Hi, I’m Laura, and My Husband Thinks I’m an Alcoholic 🫠 – Laura H.

The pressure here is to strongly suggest you get a sponsor. We think that if you pay attention to the meeting and listen to what people have to say, if somebody rings your bell and you think, wow, that guy or gal knows what they're talking about, you might want to talk to them after the meeting about being your sponsor. And we think that a good sponsor will have already completed the 12 steps with their sponsor. So those are the kind of questions you might want to ask when you're getting a sponsor. Tim, do you want to introduce our speaker here? Tim has been kind enough to ask one of our good friends to tell their story, and I'm going to ask him to introduce them. Well, Laura recently came down to the Monday night Blue Chip speaker meeting at the Navi Club and did a wonderful job, and I failed to get a good recording. So I saw the opportunity to get her out to the podium again. We're all set up. It really was a fantastic story. And it bears hearing again. I can't wait to hear it again. Laura, you're on. Thank you, Tim. Good morning, y'all. I'm Laura. I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, I just told my story down at Nava a few weeks ago, and I was very nervous because I don't like to tell my story. Public speaking is not my thing. It's not my gift. But, you know, strange people, big room, big crowd. I was really nervous, and I didn't need any more anxiety. I was the guinea pig at this meeting where Tim decided that they were going to implement a timer, like an egg timer, right here on the podium. And they set it for 40 minutes, and he hit start. And so you get to see it go backwards, you know, 39 minutes, 59 seconds, 58. You know, it was kind of like the Academy Awards, you know, when the timer goes off, the sound gets louder and louder for you to wrap it up, you know. So I had some butterflies going. I was like, oh, my God, I don't know. Am I going to end at 30 minutes? Am I going to go an hour and 15? But it all wound up going well. So my gratitude this morning is that I don't have a timer. I can look at the clock over there, but it's a little less, you know, in your face than the timer with the seconds going down. But anyway, I started my journey in this very room. So it's really kind of neat to be telling my story for the first time here. I came in about four and a half years ago. I sat in the chair right there where John Alexander is sitting. I think you were probably here for my first meeting. And I came in. I was escorted in between J.B. Johnson, for those of y'all that remember J.B., and my husband. And we came in. I was doing the whole walk of shame, sitting over here looking at my feet, you know, really thinking that nobody would notice that I was here and, you know, trying to blend in. And, you know, they do the whole thing. Anybody here from your first AA meeting, never attended an AA meeting, I was trying to bounce, raise my hand. You know, I was humiliated at the fact that I was here. And my husband, thrilled. I had to preface this with saying, my husband's kind of, our mayor's counselor used to call him a wannabe Kennedy. He likes to pretend like everything's great on the outside, you know, even if we're falling apart on the inside. He's got his appearance to keep up. So the fact that he was thrilled about being in an AA meeting ought to tell you where we were at that particular point in time. And he's over there going, you know, raising his hand, you know. So the whole rest of the meeting, you know, when you have a newcomer, people kind of tend to talk to the newcomer a lot in the meeting. They're all talking to him like he's the newcomer, and he's kind of going, you know, like this. It was really kind of humorous. But anyway, so I'm just going to, my sobriety date is March 18th, 2013. I don't know if you all remember that. It's just a little over four years ago. So I'm going to kind of start just at the beginning. I know a lot of you all have heard a lot of stuff throughout, you know, my sharing in the past four years. But I was born in 1967 in Pensacola, Florida, to a teenage mother. She, before I was, shortly before I was born, she married my father, who was a pilot in the Navy. And both of my parents came from alcoholic, crazy, abusive households. And that kind of carried on into my childhood growing up. I mean, at 18, my mom was not ready to be a mother. She kind of resented the fact that she had to drop out of school and, you know, to take on the responsibilities of having a baby. And my household was not very happy. Why? It was a lot of physical abuse, emotional abuse. And because my dad was in the Navy, they left me for, you know, months at a time with my grandparents, my mom's parents. And my mom had been sexually abused by her father. And so I, too, became a victim of sexual abuse, you know, for years. And I kept, and I don't really share this very often in meetings because, but, and I kept this a secret for a really long time. In my life. But I came to realize in sobriety that, you know, secrets will keep you sick. And that these are important parts of my story. While none of that made me an alcoholic, none of that made me an alcoholic. But what I realized is that those things did happen to me. And they did create the feelings that I was trying to numb all throughout, you know, my acts of addiction. The feelings of being defective or less than. My drive to be perfect, you know. I felt like I needed to be perfect. You know, just to kind of fit in with y'all. So I had my first drink at age 14. I snuck out of my parents' house to go to a party. I think that happens quite frequently for a lot of people. So I've heard of stories. And I was introduced to what would later become one of my dearest friends, vodka. And when, I can remember that drink like it was yesterday. You know, just that, you know, just that feeling. I mean, it was kind of similar to working at 12 Steps as far as that peace and solace. I mean, it was similar to working at 12 Steps as far as that peace and solace. I mean, it was similar to working at 12 Steps as far as that peace and solace. I mean, it was similar to working at 12 Steps as far as that peace and solace. You know, I was really anxious growing up in my household. You know, I was really anxious growing up in my household. You know, I was really anxious growing up in my household. And it was like all the anxiety just left me. And it was like all the anxiety just left me. And it was like all the anxiety just left me. And I was just feeling, you know, I knew I'd found the secret to life. And I was just feeling, you know, I knew I'd found the secret to life. And I was just feeling, you know, I knew I'd found the secret to life. And I figured if, you know, a couple of drinks can make me feel this good, well, you know, secret to life. And I figured if, you know, a couple of drinks can make me feel