Recovery When the Intellect Is Not Enough — Jackie C.

Welcome back, my friends, to AA Recovery Interviews.
I'm your host, Howard L., sober since January 1st, 1988, one day at a time.
I'm grateful that you've joined us.
I'm also pleased to have on my show today Jackie C., a woman who has inspired me for a great many years in AA.
Jackie has a powerful perspective on Alcoholics Anonymous, the byproduct of years of hard-earned experience fraught with adversity and despair.
Even after finding AA, she struggled to stay sober in the midst of one relapse after another.
Finally, nearly 28 years ago, Jackie's disease and its physical ravages of her body brought her to a dismal bottom from which only a true spiritual realization could save her.
That she's alive today, after finally gaining a solid foundation.
A foothold in the middle of AA is proof positive that miracles can result from doing the hard work required by this simple program.
Over the years, in the countless meetings we've shared, I've appreciated Jackie's direct, no-nonsense approach to AA,
and her willingness to share the gut-level truths about the program with newcomers and old-timers alike.
Her ability to put into words what she's feeling at any given moment creates an atmosphere in which meeting attendees seem more willing to open up.
About what's been going on with them.
Her gifts of spiritual awareness, combined with a deep understanding of the Big Book and the steps, has allowed her to make a huge difference in the lives of women whom she has sponsored.
And her service work has been a wonderful contribution to our AA community.
I've always admired Jackie's rare ability to speak the plain and simple truth about AA.
Sharing her story with you on this podcast is both an honor and a privilege that should go a long way to helping us all stay sober.
So please,
enjoy the next 60 minutes or so with my AA sister, Jackie C.
My name is Jackie, and I am an alcoholic.
Hi, Jackie. Thanks so much for coming on AA Recovering Interviews today.
I wanted to kind of start out, you and I have gone to meetings for, I don't know, what, the last 10 or so years together, maybe longer?
14 years. We've been going to meetings for 14 years together.
That is amazing. It seems like just yesterday.
I know.
It's really been marvelous getting to know you over the years.
And also your son, who's a heck of a great man.
And I've always really enjoyed your take on sobriety and kind of your no-nonsense views on what the program means to you and to your life.
So I wanted to kind of get a little bit better idea of the backstory because, you know, when we're talking in AA, even in the speakers meeting, we don't get to know all that much.
I was curious as to your sobriety date.
My sobriety date's February the 1st, 1993.
So where did you grow up?
I grew up on the New York-Canadian border in a resort area called the Thousand Islands.
And where are you amidst the siblings in your family?
I'm the oldest of six. I have four brothers and two sisters.
Only one brother and two sisters are still living.
I see.
When you were growing up, what was life like in your family of origin when you were younger?
My family was extremely dysfunctional.
I grew up in a drinking environment.
There was lots of violence.
There was never any certainty, never any financial certainty, never any emotional certainty.
There wasn't a lot of support.
Growing up there, I was responsible.
I was told very young that I was...
I was responsible for my siblings.
And so people tell me that any time they ever saw me going through the community,
it was like a mother duck and her ducklings.
I would be leaving the pack and then all my siblings would be following behind me.
That's just the way it was.
I can tell you that long before I took a drink,
there were two things as far as feelings go.
One was anger, and the other was fear bordering on terror.
I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't just scared.
And so if you take that and then you fast forward that to where I was when I picked up my first drink,
that was a pretty powerful experience for me.
Yeah.
When you grow up in that environment, you're like, I'm not sure what to do.
I'm not sure what to do.
And I'm not sure what to do.
I'm not sure what to do.
I'm not sure what to do.
I'm not sure what to do.
I'm not sure what to do.
I'm not sure what to do.
You almost are a split personality because when my parents weren't drinking, they were the greatest people.
My father had a tremendous amount of charm.
They had talents.
They could sing and they made music together.
And, you know, there was so much to like about them.
But they put alcohol into them.
Everything became very much like a battlefield.
I've heard people returning from war say the experience is surreal.
My growing up experience, my childhood was surreal.
Was it that way for your siblings as well?
Or did you get the brunt of it?
It was pretty much that way for everybody.
You talk to them based on where they were.
But in age at the time, the stories will differ.
I often thought that my brothers and sisters, when I talked to them about what happened when we were kids, they didn't grow up in the same family that I did.
But I was the oldest.
My bedroom was right next to my parents' bedroom.
I was very sensitive, emotionally sensitive.
And so I heard everything.
I took everything in at a moment.
I took everything in at a emotional level.
And, of course, developmentally, I didn't know how to process any of it.
So you were expected to become the surrogate parent to your siblings and take over the role of adult in helping to raise them?
Yes, absolutely.
My goodness.
So at what point did alcohol first enter the picture for you?
Well, in my house, alcohol was always there.
We had a liquor cabinet that always had plentiful supply of alcohol.
And my parents would have parties with their friends.
And so there was alcohol always there.
For me, the first experience of alcohol was on a Thanksgiving Day.
