Her Primary Purpose Is to Stay Sober and Touch Just One Person – Liz B.

About This Speaker Tape

Manhattan, 163rd Street. A girl watches the police beat her father with billies until the blood spatters, and he returns from the hospital wrapped like a mummy. Liz B. describes a life that began with rice wine sieved through cheesecloth at age twelve and escalated to selling bathtub "King Kong" booze by the gallon at fourteen. She lived as a "Jekyll and Hyde," nursing drinks in toilet tanks and wearing leopard fur coats she eventually hated. The wreckage includes a marriage to a man she drove to despair, children she forgot, and a suicide attempt stopped only by a neighbor's scream and a husband who told her to jump.

After a blackout left her with missing teeth in a hospital bed, Liz found a Higher Power in a basement, screaming for help. She traded the "easy road" for the hard one, discovering that while AA doesn't need her, she needs AA. Now, she carries the weight of dead children and a survivor's grit.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening greetings and gratitude to friends and family.
• 4:15 Childhood in Brooklyn and Manhattan; describes her father's drinking and his death by suicide.
• 6:30 First drink at age 12: sieving rice wine through cheesecloth.
• 8:45 Selling 'King Kong' bathtub gin in cream pitchers at age 14.
• 13:20 Marriage to Mr. B. and the subsequent descent into 'mental case' status.
• 18:10 The 'Coffee Royal' phase: hiding bottles in old-fashioned toilet tanks.
• 23:40 Suicide attempt and Mr. B.'s reaction; Laughter.
• 27:15 The blackout that led to her trying to kill Mr. B. and waking up in Kings County Hospital.
• 32:10 The 'last drink' story and the decision to try AA after praying in a basement.
• 36:40 First AA meeting experience and the importance of sponsorship.
• 42:15 Discussion of Al-Anon and the family disease.
• 51:20 Reflections on the death of her son and sister; the role of a Higher Power in surviving tragedy.