My Grandmother Poured My First Drink at Nine — Family of Origin Did the Rest – Amy O.

About This Speaker Tape

Frank Waters introduces Amy O. at the Monday Night Blue Chips speaker meeting at the NABBA Club, calling her "Miss AA — Angry Amy," remembering the early days when getting close to her felt like getting close to a pissed-off hedgehog, spikes and sarcasm and fear dripping off her. He calls her one of the most loving, huggable people he knows now — a complete turnaround from what she came in as.

Amy takes the podium and admits she's nervous. Her current sober date is recent; her first sober date was 2005, and she could never string more than a couple months together in between. Her biological father was a full-blown alcoholic and her biological mother killed herself. She was adopted into a good home. Her grandmother gave her her first drink at nine — it made her warm and tingly and she knew she liked it. She had her first alcohol poisoning at thirteen. She drank as a functioning alcoholic, covering everything with work. Her adoptive mother worked for the DA and her father for the sheriff's department, so they bailed her out — even after she stole her daddy's police car and wrecked it the same night he took her keys away.

She married a man she calls the most worthless she could have found, had two children she later gave up; they graduated high school this year, both alcoholics, and her daughter is in the program now telling her "Mama, I like the way it makes me feel." Amy describes relationships as "victims and hostages" — she didn't know how to let anyone in, came to meetings and sat silent for months. Her last bottom came when she was found on the side of I-285, abused and in a diabetic coma; the woman who found her thought she'd found a dead body. She put herself in detox and a halfway house and something finally broke open.

Today she actually calls her sponsor, has a network of friends who check on her, a home group she works in, parents who talk to her again, and an AA family. She recently went back to her three-quarter house — not because she drank, but because life got hard — and saw for the first time that going "backwards" was really the full picture of how much she has grown. Suicide used to be her answer; now prayer is, even though she didn't know how when she started. She closes with gratitude that she talks more now than she ever has.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Kat opens the Monday Night Blue Chips speaker meeting at the NABBA Club
• 0:30 Frank Waters introduces "Angry Amy" — getting close to her was like getting close to a pissed-off hedgehog
• 2:00 Amy identifies, gives her current sober date and her first sober date of 2005, and the pattern of picking right back up where she left off
• 3:30 Adoption story — biological father alcoholic, biological mother killed herself
• 4:30 First drink at nine from her grandmother; first alcohol poisoning at thirteen
• 7:00 Stole her daddy's police car and wrecked it after he tried to take her keys — "Don't tell me I can't ever do something"
• 9:00 Marriage to "the most worthless man," gave up two children, both now teenage alcoholics; daughter in the program
• 12:00 Relationships as "victims and hostages"; sitting silent in meetings for months, nobody knowing her name
• 15:00 Last bottom — found on the side of I-285, abused, in a diabetic coma; detox and halfway house followed
• 19:00 Today — calls her sponsor, home group, AA family, prayer; three-quarter house return showed her the full picture of her growth