I Drank on the Lie and Ran Into the Fear – AA Speaker – Donna B.

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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Glad to be here tonight with you.

I um haven't been here in a while and it's really nice to see so many people at this meeting. It's very big and it just gives me hope that there are people recovering and trying to recover just like me. I think that's one of the things about alcoholism for me was that I felt very much um isolated and alone like I really didn't know what was wrong with me.

So it was really troublesome. Every time I would get myself in a jam or have a situation involving alcohol, I I don't know. The strangest thing for me about this whole alcoholism thing was like I really did not understand it.

Like I couldn't relate my problems with the alcohol and I was having most of my problems when I was drinking alcohol but I couldn't make that connection. Um, I was thinking about, um, you know, who knows what the heck I'm going to say, but I was sitting there thinking about the part in the big book where it talks about fundamentally deep down within every man, woman, and child, you know, there's that God lives within us. And the other day I was eating dinner and my daughter came up behind me and said, "Mom, if I was in your belly, then how is there room for God to fit in your heart?" And I Now, how do you answer that?

But anyway, it reminded me of that line. And uh and what I can tell you about that is that I did not really know that God lived in my heart or within me for a long time. There was an enormous void for me because of my use of alcohol and because of the things that I continued to do around alcohol and the things that I let be done to me.

So, I had like this complete disconnect from any god of my understanding. And you know, as a kid, I was one of those kids that really was raised with a nice set of values and morals. I'm the youngest of six and um my parents were Irish Catholic and we went to church every Sunday and we uh you know, we I don't know.

I But I always felt like I was never enough. I was never good enough. And I can remember when I was like 12, I was asked to bring the baby Jesus down the front of the, you know, the aisle at mass and uh midnight mass and I had this complete and total anxiety attack like you know other kids in my class that were youth group this kind of thing.

That would have been like the thing to do. I all of a sudden had this attack. I started crying.

I'm like oh my god. And you know what I know about that is I felt completely unworthy of whatever that honor was. Like so many things had happened to me before I was 12 and I had already picked up booze at like 9 10 years old.

So there was a span there that it was already tearing me up. So that when I was asked to do that it was this sense of like I am so not worth this. I cannot do this and I did not do it.

And so when I look back and I was doing my work with my sponsor about, you know, I love and we agnostics where it talks about no matter how limited or how inadequate our relationship with God may seem, it's enough to begin. And so even though I felt limited when I got here, people were talking about God or like, you know, are you ready to believe or even now willing to believe that's all you need? I was like, I don't know.

I'm just so whacked from alcohol and drugs that I I'll get on my knees in the morning and ask God to keep me away from a drink. I'll say the serenity prayer in the middle of the day when I start to get freaked out. I'll do whatever you guys want me to do because I at the point when I gave up drinking and tried to stop drinking, I had really had enough.

like this looked really attractive to me and um really attractive to me and prior to I really tried I would try to stop like I was married and I remember thinking um honest to God if I stop cooking that then everything's going to get better in my marriage like if I could just get thin enough and I could be pretty enough everything else would work out okay at home and so I'm eating this freeze-dried food I'm on Neutri System I'm walking the boulevard every single day telling myself like, "I'm not drinking. I'm not doing it." And um and in my head, I knew there was a wedding that we were going to in May. So, I told myself, I'll drink at this wedding.

I'll settle down things at home and I will drink at this wedding in May. What happened is because I'm an alcoholic, um I couldn't hold out till May, I would sit at the bar every night next to my husband and he would drink and he was one of those drinkers that was not asking people to spot him for a back handspring on the back of the bar and he was not telling dirty jokes out in front of the bar and he was not doing he'd just sit and have his maintenance beer and you know he did fine. I on the other hand was like my money was my money and his money was my money but my money was not his money.

I'd be like I would be like in every single bar. I had to go all through the old port. He'd be right there where I found him.

Like we were different kind of drinkers. Now I don't know what his deal is now or whatever, but I know that we were different. And um you know, so I'd sit there with him and we would, you know, and I was like, "Okay." And the bartender said to me, "Have a shot of tequila.

It's got 80 calories in it." And I said, "Okay." But I had already had like 10 diet sodas and I'm sitting there trying to like hold on to my seat, not drink and stay with him and that was it. I took that first drink, that shot of tequila and I drank like eight shots of tequila later and I was drunk for a solid year. Now I knew nothing about the phenomenon of craving.

