Never Got a DUI, Never Lost a House, Never Had Just One Drink in My Entire Life — Ginny N.

Hey, let's have an AA meeting. My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the Napa Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, with one year or more of sobriety, tells his or her story. This was based on a passage from page 29 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual, in our personal stories, describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabluchipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker, and we believe it is only by fully disclosing our souls and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too. I must have this thing. Denny came to Georgia about a year ago, and she has set sobriety and recovery in Gainesville on fire. This woman's got a passion for it, and I think she's going to bring it here tonight. Get ready. Put your seatbelts on. Come on, Jenny. Hi, everybody. I'm Jenny. I'm an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I am going to respect the singleness of purpose and really talk just about alcohol, but drugs are in my story too. I think they came first. I'm going to just start out with a little bit of history of who I am and how I grew up and where I came from. I'll start off with my sobriety date is November 29, 2014. That's my second sobriety date. July 29, 2014 was the first one, but... I told my sponsor I only needed one meeting a week and I was going to go to the gym and everything was going to be just fine. And she said, seems like you really know what you're doing. And I relapsed. Luckily, I only went out for three days and I came back realizing I had a problem. I grew up north of Boston. I'm 62 years old, and I'm the youngest of six kids. I have four older brothers, and my sister's the oldest. My mom died when I was two weeks old, and my father was stuck with six kids, five of which were five and under. And like, oh boy, what am I going to do? So we all moved into my maternal grandmother's home and imagine how happy she was because he was an alcoholic. And so she was stuck with five kids, five and under, and a nine-year-old at age 55 caring for us, along with my grandfather, who had Parkinson's and an alcoholic in the home. And I witnessed a lot of unhappy things growing up. I saw my dad stumbling, falling down drunk, and I heard and, you know, witnessed all the arguments with my grandmother and him about his behavior and what a bad example he was. I was too little to really know what was going on, and he was removed from the home when I was five. My grandfather died when I was five, so my grandmother was in it on her own. And she was a depressed woman. She struggled. She did the best she could. She was physically and emotionally abusive. And I'm the victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by immediate family members and by relatives as a little kid. So I think as a result, and growing up, I was really painfully shy. I was terrified at school, kindergarten, first grade. I was so shy. And at home, I tried to be invisible. Being the youngest and dealing with, you know, a lot of aggression in the home, a lot of yelling and screaming, I just tried to be invisible. So I immersed myself in my dolls and my artwork and just kind of coasted along. Come around middle school, because of the trauma that I had experienced, I started to act out. I got arrested when I was 12 for shopping. I was uplifting. And I was more afraid of my grandmother than the police. I came from a small town, and they said, wait till Vera gets a hold of you. That's like, oh, great. Because they all knew my grandmother and what a struggle it was that she was trying to do, raise us kids. And by the time I, and when I was nine, I started smoking cigarettes. And when I was 12, I started drinking and using other substances. And I never drank normally from day one. My goal was to get obliterated. And so as a result, my first experience with vodka was drink the whole thing. I had alcohol poisoning. I was sick as a dog for a week. But it didn't stop me. I kept on doing those things. I would go to school drunk. I would drink after school. I would do other things during school. So I was using multiple substances every day, all day, as much as I could. And, um, I liked how it made me feel. I wasn't shy anymore. I was able to talk to people, engage with people to a degree. Um, and I thought, well, this is the only way I can function in life, so I'm just going to keep at it. Um, I barely made it out of high school, but I did pull my grades up enough to get into college. And I lasted about a year and said, I'm done with this. I want my own life. I want to be on my own. And so I did that. And it was party on. I worked during the day. I held a job nine to five. Um, but I did substances during the day at work and I drank at night, every night and I never stopped. I took one year off when I was pregnant with my daughter. And then I resumed drinking, um, because of being a victim of trauma and sexual abuse. I was very promiscuous at a young age because that, that, that was how you got attention and love. Okay. I had no idea how to get love because it was never really given appropriately in my home. And so I just had really poor boundaries. I didn't understand how to function in the world, in the world appropriately at all. I just, I was lost. And, um, I just kept that behavior up. I got married when I was 20 and our relationship revolved around drinking. And for seven years, that's all we did. And I finally had had enough and said, I'm done. I'm leaving. I'm leaving because we were spending our rent money on alcohol and other things. And, um, I ended up getting married again four years later and had my daughter and ended up not really drinking too much when she was little