this good, well, you know, I just keep going. So consequently, I experienced my first blackout this night. The last thing I remember was having a great time, you know, at this party. And the next thing I know, I'm waking up, coming to, my mom has my head stuck up underneath the running water of the bathtub faucet, trying to sober me up. So, you know, that was, I had a terrible hangover. I had all the things that, you know, I would come to learn real well later on in my drinking career. I knew that I, I was terrified of continuing to drink while in high school, because like I said, my parents were real abusive, and I was afraid to do anything to trigger them. So what I learned from this experience is how to be sneaky about my drinking. You know, I wasn't going to quit drinking. I was just going to be, you know, real sneaky about it. And so that's what I continued to do. I was not, I wasn't a daily drinker at this point. I just, you know, every opportunity I had, I did drink. And what is evident when I look back, I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. And what I learned back upon my drinking career, even at this stage in the game, is that once I started, I had no idea how much I was going to drink. You know, I had no stopping mechanism. I just kept on going until I passed out or blacked out almost every single time. I started college in 1985. I went to the University of Georgia, and I just embraced that party lifestyle, you know, with all I had. I joined a sorority. I became a little sister to a little sister. And, you know, my cycle of drinking continued. I was kind of the all-in or all-out kind of girl. You know, I was all into my studying during the week, but all into my drinking on the weekends. And, you know, I drank, you know, and I look back on that. I did a lot of crazy things. I'm not going to go into a drunk log, but, you know, I had lots of blackouts. Didn't know where I was for a couple days at a time. Just crazy stuff. I'm very thankful that nothing bad happened during that time. But despite my drinking pattern, I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. I was a drinker. And I was able to land. My major was accounting. And for those of y'all that are old enough to remember the big eight accounting firms down in Atlanta, I was able to get one of the prestigious internships at one of these companies. And these were stepping stones into full-time employment. I mean, my career was going to be set. You know, all I had to do was go to this three-month internship, you know, do my best, and I was going to have a great career. And my dad had worked for this particular company, and he had been a partner at this company. And he had been a partner at this company. And he had been a big eight accounting firm. So, you know, he had known some people in that firm. Well, within the first couple weeks of working for this company, I was introduced to what was business's greatest pastime tradition, and that's happy hour. And for me, happy hour did not last just an hour or two. You know, it lasted a day or two. You know, I would wake up in the same clothes I had been in. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how long I'd been there. But I knew I was going to be there. And I knew I was going to be there. And I knew I was going to be there. And I knew I was going to be there. And I did this, you know, several times. And this kind of behavior didn't sit well with my employer. And I lost that job. That was my first negative consequence in drinking. And I kept that a secret for a long time. As a matter of fact, when I was having, when the guy was talking to me about the reasons why they weren't going to continue my employment, he actually said that he thought I should go seek some help. And, you know, I thought he was crazy. I just talked to, you know, my parents had gone through a bad divorce, and I talked to them. And I to, you know, oh, this is just the way I'm coping with my parents' divorce. So I kept that a secret from my dad. I kept it a secret from everybody. I did not come clean with that until I got the treatment, you know, about four and a half years ago. So anyway, I had like three other job offers sitting there, so I just took the next best one. This was a wake-up call for me. I kind of realized at this point that I wasn't going to be able to keep drinking in the way, or I wasn't going to really be able to drink at all and continue to have a career due to things that I wanted to do. I kind of, the story in the big book where that guy, I think he's a 30-year-old that drinks heavily, and he kind of has that same revelation that he doesn't drink for, I think it was like 20 or 30 years, and then all of a sudden he retires, and he thinks he can drink again, and he's dead in four years. I see myself in that situation. Anyway, so life is going along for me pretty well at this point. I'm having a great career. I get married to the same man that I'm married to today. My college sweetheart. We have three beautiful children. We're buying houses, building houses. Life is going along. This is like my dormant period in my alcoholism. I'd say about 12 or 13 years into my marriage, we started running up into some marriage problems, or just marriage situations and parenting situations, and so we went to marriage counseling, family and marriage counseling, and my counselor, I was so blessed to have a counselor. I was a counselor that had actually been in recovery probably at 20 years at this point, although I didn't know it at the time, so he was able to have a lot of insight into my drinking, but we start off in counseling, and we're talking about this stuff, and all these secrets that I had kept for all these years started kind of coming to a surface because he started to dig and ask questions, and it was like all of a sudden I was forced into feeling all these feelings that I had buried for so long, and I absolutely did not know how to do this. I ran back to the office. I ran back to the office. I ran back to the office. The only thing that I knew that would help me, and that was alcohol, and I started drinking, and I, you know, started my drinking pattern. I picked up right where I left off. I mean, I was drinking, and I didn't drink every day, but when I drank, I was either blacking out or passing out. I mean, I'd have conversations with my family and had no memory of it the next day. I mean, like big ones, important ones, college conversations with my kids. It was, anyway, so I started doing some things. I started driving my kids. I started driving my kids around not remembering where I had taken them, other people's kids around not remembering where I had taken them, and my husband started tattling on me to the counselor, and when he suggested that, you know, I might have a drinking problem, this was probably, let me think about this. Oh, no, I'm not to that point in my story. Okay. He started