Ninth Step Calls to Old Girlfriends Showed Me the Disease Was Still Running Me Sober – Phil S.

About This Speaker Tape

Phil S., a physician, tells his story at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speaker Meeting at the NAVA Club. His sobriety date is February 16, 2005, but he first walked into AA in November 1984 — a twenty-year gap he spent proving he could outsmart his alcoholism. He grew up in a non-drinking Midwestern household with upward-mobility expectations, and as a child rode a rocking horse called Sherry Horsey until he fell asleep on it, an early hint that if something felt good, he'd take it all the way. He started drinking at 13, had his first blackout at 14 vomiting in the shower, and by medical school was drinking before hospital rounds and holding his breath in elevators so no one would smell it.

He married twice while drinking, was divorced by the first wife and eventually the second. In 1987 Colorado monitors forced him into inpatient treatment; he stayed dry almost five years, then decided one day a half-pint of vodka would be nice. The under-the-radar years that followed included switching Antabuse for aspirin in his own medicine bottle, standing in the methadone-clinic line for crushed Antabuse, then drinking on Antabuse with Benadryl and inhalers to blunt the reaction. He got certified in addiction medicine while studying for the boards with a bottle next to him.

The bottom was Super Bowl weekend 2004: he came to on Monday morning having lost the weekend, broke his collarbone with no memory of how, and weeks later got beaten up and medevaced out of Russia on a work trip. In early 2005 his boss threatened to turn him in. What drove him into treatment wasn't the drinking — it was the vanity: he could live under a bridge, but not as a non-doctor. He shaved his head in protest on the way to three months inpatient.

The day after discharge he came to NABBA, asked for a sponsor from the podium, got one, and finally did a real written 4th step after years of telling himself his psychiatrist sessions counted. He did his 5th step in a car between Kansas and Kentucky driving back from his parents in Colorado. He felt nothing afterward — no trumpets, just disappointment — but something shifted. Amends calls to old girlfriends taught him that alcoholism stayed in him even when he didn't drink. Today he's 56, partnered with a woman who has an 8-year-old and 6-year-old twins, living promises he never thought were meant for him.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction by Jeff at NAVA Club Monday Night Blue Chip Speaker Meeting — Phil S. takes the podium
• 2:30 Childhood rocking horse 'Sherry Horsey' — named after Sherry Lewis, rode it until he fell asleep each night
• 7:00 First real drinking at 14 — squirt bottle of parents' liquor cabinet, vomiting all night, parents ask 'have you been drinking?' and never follow up
• 14:00 Medical school and residency — drinking before rounds, holding his breath in hospital elevators, hands shaking so badly he throws coffee
• 19:00 The Antabuse-for-aspirin swap and drinking on Antabuse with Benadryl and inhalers to blunt the red blotches
• 24:00 1987 first inpatient treatment, five years dry, one day decides 'a half-pint of vodka would be nice' — decades of under-the-radar drinking begin
• 30:00 Super Bowl 2004 blackout — wakes Monday morning, broken collarbone with no explanation, missed Janet Jackson halftime
• 35:00 2005 boss ultimatum — it wasn't losing his life that scared him, it was losing the identity of being a doctor
• 40:00 First real written 4th step and 5th step done on a road trip with his sponsor from Kansas through Kentucky
• 46:00 Promises come true — 56 years old, partnered with a woman who has an 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old twin girls