I’ve Never Driven a Forklift Sober — Be Grateful When Lowe’s Blocks Off the Aisle 🤦 – Sandy V.

About This Speaker Tape

Sandy tells her story at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, celebrating 14 years of sobriety with a date of August 8, 2003. She opens on two words she wants listeners to carry home: hope and perseverance. Sandy grew up a latchkey kid, found alcohol at 15 after moving in with her father and stepmother, and drank alcoholically from the first sip. She became a bartender so she could drink more, worked her way up to assistant food and beverage manager, and padded drinks and stole bottles without ever calling herself a thief. One DUI at 18, a repossessed car she felt relieved about, and years of driving a forklift at Lowe's intoxicated with a backpack that held Grand Marnier, perfume, and gum.

Her bottom came when she assaulted her boyfriend in a blackout, spent twelve hours in jail, and had to call her mother for the first time. She got sober at the Biscayne Room on Claremont Road surrounded by 20- and 30-year old-timers who did not coddle her. At 100 days she took 10 prescribed relaxing pills from a doctor, abused them, and relapsed for a few days — waking up bruised head to toe with a carpet burn down her face and wine stains all over her apartment. That was her true bottom.

Sandy worked the Steps with a sponsor, found Al-Anon during an unhealthy relationship at five years, stayed single for five years of self-work, and met her now-husband Steve in 2011, marrying at 52. Life was rainbows and unicorns until last year. Her mother was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. Two weeks after Sandy was commissioned as a Stephen Minister at her church, her neighbor's son burned both houses to the ground with fireworks on Memorial Day — total loss, but the dog got out and the cat survived behind a closed office door. A week later Steve's brother died. She took her mother to chemo and radiation, sat with her the last three weeks, and was beside her when she took her last breath on April 1st of this year.

She stayed sober through all of it. Her message is that the Higher Power of her understanding takes her right up to the ledge but holds her hand so she doesn't fall off. She had already made amends to her mother long before the hospice room — "We've already done that" — and walked her mother out of this world the same way her mother walked her in. If she can stay sober through burying her mother, she can stay sober one day at a time for the rest of her life.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Julie opens Blue Chip Speakers meeting, reads from page 29, introduces Sandy as a woman who came in bitter and angry
• 3:30 Sandy introduces herself — 14 years, sobriety date August 8, 2003 — and names her theme: hope and perseverance
• 7:00 Growing up a latchkey kid in Fayette County, moved in with dad at 15, found smokable alcohol then drinking immediately
• 13:00 Bartender years — padding drink tickets, giving regulars free pours for bigger tips, taking bottles home — realizing later this was theft
• 18:00 Forklift at Lowe's intoxicated, backpack full of Grand Marnier and perfume, fainting on the garden-center swing
• 24:00 The bottom — simple battery arrest, 12 hours in jail, calling her mother from the cell, first AA meeting at the Biscayne Room
• 30:00 Relapse at 100 days — 10 pills from a doctor, took three in the parking lot, drank for days, woke up bruised head to toe
• 38:00 Fourth Step avoidance — hiding the paper around the apartment like she used to hide bartender cash
• 45:00 Memorial Day fire — both houses burned, cat survives behind a closed office door, Steve's brother dies a week later
• 52:00 Sitting with her mother through chemo and radiation, beside her for her last breath on April 1 — amends already done long before