I knew nothing about any of that. But when I look back on that, when I took that drink, when I told myself I was not going to drink until May, it set off that phenomenon of craving. And the thing is for me is that once it starts, you know, how do I know pro?

You're probably an alcoholic because once it started, I never knew when it was going to stop. And I had it was like and when I tried to quit entirely, I I could not quit entirely. So things made sense when I started sitting in meetings and I started hearing things.

I could take parts of my own life, my own story, and I could identify it. Now some of the stuff I identified with was uh for me I had an inability to be committed in my marriage. I took a marriage Catholic marriage vow.

I wasn't able to keep that vow of celibacy celibacy. Yeah. Well that would have really helped if I had done that but I wasn't able to keep the uh the commitment.

And so when I got to AA and I hear people say well I got in car accidents. I had affairs. I you know I thought those things those hazardous conditions made me an alcoholic.

that wasn't true. What made me an alcoholic was that phenomenon of craving. So although I found the stories entertaining and I could identify because I think with a lot of us we have a lot of similar things that might take place when we're out there and we have we come from similar backgrounds some of us.

But then, you know, um, what I know makes me an alcoholic is what I have in common with you. Even if our stories aren't don't mirror each other, it's okay. Is that I have that phenomenon of craving that sets me apart from my, you know, like friends that I that would want to go and have a glass of wine with dinner.

I have a glass of wine with dinner. I want to I want to shoot myself. like I want to the next day I want to die because what I've done is I've told myself I don't want to do this today.

I don't want to hurt these people around me. I want to show up for this thing. I want to I want to get an education.

I want to be able to drive my car. There's lots of things that I want to be able to do. Once I ingested alcohol, it was like, okay, I'm not driving tonight.

Okay, I'm not sleeping with my husband tonight. I'll sleep with yours. Okay, I'm going to do this.

Everything that I told myself, all those values and morals that I had just went. They just went one by one. And what happened was the seedier and the shadier the people I was hanging out with, the lower they got.

It was like, okay, that was unacceptable to me. But now it's okay cuz they're doing it and I'm hanging out with them, so it's okay to do that. And so I started compromising.

So the unacceptable became the acceptable. And it got very scary because there were times I'm thinking how did I get to be like this? Like this is not what I this is not what I wanted to be.

This is not what my mother wanted me to be. If my mother could see what I'm doing right now for a drink or a drug, she'd be horrified. I mean I remember this guy walking down Commercial Street with this cardboard sign, you know, cuz we see them all the time out there.

And it said, "I need a I need a drink. No joke." And I thought, "Oh, that would have been minimal had I just stood on the street and held that sign. It would have been minimal compared to what I did to get alcohol.

My mother would have been ashamed of me, I thought. And then I thought, no, she'd really be ashamed if she really knew what I was doing, how I was really looking, you know. So, um, and I picked up booze.

I was one of those kids that, um, you know, there's a lot of chaos in my house. I was, my mother had six kids by the time she was 44. That is enough alone.

I have one. I would have committed myself. I can tell you that.

And I don't know how she did it, but there was a lot of stuff going on. And there were a lot of things going on in my house that never should have been going on. I did not know how to protect my body.

I did not know how to talk about what was taking place. And so what I did was when I found alcohol, it took care of all of it. It like put a cap on everything that ran through my head.

Every fear I had, everything I started to to develop some real idiosyncrasies around my anxiety around a lot of that stuff. I had uh you know a lot of things that I did to cover up and protect myself and kind of little survival skills which worked for me for a long long time until I got sober and a lot of those things that I was conditioned to do and to protect myself and all that kind of stuff. I can tell you they don't work in my marriage.

I can tell you they don't work in a lot of my relationships and it's taken a lot of time with my step work to undo what I you know what my natural thinking is. It's just like my natural thinking around booze. like I know that I can't use alcohol safely in any form.

And you know, as a kid, um you know, when all that's going on, all these things, and I'm one of those kids that couldn't sleep with a closet door open, and I had to check under the bed before I got in bed. And uh you know, I wondered when I was going to ever be able to address. And a lot of that stuff that took place in my life, what happened to me, what scared the hell out of me was that I'm sitting in a bar and all of a sudden I'm telling complete strangers.