because I was too busy being a parent. I had decided to go to school and get my degree finally when I was in my thirties. And I got my bachelor's, um, and then I went on and got my master's degree in counseling. And so I didn't really drink that much then, but I didn't stop. And every once in a while I would think, you know, maybe I have a problem. I'm kind of like dad, you know. And I heard that all the time. You new gums, you're just like your father or my grandmother. Nothing I did was good enough. I tried really hard. I tried to do things for her. We all did. And it was just never good enough. Um, so our goal in life was to get out of the house. Get out of the home as quickly as possible. And all of us got married at a young age just to get away from her. Um, but I was, underneath all that drinking and using, I was really depressed. I was really anxious. And I was self-medicating with these substances because I was so unhappy. I was suicidal at times. Um, and I think that my biggest downfall came when I was, in 1976, my brother, who was a couple years older than me, suicided. And then my dad died. And my grandmother died. And, um, I just kind of went downhill and downhill. And I started drinking more and more. I got to the point where I was buying so much wine. But I was hiding it in my own house when my daughter went off to college. I hid the wine so people would only see one bottle in the refrigerator. And not get suspicious that I was drinking too much. And how sick is that? Hiding your booze in your own house. But I had to maintain appearances. I still got up. I went to work. Nine to five, I came home. And the minute I got home, I cracked the bottle. And I didn't stop until I passed out. Um, some of my worst drinking really was in high school. And I remember crawling up the driveway on my hands and knees just to get in the house. I was so drunk. Driving drunk like that, getting out of the car, crawling up the driveway on my hands and knees, standing up and saying, good night, Graham, and crawling up the stairs. I'm lucky I didn't kill somebody or myself. I drove drunk all the time. I drove drunk when I had my daughter in the car. And it doesn't stop me. I was lucky enough not to get arrested. I never got a DUI. I was never homeless. I never lost a job. Well, that's not true. I did get fired once for using a substance at work. But I never got fired for drinking. So I was a pretty high-functioning alcoholic. And I didn't have a real low bottom like some people have had. But I don't think you need to have that to define yourself as an alcoholic. I couldn't stop drinking. There was no way I would say, okay, I'm not going to drink today. I could not drive by the liquor store. I had to pull in. I was obsessed. I was compelled to buy more wine. And I used to go to different liquor stores all over town so they wouldn't know what an alcoholic I was. So deep down I already knew, but I wasn't ready to admit it. I crashed and burned pretty bad when my daughter went to college because I was a single mom. And she was pretty much my whole life. And when she went off to college, I didn't know what to do. What do you do when you've been an active parent and all of a sudden, you're done? I had no clue. So I drank more and I said, oh, it's time for Geographic. And I got up and moved to Utah. My daughter had graduated college by then. She became a forest ranger and she was in Utah as a forest ranger. Let's go to Utah and see what that's like. And I stayed there for two years. And I wasn't sober when I got there. And the whole time I drove there carrying all my stuff in a U-Haul with the dog in the front seat saying, God, I don't know why I'm doing this. But show me the way. God showed me the way because I got sober in Utah. The woman that rented me the apartment introduced me to her mom, who was my age. And she was in the program. And a couple of times she casually invited me to a meeting. And I was like, I don't have anything wrong. I won't drink around you. I'll respect your sobriety, but I don't have a problem. She's like, okay. And she let that slide. And she invited me to a speaker meeting. She was a Mormon. I had no idea what a speaker meeting was. I thought it was something in her church. And I said, what the hell? I got nothing else to do. I was astonished when I got into the meeting and it was an AA meeting. My jaw hit the floor. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me because that guy told my story. He talked about his drinking and his issues that happened to him when he was drinking and his loss. And he was telling my story. I found my people. I was ecstatic. I got to have more of this. And I said, okay, I'm going to do this. So I did it. I joined up. I got a sponsor. And then she started to tell me what to do. And I said, I'm not doing that. Steps? Are you kidding? I'm not doing those steps. Really? Make amends? To who? Uh-uh. Ain't going to happen. So I did it. On my terms. And it kind of worked a little bit for a while. But I really wasn't feeling any better. I was extremely lonely. And I was very anxious. I was very depressed to the point where I was suicidal. And so my reaction to the mood and the depression and the anxiety was to go back to the old faithful solution, which was to drink. And I relapsed. And I drank worse than I ever had before. And that's when I realized, oh, my God. I am an alcoholic. I think it was the first time I could believe that I was an alcoholic. I never really kind of invested myself. I never was full in. I never said, yeah, I really am. I just had this lingering doubt. But really, that was the disease talking. It's such a cunning, baffling, powerful disease. And it's sneaky. And as soon as you let your guard down, or as soon as I let my guard down, I started having these little