You’ve Got Higher Power Set Up as a Version of You — My Sponsor’s One-Line Cure for My Funky Higher Power – Valerie D.

About This Speaker Tape

Valerie D. opens in a Las Vegas speaker meeting with a Southern voice and a clear home-group identity — Jaywalkers group in Richmond, sobriety date October 13, 1992. She traces her alcoholism back before her first drink: an alcoholic father, a violent early-childhood home, parents divorced when she was seven, and a persistent sense of being an outsider who couldn't fit in her own skin. She names being a 'power seeker' and a thief from childhood, stealing a friend's toys and hiding them under the bed — a defect that would eventually metastasize into $40,000 in debts and amends.

Her drinking escalated fast. First drink at 14, labeled ungovernable by Florida by 15, sent to a Jacksonville Beach treatment center in 1982 where a counselor named Dick T. told thirty kids only three would make it. She got introduced to AA there but treated it as something to beat — stole a key to the Orange Park clubhouse, stole the money, bought alcohol and partied inside. At 17 she chose sobriety over juvie, moved to LA to her newly sober father, hung around the Covina 502 clubhouse and the 13-step dances, was 'stark raving sober' for three and a half years with a sponsor in name only, then drank. She ran through LA, Atlanta and the music industry, married, got pregnant, moved to New York, and — after a doctor suggested a beer to let her milk down — was back to drinking every day, carrying a gun, leaving her son with sitters, and running a double life as a fine-art rep by day and biker-bar regular by night.

One humiliating night — dress in shambles, no underwear, driver looking at her with disgust — her father 12-stepped her back into AA. She got sober in Richmond at the Phoenix Group, drank two more times (the last was two shots of whiskey in Minneapolis), and has not drunk since. The heart of her talk is what happened at three and a half years sober, when she hit her dark night on the floor — suicidal, homicidal, raging at Higher Power and AA. A woman in Louisville, Kentucky walked her back through the Big Book word for word, had her read her fourth step aloud to three strangers in a sunroom to smash the ego at depth, and put her on a plan to pay back every dollar at one or five dollars a month.

Her teaching lands on the difference between being dry and being sober: stopping drinking wasn't enough — she became sicker, a 'thief by the gate,' a predator in the rooms, until real sponsorship and the directions in six and seven actually separated the girls from the ladies. She quotes her sponsor Don — 'you've got Higher Power set up as a version of you,' 'there is no there,' 'quit trying to steal my experience' — and closes on fellowship, service, and the line she borrows from a friend named Paige: 'I'm way overpaid by Alcoholics Anonymous.'

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens in Southern voice, gives sobriety date 10/13/1992 and home group Jaywalkers in Richmond
• 3:30 Alcoholic father, parents' divorce at seven, always felt like an outsider in her own skin
• 7:00 Sponsor's teaching about power seekers; she's been a thief since childhood — material, emotional, spiritual
• 11:00 First drink at 14, ungovernable by 15, Jacksonville Beach treatment center 1982 — Dick T. tells thirty kids only three will make it
• 17:00 Stole the key to the Orange Park AA clubhouse, bought alcohol with stolen clubhouse money, threw parties inside
• 22:00 Covina 502 clubhouse in LA, sponsor in name only, 13-step dances, 'stark raving sober' for three and a half years, drinks
• 30:00 Pregnancy in New York, doctor suggests beer to let milk down, double life with a gun and biker bars, humiliating night ends in father 12-stepping her
• 38:00 Phoenix Group in Richmond, last drink in Minneapolis — two shots of whiskey before her husband walks in
• 45:00 Dark night of the soul at three and a half years — depression, rage, hated AA and God
• 52:00 Louisville woman walks her through circle-and-triangle, reading fourth step to three strangers, repaying $40,000 at one to five dollars a month