Sandy B. on Obsession, Underage Drinking, and Family Dynamics

Hi everyone I'm Sandy and I'm an alcoholic and my sobriety date is March 16 1997 and my home group is ipsy steps out in Ypsilanti on Thursday nights you guys should come check us out it's a fabulous group and I always hear the solution whenever I'm there I have a sponsor who has a sponsor and I also sponsor other women in this program I want to welcome those of you that are new and those of you who are visiting us I just want to let you know that I'm not up here because I have a fabulous story or that I've done anything wonderful you know I'm just a drunk that got sober and alcoholics anonymous and I'm here to share my experience strength and hope and I want to let that if you know you can't relate to anything I'm sharing with tonight to please keep coming back because it took me a little while before I heard my story in Alcoholics Anonymous you know I grew up in a big family I'm the youngest of seven children my mom and dad were you know middle lower class and my dad was blue collar and he went to work every day and my mom stayed home and took care of us children if you if you ask my siblings most of them will say that they didn't know we were poor my perception I remember us being poor I remember the government cheese I remember powdered milk I remember not having the same things my friends do so you know for me I know that my perception and my outlook on life was completely different from the beginning and that my alcoholism began way before took the first drink when I was seven years old I was placed in second grade in a resource room they called it for um I don't know I guess the bad kids but that's where I went because I had flipped a desk and thrown a chair and the thing about it was I had no reason to be angry nothing horrendous or you know dramatic could happen to me as a child I was just angry you know irritable restless and discontent from the beginning and in second we said second grade was rough for me I just didn't want to go back it was the pressure they taught you cursive writing it was hard so I decided that I did not want to go back and I was always looking to get out of school I didn't want to school you know and that continued throughout my life I always wanted to be somebody else or somewhere else you know know, and it just started from day one. And growing up, I'm allergic to iodine and bad things happen when it gets on me. And I think it's a 70s thing where my mother put iodine on everything. You know, any cut, mosquito bite, you know, scrape, anything, you got iodined. But I didn't because I was allergic to it. And so I didnít want to go to school the next day, so I decided to drink it because I knew it would be bad, you know, if it was on me and I knew that it would make me sick if I drank it. And so that's what I did. And I don't know if it constitutes a suicide attempt at seven, but my intentions weren't to kill myself. My intentions were just to stay home from school. You know, and my family refers to it as, you know, my childhood poisoning, but it's not like I was two years old, you known, accidentally drink the bleach. I, you kno,l I purposely drank the iodine to get out of doing something and that pretty much set the precedence for my entire life. My solutions were always completely worse than my problems. I would have rather died than go to second grade. You know and that just continued throughout my life. I never felt a part of, I never thought that you know I had it you know, I felt like I had to have a gimmick like you know. I wasn't the pretty one, I wasn' t the smart one, I wasn't the athletic one. I just felt like in my family, amongst my brothers and sisters, I was nothing. And everywhere I went, I just felt like I was something else. I was just nothing. And so the only time that that ever changed for me was when I was 14 years old. And I went to a friend's slumber party and we had decided to sneak out to the shed and get some of her dad's beer from the shed and then we were going to walk down to the end of the dirt road and drink it. So we did this. And, you know, the minute that I took that first drink, I mean, I still remember. I remember that first Drink of the Warm Pax Blue Ribbon Beer. I remember it. It was fabulous because it was the first time that I didn't want to be somebody else or somewhere else. I was happy being Sainte-Marie and just happy being there. And I felt like I had something to say. I felt like I had something to contribute. I felt cool, I felt awesome, felt everything. Everything that I'd never felt before. And I also should have known that my drinking was going to be different from that first drink because some of the other girls had drank before. I had not. It was my first time and I drank mine first. Mine was done before anybody else's and when we all threw our cans into the woods, I could tell which girls had not finished their beer because I knew the sound, the different sound between a beer empty can hitting the trees and a half can hitting the trees. And I was kind of pissed they threw it in the woods because I could have had that. But we all just had one beer and we went back into the house and continued with the slumber party, but you know, all I wanted was more of that feeling. I wanted more of