I couldn't tell the man that I was married to the stuff that had taken place. The man that I was actually being intimate with. I couldn't tell anything about my life.

But I could sit next to you and not know you and I could tell you some terrifying, traumatizing things that happened to me. And then, you know, the problem was is that nobody could help me. I wasn't telling people that could help me.

I was just telling people so they could say, "Oh, wow. Oh, poor D. Oh, you know what?

you know, and so I started getting scared cuz I started telling strangers all these things about my life and I'm like, "Oh my god, I never know what's going to come out of my mouth now. What did I just tell them? I can't go there again.

What if they tell so and so?" It was like, you know, when I was drinking, I wanted to be one of those friends that you could tell something in confidence and not tell. And I am today one of those people that you could tell me something in confidence and I don't tell. But when I was drinking, it was like you would tell me something and I'd say I'd go tell somebody, "Well, don't tell her that I told you.

And then it became this whole thing and like and it was very confusing getting sober because I was trying to be honest and I was trying to mind my own business but Jesus Christ I'm an AA got all these people doing all kinds of I KNOW MORE ABOUT PEOPLE. I wish I did not know half the that I know about people. But what I'm telling you is it stays right here.

I know where I know where it needs to I know where it needs to stay. But it's crazy. you know, some of the stuff that goes on that uh that we do and we do to each other and you know, uh and it takes some time to get well and uh and recover and uh and it took me time to recover.

And what I can tell you is that when I got to AA, I was not introduced to uh I mean I was introduced to AA and the fellowship and and uh and I had a sponsor that I did step work with the step book and we read a little bit on the big book, but I didn't know then that what I was doing and how I was going through the steps really didn't mirror what was actually written in our literature when the the big book was written. So, she would say, "Read this or go write that or write a list of your character defects or whatever." And I'd go do it. I'd do whatever instruction she gave me because I didn't want to drink anymore.

And I honest to God, I had a desire to change cuz I knew if I didn't change that I would drink again. And so, so I went along for a period of time. And what happened was as a result of not doing thorough inventory work, I had difficulty uh in areas of my life and particularly in my the areas of my sex relations and that was related to a lot of the things that took place in my life as a child and I thought I'm never going to be able to straighten out.

I mean, I got divorced in AA. I remember when I was 18 months sober, I said to my sponsor, I'm going to work all 12 of these steps and then I'm going to divorce him. I'm divorce them.

I had it. And she was like, no major changes in the first year. I got to my third step and he was having an affair.

And I had no control over that. And I was um and I was surprised. And I don't know why because, you know, it wasn't like the shoe wasn't on the other foot for many years.

The difference was I just didn't get caught. And so here I am in this situation where I think somehow I've got the upper hand and at 12 steps I'm going to be done with this. And my whole life like turned upside down 18 months over.

And I'll tell you what, it was like the best thing that ever could have happened to me. And I didn't like it and it was humiliating and you know it was scary and I had to go out you know figure out what I was going to do and where I was going to live and like everything what you know like things happen. we recover and like things don't just I mean you got to sift through a lot of stuff and the thing was is that my marriage was not based on any principles.

We had nothing in common. I married a man that didn't want children like I wanted kids and uh and he was adamant about not having kids and so it was like okay if I'm how much more can I compromise things in my life? So that that ended and I went on to um you know like okay now I'm divorced now I get to date an AA which you know oh my god and uh so I didn't do very well.

I had a lot of sexual mishaps you want to call them. Um nothing had changed because I had not done a thorough sex inventory and a lot of my resentment a lot of the things that went on I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life because of all the stuff that took place. I can't function in a relationship.

Blah blah blah blah blah. And the reality was I had not done my work. And until I did my work, I was going to be incapable of functioning in a relationship and staying in a marriage and that kind of stuff.

And so I didn't remarry for 10 years. And um I'm not saying it took me 10 years to do a thorough sex inventory, but I can tell you um uh but it didn't. It took me uh a period of time to examine the stuff.

and then actually go out and practice what I had learned about what you know what my ideals and values were after I had done a sex inventory and um but it nearly killed me. I want you to know that what I found out is that in AA when I'm living an unprincipled life and it wasn't necessarily that each relationship I got in involved someone. I can tell you that I I had a period where I thought in sobriety that you know it was okay to date someone who was married.