suggesting that I might have a drinking problem, you know, and I thought, you know, I'm offended. I thought that was completely unjustified. You know, I was... I was thinking, I have no... I was very quick to point out, I've never had a DUI. I have a job. I'm hardly ever late to my job, and I do a pretty good job. I'm a member of a country club, because Lord knows if you're a member of a country club, you cannot pee an alcoholic. I mean, you know, these other little side notes of forgetting where I'd drop my kids off and having conversations but not remember them, those were just kind of minor little details to be overlooked. So he had given me this suggestion. I think this was probably in October, and he thought, he was like, okay, why don't we do this? Why don't you try to not drink from now until January? I was like, oh, my... I mean, I've got Thanksgiving and Christmas and my family, and I mean, that was just... And I was like, I can't do that. Let's start it maybe in January. I didn't realize I was going... Then he said, well, all right, so if you're going to keep drinking during these months, let's do an experiment. He called it the 3-2-1. I don't know if anybody's ever had this. He said, you can have three drinks a week. One night drinking... One night on the week, you can have one, and one night on the weekend, you can have two. And I was, you know, my brain's going... And I'm thinking, how about this? How about I get the drink in the week, and I have the three on the weekend? You know, I mean, I just, you know, but I didn't know anything about alcoholism at this point. I mean, I just knew that wasn't going to work. So I would try every now and then during this time frame to go a day or two without drinking. I was pretty much a daily drinker at this point. And, you know, the few times I succeeded... I succeeded in this. I was just... Again, I did not know this was not normal, but I would be sitting in my chair in the day and just going... I could not even focus. You know, the TV's going, and people are moving their mouth, and I'm not hearing a word they're saying. I'm just going, God, please, what... Can I go to bed? I've got... This is misery. I, you know, I've got to get to bed so I can get up tomorrow and drink. You know, I did not know that that was alcoholism. I didn't understand that. I thought, you know, if I went a day, 24 hours or 48 hours without a drink, I was proving the fact that I was a drunk. I was not an alcoholic. I'm going to skip now to my last drunk, my last blackout drunk. I was... My husband had turned 50, and so people were giving a party, a dinner party, in honor of his 50th birthday party. I pulled quite a few shenanigans leading up to this point, doing things like having a dinner party at my house for his birthday and passing out in the closet, and him having to, you know, cover for me. And explain, you know, what happened. And it was hugely embarrassing, and I'd get drunk in restaurants and have to be carried out. And, you know, this was kind of happening in rapid succession prior to this. So he pleaded with me, please, please, do not get drunk tonight. Just try not to drink that much. And I was... I made the... I promised I won't. I won't do it. And I meant it. I mean, I really meant it. I wanted him to enjoy his birthday party. Well, that did not work. I entered a blackout in the middle of this party, and I don't remember any of the events that happened after this point. But apparently, I was causing a scene, and he brought me home. And I decided at this point that it would be a good idea to get in my car. And I live up Thompson Bridge, kind of close to the Methodist Church. And I decided that I'd get in my car and drive. Well, I wound up driving up to the Ingalls up there. And my husband realized I was gone. He was freaking out, terrified, you know, that I was going to kill myself or somebody else. And also, you know, he didn't want me to get arrested and be in the just busted, because that would really not look good for him. So he gets in the car and finds me. Well, I wake up the next morning. This is the end of November, and it's cold. And I wake up in his car, dressed in the same clothes I had on the night before. I'm freezing. I have no idea what happened. And I have that feeling, you know, that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach of, oh, my God, I did it again. You know, what happened? I was so ashamed. I was so embarrassed. I was so scared. I was so scared to face them, because, you know, I just didn't know what he was going to do. I knew he was getting to the end of his rope. That, you know, I had not reached my bottom at that point, but I very much reached my husband's bottom at this point. And he was like, all right, you know, first he said, you quit drinking or I'm moving out. And I was like, yeah, giddy up. I can drink all the time when you leave. You know, I can stay in my own house. And he sat there for a few more seconds, and he went, you know, I think you can leave. You're out. Well, I had already burned the bridges with my dad. I wasn't on speaking terms with my mom. My dad had said, you know, you can't come here if you don't quit drinking. I had nowhere to go. So I figured, you know, I'd do what he said. He said, quit drinking and go to AA. So a couple days later, I come in, and I'm sitting right over here at my first AA meeting, miserable. But I was willing. You know, I thought, I just want to get the pressure off. I want to get the heat off. You know, I'm going to really try to not drink for a little while. Then, you know, I can sleep. I can wake up where I left off. Maybe if I don't drink for a little while, I'll be able to drink, you know, normally. It wasn't until I got in AA that I figured that I heard that that is the great obsession of all alcoholics, is that one day we're going to be able to drink normally, that we're going to be able to control the amount we drink. And I really believe that, you know, at this point. We, this was, okay, so that was the end of November. I guess I probably had, I need to tell y'all, I'm going to respect the signal as the purpose is really my main problem. But I did have a side issue with some prescription pill medication. And when they took the alcohol away from me, and you take alcohol away from a drunk and an untreated alcoholic, and you're in a coat with any mechanism you can find, you know, and all I could think about during this time was, oh God, if I could just take a pill that you couldn't smell, that would give me some relief, you know, and that's what I did. I had prescriptions to Xanax. To take as needed. And I took them as needed, which was a lot during this time. I also actually had a prescription for amphetamines, and I took those. I was a mixer, you know, I was always trying to, anyway. So I was treating, I was trying to cure my alcoholism with pills, which does not work. So we were getting ready