Pretty-Girl Syndrome and High-Bottom Drinking — I Never Got the DUI I Deserved – Brooksie W.

About This Speaker Tape

Brooksie W. speaks at the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club on Halloween 2022, celebrating 35 years sober with a sobriety date of October 4, 1987. At 70, she frames the talk as old-school AA: musician daughter of an Air Force lawyer who later became a Unitarian minister and worked with Dr. King, she started smoking pot at 12, got signed at 19 in New York by Bobby Darin, and bounced between Manhattan bands, a starter marriage, and running off with her bass player. She was a cheap drunk — a few glasses of wine destroyed her — and gave up hard liquor and drugs at 21 thinking wine was safe. The blackouts and a last drink scene in an Old Town Alexandria bar, where she caught herself scanning the room to proposition someone for another glass, finally broke her.

She's blunt that she was a high-bottom drunk with pretty-girl syndrome: no DUI, no arrest, just a growing certainty she'd wake up somewhere she couldn't get out of. The counterweight is her mother — a 4'10" minister's wife who drank 18 shots of bourbon a day, didn't get sober until 70 after four rehabs, and then carried the message for 18 years before dying at 89. Brooksie had her two children in recovery; her son, now four years sober himself off fentanyl, has never seen his mother drink.

The middle of the tape is a practical step-by-step walk through all twelve steps in her own voice, including a 10-year wait before she got a Higher Power, her friend's line 'just make the Higher Power bigger,' an amends letter to a younger woman who'd tried to sleep with her husband, and the cancer-patient/heart-patient/alcoholic comparison on how we alone argue about the treatment. She closes on her third-act gifts: three top-ten folk records in her 60s, touring Europe, writing recovery songs, and recommitting to service at 70 because her mother didn't get sober until that age. Frank W. follows with a brief chip talk: action keeps you sober, inaction keeps you depressed.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting preamble and Big Book page 29 reading
• 2:00 Brooksie introduces herself, sobriety date October 4 1987, Halloween shirt
• 4:30 Childhood in Africa and Boston, civil-rights-lawyer father, starts getting high at 12
• 8:00 Signed by Bobby Darin at 19, Manhattan band life, starter-spouse marriage ends with the bass player
• 14:00 Last drink — six-ounce glass of wine in Alexandria bar, moment of clarity about prostituting herself for another drink
• 18:00 First meeting in Maryland, learning the phenomenon of craving is no longer a phenomenon
• 22:00 Mother's story — 18 shots of bourbon a day, sober at 70, 18 years until she died at 89
• 28:00 Walks through Steps 1-7, took 10 years to find a Higher Power, 'just make it bigger'
• 35:00 Step 9 amends to the younger woman who tried to sleep with her husband
• 42:00 Third act — three top-ten folk records in her 60s, recovery songs, touring Europe
• 47:00 Cancer/heart/alcoholic comparison and closing 'we do recover' if we have the capacity to be honest
• 49:30 Chip ceremony; Frank W. shares: action keeps you sober, inaction keeps you depressed