My Sponsor Told Me I Hit Bottom the Day I Stopped Digging – Karen

About This Speaker Tape

Karen, sober since May 20, 1989, tells her story at 30 years at the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting. Born in 1953 to a Southern Baptist preacher and a mother who made his father swear never to keep booze in the house, Karen grew up a straight-A preacher's daughter who took the Bible so seriously she scared her parents. At 16 in North Carolina, an integrated teen party at the parsonage ended with a double-barrel shotgun blast through the front window. When the congregation demanded her father resign and then fired him, something slammed shut in Karen. She couldn't wait to get to college, where in 1971 she bought her first pair of jeans and drank two-thirds of a quart of 190-proof grain alcohol, blacking out with a burning newspaper in her hand until a stranger kicked the door open and stomped the flame out.

The next eighteen years were a slow progression through geographics, a bohemian marriage that ended when she woke up in her own waste on a purple-stained pillow, and nine years of drinking alone in New York. She stopped only in places where she knew everyone would get her home, until she was leaving parties with strangers and ended up held prisoner in a crack addict's apartment. A piano falling on her left foot put her in the hospital, where her mother finally told her the truth about her beloved grandfather, and Karen said, mom, that's the way I drink. Her brother took her to her first meeting. After three meetings and one last six-pack of Tall Boys on a broken couch that scraped the floor, she saw her whole future as a flat gray plane stretching into infinity, and she was done.

In sobriety she learned that hitting bottom means stopping the digging, took a full year to write her first fourth step, and finally heard her sponsor say they weren't cutting off her right arm, only scraping the barnacles off the side of the boat. She walked away from her opera-star ambitions and found work she actually loved, moved to the Atlanta area eighteen years ago, and built a life nothing like the one she had pictured. This past year has been hard: a 13-year relationship ended, friends left with it, she moved to a new apartment alone, broke her kneecap, turned 66. When she caught herself making those departing friends her center, her sponsor told her to get her center back in AA. Karen closes by naming how close she is to her next drink, and by quoting Bill W. telling Dr. Bob, I'm not here to help you, I'm here to help me.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Monday night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting opening, Karen introduced as a longtime member whose sharing the chairperson stops to listen to
• 2:30 Karen on how the word qualifying made her certain there was a list she would fail, and on telling every old-timer I'm Karen and I think maybe I'm an alcoholic
• 6:00 Sponsor Lee: you hit bottom when you stop digging, and the things that never happened to you yet — all this can be yours
• 9:30 Born 1953 in Virginia to a farmer turned Baptist preacher; mother made father promise no booze in the house
• 12:00 Age 16 in North Carolina: shotgun blast through the parsonage window at an integrated teen party, and the congregation firing her father when he refused to resign
• 16:00 First drink in 1971 college — quart of 190-proof grain alcohol, blackout with a burning newspaper, a stranger kicking the door open to stomp out the flame
• 24:00 Bohemian marriage ends after the purple-pillow blackout; moving into her own apartment, Wild Turkey and Hungry Jack potatoes every night
• 30:00 Nine years in New York — held prisoner by a crack addict, sent to Al-Anon by her therapist, white wine spritzer blackouts ending in the church choir loft
• 38:00 Piano crushes her foot; in the hospital her mother finally reveals her grandfather was the falling-down drunk, and Karen says mom, that's the way I drink
• 45:00 First fourth step took a year; sponsor's line about scraping the barnacles off the side of the boat; this year's hard season and her sponsor telling her to put her center back in AA