Without Conscious Contact the Physical Sobriety Goes Too – Candice E.

About This Speaker Tape

Candice E. opens with raw honesty, admitting she doesn't want to be at the podium and is in a difficult emotional place at 11 years sober. She describes growing up with a sober father who divorced her alcoholic mother, who then married their cocaine dealer. Candice didn't pick up her first drink until 18, but when she did, it consumed her immediately. In college she was recruited into a dangerous nightlife job involving drugs and illegal activity, which she rationalized as control over the men who had controlled her. She spent five years in a violent, possessive relationship before packing friends into a Suburban and driving to Las Vegas — not to party, but to die.

In Vegas, a voice deep inside told her she wanted to live. She came home and told her sober father she needed a meeting, and he refused to let her pull a geographic to rehab, instead telling her to sit down in a chair every day and keep going. She did 90 meetings in 90 days with the same group, built a foundation, and got a Puerto Rican sponsor named Linda S. who walked up and announced she would be sponsoring Candice. At one year sober she met a man completely different from anyone she had dated, married quickly, and found out she was pregnant two days later. She spent her first year of marriage pregnant and her second in severe postpartum depression.

At five years sober, while graduating college and raising a one-year-old, her husband began drinking heavily and stopped coming home at night. Candice packed up her daughter and left while he was at work. After a year-and-a-half separation, they reconciled — he got sober, they did therapy and financial counseling, had a second child. But now at 11 years, she is leaving again because the real work was never done on his side. She draws a sharp distinction between saying you have changed and actually filling the void with a Higher Power, insisting that surface-level change is unsustainable.

Candice shares that she now cares for the abusive, alcoholic mother who never said she was sorry — and that forgiveness came not because her mother earned it, but because sobriety made it possible. She speaks bluntly about sponsors, declaring that your sponsor is not your Higher Power, not your parent, and not responsible for your sobriety. She was fired by her second sponsor during her worst crisis and hated her for it, but eventually found forgiveness there too. She closes by saying the relationship with a Higher Power is the most important one she has — without it, physical sobriety disappears, and without physical sobriety, conscious contact with a Higher Power is impossible. Everything beyond not drinking today is a gift.

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