stupid, sick thoughts. You know, that thinkin', thinkin' came back. Maybe I could just have one. I won't drink like I did before. So I thought, sure, why not? Oh, and I forgot to tell my sponsor. I was on the marijuana maintenance program while I was sober from alcohol. So I wasn't really sober. But I didn't consider that an addiction. I didn't consider that a problem. But I was still altering what was going on in my head. I mean, clinically, I knew better. I'm trained in the field, right? That's how cunning this disease is. I just was convinced that I was just fine. And, um... You know, I just... I had a lot of shame. I had a lot of guilt. And to admit that I was really and truly an alcoholic meant, really, I was just like my father. But I found out later, a few years ago, that the line of alcoholism in my family was strong, and I never knew it. My grandfather was an alcoholic. My grandmother was drinking while she's telling all us, alcohol's evil, you can't drink. Marching us off to church. And she had this little doorstopper that looked like a poodle somebody had crocheted to put over a whiskey bottle. When I was little, I never realized that that little doorstopper was full of alcohol. So she'd ship us all off to bed at night and have a few drinks. All of my siblings were alcoholic. All of them engaged in other substances as well, except one. And... And... And... And... And... And to this day, a couple of my brothers are still drinking and using. I don't have contact with them because they abused me, and I didn't want any contact with them. My daughter doesn't know them. I didn't want her to know them. I didn't trust them. So when I finally decided to take this program seriously, it was the steps that got me where I needed to go. And I was very reluctant, but my sponsor was from old school. She had 20 years. She was 20 years sober. And she made me get a journal and write all that stuff down. And so every step we did, I had to write down what the step was and then analyze it so that I could get my thoughts out onto paper and really look at, this is the issue. And I kind of balked at the fourth step. I found it really challenging. But she made it simple for me. Because I tend to complicate everything. I overthink everything. And she made it simple for me. And I was able to finally do the steps a little at a time. And over the course of a year, I finally completed all the steps. I made amends to people that I thought I never would. Even to people that had passed away, I still wrote letters and made amends and did the work. And it was really hard. It was really, really hard to be honest, to be so honest with myself and to be honest with other people that I had a problem and alcohol was it. Especially with my family members, my brother, one brother I'm in touch with. And it was nice that he was so accepting because I hid this disease from everybody. And most of my close friends and family, the family had no idea how much I was drinking. I hid it so well. I stayed home, I isolated, and I drank alone. And when I told them that I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and that I was finally sober, they were shocked. They had no idea that I had a problem. My daughter had no idea. But I found all those people to be really supportive and encouraging. My brother still struggles with it. He just chooses not to talk about it. I think it's a sticky issue for him. But still, he's supportive. So I was in Utah for a couple of years. That's where I got sober. And on the day that I got my one-year chip, I did another geographic and I moved back to Rhode Island because it was a really tough environment for me to be. If you're not a Mormon, you're not a Mormon. It's really hard to live in Utah. It's hard socially. There's not many people that are not Mormon. And I lived in Heber City, which is a cow town, up in the mountains in the Rockies. And a big meeting there was like nine to ten people. So I decided I needed to go home, be near my family, be near my friends, and I really got hooked into AA there in Rhode Island. Got myself a sponsor. Redid the steps and started to grow and change. And I think for me, the most important thing about my sobriety is that I don't get complacent and that I continue to look at my behavior. So now, for example, if I do something stupid or if I hurt someone's feelings, within minutes I realize that was so bad. I need to do it again. I need to do a tenth step. I need to make amends. I need to tell that person what I did and to accept my responsibility and to change my behavior. You know, it's an ongoing thing because it's easy to get complacent. When I first came here, I was terrified to go to an AA meeting because I didn't know anybody. And the reason I moved here was because my daughter's now in graduate school and she needed housing. And I work from home so I can live anywhere. So I moved here so she could live with me while she's in college. Which meant starting over and finding a new sponsor, finding a new AA group. And I landed in Gainesville. And the first time I went to a meeting, after about a month I was here, I went to the Halt Club. And I was so anxious and so nervous. I grabbed the lady right next to me and said, will you be my temporary sponsor, please? I didn't even know her. She was or how much time she had, but she agreed. And she was awesome. And she stuck with me for a few months until I found a permanent sponsor. I just, the AA in Georgia is so much better than the AA up north and out west. And I think it's because I'm in the Bible Belt. There's a lot of religion here. There's a lot of spirituality here. There's a lot of focus on God. And I desperately needed that in my program. Because I didn't feel like I had it anywhere else. And I feel like I have grown so much since I've