to go on a trip, on a cruise, and I had been sober from alcohol a couple of months. But I knew that I was not going to be able to make this cruise sober. So I decided, in my best interest, I was going to go on a cruise. I was going to go on a cruise. And I had this alcoholic thinking that I'd go ahead and relapse. I could just relapse, then I could drink on the cruise, and then I could get back, you know, on the bandwagon when I got back after the cruise. So I decide that I'm going to, I've got to run up. My son has a project in school, and I've got to run back up to the Ingalls to get him a couple supplies for his project. So I thought, well, I'll run up there and do that before I start drinking and get all that situated so I can just, you know, hunker down when I get home. But I'd heard enough in the AA meetings at this point, you know, about God and turning your life and your will over to God, and that He answered prayers. And, you know, I'd been hearing this in the meetings. My husband would drop me off at the AA meetings and wait in the parking lot, you know. So that was kind of the basics of my recovery at this point. You know, I was sitting in this chair, but I was doing no action. So I decided, on the way up to Ingalls, I was like, I'm going to pray. And, you know, so my prayer went something like this. I was like, God, if I'm a real alcoholic, I mean, really, like, truly, I'm going to pray. And I was like, I'm going to pray. And I was like, I'm an alcoholic. Will you show me some kind of sign? You know, just show me a sign. I promise to be open and willing, and if you show me a sign, I won't drink, and, you know, we'll all be good. But if I don't hear anything, I've taken that as that it's all game on, that I'm all right. I figured, what was he going to show me in the next 15 minutes that I didn't already know? I mean, really. So I was sitting in Ingalls, checking out, and all of a sudden, someone runs in, and they're all frantic. They're going, oh, my God, call the police. Somebody's hit somebody in the parking lot. Oh, you know, the car's stuck up underneath the car. And I go out in the parking lot to see what's going on, and this red Corvette had hit a white Expedition so hard, y'all, that the, I have pictures of it for any of y'all that want to see. That car was stuck up underneath the Expedition. I mean, stuck. That car was trying to get loose, and they had the gas pedal just floored to the ground, and just tires were screeching and smoking, and, you know, there was people everywhere in cars. If that car had come loose, I mean, somebody would have been hit. And I'm going, hmm, I better get out of here before, you know, anything else happens. It might ruin my drinking. So I go to get in my car, and I realize that that car had hit my car. And so I had to wait for the police to come, you know, to file the police report. And I sat there in my car and called my husband, and we sat there, and I watched the police take out a drunk woman about my age out of that car, handcuff her, put her in the back of the car, and I was in front of the police car and read her her rights. It was kind of, you know, I call that the burning bush, the burning tire experience for me. It was like God was saying, you know, here it is. This is your yet. I mean, this is what you can do. This is what's going to happen if you keep drinking. Well, this episode did keep me sober that night, and it did from alcohol, that night and on the trip. I was continuing to take, you know, the pills, as I said. I got home from that cruise, and within three days, I had relapsed on alcohol. And this is, and I want to share a little bit about how my relapse happened. I was, I didn't get yet, I'll tell you this. This was a little side note, too, that's funny. I kind of, I find it funny that we alcoholics, you know, we don't go to like a crash course on what to say if you're alcoholic and what to do, your behaviors. But two things that are real evident is, is, is I just had to, you know, you could be bought, you know, I don't know where we learned that. It's just like in a, you know, how many drinks? Just two. I just had a couple. And, you know, hiding our alcohol. You know, hiding the alcohol. I had started hiding my alcohol at this point because, but my whole goal was, how could I continue to drink without my husband knowing? And so I was hiding, I didn't get the memo about buying the big gallons and jugs of vodka. I don't know where I was. But I, I finally found a liquor store. Because my car was a little bit noticeable and gainful, I couldn't go to, you know, just any liquor store around here. So I would, you know, go out of town or I finally discovered the only liquor store around here that had a back parking lot where I could go in real quick, you know, hide my car and nobody would see it. And I bought the slats of the mini airplane bottles. You know, I'd go in and they'd go, they'd bring me the little eight pack and I'd go, no, no, no. I want like, you know, the pallet, the big one. I did not care. And other people do, they would go change their liquor stores. I did not care what they thought about me. All I cared is that I had my alcohol. And so they'd see me come in and they'd go, oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. They'd come in and they'd go get the slats and I'd put it in my car. I'd go around the house and I'd hide, you know, six or seven all throughout my house. I mean, I had them hidden everywhere because my theory was that if somebody found one section of my alcohol, you know, I still had a whole bunch of others. You know, I was not going to run out of alcohol. So I was doing this, you know, while my husband was dropping me off at AA meetings. So he decided I was doing so well that he was going to go and run all the carpools for me that night. So I was sitting at home. It was about five o'clock. I had about an hour before we were going to go eat with some friends. And at this point in my recovery attempt, I was still going out with the same friends I hadn't been going out with, my drinking buddies. I was doing the same thing, going to the same places, and nobody, you know, told me that I had to change my playmate and play date yet. I thought that I could just continue to do the same thing and just not drink. Well, that didn't work. But I'm sitting there in my chair, and the vodka that's hidden under my bed is talking to me. You know, it's just going, come on over here. No one's here. Nobody will know. Just have one. Just one, you know, to take the edge off. You've been 65 days with no alcohol. You can have just one. So I decided that I'd have just one. And within 30 minutes, I polished off the whole stash that I had right there, six or seven. I mean, just at this point, I'm down in straight vodka. Okay. A few more in my purse, and I'm off to the restaurant with my husband and friends. And, you know, he orders his little, he was the kind of drinker that, he'd order the little frozen margarita, like the little 12-ounce one, I think, you know, and the little frozen margarita. Maybe not even finish it. I mean, and here I am, I'm running back to the back of the bathroom, and I can remember, I'm starting to reach my bottom. I'm in the bathroom stall of this Mexican restaurant, down in straight vodka in the bathroom, just wondering how, you know, how I had gotten to this point. And the other thing that was really alarming to me at this point, and why I'm really grateful for this relax, is that I couldn't get drunk. I mean, y'all, I've had, I've had about 10 of these airplane bottles, you know, of vodka within a 45-minute period. I couldn't get drunk. It was not working for me anymore, but I couldn't stop. You know, I was sitting there at the table, you know, with all of them, and their lips are moving, you know, it's the same thing, but I'm not hearing anything. All I'm thinking about is, am I, where, when can we leave and get home to my daughter? