Two White Chips in Two States — I Kept Insisting I Was Alcoholic but Not Powerless – Sharon F.
About This Speaker Tape
Sharon F. opens by reading a passage called 'Memories of Alcohol' — 'I drank for happiness and became unhappy...' — and says it could have been written by anyone in the room. Born in Jacksonville in 1948 into a seriously alcoholic family on her father's side, she watched her dad, her grandfather, an aunt, and several uncles and aunts die of alcoholism. Her father died at 52. Only one aunt recovered in AA with 40+ years sober. Sharon swore she would never drink like her dad — but never once considered not drinking. As a child she practiced, filling wine glasses with grape juice and shot glasses with apple juice while watching Saturday cartoons.
Her drinking was alcoholic from the first night — a 14-year-old blackout at the beach where she nearly drowned night-swimming. She quit nursing school rather than risk failing chemistry, hiding the fear behind 'I'm too compassionate.' At the University of Georgia she was sent to the Dean of Women for drinking; her advisor planted seeds about a drinking problem. She married a musician, worked as a cocktail waitress in underground Atlanta, traveled the country with his entertainment act, and drank free every night until 4 a.m. She visited AA twice — once at Glen Haven in 1971 where Poor Boy Rice told his story and she decided those were 'real alcoholics,' and once in Steamboat Springs after attacking her husband in an elevator. Neither time did she admit powerlessness.
The bottom came the night she passed out on the sofa with a brandy snifter while her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter slept beneath her, the sliding doors to the pool wide open and an unscreened fire burning. Before passing out she had drunk-dialed three old drinking buddies — all three told her they'd quit and joined AA. The next morning, September 7, 1982, she called central office and went to a women's meeting in Clarkston, Georgia. She wrote in her Big Book: 'Sobriety day September 7, 1982. I never have to feel like this again. Expect a miracle.'
She talks about the sponsor she picked because she looked like a good tennis partner — who never played tennis but loved her with a velvet glove and let her skip Steps 2 and 3 until the Fifth Step revealed why she'd been resisting them: she was afraid she was a 'special sinner' beyond forgiveness. She describes being unemployable at her first interview, her sponsor telling her a minimum-wage internship was 'a $5-an-hour raise,' and 27 years later being practice manager and lead vision therapist at the same office. She married a sober man after waiting for her five-year chip. She closes with burning-bush spiritual experiences, the $500 checks that arrive when you're broke, and the plea: don't drink no matter what.
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