The Spiritual Malady: Why No Amount of External Love Is Ever Enough – Polly P.

About This Speaker Tape

Polly P. shares her story at the Woodstock of AA in Cocoa Beach, Florida, with 33 years of sobriety dating back to April 11, 1977. She grew up in Texas as an only child with non-alcoholic parents who loved her deeply but, as survivors of childhood abuse themselves, couldn't transmit the self-worth and self-esteem they wanted to give her. She describes growing up spiritually ill, feeling unloved despite being surrounded by love, and terrified of a punishing Higher Power preached in her Baptist church. She married an Air Force officer at 18 and had her first drink at a military wives' luncheon, where alcohol gave her the ease and comfort she had been missing for her entire life.

The drinking escalated alongside prescription drugs — Librium and Valium from 1962 to 1977 — while she raised two boys largely alone during her husband's military deployments. She describes herself unflinchingly as a child abuser in every form: emotional, physical, spiritual, and through blatant neglect. Her son James, sober 26 years himself, tells audiences his mother never makes it sound as bad as it really was. She paints the gut-wrenching image of her 10-year-old stepping over her unconscious body on the kitchen floor to make his own breakfast, completely shut down emotionally.

After a drunk-driving incident, a failed first treatment stint, a jailhouse romance, and a suicide attempt that resulted in being pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in Bedford, Texas, Polly was court-committed to a treatment center in Dallas on April 11, 1977. Her sponsor Frank — a former Navy captain and Monsignor priest who was also an only child — took her through the steps quickly and told her plainly she was a child abuser who needed to make amends to her sons. That direct honesty, combined with deep service work, became the foundation of her recovery.

Polly and her husband Dave, who married when she had three and a half years sober, have walked through bankruptcy, foreclosure, the death of Dave's oldest son to cancer, and raising four children who all turned out to be alcoholics and addicts. Her youngest son James got sober, married Kelly (also sober), and together they raised a deaf child with extraordinary devotion. Polly emphasizes that she went from a mother whose son told her not to show up at his school to a trusted grandmother of five. She closes with the words the treatment center director told her: if you make it, you're going to love me — if you don't, it really doesn't matter.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction — 33 years sober, home group in Bellingham, Washington, excited to be at the Woodstock of AA
• 3:00 Grew up with non-alcoholic parents who loved her but were both abuse survivors — father full of rage, mother emotionally closed off
• 8:00 Spiritual malady — feeling like nothing was ever enough despite being loved, the Baptist church teaching a punishing God
• 12:00 Married Air Force officer at 18, first drink at military wives' luncheon — the sherry fountain and finally being able to breathe
• 16:00 Prescribed Librium and Valium at Loring Air Force Base in Maine, couch-potato alcoholic dying on her living room sofa
• 20:00 Child abuse confession — son stepping over her unconscious body, oldest son shaking her awake asking if she was dead
• 25:00 Car wreck in Irving, Texas, first treatment, jailhouse romance, suicide attempt — pronounced dead on arrival in Bedford, Texas
• 30:00 Court-committed April 11, 1977 — sponsor Frank takes her through steps quickly, tells her she is a child abuser
• 36:00 Marriage to Dave at three and a half years sober, blended family of four kids all alcoholics and addicts, bankruptcy and foreclosure
• 42:00 Son James 26 years sober, grandson born deaf, becoming a trusted grandmother — closing with the treatment director's words about making it