been here because the quality of the sharing is so genuine and honest. And it's allowed me to be more genuine and honest and share when I go to meetings. I now sponsor someone. And I have a sponsor. And I work this program night and day. I read AA literature. I go to AA literature every day. I go to at least three or four meetings a week. And I don't take anything for granted. Because I know if I get complacent and lazy, those crazy thoughts are going to slip back into my head. Maybe I could just have one. And I know for the rest of my life, as long as I live, I'm never going to be able to drink again. Unless I want to relapse. Because I can't just have one. I've never had just one. I've never had one of anything. I'm like that now with food and sugar. It's like, ah, you know, I just, I'm an alcoholic. I'm an addict. No matter what it is, I don't know moderation. So I have to work really hard on that. You know, my life has changed so much. And I'm no longer implagued with depression and anxiety. I'm no longer suicidal. I found a power greater than myself. And at first, I didn't know what that meant. So I made the group and the meeting my higher power. But I think since I've been here, I've really started to kind of engage and have conversations with my higher power, who I call God. I was raised in a church and I, you know, I knew about God. I believed in God. But I had to recreate who that God was for me so that it was doable. I couldn't have the punitive God that I was raised with. I was raised Roman Catholic. And religion was crammed down my throat. I went to Catholic school. I got it, you know, full tilt. But today I feel like I have a compassionate God who I can converse with and who I can get on my knees and pray and ask for help. Because even though I have a little over three years sober, I struggle. I have a lot of struggles. And we all have struggles. Life happens. Stuff happens and you got to deal with it. But without self-medicating. And that's really hard for me. Because I still want to do that go-to of, oh man, you know, I still have those, if only I could have a drink thoughts. I can't have a drink. Which means I have to look at what's staring me in the face and deal with it and accept it and find a way to cope. Which means I call a sponsor. I call another alcoholic. I up my meeting attendance. And I share what's honestly going on with me so that I'm not in that place of relapse. Relapse for me the first time happened well before I picked up a drink. It happened months before I picked up that first drink. And it was because I was complacent and I took back my will and I decided I was going to drive the bus. But I think I realized that the only way I'm going to ever be, be successful in this program is to let God drive the bus. And it sounds kind of silly and juvenile, but I kind of had to return to my childhood God on some level to make it doable for me. And my version of God is, he's driving the bus and I'm sitting in the seat and every once in a while he just looks back and winks and smiles and says, yeah, it's going to be alright. God's driving my bus today. Because if I was driving the bus, it wouldn't be pretty. When I first heard that speaker the very first time tell his story, and I heard so many things in it that were like my life and my story, I realized that I wasn't less than, that I deserved a higher quality of life. I always felt less than and that I never belonged anywhere. I was never good enough. I never felt good about myself until I got sober and worked the steps. And working the steps is the only thing that saved my butt because I had no clue about what AA really was until I did all those steps. And then it kind of all gelled and came together and made sense. So if you knew, just coming in, coming back, get yourself a bus, self-sponsor and work the steps to the best of your ability. Don't worry about how well you do them, just do them. Because you don't just do them once. You get the opportunity to do them as many times as you want and as many times as you need to. And your life just keeps getting better. And you know, people just say, oh, just keep coming back, it gets better. And I'd be like, yeah, you're full of crap. It does get better. It does. Things are happening for me in my life that I never thought would ever happen. My relationships are better. They're more honest. They're more fulfilling. I don't have so many worries. I'm not trying to remember what I said to this one or that one and who I lied to and how much was I drinking because I have to hide it and keep a secret. I don't have to keep secrets anymore. I just have to be honest with myself and with God. And I have to be willing to take baby steps. And keep doing the work. It's because of this program that I have a life today. I'm not dead. My dad died from cirrhosis. He died a slow, miserable death because he couldn't stop drinking. And I didn't want to have that death. I didn't want to lose hope and commit suicide like my brother did. He blew his brains out. You know, I was pretty close to that several times. I didn't want to go there. And I don't think you have to go there. As long as you're willing to surrender, admit that you're powerless, and work the steps. It's a beautiful program. It's a great design for living. It's my roadmap to how to function in everything in life. I use it in work. I use it in my personal relationships. I use it for everything. It's made a big difference. And I think it can make a big difference for anyone who's willing to just grab it and hang on and go for the ride. Buckle your seatbelt. It gets bumpy, but it's worth it. That's all I got. Thank you, Jenny. First I slept, and then I crept. You rescued me. Waking there, I see. I look in time's flow. It just was on a broad highway. I'll keep trying.