it. And, you know I continued to chase that. That feeling of, you know, being something. And And, you know, I've heard people share that as an underage drinker, they had a hard time getting liquor and alcohol. And that's not my experience. I just feel like those people just, you Know, didn't go at it like the career, like a career. Because that was my career. That's all I did from the time I was 14 until I was old enough to get it on my own was I sat outside party stores. I sat inside grocery stores. I knew who would buy. I knew whom wouldn't. I you know I hung out with people that a 14 year old girl has no business hanging out with just to get that good feeling again and it's all I thought about when I wasn't drinking I was thinking about how I was going to get it what I was gonna get I have this much money and the entire obsession of alcohol had just taken over my every being because all I could think about is how good it was gonna feel you know once I got it you know and that just you know shortly after that, my life spiraled out of control. I'm, I started soon after not coming home at night, not coming Home on weekends. My parents were, you know, they just didn't know what to do with me. My parents told me that they had later on after I'd gotten sober, you Know, they told me you're the only child that none, no punishment would ever work on you. It worked on every other child, but not you. The other kids, they would sneak out, they got grounded, they wouldn't get it again, do it again i snuck out i got caught i got better at sneaking out you know and it got so bad that my father had to nail my bedroom window shut and he took my bedroom door off and my parents then my bedroom was straight across the hall from theirs so my parents moved their bed and moved my bed so that when we all laid in bed at night we could wave and you know it's funny now but And, you know, back then all I could think about was, you know, they just don't understand. They're so, you know, they're ruining everything. I just need to get out of here. You know, and never once was there a thought that, you know, what is this doing to the family dynamics? What is this doing to their marriage? What is this doing to their relationship where they have to stay up all night just trying to keep their daughter in the house and keep her daughter from going out and killing herself or somebody else? You know? I just didn't think of that you know I just was more concerned about me myself and getting what I needed and that's how I went throughout my life. I didn't care who or what I had to trample to get what I wanted and do what I want and you know, I did a lot of damage with family and friends. I soon started losing all kinds of friends. Um, I was asked to leave the house at 17 and you And it was a real hard thing for my parents to do. My parents were just at a loss. My parents weren't hardcore, but they were strict. They had children before me, and they knew all the tricks of the trade. They thought they had seen it all before until I came. My older sisters would roll up the tops of their skirts when they got to school so the skirts would be shorter. So by the time I came around to wearing skirts, my mother would draw with black permanent magic marker a black line across my thighs so that if I rolled up my skirt at school, all you would see was the black magic marker my mother drew. So, I mean, they were pretty clever, but they just couldn't catch me, you know? So I left at 17 and, you Know, I got an apartment. I, you Now, I lived with people I shouldn't have lived with. I, you know, and as soon as I became old enough, um, you know, I started going to bars and clubs and I started disappearing for longer periods of time. And there was at one point, um where apparently my family had a family meeting and it was to decide whether or not because nobody could find me and nobody had heard from me in a long time. It was and they decided to have a meeting to find out if they should put a missing persons report on me or not, you know? And that's the kind of things I did instead of my family being able to get together and share in the joy of each other in life, it was always what are we going to do about Sandy? When was the last time you saw her? What is she doing now? Good God, is she alive? And good God, I hope she doesn't come over. Those kinds of things. It was bad. My mother, she would leave me notes that she would tie in a plastic grocery bag and other things and stuff and tie it to the mailbox because I wasn't welcome in their home anymore and so I would drive by open up my little plastic grocery bag read the note and write my answer and then put it back in the grocery bag and that's how he communicated for months you know I just wasn't even welcome in the driveway and you know my drinking started getting a lot worse and I started losing a lot of time I mean I learned an alcoholics anonymous it's called a blackout I didn't know that's what it was I just thought I fell asleep and woke up but I knew some things were happening while I was drinking that I wasn't remembering and I didn't that that was a blackout you could get up you can move around you could do things in while you were blacked out and what happened is I woke up in a house not knowing what day it was what time it was where