Two Weeks Short of Fourteen Years and I Drank Because I Left the Room – Isla C.

About This Speaker Tape

Isla C. speaks at the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Napa Club, introduced by her sponsee Ellen. She is a classic old-timer sober since April 3rd, 1975. Born on Sand Mountain in rural northeast Alabama — seventh of eight kids, daughter of a part-Indian sharecropper alcoholic, sister to a younger girl with Down syndrome — she graduated high school shy, skinny, and secretly pregnant at 17. She went to Chicago, gave her son up for adoption, and swore she would not drink like her father and siblings. She held that line until 18, when she was kicked out of the YWCA and then the Women's Christian Temperance Association for drinking and for conduct unbecoming a young woman.

Eastern Airlines hired her into what she calls the golden age of stewardesses. She was a blackout drinker from the first drink. She married at 24 and passed out on her wedding-night coffee table thinking it was the bed. She transferred from New York to Atlanta in 1971 hiding black eyes. Between 1971 and 1975 she collected two DUIs, drove a red 1969 Firebird she inspected for blood and dents after blackouts, and began hiding vodka miniatures in airplane lavatories because her hands shook too hard to hold a coffee cup. A former roommate who had tried Al-Anon for her own mother called Isla, told her about AA, and offered to walk her in. That's how her Higher Power answered the prayer she had been repeating drunk and sober: please help me stop drinking.

At her first meeting she got three things that still anchor her — the Big Book, the 12 and 12, the 24-hour day book — and, more important, hope. Her sponsor Peggy Riggs never told her what to do; she loved her and listened. Isla worked the steps out of order, paid back the stolen liquor-and-movie money from her flights, did a Step 3 with a Catholic priest at a retreat, and asked the meanest woman she knew to hear her Fifth Step.

Two weeks shy of 14 years sober she drank again after disconnecting from the fellowship during the Eastern Airlines strike. She came back. On Valentine's Day 1997 the son she had relinquished flew her to Midway Airport and she met four grandchildren. Later the 2008 housing crash took a stack of real estate mortgages — and it never occurred to her to drink, because this time she was connected to the people, not just the literature. Today she is retired, lives in what had been a rental, raises rescue dogs, and quotes her friend Linda: thank you Higher Power for what you've given me, for what you've taken away, and for what's left.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Ellen opens the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Napa Club and introduces her sponsor Isla
• 3:30 Isla opens with the 'shoulders of giants' image, linking it to her dogs Ollie and Cole learning to swim
• 7:15 First meeting April 3rd, 1975 — walks in late, hears women's group behind the wall, buys Big Book, 12 and 12, and 24-hour day book
• 13:00 Sand Mountain, Alabama childhood — sharecropper father, seventh of eight, caring for younger sister with Down syndrome
• 17:45 Pregnant at 17, brother Billy brings her to Chicago, she relinquishes her son for adoption
• 22:30 Eastern Airlines stewardess years — nickname 'Mike', Trader Vic's blackout, marriage at 24, wedding-night coffee table
• 28:00 Two DUIs in Fulton County — six carloads of cops, cold cage, the Scotch-drinking stranger in the release line
• 33:00 Hands shaking too hard to hold a first-class coffee cup — vodka miniatures in the airplane lavatory
• 36:30 Repeated prayer to her Higher Power, Pam Mellish's Al-Anon phone call, walks into AA
• 48:00 Relapse two weeks shy of 14 years after disconnecting during the Eastern strike — sponsor tells her to come back to AA
• 52:30 Valentine's Day 1997 — son who was relinquished as a baby flies her to Midway, she meets four grandchildren