Mom Said Don’t Drink Alone or That’ll Make You an Alcoholic — So I Drank Socially 😂 – Pat F.

About This Speaker Tape

Pat, a female alcoholic from Toledo, Ohio, traces her descent from a blissful early childhood into isolation after her father began a 20-year affair and heavy drinking when she was eight. By seventh grade she'd found the wild kids, and at 13 she mixed vodka into Hawaiian Punch and felt a warmth climb her legs that she never wanted to stop — her first drink ended in her first blackout. Her teenage years were marked by a no-rules household, a gang rape she interrupted, fake IDs claiming epilepsy, and running with a coke-dealer boyfriend named Danny.

A partial 18-month sobriety collapsed when a high school friend goaded her back into drinking. Within six months she was crying on her kitchen floor on February 17, 1983, trying to pry apart a Flicker razor to cut herself in the bathtub. A voice told her to call the suicide hotline — the counselor who answered turned out to be a classmate from her graduate counseling program. Her friend Mary detoured her to a donut shop before treatment; the admitting doctor lived across the street from her parents; a nurse named Shirley had gone to high school with her dad. Her worst fear was public humiliation, and her higher power delivered it.

Her first sponsor Shirley rushed her through the steps but drilled service — shaking every hand, washing ashtrays, becoming a GSR and speaking before 200 people at two years sober. A second sponsor Dawn made her work the steps. She married inside the program (it failed), got a PhD, married outside the program for 20 years, had her daughters as her sixth and seventh pregnancies after bed rest, and drifted into online meetings and phone calls instead of real rooms. After leaving that marriage she fell for a 13-years-sober artist named Caleb, who saw her drifting and walked her by the hand to a group of sober women before going back out himself.

Caleb made two suicide attempts and now lives in a nursing home without the use of his hands. Sandy, who first confronted Pat at her kitchen table, died of cirrhosis in a nursing home. Marsha shot herself. Jack killed himself. Sue, Lori, Ann — all dead. With two exceptions, every woman Pat partied with is gone, most before 50. Her closing question is the tape's heart: why does she get this seat? Not her doing — higher power. Don't drink, go to meetings, read the book, and pray.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Monday Night Blue Chips opening, Rusty Jones introduces Pat
• 3:00 Toledo childhood, father's drinking and 20-year affair starting at age 8
• 7:30 First drink at 13: Hawaiian Punch and vodka, warmth up the legs, first blackout
• 12:00 Mother's advice 'don't drink alone,' Danny the coke runner, fake epilepsy ID
• 18:00 Friend Sandy's kitchen-table confrontation leads to 18-month partial sobriety
• 23:00 February 17, 1983 — suicide attempt on kitchen floor with a Flicker razor
• 27:00 Suicide hotline counselor is a classmate; Mary detours to the donut shop
• 33:00 Sponsor Shirley's service work: shaking every hand, GSR at two years, speaking to 200
• 42:00 Drifting into online meetings and phone calls during bed rest with the twins
• 48:00 Caleb the artist takes her by the hand to the sober women; roll call of the dead