I was gathered up my belongings and went out to look for my car because my car was always missing and I couldn't find my car so I you know I hitchhiked a lot at these times and so I just walked to a main road and started hitchhiking and a couple of guys picked me up in a pickup truck and I told them that I was going to Whitmore Lake and they didn't know where that was so I said you know it's out by Ann Arbor and they didn't where that so it's kind of one of those things where you just try to act cool you just tried to you know well you don't know Ann Arbor is you're crazy and you know it's the meanwhile you're telling yourself just stay calm don't let him know you don't know where you are and so they had heard of Detroit so I said okay we're gonna head that way and come to find out um I lost about two to three days I don't know where I went I don' t know what I did I know that I had come to in Yerkesville Ohio which is like a southeastern part of Ohio I guess I don't know and to this day I don't anybody there I don' t know how I got there I just went out and kept on with my life and kept drinking and kept going and it really wasn't a consequence to me anyway they um you know my life was falling down around me everywhere it wasn't just you know as a result of my drinking I was crazy I mean everywhere I went I was screaming crying I was this big ball of dramatic mess everywhere I and I also when I came out of these blackouts I kept waking up to these was told to tell the story I kept waking up two these orange road barriers in my house with the orange light flashing in my apartment and back then they weren't the orange barrels they were like the orange heavy they were heavy there were metal and wood a-frame road barriers so I the flashing light was really bothersome so I put a towel over it and duct tape around the light and then for some reason I had to sneak it out into the trash only after the garbage truck has come so my theory was the garbage dumpster would be empty so that way I could put the road barrier in the bottom and then more trash would come. The problem is the road barriers accumulated faster than the garbage truck came. You know, so there was times where I had, I don't know, like eight or nine of those in my house. It's funny now but I did have to make amends and I'll tell you I don''t don't recommend taking those because they're pretty expensive and I did pay them back for them so yeah but that was my life that was the way it was behind closed doors I was absolutely crackers just and you know there was a time you know I was at a family's house for a holiday or something I don't remember because I was drunk but um I mean I know I was at my sister my sister Liz's house and so I found myself rummaging in her bathroom cabinets for something to drink just something to make me feel better and I found this clear bottle with some beautiful translucent blue stuff in it with like a metal screw-on cap and then the on the bottle and black magic marker it said Carl's hot mix and it was hidden I thought it was in in the bathroom cabinet and I thought you know it must be something good so my sister my sister had an airport and so she Carl was this guy that made homemade wine so when I saw Carl's Hot Mix I automatically put together Carl made moonshine and my sister's hiding in the bathroom. So I drank it, and it burned. It burned a lot, but I still drank it, um, and that's pretty much all I remember. I came to in the hospital, and my family was running around, God bless them, they were running around trying to figure out what I had eaten, because it must have been the bad mayonnaise or something that I was so sick from, because they couldn't, they couldn't wake me up um and so they thought it was some extreme food poisoning case but the doctors knew better and you know um that was you know that's how I was that's how it was when I came around my family that's what I did you know people just we didn't just you know carve the turkey you know I you know i ruined things everywhere I went and um if I wasn't screaming or crying. I was falling down drunk, and so what happened was my life was becoming more and more unmanageable, and I actually had found myself in therapy, and I had a therapist and my pastor at the time did a 12-step call on me, basically, and they both basically came to me and told me, we can't help you anymore. We can't help you any more until you do something about your drinking, and they gave me a list of things that I needed to do and I chose one of them and that was to go to there was this 12-step group and it was alcoholics addicts codependents sex addicts OCD people all kinds of us all of us crazy people altogether and it ran by husband and wife and it met once a week and so you know I would go I would and they did use the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and discuss it and you know and so you know but my life wasn't getting better I was still a mess a complete mess and the husband that ran the group with his wife he was always so happy to see me and always so kind and just very jolly and just very calm, and his wife was one of those women that always had tissues, you know? And you know those people, like they always have, you need gum, they have gum. You need a mint, they have a mint. She was