The Ism Stays After the Alcohol Goes – Barb C.
About This Speaker Tape
Barb C. shares at the West Portland Group about identification — the thing that saved her life when nothing else could reach her. She opens by describing her daily program: knees every morning, meditation, sponsor, sponsees, service commitments, home group. Then she traces the disease back to a childhood so paralyzed by shyness she could not do show-and-tell, could not introduce herself to other children, could not be comfortable in her own skin. At a wedding reception around age sixteen, a glass of beer shifted her shoulders from up to down — and she chased that feeling for twelve years through college, California, violent relationships, and spiritual bankruptcy.
The turning point came when her college friend Chris, five and a half years sober in AA, took her to Taco Bell and said she deserved to be happy. Later that night, Chris asked what she would do if she drank again. Her instant, detailed answer — double shot Cuervo Gold with a beer back at the Santa Fe, then dark beer at the Mission Theater — was identical to what her alcoholic father would do. The moment of recognition hit: she was alcoholic, from a family where everyone was dead or dying from the disease.
Barb reads from the Big Book on identification — how an ex-problem drinker armed with facts can win another alcoholic's confidence in hours when no therapist, counselor, or family member could. She speaks powerfully about singleness of purpose, refusing to bring her MS diagnosis into an AA meeting when alcoholism is what everyone in the room shares. Recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after three and a half years of illness, she emphasizes that nothing — not health crises, not divorce, not losing children — justifies drinking. Her closing image is vivid: the sunlight of the Spirit finding her black little raisin of a soul and growing it back.
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