Six and Seven Is Where the Magic Happens — You Found Out Who You Are in Four and Five, Now Ask Higher Power to Remove It — Mary S.
About This Speaker Tape
Mary tells her story at a young people's conference in Vermont, beginning with a loving Catholic upbringing on the west side of Cleveland as the oldest of seven children. Her parents taught her to pray and gave her a foundation of faith, but everything shifted at 13 when she was assaulted by boys from her Catholic school. That trauma drove her away from Higher Power and toward alcohol, which she discovered through stolen altar wine in eighth grade. She describes the instant feeling of power that first drink gave her and how she spent the summer of 1976 teaching herself to drink from her father's liquor cabinet in the garage dormer.
Her drinking escalated through high school, where she was expelled from a private girls' school and became a self-described burnout at the public school. She married a fellow art student from Kent State, but the marriage was a disaster from the start. She cried through her wedding night, hid in a Bahamas hotel room on mescaline, and spent two years in a dark room printing photos while medicating with Valium, codeine, and alcohol. Her husband served her dissolution papers on her 25th birthday, and she attacked him violently before he drove her back to her parents' doorstep.
Within days she was tending bar, controlling everyone's drinking while hiding vodka in a water glass under the sink. The rage and blackouts worsened until she was thrown out of her own bar. She woke up on February 12, 1988, knowing that another drink would kill her. A friend in AA told her to try 90 meetings in 90 days, and she fell in love with the fellowship immediately. She emphasizes that staying sober was the easy part — doing the work of honesty, prayer, and service was hard. She highlights Steps Six and Seven as where the real transformation happens.
Mary went on to earn a PhD, married Tim — the man she spotted her first week in AA — in her mother's restored 1960 wedding dress, and rebuilt her relationship with her parents. Her father suffered a massive stroke two days before her dissertation defense. AA members packed her briefcase and drove her to Kent State, where she defended successfully, then whispered to her unconscious father that she had done it. He died shortly after. A year later, deep in grief, she came close to drinking for the first time in 11 years but survived by going to meetings. She closes with the death of a sponsee from a ruptured esophagus earlier that week, a reminder of how lethal the disease remains.
Discussion
Be the first to share your thoughts on this tape.