And if you asked me if he was married, I'd tell you he was getting divorced. You'd say, "Well, is he married?" And I'd say, "Yeah, but he's getting divorced." See, I did not get the whole, you know, so I wasn't I didn't want to go out with somebody married. But, you know, because I started a relationship not based on the same principles and any ideals or values or going in the same direction and I got involved with someone who's unavailable.

So, it went on and on and on till I could stay out of the relationships, do my work, and then actually go out and date. And so, um, and when I dated, when I first went out with my husband the very first time, I remember saying to my sponsor, I'm not going out with him again. Like, because it was so different from anything I had ever done, it was terrifying.

She's like, "Oh, yeah, you're going out with him again." I'm like, "Oh." So, and then you know and then I you know I married him but you know I didn't just marry him within a month. I dated for a year. We had a lot of things you know and I've still had a lot of because of my past and because of my life and because of my history I I've had a lot of things that I've had to work out to be able to stay in my marriage and stay put.

And uh so um you know I often tell myself I'm just married for today and you know I'm committed and uh just for today I can do this and it seems to work like everything else everything else that I'm afraid of doing you know. Um I had uh a lot of fear. I was ruled and run by fear you know as I described the not closet door the under the bed.

Some of those were like justified fears, like real fears. I had them. The others were ones that I would cultivate over and over again.

I had no idea how to like settle down, get back into reality, call somebody, not act on my fear. I was always acting on fear and then I would get in trouble like it says in the big book. I mean, where did you get the ball rolling?

That ball was just rolling all the time. I couldn't I could not like say stop. I didn't have a relationship with God.

So, I couldn't when fear and resentment and all those things cropped up, I couldn't pause and go to God and figure it out or call somebody or whatever. I just acted on it. When I got afraid, I'd get angry.

So, I'd find myself in this huge battle, this huge argument because now I'm scared. And how I'm going to tell how I'm going to shut you down is I'm going to get angry. So, you don't even approach me about that.

And um and you know I still have you know I still have those kind of reactions to certain things but um I'm able to stop myself and say okay this is what you know and um and life continues to happen. Uh I you know I never imagined I mean I got sober at 26. I'm 44.

I never in a million years imagined that I would I don't know what I thought it was going to be like. All I can tell you is that I was terrified for a long time. I did not trust myself that I was not going to drink again until I did this work as it's outlined in the book.

And then and only then did I actually take my power back and find a power greater than myself and trust in the fact that God doesn't want me drunk. Uh I am capable of a lot of things. I have this I mean I honest to God believe this today.

If you would asked me early on, it was just kind of like, well, I'm going to stay sober. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get this together here. Uh, I'm going to find the right man, the right this, the right that.

And I know that a lot of people come into AA and think that, like, I'm going to get my together. I'm going to get the right job. I'm going to get the right woman or the right man, and everything's going to be okay.

And you know what? It's just one of those things where it really, I found out, was an internal, it was an internal thing. I had to do an internal investigation to be able to, you know, you can't go within without.

I had to find God and then be able to go in and examine all those things. And so now for me, like after years of coming day, I'm not one of those people that relapsed. I'm It's just not my story.

I think relapse is part of the disease. Relapse is not part of the recovery. It's part of the disease.

And I think that um for whatever reason uh my my my deal was I came here and I heard what I needed to hear and I did enough to keep me coming here until I realized what was really going on here until I was actually introduced to the big book in a way that I found out that it wasn't enough just to be sober that I had to find God. that somehow I had to get all this stuff that was blocking me from God and I had to go out and make amends and I had to do all kinds of stuff that I thought I will never live through. And I have completed my amends.

I have forgiven the unforgivable and I have been forgiven for a lot of things that I never thought. I have restored relationships that I never thought would restore be restored. And um you know I recently I lost my parents both of my parents 6 months ago within within 6 weeks of each other.

Craziest saddest time in my life. And all I can tell you about that is that I did not go through any of that without without a lot without fear and without God. So what I found is that I could match calamity with serenity.

There was a lot of chaos. There was a lot of sadness. There was a lot of family.

There was a lot of hospice and a lot of changing of diapers and a lot of all the things that go along with helping people die within a six week period, both of them. And I would drive over the bridge and I would think to myself, I do not want to go over there. I do not want to bathe him.

I do not want to change her diaper. I hope my sister's there when she needs her diaper changed. I cuz they were both.