And I was 14 years old.
And, of course, my brothers and I had stolen some alcohol.
And we had taken a boat and gone out on the river.
And we drank this beer.
And being the oldest, of course, you're the leader of the pack.
So you're going to make sure you're leading the way.
And I remember that first taste of beer as it slid across my tongue.
I thought, oh, my God, this is terrible.
I hate the taste of this stuff.
And because I would never show weakness in front of my siblings, I took the second taste of beer.
And it went over my tongue a little easier.
And then the third gulp, by the time I took the third gulp, something was happening down in my stomach.
And it was coming back up into my head.
And all of a sudden, I started to have a sense of ease and comfort about stuff.
Alcohol hit me pretty quick.
And I got drunk that day.
I fell out of the boat and got wet.
We were supposed to be home by noon for dinner.
My brothers ran interference or attempted to run interference.
I walked right in the front door and I tripped over the dog.
And the whole attention of the house came down on my head.
And what I know is my mother picked up a broom and she went after me with the broom handle.
And I headed for the stairs.
And I tried to make a 45-degree turn in our stairs going upstairs.
And I flipped.
And when I flipped, the broom handle came down on my head and then down on my back.
And why that was important is because for the first time in my life, I was even.
Do you know what I mean?
The playing field had been even.
It didn't matter that my mother was wailing on me with the broom handle.
I was even.
I wasn't afraid of my father's anger.
I didn't care whether I was wet or drunk or what the consequences of that.
I had discovered something that had relieved me of tremendous fear.
And for me, that was a powerful spiritual experience, even though I didn't understand all of what was happening at the moment.
Was that equalizing effect of alcohol while you were drunk?
Or did it continue into when you were drunk?
Or did it continue into when you were sober in the family, that you were able to endure what they were dishing out?
Well, you know what?
From that moment on, I chased alcohol as a way to deal with what was going on in my life.
Things that I couldn't resolve and things that I was powerless over.
I looked for alcohol to escape from all of that, to deal with the feelings, to deal with the thoughts.
I found alcohol.
And it found me often and almost from jump street.
Howard, I started away from home.
I found the courage to get on a bus one day and go and not come back.
I mean, alcohol definitely facilitated a lot of things in my life that I wouldn't have done otherwise.
So unlike those who experienced their first encounter with alcohol, being a negative one or one that makes them sick or whatever yours was.
Pretty quick to let you know it was the way out?
Yep.
Pretty quick.
Pretty quick.
So how old were you when you were doing these things like running away?
I started at 14.
And by the age of 17, I was on the streets.
I found myself in a big city where I knew one person.
I knew one person that lived in that city.
I didn't know where they lived.
I didn't know.
I didn't know how to get in touch with them.
And we didn't have cell phones in those days.
I had been standing at a bus stop.
And apparently the guy that was giving information about buses, he noticed that I stood on that corner a good part of the day.
And he approached me to ask me if I needed help.
And of course, I'm not going to tell you I need help because I know I'm a runaway and I don't want to go back.
So I said no.
And then he offered to buy me a cup of coffee.
And we went into a coffee shop right next to the bus stop.
And he took me and he bought me some coffee.
And then he said to me, well, do you know anybody here?
And I said, yes, but I don't know how to find them.
And he helped me find them.
You know, I didn't stay on the streets very long.
I remember I crawled into a Salvation Army clothing box to sleep because I was afraid of being out on the streets.
And then I did.
I decided after the first night in the Salvation Army clothing box that I was going to do whatever it took to not do that again.
If I had to lie, cheat or steal, I was not going to live on the streets.
Next day, this man helped me find my friend who lived with this Greek family.
Hmm.
So at 17, you were on your own in the city living with your friend's family.
What?
What did that?
What did that look like?
They were loving, loving Greek family and very supportive.
And they they made arrangements for me to have room and board.
One of the family members homes in exchange for a kitty kit.
So I would take care of the children when I wasn't in school and that would pay for my room and board.
Hmm.
And you had a lot of experience with that.
Having essentially helped raise your siblings.
Absolutely.
When I lived with this family, I didn't mind living with the family.
I didn't mind taking care of the children.
But for the first time in my life, I felt a tremendous loneliness that I had never experienced.
I experienced being alone in a crazy family with all this violence and upheaval because I didn't have anybody to talk to.
Hmm.
I didn't know who to talk to about that.
The rule is you don't tell talk outside the family.
And then I find myself in this other family.
Well, I have no history with them.
I don't know them.
So I really don't know how to talk to them about anything.
So it just kind of reinforced a new level of loneliness for me.
So you so you went from being lonely in a family where you were being essentially.
Abused where there was lots of violence to what you just described as a loving family, which would seem to be quite an attraction.
But because you didn't know them, you were still lonely within the midst of them being good to you.
I believe that's true.
I just didn't know how to relate to people.
I think there were layers of shame that had built up over the years.
Hmm.
And I.
