The Obsession to Drink That Took Three Years to Lift – Connie B.

About This Speaker Tape

A 63 Impala in a Denver graveyard—that is where Connie B. woke up in eighth grade after a vodka binge in Kansas City. For fourteen years, life was a blur of blackouts and "escapades" that spanned from Chicago to Japan. Even the Marine Corps couldn't discipline the drink; Connie was getting DWIs on base and eventually ended up in jail for breaking and entering. The bottom was a split-open skull stitched without anesthesia because she was too loaded for the drugs to work.

Sobriety began on a back porch in 1983, born from a raw fear of dying. The first year was white-knuckled and silent, a "geographic" shuffle from Memphis to California. It took a blunt warning from a tanned man in deck shoes to realize that without a sponsor, the drink would return. Connie spent years peeling away secrets and using a dictionary to decode the Big Book. The obsession to drink took three years to lift, replaced by an obsessive drive that turned a former dropout into a college graduate with a 3.97 GPA. T...

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Timestamps

• 0:45 Laughter: Connie jokes about her arm cast and the 'Darth Vader glove'.
• 2:15 Connie describes the 'trip' from a Kansas City park to a graveyard in Denver as an eighth grader.
• 6:30 The 'hair of the dog' moonshine experience at age twelve.
• 11:20 The bottom: breaking and entering, a split head, and stitches without anesthesia.
• 15:40 Moment of clarity on a back porch and the decision to enter Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 18:50 The 'no booze, no boys' rule in the Memphis Marine barracks.
• 23:10 The encounter with the tanned man in the Garden Grove club and the push toward sponsorship.
• 27:40 The struggle with reading comprehension and using a dictionary to unlock the Big Book.
• 31:10 The story of the 'wave' at Founder's Day in Akron and the reunion with Private B.
• 35:20 The full-circle moment with the 300-pound woman from the Finance Center who becomes her boss.
• 38:40 Discussion of the Big Book promise on page 100 and the role of sponsorship.