And you know what? By the time I got over the bridge and the time I prayed, I had her more in love with my father and more in love with my mother. By the time I got there, my heart was softened.

I didn't have to want to do it. I just had to do it. It's like a lot of things.

I don't have to want to get out of bed every morning for my daughter, but I get out every morning. I love her. I want to see her.

But sometimes I'm just tired. And so, it's okay. I don't have to torture myself or I'm a bad mother cuz I can't get my ass out of bed.

Sometimes she has to lay there and punch me a few times. You know, all this stuff that goes on. Come on, mom.

you know, put some cold feet between my legs to torch me. You know, all those things that kids do. And then I say, "Okay, I'm going to get out." And I don't need to feel bad about any of that.

I can think whatever I want. It just depends on what I do. I can think whatever I want about a person.

I can think about whatever I want about the guy in front of me at the grocery store. I can do all that stuff. But what matters is what comes out of my mouth and what I do with my body language and what I do.

I mean, I think words are are like the most important thing. I mean, a word you can you could just you can wreck somebody, you know, and I did a lot of that. Like, I was one of those people that the sarcasm I wouldn't tell you like, gee, you really, you know, I don't really like what you said to me or, boy, that really, you know, or why would you say something to me like that?

That's kind of hurtful. I could never say that. What I would do is I'd come in the back door and I'd either tell something about you that nobody is supposed to know that would get you or I would just slice you in half with my sarcasm.

Like I remember my first marriage, my husband didn't come home one night. He was out sailing or something. You didn't call.

So I took those sticky notes when they first came out. We had this long countertop and I wrote t h a n k thanks for calling. and I taped it all.

So when he came home, he understood that I was pissed that he didn't call me, which meant sleep downstairs, don't touch me, whatever, but don't come near me cuz I'm really pissed off you didn't call me. Now, I could have called him and said, "Geez, son, you know, but I was drunk, so I wasn't thinking about him or was anything wrong. I was thinking only about how whatever." So that's kind of how I communicated.

That's how I functioned. That's how I dealt with things. you know, showing up for work.

If you miss work one day, you can't, you know, because you're hung over, you can't just miss one because they won't really think you have the flu, you got to miss two or three, and then you talk drunk into this three-day thing, and then you're still trying to regroup, and you still got to go in sick on the fourth day. It was like, you know, I was introduced to the big book and they would read the part more about alcoholism, about reading inspirational books and um, you know, physical fitness. I mean, I never identified more in my life.

Like, my sisters were giving me books like Dream Your Own Dream, What Colors Your Balloon, all this kind of stuff. And what instead we take up physical exercise, I would enter your system, Jenny Craig. I would infomercials at the end of my drink and I'd be up at 1:00 watching these infomercials.

In the first week, I got some freeze-dried I don't even know what kind of food. My sponsor was like, "Why don't you just put that away?" I was going to go back to church because that was going to fix me in the first week. And my sponsor said, "Look, I'll never discourage you from going to church, but being part of AA, it's not a requirement that you go to Catholic mass every Sunday.

That's not that's not what this is about, you know, and so we talk about spirituality and we talk about my organized religion and those kind of things." And I didn't go to church for a very long time. I just said, "This is all I can handle. All I can handle right now is focusing on the spiritual thing and trying to work these steps and not drink." and my life has gotten easier and easier.

And I'm not talking about the things that have gone on that have caused me turmoil. Loss of pregnancies, loss of children, you know, the things that have happened to me in my years in sobriety have happened to me. And what I found in all of those things that I can share that experience, I don't know who's going to come to me in the next 10 years and tell me they lost both their parents in six weeks, but I can tell you that I'll be prepared to help them.

I've had women come to me after I lost pregnancies and say, "I need help. I don't you know and then every pregnant woman in the world came to me after they you know I lost my baby and all of a sudden I got all these pregnant women you know that are like I need help. I don't know how to stay so stable or go to meetings do this whatever and I helped them because that was what God wanted me to do and I was happy for them.

See I don't genuinely take away from anybody's happiness because I've had sadness anymore. And when I was sad believe me if my day was going to yours was too. like worship and I would take you down with me.

I mean immediately. Sundays I would get up on the weekends and I would immediately pick a fight with my husband because I wanted to go out and drink. I wanted to look like we had this relationship and on the weekends we did things together, read the paper, played tennis.