Definitely from my earliest age had trust issues with everybody in my life because it seemed like the people that I counted on to help didn't ever show up.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I think those of us that come from those kinds of families, I guess I can speak from personal experience.
It's hard to get your emotional bearings after all of that.
It's hard to know who to trust, who to care about, who to.
Despise.
I mean, there's also a whole range of emotions that need to be dealt with.
So at 17, you're living with this family.
How long did you live with them?
Not long.
I graduated high school and it was simply because I focused on I just focused on what was right in front of me to do.
So during high school in those days, was the drinking continuing throughout this whole period that we're talking about now?
When I moved in with this family, the drinking kind of.
Got put on hold for a little bit until I met my first husband and met him while I was with this family and the man that I married, the first man that I married, you know, loneliness will cause you just to reach out and latch on to whatever the first thing floats by.
And that's what I did.
How long were you with him?
Two years.
What was that like?
It was pretty much a continuance of the nightmare.
Because he was a drinker.
We we built our relationship around drinking and bars.
And then before I knew it, I had two children and he betrayed my trust with my best friend.
And then I had two children and me to support with a high school education.
I didn't know anything.
I was a small girl.
I had not had a clue about.
Being responsible adult and raising children.
I didn't have a clue.
He had split by this point.
By this point, he had split.
Did he provide any kind of support to you after that?
Oh, I got hot checks.
You know what?
I don't fault him for anything.
This is a guy that came out of foster care.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a terribly abusive background.
We had a shared problem.
We understood the pain.
We understood the pain of emotional and physical abuse.
Mm hmm.
He did it with alcohol just to feel a little bit normal or a little bit socially acceptable.
During that time, did you feel that you were maybe moving towards a problem area with drinking?
Or was that just your way of getting along at that particular point?
You know what?
It was just it just felt normal.
I see.
Everybody that I knew all my life was doing exactly what I was doing at that time.
I didn't even have a frame of reference outside of that experience.
I didn't know people who didn't drink.
Yeah, I get that.
And and it's I don't think it's unusual for us to surround ourselves with people who we feel comfortable with.
And if we if we only feel comfortable drinking, then those are going to be the people who we associate with the drinkers.
So you're raising two kids in the city.
What what happens next?
I did a normal job with the telephone company.
Thinking that was going to be a normal nine to five.
And I really couldn't didn't make enough money to support us just to keep us afloat.
But in the telephone company, they would have these drinking lunches.
So it kind of escalated between the fact that I wasn't making enough money to survive.
And we were having these drinking lunches, you know, eventually things are going to fall apart.
And they did quite quickly.
And then I started looking for work in bars and restaurants.
It make a lot of money.
And and I could have that lifestyle.
I didn't drink on the job, but I was around it.
And I was around people who drank.
So that opened doors for me.
Open doors to things that I probably wouldn't have experienced otherwise.
So we're talking about an environment in which you can drink.
And.
Engage in other behaviors that are common in those places.
Absolutely.
It's a gateway.
Alcohol was the gateway drug for everything else that happened in my life.
I see.
Any time I ever got in trouble, any time things really got really, really bad.
Alcohol was always a part of the story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just just being able to survive day by day.
What period of years are we talking about here from when you first started that until.
Whatever the next milestone is.
So from the age of 14, all through my thirties and right up to my early forties, the story pretty much is the same.
All the time.
All the time.
It was like a roller coaster ride.
I am one community and things would get so bad behind my drinking or lack of resources or whatever.
I would uproot.
I would uproot my family and I would go to another place hoping it would be better.
I would take the same habits with me.
I would surround myself with the same kind of people.
And of course, the story was ongoing.
It just was always going to be eventually some kind of crisis that would tip us over and then we'd have to uproot again.
So I moved from New York to Florida, from Florida to Chicago.
From I go back to Florida, from Florida to Memphis.
I mean, it was just like that.
That must have been pretty hard on the kids.
That sounds like a really difficult family to grow up in.
That's always moving around.
If I talk to my children today and I do talk to both of my children today, both of my children are in the program.
Thank God.
When we talk about the past, it's interesting.
Because Jeffrey.
I will say, Mom, I had the greatest childhood ever.
I had more freedom than any of my friends.
I got whatever I want.
But Jeffrey was one of the first kids that was in a program to teach children how to deal with ADHD.
So there was lasting effects from that lifestyle and the uncertainty of life that affected my children's.
Emotional development.
Did you see a connection between what you were doing and their developmental process or progress?
I didn't see it when it was happening.
All of my sight is hindsight.
Howard looked back because when when I was drinking and living out there and being just whoever I was, I wasn't doing any self reflecting.
I didn't have time to look at that stuff.
Howard.
Most of.
The time I was working two jobs just to keep a roof over our head, just to keep us from sinking.
And of course, a lot of my drinking was I don't like drinking.
You know, you work till four in the morning and then you have to take a drink to relax so you can go to sleep.
Well, that's a habitual way of living.
You know, alcohol just breaks down in your system and it affects your ability to sleep.
