The Spiritual Experience That Removed the Compulsion – Mildred F.

About This Speaker Tape

A former nun who spent fifteen years drinking in the convent Mildred F. recounts a life of psychiatric wards shock treatments and a high-speed landslide into degradation. After decades of medicating herself with everything from mass wine to Chanel No. 5 she hit a bottom that left her sleeping on a park bench with her possessions in a single plastic bag

. Her turning point came in a psych ward on a Sunday morning when a sudden spiritual experience removed the compulsion to drink. She describes the slow gritty process of dismantling the walls she built to keep people out moving from a place of self-centeredness and defiance to a life of spiritual retreats and peace.

The narrative culminates in a sacred finality: returning to her hometown to sing songs and perform a life review with her dying sister Dora a woman who taught her about surrender long before Mildred ever found the program.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Mildred F. opens by discussing the upcoming international conference.
• 4:15 Discussion of the 12 and 12 and the 'nasty little piece of work' she used to be.
• 8:30 Recounting the 38 shock treatments and marrying her own psychiatrist.
• 15:40 The memory of her sister Dora and the lesson of surrender.
• 22:10 Laughter: Stories of drinking vanilla extract and perfume while in the convent.
• 30:20 The 'high-speed landslide' into degradation after leaving the convent.
• 38:15 The spiritual experience in the psych ward and the removal of the compulsion to drink.
• 45:50 Living on Skid Row and the process of ego deflation.
• 52:10 The realization during her Fourth Step that she was the problem.
• 1:02:15 The experience of making restitution and the paradox of making money but remaining miserable.
• 1:12:40 The journey from the head to the heart and dismantling her emotional walls.
• 1:22:10 The final sacred experience of being with her sister Dora at the end of her life.