like that. And she was just, they were both very kind and nurturing people. And I found out through him that he also went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that he had been sober for several years. And he invited me to a meeting. And so I started going to meetings sporadically um but you know i found myself being able to put together a little bit of time sober but the problem was i wasn't drinking um but my life wasn't getting any better because i was just going to a meeting a couple times a month and um i don't recommend it because i was a mess because i found himself not drinking but i also found myself wanting to kill myself at every given moment and it's you know it was after um you know working a program and coming to Alcoholics Anonymous wholeheartedly that I realized that alcohol is just a symptom of my problem that I am my problem and that I need to come here to learn how to live and I didn't know that until after some time and you know I ended up being invited out to a meeting here in Ann Arbor and it was my first ann arbor meeting was um friday night primary purpose and it was up at the first presbyterian church down in the basement and you know i don't really remember much about my first meeting i mean i remember sitting in a metal chair thinking again not wanting to be myself i'm not going to be there but at this point there was no one else left to be and there was no place else to go so there I was and I remember people being kind and I remember people giving me numbers and I didn't call any of them but you know I did come back and I came to this meeting was my second Ann Arbor meeting and I kept coming back and you people kept inviting me to meetings and you know that that first meeting that I went to at primary purpose I remember it being tricked the people there remember it been completely different I remember the person that invited me to the meeting, she said, well, we're going to go, we can go out to dinner afterwards. And I said, okay. And I figured that meant like she and I were going to get something to eat. Well, I found myself sitting at a table at this Vietnamese restaurant with about 12 people. It seemed like 20, but I think it was about 10 or 12. And, you know, those people had been sober a long time. And those people, you now, they kind of shared a little bit about their story. They were having fun. They were able to eat they were able to socialize and they were you know they asked me some questions and they they set me straight on a couple things and I'm only here sober today I swear those people saved my life absolutely alcoholics anonymous continues to show up and save my life but I think if it hadn't been for that dinner I would have offed myself a long time ago because I was not drinking but completely miserable and um you know I started coming to more and more meetings and you people kept inviting me back you you told me what to read in the big book and you people were so kind and loving to me and you gave me jobs to do I picked up chairs um made coffee cleaned up coffee but the problem was my life still wasn't getting better you know and I would stand up I would share at meetings and you people would kindly say thanks Sandy and you let me share and you just you know you let me you know grow up in Alcoholics Anonymous and I ran around here for a long time without a sponsor and I don't recommend it because I was almost three years sober dry but three years over without without a sponsored and I hadn't worked a step and I again found myself crumpled up on my living room floor wanting to kill myself and I called a woman and um she was my first sponsor and she lovingly took me on her wing and she took me through the 12 steps and she was tough as nails and at that time that's what I needed because she told me to pick up chairs and I said well I don't see why everybody doesn't pick up their own chair because I only sat in one and she you know and she just said well now you're going to pick up chairs for two months and so that's that's how it went and she was exactly what I needed at that time and you know she didn't take any crap and you know I started hanging out with people that came to meetings early and they stayed late at meetings so I talked to people and I started you know beginning to see a fellowship build up around me and it was the first time that I actually started to see Alcoholics Anonymous work in my own life and I was three years sober. And I'm here to tell you, you don't have to wait that long for the miracle to happen. Um, but if it hasn't happened yet, I'm also here to tell you to stick around because it took a long time for me, but the miracle did happen and I'm sober today and I's still here and I keep coming back. And some amazing things have happened in sobriety for me. I've been able to repair relationships with my families and my family and my friends I have friends that I've kept for long term um I had a sister that I was not allowed in her house and she refused to speak to me and after being sober sometime and going through the steps and you know under the direction of a sponsor making those amends when the time came appropriate I was able to do that and that's my sister Michelle and you know today I was her birth coach for both of her children I was I'm the