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I don't know. I'm not drinking. So we get to the end of the night, and my husband had had his little 12-ounce frozen margarita, and he decides, this is so great. I have a designated driver now. You, you know, you drive us home. And nothing happened. I did drive us home. I was thankful that nothing happened during that time, but, you know, when I look back on that, and I think about how I could have killed both of us, and I would have left my three children with no parents. I could have killed someone else. I mean, but, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't think clearly at this point. Alcohol was totally controlled. Every move I made. So, I've got to figure out where I am in the story. All right, so the next few weeks are kind of a brownout for me, because I was taking so many pills at this point, and I'd added the drinking back on top, the alcohol back on top of it, that I was, I was, even during the day while I was at work, I don't really remember. I would, like, come in and out of, of what I was doing. I, I call that a brown, a brownout. My work, my friend, I'm calling friends to get my prescriptions, because, you know, I, my husband would find my prescriptions and hide them, and, you know, I'd find them, and we'd play this hide-and-seek game with the pills, and so I, I would start calling people to get my prescriptions, and they started getting concerned, and they were calling and tattling on me, and then my work friends, I started doing things at this point, like showing up for work with no makeup on, or falling asleep at my desk, or under my desk at work, and, you know, work people would come back and go, and I'm working in a public school system, y'all. This is really crazy. God's really looking out for me that I did not lose my job during this time, but my work, my boss would come in, I'd be asleep, and, you know, she started tattling on me to my husband, and so my husband became very concerned, and I, I went to an AA meeting. I think I went to the Sunday morning St. Luke's AA meeting, and I came home from that meeting, and my husband had just absolutely destroyed my closet. He had gotten wind that I had been, you know, buying these pills and alcohol and hiding them everywhere, and he had, you know, all my sashes of alcohol, all my pills, you know, I was hiding pills in, in these little bitty bags, you know, in pockets, and all my jeans, and then, I mean, I was creative on where I, he had found just about everything, and I had gone to our safety deposit box at the bank and cashed in bonds, and gotten bonds out without his knowledge to support my habit at this point, and he had found it all, and he, you know, at that point, when I walked in from that AA meeting and saw that, I was like, I knew the gig was up. It, it, and I kind of felt relief at that point. I was like, even if I'm homeless, it'll be better than the way I'm trying to hide all this. I mean, it was so exhausting trying to continue to do all of that hiding. I mean, he looked at me, and he said, you know, I could understand you having an affair with another man more than I can understand you choosing alcohol and drugs over your family, and that was kind of my bottom for me. That was, I, I, I just, it was true. I mean, I was choosing alcohol over my family. I loved alcohol more. I loved anything else. I mean, I had to have it. Well, instead of throwing me out, he gave me, he gave me, okay, I've got to wrap this up. He gave me another chance contingent on one thing that he, that I go to rehab of his choice. So, I'm very thankful for some people in this room that got him in touch with where I wound up going to treatment. I went to treatment down in Atlanta, and I have a funny story I wanted to tell about this, but, you know, in my mind, treatment was kind of like when a man loves a woman, you know, like sitting outside on a beautiful day with a beautiful view, painting pictures, and it's so pretty, and, you know, I don't know. I thought that was rehab. Well, I come to, and I am without my shoelaces, out my phone, sick as a dog, and there are no locks on any of the doors except for the doors leading to outside, and I was like, oh, my God, I don't know what hell I'm in, but I have got to go. I'm going to rehab. I'm going to rehab. I'm going to get out of here, and I, you know, then they expect me to go to meetings and introduce myself as an alcoholic with my little throw-up bucket, you know. I was like, okay, this is crazy, and, you know, the best I could do was go, hi, my name is Laura, and my husband thinks I'm an alcoholic. You know, I really was not going to accept the fact that I was an alcoholic. I focused so much at this point on, you know, I heard a lot of similarities in the rooms about the way, you know, the way y'all hit alcohol and the way you drank and all that, but, you know, I really focused on the differences. Well, I didn't have a DUI where I didn't lose my family. I didn't lose my job, and so, therefore, I'm not an alcoholic, and I met a good friend of mine that I still keep in touch with now. We checked into our detox the same day. She had fallen down and had these bruises on her face, and I can remember looking at her and telling her quite frequently, I am glad you're here. You really need to be here. You know, like, I didn't need to be there, and Carla was a bitch, y'all, because she got out, like, three weeks ahead of me from that truth and reality. So, anyway. You know, I did not enter, I didn't enter treatment or recovery, even when I got home, you know, embracing the whole recovery thing. I just didn't do it, and I know a lot of people do that. They're willing to go to any length, you know, to get sober at first, and that wasn't my story. I really, Renee's not in here. She used to tell me, honey, quit trying to paddle upstream. Just turn around and go with