It affects your ability to think it affects your everything.
During the time that all this was going on, did you draw any connection between the drinking and the problems that you were having?
Not at all.
I thought I was just having bad luck.
Just life was out to get me.
If I could just move faster, I could keep ahead of the axe falling on my neck.
I didn't think about the alcohol.
And by then, also other drugs had come in to help me along the way.
I start taking amphetamines to be able to go.
Go farther, longer, faster, do more.
And then, of course, I had to take things that brought me down from that so that I could sleep at least some time.
I just don't know about that time how much I was aware of anything.
I was just reacting to life.
That must have been that must have been tough to to juggle all you had going on with the kids and and with work and then to be putting
alcohol.
And drugs on top of that, that must have been a very difficult time in your life.
When did you hit the point at which you knew you needed to stop or do something different?
In 1976, I was tending bar in the Thousand Islands and there was an oil spill that went down in the river.
So all the resort activities came to a stop.
And in order to support myself, I I've been angled the job on an oil spill.
I went to work on that crew.
I went to work on that crew.
We worked around the clock and those seal and restoration brought in a great big bathtub full of ice and set it in the middle of the work site and they filled it with booze.
And it was the reward to keep you working.
It was the motivation to keep you working around the clock.
So they didn't mind that you were getting drunk on the job as long as you were cleaning up the oil spill.
Right. They didn't care because of toxic.
fumes from the oil were really affecting everybody so they they had to have the oil cleaned up it was
a federal mess everything was on the federal tab and so there was all this booze well that really
was the beginning of the end for me the first time and what happened was i drank so much that
summer that it totally destroyed me and i crashed and burned and i ended up in a mental institution
and then they shifted me from the mental institution to uh an alcohol rehab that was
a part of the state hospital and that's the first time ever i heard about alcoholism that's the
first time ever i sat in a room with people who talked about drinking and what happened when
they were drinking and they were drinking and they were drinking and they were drinking and
they drank and i began to put two and two together for myself i wish i could say that
uh i i learned enough and i got enough out of that that i didn't have to take a drink again
that wasn't my story so did you have any exposure to alcoholics anonymous during that stay in the
mental hospital yes we went to outside meetings we made outside connections with alcoholics and
communities that were around and when i left that hospital one of the counselors took me into their
home for a short period of time and he funneled me into another home with a woman that was in
recovery uh it didn't work out well she got drunk and uh almost burned the house down yeah
what did you think about aa at that time i mean you were exposed to it i liked aa i liked the
people i liked the people i liked the people i liked the people i liked the people i liked the
meetings i related to people in aa but circumstances kept happening in my life that
tipped me over the woman getting drunk and almost burning the house down uh i was forced to take my
children back before i had a place to live i'll tell you i know how to survive i don't know how
to live at that time i just would use any anything at my disposal yeah but we're going to survive
this
mess and by the way i'm also going to take a drink to do that in order for me to revert to that mode
that survival mode i really have to drink in order to allow myself to do the things
that i know i'm going to have to do let me ask you and that's interesting that you say that because
in the program of course if we were working a good program um and staying close and in the
the idea is we go to the program for the solution what was missing from your aa experience at that
time that you went to booze instead of going to the program it was all on me i think my inability
to trust my inability to be honest i knew how to play the game and wear the masks and
i knew how to work the fellowship but i didn't work the program
mm-hmm
and i wasn't ready to dig into uh what got me there in the first place to dig into the past
howard i leaked some of it out when i was in rehab and that gave me some relief
i always had this deep core of shame and remorse yeah i mean my children while i was in in the
program in the beginning were in foster care i i just felt like a total failure
i just couldn't get beyond myself uh long enough to really get the benefit of sobriety
but i could hang around sober people fantasize maybe or even aspire a little bit that maybe
that could happen to me but i didn't see how working these steps or uh telling my
dirty secrets was going to relieve me of the bondage that of drinking i went back to the
poison
well i always went back to the poison well i get it so this is happening in the 70s where you got
exposed to aa 1976 to 1993 i had i was in and out of the program i would come in and i would be
around for three or four years i would do things and then i would do something stupid i would
like one time i decided that i was going to move to california after a divorce and in nine days i
separated myself from the program and i thought me and god has got have got this and at the end
of nine days i had a drink in my hand so you so you caught the the the spiritual angle of the
program sufficient to think that just you and god alone without the program would be sufficient to
stay sober and you drank and then i drank again because i was in the program and i was in the
i would separate myself from my from my support i separated myself from the people that were moving
in the direction of sobriety i separated myself from the sponsor who was pushing me to look towards
the steps i was too smart i don't know what dishonest i was too much of everything that
didn't work in my favor and not enough of the willingness and the
pain and suffering that would move me towards deeper into the solution where the solution
was the only thing where all it mattered to me was just don't drink we'll be right back
my friends if you're enjoying this show i invite you to check out the big book podcast
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wearing headphones or you can visit bigbookpodcast.com and listen there and share it with
your friends sponsees and anyone you know who has a desire to stop drinking it may be the only
version of the big book they ever hear and we're back what were you saying in your shares first
time you were sober before you relapsed that turned out to be not true or what kind of things
were you saying about your program while you were actively engaged in it i was saying media makers
make it i was saying um the solution is god reliance on god shift from self-reliance to god
reliance i was saying that the steps were the way that i could unburden myself of the wreckage of the
past and um my shared experience was going to be helpful to somebody else i was saying all the
right things but the saying of just don't drink somehow didn't work
register deep within you i had it in my mind i think howard i was an intellectual and i had it
in my mind that you got the program through the intellect and i did not understand when people
said you need to take the program from your head down into your gut and when you're living from
that program in your gut then you're living from the program yeah because i'm a thinking person
there
many good seeds planted for me in my mind yeah that when the pain and suffering of my drinking
finally brought me to my knees all of that stuff was available to me and it meant something to me
in a different way so between your first experience with aa the three and four year
periods how many times between then and 93 had you actually gotten sober have you kept track of
that or eight eight times
i remember you never really talked to anyone howard i was very confused and
very voracious and and can't wait for the say really make the decision that means
me up and i report it maybe three years before my last meeting with my
mentee because i counted on howard but i'd be around the program for three years and i'd do
everything i would do service work i'd work with a sponsor i worked the steps i went to meetings i did every single time i came in the program i did everything that was required of me
After I separated myself from meetings and meeting makers.