I couldn't even get the paper delivered to my house. My experience of playing tennis was I stored a few lines of cocaine and I'd go out and I'd play tennis with my sister. Like I did nothing.

It was all everything recreational involved drugs and alcohol. I wanted to look a certain way. So like my underwear would match, my nail polish, it match, my lipstick would match my shirt.

And I would be puking whole tomatoes out my nose by no time because I drank so much and drunk so much that I thought if I ate something, everything would be okay. I was one of those drunks that would like throw up in a dresser drawer, shut it, find it three days later. I was popped with blood vessels in my eyes puking.

I had not had a solid bowel movement in a year. I could my whole system was completely shut down from drugs and alcohol. And I was 26 years old and I could have used AA at 20.

Like I remember dropping out of college, driving home and saying to my my mother, I I I can't stop drinking. I don't know what to do. And you know what?

They did not know what to do with me. I had a grandfather that lived with us for a period of time. He would urinate in the corner of the bedroom.

My mother would bring him maintenance beers and every once in a while he'd get loose and he'd run down to Tyranny's bar and my brother my older brother would drag him back. That was what I knew about alcoholism. I was not peeing in the corner and I was not um you know those things weren't going on for me.

Um but I had a brother that peed every time he drank and I swore he was going to you know it was like he'd pee in the closets. We'd all be like you know afraid it was awful. And then I of course, you know, then you go on to sleep with people that pee on you and and I came thinking, well, I wasn't a bed wet, but if you sleep with people that went to bed, you get wet.

I really don't think there's much difference. And so I had to identify with what I identified with a lot of men and I identify with a lot of women. And those are the two types alcoholics that I know, male and female.

And the beauty for me is that I no longer suffer, you know, from that hopeless state of mind and body. That I really, honest to God, have recovered from that seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. And all I have to do is ingest one drink and I'm done.

And you know what what I mean about like is that I will die that spiritual death that it describes in the big book. I might not die right away. I'll want to die, but it doesn't mean I'm going to go out and get hit by a car.

It doesn't mean I'm going to overdose. It doesn't mean any of that. What it means is that I'm going to walk around knowing what I know about this disease and the true nature of, you know, I am now armed with the truth about myself and I wanted to blow my brains out when I got here.

Imagine the progression of that that period of time of what I will feel like if I take one drink. And as much as I'd like to think, well, I've been coming here, maybe people would miss me. You know what I know is that I will do until another one comes along because I I'll tell you what, I've been here a long time.

There are people that I have loved in AA and all of a sudden they're gone. And then a period goes by where you call them and you wonder where they are. And then five years will go by and they show back up and you realize you haven't thought about them for four or five years because you know what?

There's so many of us. And there's so many relationships and there's so many people to help and there are so many people that need help. That's the thing about doing this work in AA is that I really feel a very strong responsibility to continue on this path because there are people that need help.

And so people that are doing the work, I would encourage you to continue to do your work because there are people that need you like desperately need you. Could be the guy sitting next to you haven't talked to yet. Maybe he needs you.

Could be somebody you're going to meet tomorrow if you go to a detox meeting. But I couldn't get out of myself or get anywhere until I did this work because I couldn't sit next to somebody and say, "How are you? Have you been to this meeting before?

Do you need help? Have you tried to come to AA before?" You know, and you know the part in the big book where it says, "Oh, go out drink." You know, people will pull things out of the big book randomly like, "Our hats are off to you. Go try some controlled drinking.

Go drink for a year." If you read on, it says, "We can be of most help to alcoholics when we help them understand the thinking that precedes the first drink." So, if you're thinking about drinking, you have an obsession to drink right now and you need some help. Talk to somebody about the thinking that precedes that drink. What is it?

Is it you don't have the right woman? I mean, is it you don't have the right man? Is it you want the right job?

Whatever it is that's that's got this obsession that's driving you to think, "Okay, I've got to have all these things to be okay." That's not true. It's the lie. Like for me, there were a lot of lies that I would tell myself.

I'm not going to drink tonight. I'm going to go home. I'm going to cook dinner for this man cuz that's what people do when they're married.

I'm going to do my laundry. And what would happen is I would ingest the drink and then that was it. So the lie I told myself is I'm not going to end up drunk on Peaks Island.

I'm gonna stay right here in town. And somebody would say, "Hey, I'm go. There's a booze cruise.