godmother of her youngest and both her children are going to be in my wedding and it's just that is because of you you guys have done that because I was not the kind of girl that anyone would call to say meet me at the hospital I'm having the baby today my family and people see me that way and sometimes they don't always see it in myself but others see it and when I forget to look at it myself you people remind me and remind me if I just you know show up and keep doing what I'm supposed to be doing that the miracles do happen you know and I I'm internally grateful and I love alcoholics that honest for that I also was able to make amends to my parents and a few years ago I suffered the loss of my father he he had he was dying of emphysema and he had three to six months to live we had hospice in and he was smoking on the oxygen and caught the house on fire and because of the oxygen oxygen tanks in the house the house exploded basically burned to the ground my mother barely made it out alive and my father did not but because of you people I got the phone call 2 o'clock in the morning I showed up at the home site with my brother and I found out my father had not made it out of the house and I hit my knees and I called my sponsor and I started calling people at two o' clock in the until I got somebody and you know that's what you people taught me to do and because of that I was able to stay sober stay grounded be there for my family and accept your help and be carried once again you saved my life and amazing things happen because up until this point you know my family you know loved me and they knew I was sober and they liked me that way and but you know alcoholics anonymous was also something that took me from them you know it was always I got to go I got to go to a meeting or you know there was um phone calls that sometimes I just had to take in the other room and and there was you know some things that were like family vacations or family weddings um you know I had to miss some parts of not the weddings but some parts of the family get-togethers because I was out of town and had to go to a meeting and what happened the day that my father died was um you know I had my my best friend call me up and I didn't have to call her she called me and she said we're on our way and Alcoholics Anonymous showed up that day because of the fellowship that was built up around me I did not have to reach out for help you know for AlcoholicsAnonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous shows up for me and that's what you people do and that is what you people showed my family because you showed up you showed up with water you brought me meetings you brought me sanity you know amongst all the chaos and you carried me and you know we were at a hotel that was nowhere near my parents house and food um food platters showed up at the hotel to feed my herd of a family and it was sent the card was simply signed from friends from friends of bill And that is just amazing to me, but it was amazing to my family because my family got to see what you people do and what you're capable of and how you come into lives, and you just completely change them from the root up. And that's just, you know, I get teary thinking about it because it's not the memory of my father. It just gives me, it's the chills and the emotions that the love that you people are capable to give. And I just never experienced that in my life, and I wasn't that kind of person. But what you also did in doing that is you showed me what to do when my friends are in dire straits. You showed me, and now I just, you know, that's how I give back because I do what you did for me. You know, and during those times when you brought me meetings and stuff, that was my safety zone. That was my sanity time. And, you Know, shortly after that, you Now, it was suggested that I do 90 meetings in 90 days. And, you know, thank God for the Alano Club because I wouldn't have been able to do it without it. Because at the Alamo Club there is almost always a meeting going on. And,you know, because I still had a family that I was helping to take care of, but I also had a career that I had to return to. I work at a child care center and shortly after this was parent-teacher conferences. I still Had to show up and suit up at my job. And the meetings helped keep me grounded. They helped me keep first things first, and thank God for them because I was able to work. I was unable to run to a 505 meeting and then run back to work and do the parent-teacher conferences and do what I had to do to stay sober but also do what i had to because of the responsibilities of life. And I just love that AA's everywhere. love going out of town and going to out-of-town meetings if for nothing else when you're the out-to-town er you know they always ask is there anybody from out of Town and you get to say I like it when you get to say your state you know I've been tomorrow yeah I like it when yeah I went to Toronto one time I got to say it was from you know United States it's exciting you kind of feel special but I love that a is everywhere because no matter where I've gone I did not go to international but I know many of you did and you got to experience that firsthand and you know I can only imagine. You know firsthand that alcoholics is