I get it.
So in 1993, what happened that made that time?
You mentioned about being brought to your knees.
What did that look like in 93?
In 93, my drinking was daily.
My body was starting to give up on me.
I was 47 years old.
I was not processing alcohol.
I was having hallucinatory events where I got a couple of drinks into my system.
And I didn't know if it was the first drink or the third drink.
I know that as far as whenever I picked up a drink, I turned my car keys over to the bartender or whoever was around.
Because I knew that I just couldn't be counted on.
And my body hurt all the time.
And what I didn't know was that...
That probably for 30 years, I'd had undiagnosed hepatitis C and drinking with that.
And my liver was corrupted.
I was in bad physical shape.
And I didn't even know how bad it was until I was 13 years sober.
My goodness.
I crashed, Howard.
Such a big way that I stood in my living room on February the 1st, 1993.
I knew I was dying.
I just knew it.
Nobody had to...
I could feel it.
I said, God, I need help.
I need you to remove the obsession for alcohol.
Every time I say that, it brings me to a very emotional place.
Powerful moment for me.
I can imagine.
And it continues to be because it still brings the feeling right back.
I can see that.
And I've heard you share in meetings before about that.
And each time it does have...
To me, that's the sign.
Of a truly spontaneous and natural emotional reaction that comes out of truth.
So that was a beautiful realization for you.
So this prayer obviously leads to something.
Well, it led me to the telephone.
I was in a small town.
I was 10 and bar.
And I went to the phone and I called one of my drinking buddies that had gotten sober.
I said to her, Miss Lee, I need you to come to my house.
I need you to help me get to America.
I'm meeting.
I need help.
I just want you to help me.
And she came.
Now, I had never asked for that kind of help before.
Ever.
I never asked anybody for that kind of help.
To take me to a meeting.
Howard, I lived right around the corner from the meeting in town.
There was only one meeting where I lived.
And I could walk to it.
I couldn't get to it on my own.
I had to ask for help.
And I think that that was God came right into me with that prayer.
God motivating me to do the things that I had never done to help me get sober.
Yeah.
Reaching out to help from God resulted in you getting help from other people in the program.
It's almost like God manifesting himself through your fellow AAs, isn't it?
It really was, Howard.
Because I found.
I found myself in an AA meeting that night in the room where I went to Sunday school as a little kid.
And I was so sick, particularly sick.
And I held on to the chair with my fist clenched because I was going to come apart at the seams.
And that sobering up was so very, very hard for me because I was so very, very sick.
Yeah.
And I was really near death.
I didn't.
I couldn't.
If it would have cost me money to get sober, I would have died.
I couldn't afford to pay to get sober.
I had to go in and just grab a chair and hold on for everything that I was worth.
I imagine it felt a lot different than the other times you had been in AA because of the experience with God.
Is that a fair statement?
It definitely.
Did because this time for the first time in my life, I was fighting with everything in my, whether it was a real or imagined fight, I was fighting for my sobriety.
I was fighting to not drink and I did it a minute at a time.
And I really pushed myself forward as far as listening harder to what people had to share.
And trying to be connected to people in a way that I'd never been connected to them before through through our meetings and through our fellowship.
And about three months into my sobriety, that was I sobered up in February.
By May, I knew that I needed a second meeting in that community.
I needed a meeting that was going to be.
It was going to be a weekend meeting because I was still 10 and bar.
I will tell you, I know that God was in my life at that time because I was not tempted to drink alcohol.
I never had a problem with the thought to drink alcohol.
I was now drinking was no longer my business.
