Obsession Lies Dormant — the Physical Allergy Waits for the First Drink – Marianne G.

About This Speaker Tape

Marianne shares from the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting on NapaZoom with about 13 months of sobriety. Her sobriety date is March 24, 2020 — the same date her first daughter was born forty-four years earlier, a baby she surrendered in a closed adoption in Gallup, New Mexico at seventeen. She walks through being one of eight kids in a Santa Fe Railroad family that moved constantly, the first taste of beer on her father's lap in Clovis, her disabled brother Paul whose rages brought police to the house, and her brother John taking his life at twenty-four.

She dates the real damage not to giving her daughter up but to being sent away to the Salvation Army in Chicago and told to lie about caring for a grandmother in Florida. The shame spiraled into disco-era blackout driving, a two-year relationship she couldn't say no to, and a flight to Kansas City with a bottle of pills she never took. Marriage to Mark, two kids in Atlanta, and years as a "dry alcoholic" followed — temper tantrums, thrown phones, and in 2003 an emotional affair with a monk she met seeking contemplative prayer that nearly ended the marriage.

The wreckage compounded in 2017-2018 when Mark's brother took his life, followed by her uncle, mother-in-law, and brother Paul, alongside a layoff. She describes hiding bottles, chasing whiskey with beer, Total Wine tastings as her Dillard's, waking up with a blackout injury on her chin she blamed on bedcovers, and Mark finally sitting her down to say her eyes looked crazy and her face was puffy.

She walked into Napa in August 2019, got overwhelmed, tried to quit alone, came back November 19, and relapsed five hours on March 23, 2020 — driving to buy wine after a doctor's visit partly to see if she could have the relapse story everyone else had. Her core teaching, drawn from another speaker earlier that day and from Tinsley and Tim R., is that the obsession can lie dormant but the physical allergy never leaves, so surrender to a Higher Power has to be a daily act.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Joanne opens the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting on NapaZoom, reads from page 29 of the Big Book, and Patty introduces Marianne with thirteen months
• 2:45 Marianne takes the podium in tears, thanks her Higher Power, Bill W., Bob, her sponsor and her pandemic-sister friends, and gives her sobriety date of March 24, 2020 with a five-hour relapse on March 23
• 6:30 One of eight kids, Santa Fe Railroad father, brother John's suicide at twenty-four, and disabled brother Paul who was legally blind and deaf and brought police to the house with his rages
• 12:00 First taste of beer on her father's lap in Clovis, New Mexico — the bitterness, the thirst, and the moment she says she loved it
• 18:30 Pregnancy at seventeen, sent to the Salvation Army in Chicago, then Gallup and Santa Fe — the closed adoption on March 24, 1977 that now shares her sobriety date
• 28:00 Meets Mark in a Kansas City bank; years in Atlanta as a dry alcoholic throwing temper tantrums and phones while raising two kids
• 34:00 2003 emotional affair with a monk during a contemplative-prayer phase; drinking heavily through it and nearly losing her marriage
• 40:00 2017-2018 deaths stack up — Mark's brother, her uncle, mother-in-law, and Paul — while she hides whiskey bottles and shows up to work with a chin injury from a blackout fall
• 48:00 Mark tells her her eyes look crazy and her face is puffy; she walks into Napa in Sandy Springs in August 2019, is handed the blue book by a woman she still remembers, and flees before coming back November 19
• 54:00 The core teaching — the obsession can lie dormant but the physical allergy is incurable — closing with Tinsley's line that it is easier to stay sober than to get sober and Tim R.'s line about a spiritual malady that wants to kill him