everywhere, and we are blessed to have it so. AA has taught me how to stay sober and how to have that social grace that I never had, and I still falter. I still don't have a lot of social grace, but I'm still working on it, And if we think we're done growing, then we haven't looked at ourselves lately. So I'm hoping to grow in that area. And what I love about Alcoholics Anonymous is you can serve at any level. You can serve. You can shake hands. You can sponsor. You can pick up chairs. You can also serve at the district level. And I did that for a long time. And, again, that saved my life at a time where I thought, yeah, I've made enough coffee. I've picked up enough chairs. I'm done. I'm over it. But, you know, I started serving at the district level and fell in love with AA all over again and got to see it in a whole new light. And I recommend that to anyone that thinks they're bored in AA, you Know? And what I also love about District 4 is it's like a group conscience meeting. and group conscience meetings have taught me more about how to live at work than anything else because i get to go to a group conscience meeting and it taught me a lot of life skills like we take turns when we talk we you know sometimes we raise our hand wait for permission to talk and it also taught me you know a lot life skills about listening to other people's ideas and trying other people'S ideas even when i think they're completely bonkers and most of the time when i their idea is completely bonkers that I get to sit back and I get to watch them work and I learned something new about myself and about others and because of the group conscience means I'm able to go and conduct myself in a staff meeting I last year I served on the State Board of Michigan for NAEYC which is the National Association for Education of young children and I got to be a child advocate and I got to stand on the Capitol floor and speak and I would have never been able to do that without you and it was interesting because in high school I went on a tour there and threw up on the state capitol floor It's interesting to be back and be a part of. It's a whole new experience. But, you know, and the other wonderful things about Alcoholics Anonymous is I get to sponsor and I get work with women in this program. And I swear that God puts women in my life and people in my wife that lives have run parallel to mine because I have had women share with me things that I have gone through and I'm able to share with them how I stayed sober through it. And I also get so much strength from watching the newcomer women stay sober and struggle through daily life and stay sober, and they do it with so much more grace than I did. You know, like I said, I mean, I was sober a long time without a sponsor and I'm always amazed by the newcomer women and their willingness they're eager to grow and they want something different that's what I found here I found something beautiful and something different it's what i was looking for my whole life to be somebody and something different I am somebody different and something different today I'm still myself but I'm sober it's just an amazing ride I also have a sponsor in my life who I go to and she has gone through so many things that I have gone through. And it's just, there's that sense of when I'm, I still get nervous, you know, when I have to be honest or tell what's going on or something I'm struggling with. And, you Know, if it's something embarrassing that I've done or that's going on and that's that taking a breath and just saying it. And then to hear the other woman say, I've experienced that or I've done that. It's that, oh, okay. You know, it's like she did it. She's gone through it. She's sober. She's happy. I can too. And that's what I find here. You know there's never been a problem that I faced sober that I have not run into another person that has gone through it too and they've stayed sober. It's just amazing to me the honesty and the openness that I hear at these meetings about the people who share about their lives and the things and the tribulations they've gone through and just the utter honesty, you know. And for that I'm just entirely grateful. And I also want to talk about my family today. I mean, they are so dear to me. I mean I recently, about two and a half years ago, almost three years ago moved to Chelsea from Ypsilanti from an apartment that I lived in in 10 years because I was scared to move. I didn't want to move away from Ann Arbor AA. But I moved to Chelsea to be closer to my mother so that I could help take care of her, you know? And today I'm the type of girl that has a key to her mother's house. I have her credit card information in case something ever happens that I can get the things she needs. I am a co-signer on one of her checking accounts. And that is a girl that was not allowed even in her driveway. And that's just amazing to me. it's just it's it's a miracle you know it really is and you know the the problem is the problems I have today is you know I'm planning an upcoming wedding and I have too many people in Dubai because there's too many people in my life you know and that's my high-class problem of today and that just amazing too and so it's kind of cutting it short but that's all I got for tonight, so thanks a lot.