The Family Disease That Put Her in a Nut Factory – Geraldine D.

About This Speaker Tape

A long cord hanging from a ceiling with a single light bulb; bars on the window; a peephole in the door. Geraldine D. woke up in a nut factory after a blur of 180-proof alcohol, phenobarbital, and a striptease in a Chicago nightclub.

For years, she had viewed her brother as a moral leper, only to find herself the one locked up and stripped of her dignity. She describes a life of dehydrated alcohol and pills, smuggled in rubber hot water bottles strapped to her legs. After 27 psychiatrists diagnosed her as merely overworked, she hit a floor where only a Higher Power could reach her.

She recalls the grit of early AA—being told to shut up for nine months and the "obnoxious" word honest. From the wreckage of a marriage to a man who nearly blew her brains out with a shotgun, she found a simple password: don't drink, don't take pills, and keep it simple spiritually.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:45 Jerry D. opens with a joke about her initials and her history of overdosing.
• 2:15 Mention of Bill W. and his early involvement in helping her brother.
• 6:30 Detailed story about smuggling whiskey in hot water bottles strapped to her legs.
• 11:20 Waking up in a 'nut factory' in Chicago and the decision to ask her brother for help.
• 15:45 The experience of DTs and the early days of being forced into meetings by the fellowship.
• 21:10 The 'second miracle': reading the 12 Steps in the first person and the immediate cessation of the desire to drink.
• 26:30 Laughter: Discussion of her volatile marriage and the 'butcher knife' of their arguments.
• 31:15 The tragedy of her husband's relapse after 20 years of sobriety and his subsequent death.
• 36:40 Defining addiction as 'pain plus a learned relief.'
• 42:10 A story about a shotgun and a miracle of the Higher Power.
• 48:50 The 'spiritual garden' metaphor: planting rows of preparedness, promptness, and prayer.
• 53:10 Closing prayer and final thoughts on holding the Higher Power's hand.