Not Insane, So Step 2 Doesn’t Apply — That Was My First Read – Susan W.

About This Speaker Tape

Susan grew up with alcohol everywhere — a bartender mother, an air traffic controller father whose career ended in a nervous breakdown at the tower when Susan was ten, and a sister already deep into drugs. At eleven she mixed gin and vodka from under the kitchen cabinet into a bottle of orange juice, took it to the skating rink, and came home drunk to her dad who had just over a year sober. From teenage alcohol poisoning in a hospital bed she kept hidden from her father, to binge drinking through cheerleading, to a cocaine habit her friends thought would kill her, Susan moved between her parents' houses trying to outrun what was already in her.

Her sister died at 26 in a car accident, high on cocaine and alcohol. Susan backed away from drugs and locked in on beer, got her first DUI at 21 in a wreck she still thanks her Higher Power nobody died in, married her boss Ron, had a son Tyler, and watched Ron vanish into opiates. By 38 she couldn't stop once she started — drinking at 6, then 6:30, hiding bottles, sleepwalking in blackouts her son noticed, terrified of the labs a doctor would order on her swollen organs. She bought books on moderate drinking and tried every trick in them before a male psychiatrist told her to go to treatment. She said no — let me try AA first, because her dad got sober.

Five months in, she relapsed for eleven days, blacked out three times in four drinks, and on the fourth night poured the third beer down the drain. She picked up her white chip at a birthday celebration in front of a hundred people and kept coming. She got a new sponsor, took a service commitment as home group secretary, started going through the Big Book even though her comprehension was so bad she couldn't break it down for herself — and she managed nine offices and seventeen employees. She worked amends with Ron over the phone the night before he went to federal prison for 18 months; he got the message inside, and is coming up on eight years.

The center of the tape is her father's death. After a fall, a broken hip, brain surgery years earlier, and kidneys that wouldn't stabilize, he ended up in hospice. He hallucinated "good guys" in the ICU and Susan understood he was seeing the meeting in the sky he was about to go to. Driving to the hospital the morning he coded, Spirit in the Sky came on the radio. A sponsee was in the room when he woke up one last time, eyes bright. Susan motioned her behind the curtain, told her dad it was time to go to heaven, and he said, I think you're right. He asked if she'd be okay, she said yes, and he told her he just wouldn't worry about it. Sober women chauffeured him to Waffle House in his last years. Sober women brought her food in the hospital. Sober is how she got to be there.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Julie opens the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at NABBA and introduces Susan
• 2:30 Susan states her sobriety date, February 28, 2010, and her home group, How It Works
• 5:00 Father's nervous breakdown as an air traffic controller when Susan was ten, 30-day rehab stay
• 8:30 Age eleven, first time drunk — gin and vodka mixed into an orange juice bottle, taken to the skating rink
• 17:00 Sister killed in a car accident at 26 while high on cocaine and alcohol
• 25:00 Vow to never run out of alcohol again after driving drunk on Ambien in a blackout to buy beer
• 32:00 Two women come to her house, get the alcohol out, and take her to a women's meeting in McDonough
• 38:00 Eleven-day relapse at five months, three blackouts in four drinks, pouring out the third beer
• 48:00 Father hallucinates 'good guys' in the ICU — Susan recognizes the meeting in the sky
• 52:00 Spirit in the Sky plays on the car radio driving to the hospital the morning he codes; final conversation in hospice