. Her first drunk came on cherry brandy as an exchange student in Finland, but her real drinking started after college.

A French and Spanish major, she studied abroad in France where promiscuity and drinking took off, then returned to the University of Georgia to keep partying. She worked as an interpreter at Hartsfield for two years until cocaine entered the picture; within six months she was in her first treatment center. She progressed from snorting to smoking to shooting up, contracted hepatitis C, wrote bad checks and landed in jail, lost 36 days of work in a year, and ultimately came home to find the locks changed, her car repossessed, and her belongings moved out. Her mother went to one Al-Anon meeting and was done.

She got a year, relapsed with a man she moved in with out of treatment, reached five years sober and then picked up a diet pill after a boyfriend hurt her feelings. The final bottom came on Christmas Day in a cheap hotel across from the Triangle Club: strung out, no food, no sleep, just taken in a drug deal, sitting on the floor with her cat and a suitcase when a voice said, "This is not who you are." She called her mother and came home for good.

Today she works on codependency in Al-Anon, on her eating disorder, on finances, and on relationships — she now competitively dances with a healthy husband. She prays on her knees every morning, meditates when she can, keeps a Higher Power box where she puts what she can't fix, and tells newcomers the two things that saved her: keep coming back and keep praying. Surrender, she insists, happens on the Higher Power's timetable, not ours — so stop beating yourself up when you can't stay stopped.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Julie opens the Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club and introduces Tammy from the 930 I Can't We Can group
• 2:30 Tammy names her sobriety date as December 25, 1997 and identifies not-good-enough as her core issue from a perfectionistic Atlanta home
• 5:30 Overachiever childhood — track, cheerleading, honor society — and a pre-drill-team binge on a whole box of cookies as her first addiction to food
• 9:00 First drunk on cherry brandy as an exchange student in Finland and Russia, then sophomore year in France where promiscuity and drinking took off
• 14:00 Hartsfield interpreter job lost after 36 sick days; cocaine enters within six months, first treatment center, begging for drinks the night she leaves
• 19:00 Progression from snorting to smoking to shooting up, hepatitis C, bad checks and jail, mother changes the locks and sends her into treatment
• 24:00 One year sober from Triangle, moves in with a man from treatment, they relapse together; at five years a diet pill takes her back out
• 28:30 Christmas Day hotel room across from Triangle — strung out on the floor, a voice says "this is not who you are," calls her mother and surrenders for good
• 33:00 Current program — Higher Power box, daily knees prayer, meditation, Al-Anon for codependency, competitive dancing with her sober husband
• 38:00 Closing message to newcomers — keep coming back, keep praying, surrender arrives on the Higher Power's timing, not ours; Damon hands out chips