the current and go, you know, downstream. It's so much easier. She kept telling me, I kept telling her all the reasons why I was a little bit different, and she was like, you're just a garden variety drunk like the rest of us. I was offended by that. But, you know, today I'm really grateful to know that I am just a drunk like everybody else. I mean, the way I got here might have been different. I might not have reached the bottoms that some people had reached, but you know what? It didn't matter. I mean, I have the same problem that y'all have, and I have the same solution. There is one solution to this problem. Now, I have to tell y'all a little bit of a second surrender. I call it my second surrender, and again, I was sitting over here at an 8 o'clock meeting. I used to go to all kinds of meetings when I first got out of treatment because I got relief when I got to, when I was in meetings. I had that, the obsession to drink was still right here all the time because I had not worked the steps of this program really. I mean, I did it in treatment more like a course so I could graduate and get out and get home, but I had not worked the steps from my heart. I had not worked the steps from my heart. I had not worked the steps from my heart. I had taken really no real action, and you know, so therefore the obsession had not left me. I mean, I was obsessed, and I kept going. I was on antabuse also at this point, so you know, I had a whole lot of contingencies. I had on antabuse. I was being drug tested. I'd lose my job. I'd lose my family, so I had a lot of reasons. I had a lot of fear of consequences that kept me sober, which I'm thankful for now because it kept me sober long enough for the fog to kind of clear from my brain. It kept me sober long enough to come to these meetings. Finally, surrender. My ultimate surrender. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I mean, I was more miserable at six months sober from alcoholic pills than I was in the middle of my drinking, and I just was. It is very possible to be that miserable if you do not work these steps for me. That was where I was, and I was sitting over here, and I'd been out with my drinking buddy friend. I wasn't drinking, but I was telling her all the things. When I turn 50, I'm going to drink, and when I do this, and you know, all these things I had said. And we sat here in this meeting, and it was the craziest thing. It was another God moment. Somebody had just said, almost verbatim, what I had said, and they talked about where it led them, like to jail. I can't remember exactly where it led them, but it was bad. And even my friend looked over, who kept telling me I wasn't an alcoholic, and I really liked to be with her because she was my hope that I really wasn't an alcoholic. She looked at me, and she goes, I don't think you should drink again. You know, and that was kind of my second surrender. And when I did that, you know, I finally was, I sat there, and I was faced with. The reality that God's will for me was not to drink. That was God's will for me. My will for me was to drink. And the only way that I was going to be able to get through this was if I just surrendered it to God, and I turned it over. And that night, I just went, I'm all in. I'm all in. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Just, I just got to be better. Anything's better than where I'm sitting here. And I know I shared this story before, too, about, you know, I was so miserable before this point that I would, you know, I thought if I could just go buy my little bottle of Flavor Block and stick it up my nose and smell it, you know, I would go around sniffing it. Did I feel better? You know, I couldn't drink it. I mean, that's just insanity. I mean, I was doing this six months out of treatment. But anyway, it was like a ton of bricks just fell off my back, and I picked, I did with Beth, I reworked my steps. It was the best thing I did. And through working the steps, these steps right here, not only did I find relief, it was a relief from the obsession. But I found the freedom that I had been looking for. You know, you can get relief coming into these meetings. But for me, I couldn't experience the freedom from alcohol and the freedom from my mind going 24-7 until I had worked these steps. And throughout my recovery, I have found that these steps, there is not a problem that I encounter. Alcohol was just the start of the thing that these steps would solve for me. You know, I keep running up into problems and sobriety or issues. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And I've learned, you know, at first I thought I had to just solve them myself. And then I have a sponsor who will go, have you tried to work the steps on this problem? And I go, oh yeah, okay. I'm powerless over. Whatever it might be, I fill in the blanks. And I work the steps. And the problem, you know, goes away. It's amazing. Or it might not go away, but my ability to deal with it. You know, I have freedom in trying to deal with that problem. I used to think when I got sober that, you know, I would have to get my recovery going first. And then I'd have time for this program. I'd have time to work those steps. But I had it backwards. It was through working the steps that I could work out all the messes in my life and be okay with it. And have that freedom, you know, that I could be in a mess and I could still have peace. And that is such a gift today. And I'm so thankful for the people in this room that were here when I first started. Because I did a whole lot of victim whining when I first came in, you know, probably for a year. You know, I was a victim. I loved that. Yeah. I was a test sponsor that would always be, you know, I'd start complaining and she'd go, pour me, pour me, pour me a drink. You know, or wah, wah, wah. I'd be like, oh, you know, suck it up, buttercup. I mean, I needed to hear all that stuff. But I'm really thankful for that. You know, when I first got sober, I thought I would, if I survived getting sober, that life would be absolutely no fun. That you people were not fun. You know, I could not. But y'all, I have had more fun and more laughs in sobriety. And, you know, the kind of laughing we do in here. It's just, I can remember being in treatment and having that belly laugh where your stomach hurts. You know, sober. I mean, it's just the coolest thing. You know, I don't have a hangover. I don't need that alcohol. You know, and I still, when I run up against problems, you know, instead of reaching for that drink that I used to, now I reach in my toolbox and I pick up a tool and I use it. But I say this all the time in meetings, you know, I can't, I've got to be vigilant in my recovery. There is no treading water for this alcoholic. Right. I'm either working on a relapse or I'm working on my recovery. And I don't have a lot of gray area. If I sit in my laurels for very long, I