Question Sixty-Eight on the Hazelden Fourth Step Asked If I Was Afraid of Red-Headed Women 😂 — Michelle B.

About This Speaker Tape

Michelle got sober November 17, 1986, at 22, after falling through the doors of AA in Georgia with no driver's license, no shame threshold, and no memory of anything between 17 and the day a Higher Power rendered her sober. Polish Catholic, raised on geographical cures and her father's whiskey, she drank Tickle Me Pink and Strawberry Hill through middle school, blacked out through high school graduation, totaled two cars into the same telephone pole in Lilburn within six months, and took baths in bar sinks before picking up whoever she could rob when they passed out. Treatment at the medical center in Buford ended when she noticed there were no handles on the inside of the doors.

A woman in pearls at the 8111 halfway house sent her to Clarkston. A sponsor named Justine stood her up in the middle of How It Works, told her to shut the fuck up, and made her make the coffee every Wednesday night for three years. Laura T. knelt beside her while she scrubbed a toilet at Clarkston and asked, how's your Higher Power? Women in the fellowship read her the first 164 pages of the Big Book out loud because she couldn't read — dyslexia she wouldn't name until decades later. At six months sober they were waiting at 9 p.m. meetings to pick her up off couches.

In 2000 she cracked three vertebrae and the same women who made her clean ashtrays wiped her butt, shaved her legs, and walked her down the hall. Three months later her baby sister Chris died with 19 months sober — one of those who lacked the capacity to be honest — and her sponsor sent her to Ellijay for two weeks to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for Chris's kids and bring some kind of normalcy. Barbara sat beside her through the sobbing and said, it's okay, just don't drink. At 15 years her mother told her she was forgiven; five weeks after a cancer diagnosis her mother was gone, and Michelle was relieved, not angry.

She retired from teaching auto shop at Appalachia High School in Barrow County, got bored, and now teaches college to students just like her — the least likely person to ever teach college, her father told her that at graduation. 39 years. One sobriety date. A sponsor in Ellijay with 53 years. A home group she is leaving for Bridge Builders. The promises have already come true, she says; the sponsor keeps telling her the best is yet to come.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction, cell phone addiction joke, Saturday-night-in-heaven sponsor joke
• 3:30 Polish Catholic upbringing, father's geographical cures, one sobriety date November 17, 1986
• 8:00 First drink of Tickle Me Pink, the 10-foot-tall feeling, there never was enough
• 13:00 Totaling two cars into the same Lilburn telephone pole, hitting a DeKalb County police officer
• 19:00 Buford treatment center, walking the walls, discovering no handles on the inside of the doors
• 26:00 The woman in pearls at 8111 sending her to Clarkston, women arguing over who gets to sponsor her
• 32:00 Justine smacks her during How It Works, three years of Wednesday-night coffee duty
• 38:00 Laura T., cleaning toilets at Clarkston, first real conversation with a Higher Power
• 44:00 Back surgery 2000, sister Chris dying at 19 months sober, two weeks in Ellijay making breakfast for her kids
• 52:00 Mother's deathbed forgiveness at 15 years sober, teaching college with dyslexia, Bridge Builders as new home group