The Insanity of Choosing Not to Use the Tools – Janeens A.

About This Speaker Tape

Syracuse, Kansas: a two-room tar paper shack and a bed shared with four siblings. Janeens A. grew up cockeyed, caught between a born-again Pentecostal mother and a riotous, alcoholic father. By twelve, she was "old," stealing from a change purse and wearing a mask of innocence while cracking her knuckles behind her back. She spent nineteen years chasing her father's carefree wreckage, a path that led to fifty-five hospitalizations and a penchant for prophesying in the streets of Garden City while wearing a royal blue choir robe.

Her bottom was a shattered pane of stained glass; she crawled through the garment of Jesus to sleep on a church altar. Dragged into AA unconscious, she viewed her Higher Power as a "royal son of a bitch" and once burned her Bibles in an aluminum trash can. She didn't come for sobriety—she came to avoid jail or the state hospital. Eventually, the shell chipped away, and she felt a softening she resisted with everything she had.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Janeen J. opens with a joke about her watch and the meeting length.
• 10:15 Discussion of her 'cockeyed' upbringing between a Pentecostal mother and alcoholic father.
• 22:40 Story about prophesying in the streets of Garden City in a royal blue choir robe.
• 31:10 The 'bottom': breaking a stained-glass window to sleep in a church.
• 38:20 First meeting: arriving unconscious and weighing 230 pounds.
• 48:15 The struggle with the Third Tradition and the 'doctor' who claimed she wasn't an alcoholic.
• 56:40 The relationship with her aggressive sponsor, Olga, and the size 20 dress.
• 1:08:10 Step 4: Writing her inventory in the waiting room of Larned State Hospital after a threat of suicide.
• 1:18:30 Emotional account of making amends to her son and his decision to postpone his wedding for her to speak.