am getting wacky in the head. That is just the kind of alcoholic I am. So I've got to continue to, you know, turn it over. I've got to, I've got to work these 12 steps. I've got to turn it over. I've got to, you know, help others. For me, one of the biggest gifts I've been given is being able to sponsor other women. And if y'all don't have any sponsees and you, and you can sponsor, please do. I mean, it is, it is, it's better for me, I think, than it is for my sponsee. It has been the biggest gift. And to see that miracle happen in someone else, it is just so cool. I really trade that experience for the world. So thank y'all that were in this room and led me through this. Van, all those conversations on the phone, he'd see me falling apart and give me a call. I mean, just, you know, just those phone conversations or looks that you get from someone. I mean, and sometimes just showing up in a meeting is enough to help somebody else. You just never know. But the presence, your presence can mean somebody in a meeting. I know it does for me to see some of the same people that were here when I started. I guess I'm going to turn, I'm going to wrap it up now. I'm going to wrap it up by reading one thing before we close. This is my favorite daily reflection. And then I'm going to turn it over so we can do our special tips. It's called the mysterious paradoxes. What glorious mysteries paradoxes are. They do not compute. Yet when recognized and accepted, they reaffirm something in the universe beyond human logic. When I face a fear, I am given courage. When I support a brother or sister, my capacity to love myself is increased. When I accept pain as part of the growing experience of life, I realize a greater happiness. And when I look at my dark side, I am brought into new life. When I accept my vulnerabilities and surrender to a higher power, I am graced with unforeseen strength. I stumble through the doors of AA and disgrace, expecting nothing from life. When I accept my vulnerabilities and I have been given hope and dignity. Miraculously, the only way to keep the gift of the program is to pass them on. Thank you. We have a number of trusted servants which quietly go about doing their jobs. And Laura happens to be one of them. She's been our treasurer now for probably longer than she wanted to be. But she's doing it and we appreciate it. This is the one job we've got to take care of, you know, so we can pay the rent. And we appreciate it. Another of our great trusted servants is Janelle, who has served with our GSR for longer than she ever expected, probably. She's been having some problems lately, health issues. We're grateful to be here this morning. And she is celebrating 10 years. Wow, Laura. For somebody who's not a huge public speaker, Nancy Rockett, I want to thank you for that. You know, I was thinking this morning before the meeting, because I haven't had a drink today, and I'm in recovery, I get to come to the AA meeting on Saturday morning. And I love that I get to do this. One of the greatest honors and exciting parts of the AA meeting is there's nothing I'd rather be doing on a Saturday morning than coming to an AA meeting. And I was thinking, is that really true? And I really cannot, I'm a middle-aged woman, probably, but I could not think of anything else I'd rather be doing than be in a room of recovering alcoholics. And then the next part of that was I get to be a part of another alcoholic celebration. I'm not having a drink in 10 years. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for telling your story. I was thinking while you were telling your story, wait a minute, I'm going to back up, probably be ahead of myself. I'm Janelle, and I'm an alcoholic, and I have 10 years of sobriety. I never thought I'd get past, well, two hours was my limit. I was never, the last, I don't know, 10 years of my drinking, I was never... I was always out, out in the hall in my system. Not for a minute. I didn't give it enough of a chance to get out of my system. So I was always, uh-uh, drunk. Well, I wasn't drunk. I just managed to just blow with everything else, but I was always full of alcohol. But hearing your story, over these 10 years, I've heard a lot of stories, and those stories give me hope still to keep carrying on and that this really works. There are so many things. When I first came in here, there was nothing left of me. I was drinking myself to death, literally. And when I would wake up in the morning, I'd be so sad. Oof. Because I was alive. I did not want to be alive. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. Um, I had a divine intervention, because that's the only answer for me of what happened to me, because I was so stubborn that I could not surrender. I thought that was weak submission. That I could do this. I'm tough. I'm strong. I can do this. I never could do it, no matter how many years I tried. Um, but I woke up one morning, and I was so miserable, and I got up. My normal thing, I hid my drinking in my closet, but mine were big bottles, as big as I could get. Um, it didn't matter. It could be wine. It had to be a box of wine. I mean, I didn't care what I was drinking. I just knew I had to get that. I didn't care if I had to get that high, of which I got to the point where I never could get to it anymore. I was chasing it all the way, and I could not get it. Regardless of what I did, whether I did drugs, too, because I'm an addict. I can be addicted to anything, and if I didn't drink, I did drugs back and forth my entire life. Um, but I woke up one morning so miserable, and I got up, and I'm walking into my closet, and I mean, I remember, I mean, I was dragging into my closet to have a drink, and I got in there, and I picked up that bottle, and when I picked up that bottle, it's just something just washed over me, and it was like, hit your knees. It was like I was down, in my closet, going, what? You know, I had no clue what this was. Going, just what? And it just started working in me. You have to do something. And it was just rolling and rolling, and I thought, what do I do? And I ended up calling, uh, my family doctor was a friend of ours. They were very close to us, too, at the time, and, uh, I called up and gave some lie that I had to commit. And, uh, I got up, and I went in about my stomach, or whatever, and I went in there, and to sit and wait for him for like an hour, I was a mess, because I wanted that alcohol. I had to have that alcohol. And I couldn't get it. And when he walked into that office, took one look at me, said, stay right here, and he went and got somebody to sit with me, and he went and got me a bed in Laurelwood. Just like that. I never said a word. And from then on, my whole life has changed. I mean, I could talk forever. My whole life has changed. And coming in here, the first day that I came in here, after I went to the hospital, I was like, I'm going to go back to