That job was just a means for me to survive till I move forward and into another job.
You put together another meeting yourself in that community.
I did.
I went to the Methodist Church and I talked to them.
I told the pastor there what my goal, what my intention was and what would it take for this to happen.
And then after I gathered all the facts, I went back to my group conscience and I asked my a group at the time to support me and starting a morning meeting on Saturday morning.
There were nine people in that.
And there was one dissenting voice that said, you don't have enough sobriety to start a meeting.
And there were eight voices that said she may not have, but we do and we will support her in that group conscience.
Yeah.
What a what a great demonstration of how of how the how the process works.
How long did it take you now that you were back in the program?
Sounds like you were grounded.
You were grounded, sticking around the middle, doing things like getting with other more experienced AAs to support you and started the meeting.
How long did it take you to work through all 12 steps to your sponsor satisfaction?
I did the 12 steps up to the ninth step.
I did in the first year of my recovery.
Mm hmm.
Not a ninth step.
And my sponsor and I sat down and we started to put things in.
Like, how do you make amends and when make amends and who do you make amends to?
And exactly what do you make amends for?
And so as I had these meetings with my sponsor about my amends, the first amends I made was she said, pick out the hardest one.
Pick out the you absolutely don't want to do.
Mm hmm.
And I did.
Mm hmm.
And and so we talked about it.
And I knew exactly it was to a former employer.
Mm hmm.
I knew exactly what I needed to do.
Mm hmm.
I called them up and I, you know, I had no expectation that anybody was going to forgive me for anything.
All I knew was that my job was to clean my side of the street, was to take responsibility for the things that I had done.
I had done exclusive of anybody doing anything in response to that.
Now, that's the only way to work a ninth step properly in my in my mind, because going in there with the expectation of being forgiven or being let off the hook or any other outcome is setting oneself up for failure with that step.
So you got through your ninth step.
And about what point did you feel like you had gotten through all 12?
Well, I.
I will tell you, it gets a little fuzzy because Howard, when I started that AA meeting, I was actually doing 12 step work.
Mm hmm.
And I showed up a lot of Saturday mornings and made the coffee and put the literature out and just waited.
And no.
And it seemed like nobody was coming.
And then all of a sudden I might have two people in the meeting.
Oh, yeah.
And then gradually as time passed.
The meeting grew, but my life was also growing.
My life was also changing.
So I learned to share responsibility with others in my home group.
There were other people that took over that meeting and it was hard to let go of that.
Yeah, I can imagine.
I felt by the end of my first year of recovery, I was praying on a daily basis, learning how to use the steps to take my own inventory when I ran into problems.
Talking to my sponsor on a regular basis, I was not yet sponsoring anybody, but I was leading this meeting and I had gotten into carrying the message into prisons.
So my service commitment kept evolving and it was because of the people in AA that I was running with eight people in AA that were just high powered people for starting meetings and carrying the message.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Going to the institutions and going to the hospitals and searching out those places that need more AA support.
Yeah.
And it's amazing to be with people like that.
Nothing energizes someone new in sobriety more than being around people who are enthusiastic and wanting to get out there and actually do the work.
You know, part of putting together of this AA recovery interviews process was to have people.
You know, people identify milestones in their ongoing recovery milestones that occurred that that they stayed sober through or that they were particularly difficult, but they went to the program and and was able to get through it.
Could you identify some of those milestones for you in your 20, nearly 28 years of sobriety?
Yeah, I really can.
I have some things that just jump right out at me every time I look back over 28 years.
And one of them was I was having problems relating to people that I worked with.
And my sponsor gave me an assignment to go in and find find the similarities between all of us.
And when when I did that assignment, it's my whole attitude and outlook towards the people that I worked with changed.
And it opened a door for me that the thought came to me, you know, maybe I need to start looking.
I'm going to do for what I'm going to do for the rest of my life instead of what am I just going to do to survive today?
And I went back to my sponsor and I said, I think I need to go to school and I think I need to develop myself as an individual.
And I'm 47 years old.
She said, well, go to the local college and fill out the paperwork.
And I said, well, but how do I pay for it?
She said, just take the first.
Step.
So my sponsor always directed me back to the steps as the way to move forward.
And it opened doors for me.
I remember when I was 13 years sober, I was in a meeting in Tyler, Texas, and I had been getting infection sick.
I've been getting sick a lot.
I went to the doctors and I asked my doctor to do a complete work.
Up and that year was I found out how sick I really was when I came back to AA, how bad liver was just my liver was corrupted.
I knew after the tests were run, I had a meeting to meet with my doctor and I, I sense that the news might be not good.
So I invited another member of the fellowship who was a nurse to go with me.
Hmm.
I was afraid I would get overly emotional and maybe not hear the truth.
I wanted to know exactly what it was I was dealing with.
And I went and I got the bad news.
And I was told that it was going to be a year long of some serious drugs and a third of a chance to survive.
And I left that doctor's office and it's almost like I'm solid when I'm hearing the bad news.
