Step 5 and the Only Fifth Step I Like Better Than Mine Is Yours – Carla R.

About This Speaker Tape

A scream without a mouth. That was the sound of Carla R.’s adolescence, spent alternating between violent outbursts and total withdrawal in mental hospitals and juvenile halls. By fifteen, she was intimately familiar with five-point restraints and the "tragic cigarettes" smoked on the benches of the nuthouse. She describes a life of drifting—from the 99-cent store version of street walking to a plastic-tarped mining claim in the woods where she drank organic moonshine and raised a daughter in filth.

Carla recalls the wreckage of a "tornado" existence: dragging a partner down the street by the car window and eventually losing her child and her job in one afternoon on a barstool. She admits to mistaking arrogance for confidence and brute strength for character. It took twenty-four years of sobriety and a Higher Power to replace that gaping hole in her soul with self-respect. Now, she walks with her head up, no longer needing to beat her head against the wall.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Meeting opening and introduction of the first speaker, Kenny S.
• 4:15 Kenny S. describes his childhood with 'wild Texan alcoholics' and drinking at age four.
• 8:30 Kenny S. discusses the 'defense mechanism' of emotional detachment and his 24 years of sobriety.
• 12:45 Carrie F. shares her experience as a child of celebrity parents and her struggle to fit in.
• 18:20 Carrie F. discusses her sponsor, Clancy, and the importance of doing what she was told.
• 24:10 Carla R. recounts the chaotic relationship with her daughter's father, including dragging him down the street with a car window.
• 35:40 Carla R. describes her time in mental hospitals and the experience of five-point restraints at age fifteen.
• 46:15 Carla R. shares the story of her '8th step' amends to a man from Hollywood Boulevard.
• 55:30 Carla R. describes the trauma of being raped by a former member and the use of the Seventh Step Prayer for forgiveness.
• 1:05:10 Carla R. discusses the reconciliation with her mother and the death of her baby brother.
• 1:12:00 Carla R. talks about finding ballroom dancing as a spiritual practice.
• 1:18:45 Laughter: The group celebrates 18 birthdays, totaling 254 years of sobriety.