Honey, You’re Not Working Those Steps — Those Steps Are Working You – Kathy A.

About This Speaker Tape

Kathy shares her story at the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, introduced by her sponsor Mary Lourdes. Sobriety date July 5, 1994. She grew up in Michigan with a father who drank and let her drive his car at 11 or 12 so he wouldn't have to. Pregnant at 16, she was pushed into a wedding she didn't want; her daughter Shannon, she says today, saved her from herself. Her first real drink was a pint of Southern Comfort that left her so sick she swore off alcohol for years — a promise that didn't hold once her second marriage, softball, and a social crowd made drinking routine.

Two geographic cures — Michigan to Colorado, then Colorado to Georgia for the promised swimming pool — only accelerated the drinking. Her alcoholism showed up in ladylike failures like lying on the floor playing dead bug at a party to dodge buying a round, and in darker moments: an aunt beaten to death by an alcoholic husband, a young cousin killed running out of a bar, and finally Kathy herself driving under a Cobb County parking garage planning to hit a cement wall. The next morning her college-aged daughter called her out of bed and forced her to phone a counselor, who sent her first to Al-Anon and then, when her hands started shaking, to an AA meeting behind Tower Liquors off Piedmont.

She cried through her first several meetings, took a white chip from an AA angel who wrote her number on a scrap of paper, and at 30 days walked into a meeting held inside a bar at the beach. A woman there took her to Waffle House and gave her a written morning routine: ask a Higher Power to remove the compulsion, go to a meeting, call another alcoholic, read five to seven pages of the Big Book at night, thank a Higher Power before sleep. Back in Atlanta she asked the woman in the red convertible to sponsor her, and got walked through the Big Book a page at a time until Mary Lourdes finished taking her through the remaining steps.

Twenty-five years in, she's a sober grandma who flew to Disney when her daughter went into early labor, buried a 19-year-old godson killed when a manure truck lost its brakes and went over a cliff into the Snake River, and still remembers the day a woman tapped her shoulder in a mini-mart just as she was reaching for a beer. Her summary: she's a drink away from a drunk, a thought away from that drink, and a prayer away from the thought — and it gets better beyond her wildest dreams.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening song and Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting preamble at the NAVA Club
• 1:45 Mary Lourdes introduces her sponsee Kathy from the Shiloh Group
• 4:00 Michigan childhood — cross-country skiing with her father, driving him home from bars at 11 so he wouldn't drink and drive
• 7:00 Pregnant at 16, mother plans the wedding, daughter Shannon born when Kathy is 17
• 9:00 First drink — a pint of Southern Comfort, sister shoves her into an upper bunk
• 12:00 First geographic cure from Michigan to Colorado; second marriage and softball drinking
• 17:00 Playing dead bug on the party floor to avoid buying a round
• 19:30 Second geographic cure to Georgia for the promised swimming pool
• 23:00 Cobb County parking garage suicide attempt stopped by the thought of her daughter
• 28:00 First AA meeting behind Tower Liquors off Piedmont; white chip and a bear hug that scared her
• 32:00 30 days sober at the beach, AA meeting inside a bar, Waffle House breakfast with a written morning routine
• 37:00 Asks the woman in the red convertible to sponsor her; Mary Lourdes finishes taking her through the steps
• 40:00 Godson, 19, killed in a manure truck accident in Idaho; month with her sister after the funeral
• 43:00 Mini-mart beer-cooler moment — a woman's tap on the shoulder for a forgotten hug stops her from picking up a beer