And then I pull apart afterwards.
Yeah.
And I got in the car with this woman, this woman that had gone with me.
And I said, tell me what you heard her say.
And she, she said, well, you tell me what you heard her say.
So I did.
And then he said, well, that's what I heard her say.
Hmm.
So we left that doctor's office and we went to a meeting.
I said, let's go to a meeting.
I need to go to a meeting.
And we walked into like a six o'clock meeting.
And guess what?
We went to a meeting.
We had a meeting.
And the meeting was the third step.
As I'm sitting there trying to be strong, the leader introduces the third step and does a reading and does a sharing and then asks me to share.
And when they asked me to share on the third step, I came unglued.
And you know what I believed out of that experience was God was doing for me what I couldn't do for myself.
Absolutely.
And that whole year was a really bad year.
I was overdosed on those drugs really bad.
I got so down physically.
I was had to be tied in a wheelchair.
I my family couldn't come and be supportive of me.
They all ran away.
And strangers showed up and then from a woman's meeting that I had been going to out in the middle of nowhere, came into my home and took over my couch.
And rotated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They all had their schedules so I had food.
I could make the doctors appointments.
I could have help getting out of bed to get to the toilet.
Mm-hmm .
It was a miracle.
It really was.
Mm-hmm .
And so I began to see really in big ways how God was present everywhere I went in everything that I did.
Mm-hmm .
And I know that I left Tyler 14 years.
14 years. And the reason I'm in is a whole miracle. My boss, the guy that brought me here
was suffering from prostate cancer and alcoholism. And I suspected he had a problem, but I don't
diagnose problems. I wait till people come to me and they say, I have a problem. Can you help me
with it? And my friend's wife asked me to help him with his problem. And I brought him to his
first meeting and I introduced him to people that men that could walk with him. Unfortunately,
it was too little, too late. The cancer took him real quick and he really didn't ever have a chance
to have that life that I have. So here you are coming here 14 years ago. I know you got involved
immediately with other meetings in town. What was the adjustment like for you? I've always had a
really good,
home group that had a good group conscience that had good member support. I knew that I
wanted a home group, just like the ones that I had had. So I ended up looking for meetings and
walked into the club. I walked into a caring and sharing meeting. George T was there. And what a
wonderful human being he was. Because when he shook my hand, I felt like I had arrived.
George T was in a party. He was wearing a wedding suit. He just had us. And that was a lot.
In the second meeting, I received a lovely warm tone, which means that the whole team
finished it over well. When I came home from the meeting, I felt like everyone was there.
And George was already on top of the team. But my mom just a long way this gets on our
he said we're so glad you came back to this group and you know i made caring and sharing my home
group right away just because of that because there was a hand at the door to greet me when i
walked in and show me where everything was and help me to ease my social anxiety about being in
a new place you know i know what that feels like uh especially to newcomers the aa pledge of
whenever anybody anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of aa to be there and for that i am
responsible the hand that's reaching out can all often be the hand of somebody sitting in an aa
room or walking in the front door for the first time and what you're describing is something that
i've always felt is so critical to good fellowship and good recovery
is
people welcoming and supporting people as they're coming in so they feel comfortable in the
fellowship in the room first because if they walk in and they're playing cards and there's no meeting
and nobody pays attention that's not very inviting so uh and i know exactly what you're talking about
i know the people that you're talking about and they are a really friendly bunch so that happened
when you got here 14 years ago uh any other times during the last uh the last 14 years
that other milestones while you were here absolutely i've had so many opportunities
i'm a meeting maker so i go to lots of meetings so i'm asked to speak a lot
spring branch asked me to speak at one of their spring flings i have a friend from way back when
i was getting sober in new york and his name is clancy
Clancy and I spoke early on at a very small retreat in the middle of New York, in the
Finger Lake area of New York State.
And it was the first time I ever had any experience of Clancy as an individual.
I went in to hear Clancy speak.
I wasn't very far into my sobriety.
Certainly hadn't resolved all of my family trauma.
I sat right up front where I usually sit when I'm trying to absorb speakers.
And Clancy did this thing that he does sometimes when he's staring.
He bangs on the podium and he bellows out in a voice that's very gruff, like a pirate.
When he did that, it struck a chord of terror right in the center of my being.
And I got up and I left the meeting.
I left the meeting and I didn't say a word to anybody.
I went back to my room because I didn't know what had happened.
And I was supposed to speak the next day, do a spiritual talk.
The last thing I felt was spiritual.
I felt shook up.
Well, when I met Clancy at Spring Branch, I went up to him and I told him that story
because I had never shared that story with him.
And I said, you know, I never got to hear you share your story.
And until years later in Tyler, I got to hear you.
And then tonight I got to hear you.
I said, I don't know what happened, but I sure got all screwed up when you banged on that podium
and said, rest was irritable and discontent.
And what I know is that I just had unresolved.
Family trauma that got triggered.
