You Cannot Plug Your Higher Power Into Another Human Being – Angie D.

About This Speaker Tape

Angie, a Mexican-American woman from Blythe, California, shares a raw, darkly funny story of her journey from battered child to sober grandmother. Born into a family that never wanted her, molested by a stepfather who wasn't believed, and sent to nuns who couldn't civilize her, she drank sherry wine from the Gallo brothers as a child fruit picker and knew immediately that alcohol did magic for her. She describes a lifetime of 'the booze and the boys and the cha-cha-cha,' burglary, reform school, an abusive marriage to a heroin-using husband, uppers and downers, and raising two terrified little girls in a cockroach-filled shack in Mira Loma where she beat them and couldn't stop.

She tells of a suicide attempt where she woke to find her husband had slept with her both nights of her coma without calling a doctor, of a PTA lady who dragged her to Al-Anon ('I felt like a whore in a nunnery'), and of walking into a young people's AA meeting in Pomona in 1964 where she heard 'valley laughter' for the first time. For five and a half years she stayed sober as a 'visitor of a different sort,' married to a gentle young man eleven years her junior whom she treated as her higher power. When he left and her daughters hit the drugs, she had a nervous breakdown and finally made the emotional surrender — learning to live alone for nearly ten years.

At 22 years sober, now married to a blue-eyed cowboy from Blythe she 13-stepped, Angie testifies that she is 'not in real danger of getting well' and comfortable with that. The core of her message is that AA women became her mamas who rocked her, AA men taught her to be a lady, and that the miracle is not that she came to AA but that she is still here. She tells newcomers she carries the message, her husband carries the messenger, and that between every two surrenders she forgets how she did it the last time.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Angie opens, thanks the El Paso Jamboree committee, says she is 'not in real danger of getting well' and introduces her cowboy husband from Blythe
• 4:30 Childhood — born into a family not ready for her, battered, sent to nuns, raises her dress on a dare and gets kicked out of catechism
• 9:00 Stepfather molests her, mother doesn't believe her; at 12 goes to live with her father, a fruit picker
• 12:00 First drink — a water glass of sherry wine from the Gallo brothers; wakes up with vomit in her hair, begins a lifetime of studying people's faces
• 16:00 Burglary, 13 months in California girls' reformatory, marries a mainline heroin user, pregnant in that order
• 22:00 White crosses and downers in the Mira Loma shack, bedroom drinking, suicide attempt — wakes after two days a 'piece of meat nobody wanted'
• 28:00 PTA lady takes her to Al-Anon ('whore in a nunnery'), then to young people's AA meeting in Pomona in 1964 — first time she hears 'valley laughter'
• 34:00 Ten months as a 'visitor,' 13-steps a 21-year-old with blue eyes, marries him, stays sober 5.5 years as an emotional parasite
• 42:00 The hated old-timer — stiff-arm hug turns into him crying on her shoulder and all her hate melting away; magic of AA
• 50:00 Daughters hit drugs, nervous breakdown, young husband packs and leaves; learns to live alone nearly 10 years and touches her higher power