We're going down, you know, Casco Bay. Why don't you come with us? We'll be back by 11." I tell myself, I can be back by 11:00.

I can get up tomorrow. I got to work the early shift. But if I take the 11:00 boat, I'll have 6 hours to sleep it off and I can do that.

And you know what happened? I wouldn't make it back. I'd be calling out from work, whatever.

I drank on the lie and I ran into the you know. So now the thing for me is how am I going to cultivate this relationship with God under all circumstances when my parents are dying, when I'm selling my house, when I got a lot of stuff going on in my life and I just keep saying, "Please God, remove my fear and direct my attention to what you'd have me be. Help me to not direct this to my husband cuz when I'm in fear and he's in fear and we got stressed and you know, there's a lot going on.

The other day we had this little thing and I'm like, you know what? My parents just died six months ago. I'm selling my house.

I got a four-year-old. We're in a dead way. Like, you know, I got to consider these things.

It's stressful. But I also don't want to inflict myself on the people around me. So, how am I going to do that?

I have to go to God. I have to go to my sponsor. I have to work with other people.

I have to do this stuff to get out of myself. So, what am I not willing to give up to have a better relationship with God? Am I going to stop?

Like, every time I go to see a house, I lay in bed, my husband will say, "I'm sorry I woke you up." Like if he whatever snores and I I'll say that's okay. I'm just redecorating that house we just looked at. Like this is the stuff I'm doing in the middle of night.

I'm like please God help me sleep. Like get everybody and everything out of my bed cuz I got to go to sleep. I got I got responsibilities tomorrow.

Like it seems minimal to you but the stuff that we store in our heads is just ludicrous. I mean it's unbelievable to me what we can keep going around there. And the only way I know out of that is is really to go to God, you know.

And um so you know, if you're new, welcome. And you know what I can tell you about my experience here is there really is a solution. It really does work.

I'm not kidding you when I say that my life has gotten better and better and better. And I'm not saying it's been without. You know, I've had I've had scrape your chin on the sidewalk kind of sorrow.

And I've had joy where you got to peel me off the ceiling. I mean, it's that it's that there have been that extremes. And I don't think that's any different than anybody else who's out there trying to function in this world.

I just don't use alcohol to sedate myself to comfort myself. I have to go to God for that kind of um peace of mind. And the last thing I'll say is that you know when I came here to AA it was really my relationship with God pretty much this was it.

God damn it or God help me. So the idea that I would come here and come to know God and come to and be willing to take a regular look at myself uh you know make restitution as needed know that I'm not I'm human that there's no way I'm going to get perfect that I am going to get angry that I'm going to you know I'm going to retaliate I can still be manipulative all those kind of things but what happens is this internal barometer says to me that's not the right thing that was not the right thing that you said to that woman that was not the right thing. You shouldn't have repeated this.

You shouldn't have done whatever. Whatever it is that I can say to myself, that's not okay. And then I can go back and take care of it.

So then I get to go out and be free because I don't have all this stuff in my head that tells me I'm not good enough. I shouldn't have done this. I mean, I remember teaching sixth grade math.

Don't you love it when somebody says the last thing they say when they go on? He was teaching sixth grade math and I taught them for a whole year and I would go in every day before I had done this work and I would say they're going to find out I don't know how to add. I was teaching sixth grade math but I'm telling myself every day they're going to find like they're going to find me out.

I don't know what the hell it is that you guys are going to find out about me stuff I don't even know yet but I had this thing that was like if somebody was looking at me they must know they got to know I don't know. I mean it's just crazy. And the only way that I've been able to find relief from any of that stuff is by um by trying to have this relationship with God.

So if you are new, I welcome you and I I hope that you find what I found here. And uh and it's never too late. Where there is uh where there is life, there is hope.

If you're breathing, you stand a chance. No matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, there is a solution. It's outlined in the book.

Very helpful to do a thorough resentment, fear, and sex inventory. find God and go on and help other people continue to take inventory. It's a beautiful thing.

It for me it beats the alternative. I don't know what your mental movie picture about where booze and drugs and all that stuff took you, but I have a very clear one of of me and working with other people and sharing with other people keeps it very fresh. I no longer live in my past.

I am free from my past. Those promises that it outlines have come true. Um, and I believe it it can happen for anyone.

So, thank you for having me and >> thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.