Ma’am I Came Here to Get Sober Not Celibate 🤣 – Liz M.

About This Speaker Tape

Liz M. shares her story from the East Marietta Group with over four decades of sobriety dating back to July 31, 1981. She grew up in Pittsburgh with a functioning alcoholic mother who eventually found AA and stayed sober nearly fifty years. All four siblings became alcoholics — one with over fifty years of sobriety, one still drinking, and one who quit but never joined the program. Liz traces her alcoholism to age twelve when she stole a beer from her mother and walked home feeling like she was in Oz, chasing that feeling for the next dozen years without ever catching it again.

Her drinking escalated through Catholic school and college, where she became a daily drinker who scheduled classes around hangovers. She took a night shift at a Sheraton hotel so the bartender could feed her drinks during work, and turned down a promotion because the hours would interfere with her drinking. A motorcycle accident at twenty-two left her covered in road rash and cinders, and the ER doctor she lied to about drinking became the beginning of the end. She tried controlled drinking, failed, and one day sat in her grandmother's closet — vodka in a cowboy boot, weed in a Frisbee, cocaine and a mirror — and realized her entire happiness fit inside a walk-in closet.

She called her mother, who simply said she had been waiting and told her where the meetings were. A friend of her brother's took her to her first meeting — a smoky room packed with eighty people, many of whom already knew her family. She dove into service work, was planted at the front door as a greeter within days, and learned early lessons the hard way, including why old-timers warn newcomers about dating in their first year. At eleven months she moved to Florida for a job, then to Paducah, Kentucky, where a sweet Southern sponsor pushed her into deep service work — GSR, DCM, and master of ceremonies for a tri-state convention — that cracked open her ego and built real confidence.

After nine years in Key West and a move to Atlanta in 1993, her husband was diagnosed with leukemia. The next twenty years forced her to become both caregiver and breadwinner — the two roles she had been most determined to avoid. She credits the program with carrying her through his illness, his death ten years ago, and subsequent years caring for his elderly mother and her own mother. Now recently retired, she volunteers to help an elderly neighbor and laughs at the irony that caregiving — the thing she swore she would never do — turned out to be exactly what Higher Power had planned for her.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Meeting introduction at NAVA Club Blue Chip Speakers meeting
• 2:00 Liz introduces herself — sobriety date July 31 1981, East Marietta Group, family background in Pittsburgh with alcoholic mother and four alcoholic siblings
• 6:00 First drink at 12 — steals mom's beer, walks home and the street looks like Oz, chases that feeling for the next dozen years
• 10:00 High school drinking with city girls, Catholic all-girls school, gravitating toward the mean girls and older siblings who could get alcohol
• 16:00 College as a daily drinker — scheduling classes around hangovers, totaling cars, never facing real consequences
• 21:00 Working the 3-to-11 shift at the Sheraton — bartender feeds her drinks on the job, turns down a promotion because 9-to-5 would ruin her drinking schedule
• 24:00 Motorcycle accident at 22 — road rash, ER wire brush, lying to the doctor about drinking, the beginning of the end
• 28:00 The closet at Granny's house — vodka in a cowboy boot, weed in a Frisbee — realizes her whole world fits in a closet and calls her mother
• 35:00 Early AA — first meeting in a smoky room, learning through service work, dating mistakes at six months, moving to Florida at eleven months
• 45:00 Husband's leukemia diagnosis, 20 years as caregiver and breadwinner, his death, and how the program carried her through it all