The Fog Lifting: What She Wrote at Six Months and Thirteen Days Sober – Barb C.
About This Speaker Tape
Barb C. shares her full story at the West Portland Group, reading aloud from journal entries she wrote in the back of her softcover Big Book during her first year of sobriety. At six months and thirteen days sober she wrote that the fog was lifting and sunlight was flooding the newly vacant space. At eight months: it is getting easier to be human. At almost a year: sure hope I am one of the lucky ones that stays sober.
She traces her alcoholism back to a childhood of paralyzing shyness where she could not walk across a playground to introduce herself to another child. At a wedding reception when she was sixteen, a popular boy pushed a beer across the counter. She drank it down and the alcohol shot through her arms and straight down her center. The boy was no longer that popular. She was suddenly pretty, smart, and more than enough. She chased that feeling for twelve years through high school, college, Southern California, and violent relationships — always functioning, always dying inside.
Her college boyfriend Chris got sober in AA and five years later told her she deserved to be happy. When she moved to Oregon and swore off drinking, Chris asked what she would do if she drank again. Her instant, detailed plan — double shot Cuervo Gold at the Santa Fe, dark beer at the Mission Theater — was identical to what her alcoholic father would do. That recognition broke through her denial. She describes the phenomenon of craving, singleness of purpose in AA meetings, and how she found a Higher Power that replaced the mean, score-keeping Higher Power of her Baptist childhood. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and grieving the death of her beloved dog, she did not want to drink — and that astonished her more than anything. She credits daily Steps 10, 11, and 12, hitting her knees every morning, and the fellowship that became the best family she has ever known.
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