Laurelwood and detox. When they let me go home after three days, I failed to stay there. That's how bad I was, because I was staying in there from myself. I didn't want to leave Laurelwood. And they said, yes, you can. You're going to leave here right now, and you're going to go over to an AA meeting at the Hall Club. It was in, you know, like 1130 or something. I came over here, and I walked up on that front porch out there, and people actually had their hands out. I mean, this was just so neat. They were like that on that front porch. Everybody was shaking hands with everybody, or hugging everybody. And I felt like that instant. Everybody had a different story. And that instant, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And I'm still exactly where I'm supposed to be, and doing exactly what I've read, what I've heard other people do. And, you know, I'm like, I love AA. It's actually an incredible life that I have, just from coming in here and learning how to live life, because I learned how to live life here. On my own, I self-destruct big time. So I just need you all. I can't believe 10 years. I mean, it's still not going to end. Thank you, honey. And another of our trusted servants, who takes care of a lot of details behind the scenes, is our friend Jim, who is also a solver in 10 years. All right! Ain't nothing safe using 10 words of nothing. Or not. I know it's going to be the hardest thing you do all day. What's your name? I knew Tim when he first came in, and he hadn't changed since he texted me. He asked Tim what time it is, and he could tell you how to watch work. But anyway, Tim's a good guy. I'm glad he's here, and he's glad he's here. He's famous, a very famous person as well. He's a mobster. His mobster name is Timmy Two-Dogs. Because he used to steal two dogs at a time. He's been a real good part of my life, and it's good to have somebody that you can always count on. Tim's going to have something to do with it. Oh, I'll call him. Have something going on. And I appreciate you, Tim. And thanks for the honor of letting me stand up here. What are you doing? Surprise, surprise! I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic, and I'm one day away from 10 years. I always feel funny at these birthday meetings. I picked April 30th to be my sobriety day. And I guess once every seven years, I actually get it on today. So I'm a little early. And I'm trying to get practice to tell you how I did it. For 40 years, I was a functional alcoholic. I didn't understand that I had an insane spiritual malady in alcoholism. For 40 years, I sponsored myself. That was my ism. I was constantly going on the wagon. And every once in a while, I'd be successful. I could swing a few days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. I even made it to 14 months sometimes without a drink. And I always convinced myself that I could drink again. Even though the people that loved me gave me AA literature for my Christmas presents and birthday presents. All that stuff got followed up on the bookcase. And I never really looked at it. And I just knew that if I ever walked into an AA meeting, that would just be the lowest point. And I wasn't ready for that. I just wasn't ready for that. I finally got to the point where the smartest thing I ever did was I asked my family for help. Because I had stopped drinking for about 14 months. And I thought I could drink like normal people again. And this time, I couldn't control it at all. And I couldn't stop drinking. And it was month after month. And it was like what Janella described. And a little bit like what Laura described. Totally out of control. I asked my family for help. Really, if I had known about the Hawk Club, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. I couldn't come here. But my family lived in Decatur. And they knew of a clubhouse. It was near their house. And they weren't going to let me out of their sight for a while. I packed a bag and went down there. And they took me to my first AA meeting. It was a Monday night blue chip speaker's meeting at NAVA. And you walk through this building. It's been there for well over 50 years. And there's pictures of the presidents. All the past presidents up on the wall. And they're all peering down looking at what I thought was kind of pious. At the time. And all squirming. And their hearts pounding. And you go in. Sit down. Room full of people like this. And a lot of happy, joyous and free people. The speaker gets up. And I didn't recognize him at first. And then he's telling a story. He mentions a treehouse in Sandy Springs. And he was 12 years old. He had an upperclassman. That was his bootlegger. And that was his big sister's boyfriend. That would load him up. Every weekend. And so basically this kid had financed my romance for quite some time. And then I realized that I was responsible. Definitely partly responsible. For all the joy that he had for so many years. That that joy turned into that cunning, baffling, powerful, pitifully incomprehensible demoralization that I think we all get to before we come in. I realized that I had that same path. Or a very similar path. That got me to that hot seat I was sitting in that night. And I realized that. It was like that first glimpse of a God moment. An AA God moment. When they offered that white chip. I knew that if I didn't grab a hold of that thing right then. I might never make it. That was the only chance I felt like I had. And so I grabbed it. And I went home. With a big book. Even though I had several bookcases. That I ignored. That I got on my knees. And I asked God for the strength to make it till the morning without taking a drink. And that was the first night that I had not had a drink. I woke up and the big book was on my chest. And I think I only read about a sentence or two. That was my habit. Starting that big book at night. I would carry that big book with me all day long. And I would pray on my knees in the morning. And I would pray at the bus stop. I would pray when I was sitting in the meeting. Waiting for a meeting to start. I mean I was just going. Please. Please. You know. I got to stop drinking. That's when I entered this spiritual kindergarten. That we have. And I learned the ABC's. That with acceptance and belief. Comes change. And that became more AA actions. Through the big book. About products and items. Convinced me to continue. I picked up a 90 day chip. And I couldn't believe it. I looked back on that. And I found a sponsor. A man who was at ease in his own skin. And he was at ease with himself and others. We worked the book. And worked the 12 steps. It made such a big difference. Now I get to say the serenity prayer. The third step prayer. And the seventh step prayer. But God. God helps me through it every day now. As long as I ask him to take away any thoughts. Self pity. Decide to see. Self speaking. Self love. It's a nice way of closing.