Clancy just looked at me and he leaned down and he put his hands on my shoulders.
And he said, I have a message from your father.
And he gave me a gentle shake.
And he said, straighten up.
And I don't know why he did that.
But it made me laugh because it was like all of a sudden Clancy,
I presented something about my father.
And I don't know, but that was a very meaningful moment in my relationship with Clancy.
It's amazing.
He did so much for so many people.
In more recent years, let's say even leading up to today,
has there been any other defining experience for you that you'd care to share?
When I talk to you about the best job I've ever had in my life,
it didn't start off that way.
I got a job teaching at a private school and it was all foreign territory to me.
There was a whole culture there that I didn't, I didn't, I had never experienced.
And when I first started working there, there was some politics going on behind
the scenes that I didn't understand.
I didn't understand what was at play.
I had a principal that was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She just treated me awful.
That's the only way to say it.
And when I called my sponsor and talked to her about it,
she had me praying for this woman for 90 days.
Well, 90 days turned into two years.
I prayed for this woman every day for two years.
I lowered all of my expectations about the job because when I started,
I thought,
I made the wrong decision and I need to get out of here.
This is bad.
This is, this is not going to work.
I will lose my temper and somebody is going to get hurt and it's not going to be me.
And I just started praying and I prayed every day for two years.
And one day I'm walking in front of the sanctuary and there's an enclosed garden with a water
element and I can hear the water because the doors are open.
I can hear the water dripping.
And I had been praying to understand what my part in this was,
as well as what were the steps I needed to do to resolve the resentment that I felt over the way this woman treated me.
And all of a sudden it was like light just filled me and clarity came to me.
And I realized this problem was never my problem.
It wasn't about me.
It wasn't about me except that I made it about me.
This problem was all the other things that were going behind the scenes.
And I was just getting the flack that everybody else was getting too.
It took two years of prayer.
It took two years of just being quiet and observing for me to get the clarity and see what was at play in that situation that caused me to feel the resentment.
And I walked into this woman's office the very next day, and I told her, you know, I have had this ongoing bad feeling about our relationship, and I've been praying for you for two years so that I could be clear about what happened.
And now what I know is that the hardest things that happen to you with people are there.
You baby.
You become your greatest teachers.
And she just didn't even say a word.
She just walked right over to me.
She put her arms around me, and she just gave me the most warm hug.
And I knew that was God with us.
That happens to me all the time, Howard.
I was asked to speak at Ray's funeral at the school did a celebration because Ray was head of school and I was asked to speak.
I was asked to speak at Ray's funeral at the school did a celebration because Ray was head of school and I was asked to speak.
And at first I said I couldn't because I didn't have the words.
And at first I said I couldn't because I didn't have the words.
And the day of the celebration, I was driving to school.
I had said my prayers that morning.
And all of a sudden, on the drive in, all of the words that I needed to say came to me in like one fell swoop.
I walked into my classroom.
I sat down at my iPad.
I typed up what I was going to say.
I called the chaplain.
And said, I don't know why, but I'm supposed to speak today.
And allow me, I will.
And I did.
And it was perfect.
And my new boss walked up to me afterwards and put his arms around me.
And he said, I just hope that when I leave this earth, that I have a friend as good as you that will say things about me like you did about your friend.
That's wonderful.
That's really beautiful and touching.
And it's such a great demonstration of the impact that the AA program can have on our lives, on the way we think, and on our relationship with a higher power that plays out that way.
It's just, it's remarkable.
And what you've shared with me today, Jackie, your story, and we share a lot of similarities with our family of origin and that kind of thing.
But one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this is because I think it's a great opportunity.
And one of the reasons I wanted to do this show to begin with, because there are so many people I want to know more about, that five minutes at a time in meetings wasn't enough.
And even a speaker meeting isn't enough.
And so the fact that you were able to be here today to share, not only with me, but to anybody who listens to this podcast, what I think is a very inspirational and profound experience of sobriety for the past 28 years.
I can't tell you how grateful I am that you did that.
You know, the bottom line is, if I can do it, anyone can do it.
But be willing.
So if you do what I do, then you'll get what I got.
And I have connections with women now that they've been a part of my experience.
And they've gone on and they're helping other women.
That's the joy of recovery.
To see families recover.
To see women and men recover.
To see lives restored.
That's the joy.
And for me, that's the power of God in this program.
Because I couldn't fix my life, and I can't fix your life.
But together, somehow, the broken fix the broken.
We encourage one another forward.
Yeah, that's amazing.
And I think an awesome way to kind of wrap things up.
Jackie, I really appreciate your being here today.
Thank you.
You're an awesome person, and I love you.
And I've enjoyed getting to know you, obviously, over all these years.
But hearing your story like you've told it today is excellent.
Again, many thanks, Jackie, and for doing this.
Well, thank you, Howard.
I really have enjoyed talking with you because it hasn't felt like a speaker thing.
It's felt like two friends talking about a shared experience.
Well, my friends, that's it for the AA Recovery Interview.
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