Old-School Sobriety Kept Me Alive When Wishy-Washy Suggestions Would Have Killed Me – Dawn H.

About This Speaker Tape

Dawn H., a minister's daughter from northeastern Ohio, tells a long-sobriety story anchored in chronic illness, infertility, and late-onset drinking. She grew up the oldest daughter in a parsonage under the weight of being everyone's 'role model,' split early into two Dawns — the real one and the minister's daughter — and had her first drink, first sex, and first blackout in a single skipped-school afternoon at 15 with an older boyfriend. A teenage pregnancy ended in an abortion her parents walked her through, a grief she cried over for years before working through it in the program.

At 20 she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which she calls hell before the hell of alcoholism — stripped of sexuality, self-confidence, dignity, and dragged through colostomy bags, a prolapsed stoma, a forced second-trimester termination of a wanted pregnancy in 1983, and a promised adoption her second husband backed out of at the home-study stage. A doctor's cruel verdict — 'honey, you don't ever need to worry about using birth control again' — shut the door on motherhood entirely. She married her pot dealer, stayed dry 14 months on step one-two-three alone, and picked up a bottle of tequila under a Christmas tree that put her back into 24/7 closet drinking within 48 hours.

The bottom came August 14, 2000: convulsions from alcohol poisoning, crawling to the closet to get enough booze down to dial the phone, and her husband throwing her suitcase on the curb at Summit Ridge with 'have a nice life.' In that moment on the detox ceiling she said 'now I can do this' and hasn't drunk since. She credits two sponsors from day one, a women's recovery weekend called WRW twice a year for twelve years, and a frog (Fully Rely On God) her father clutched as he died.

The back half is long-term sobriety under hard conditions: surgery after surgery from 2010-2013, two and a half months on life support, bankruptcy at eight years from a shopping addiction, foreclosure in 2013, her 80-something mother paying her bills, three and a half years to get disability. Her message is unfashionably hard-line — do the steps in order, dress to speak, no texting in meetings, untreated alcoholism is everywhere in the rooms — wrapped around the plain fact that she woke up today and woke up sober, and that is enough.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Big Book page 29 preamble, introduction of Dawn as a woman with long-term sobriety
• 3:00 Minister's-daughter childhood in Madison, Ohio; the two Dawns split
• 12:00 First drink, first sex, first blackout at 15 in a skipped-school afternoon at Walt's friend Ron's parents' bed
• 18:00 Pregnant at 17; parents walk her through the abortion; years of grief
• 24:00 Crohn's diagnosis at 20; first marriage planned from a hospital bed; marijuana substituted for alcohol
• 32:00 1983 forced termination of wanted pregnancy; promised adoption reneged at home study; doctor's verdict of permanent infertility
• 42:00 Florida party city — bartender's oversized 'one shot,' hair of the dog, closet drinking, hiding bottles in her Crohn's-covered bathroom trips
• 50:00 August 14, 2000 — convulsions of alcohol poisoning, husband throws suitcase on Summit Ridge curb, the ceiling moment
• 58:00 Two sponsors from detox; WRW women's recovery weekend for 12 years; Lindsay carrying her home after the 50-mph crash at 11 months
• 70:00 Surgeries 2010-2013, life support, bankruptcy, foreclosure, disability; the frog her father held while dying