You Can’t Think Your Way Into a New Life: AA Speaker – Jeanette S. – Waitsburg, WA
AA speaker Jeanette S. from Waitsburg, WA shares her story of early blackout drinking, multiple treatment attempts, and how working the steps with action changed everything—not thinking.
Jeanette S. from Waitsburg, WA was a blackout drinker from her first drink at 12, spending years waking up with no memory of where she’d been or what she’d done. In this AA speaker tape, she walks through how she finally got sober at 24 after hitting a blood alcohol level of .28, and how her sponsor’s insistence on the Big Book and *action*—not thinking—saved her life.
Jeanette S. shares her story of alcoholism starting at age 12 with blackout drinking, multiple treatment center stays, and a turning point when family members took her to AA meetings consistently despite her resistance. This AA speaker talk focuses on how working the steps with vigorous action—particularly the importance of Step 4 inventory work and understanding that “you can’t think your way into a new way of living”—transformed her thinking and her life over nearly two decades of sobriety. She discusses her spiritual awakening through the program, the role of her Big Book-focused sponsor, and how practicing the principles in all her affairs has given her true freedom.
Episode Summary
Jeanette S. doesn’t remember most of her drinking. From the first sip at a slumber party at age 12, she was a blackout drinker—waking up in places with no clothes, in jail, in California, with complete amnesia about how she got there. For the next 12 years, every morning started the same: a promise not to drink, obliteration by noon. Her family intervened repeatedly, sending her to treatment at 19, then again after a car accident that broke her back. Nothing stuck.
She tried aversion therapy at one treatment center, overdosed twice (once on pills mixed with tequila, once on alcohol alone with a blood alcohol level of .28, when she was found unconscious outside a hospital emergency room), and still didn’t believe she had a problem. But somewhere between her fiancé going to treatment and both their families dragging her to AA meetings every single day, something shifted. She hated the people in the rooms—they were old, they smoked too much, they didn’t look fun. But one person who drove her to meetings kept talking about looking for similarities instead of differences, and Jeanette started to identify with the loneliness, the hole in her soul that nothing could fill.
She asked for a sponsor at around nine months sober and got someone who was, in Jeanette’s words, a “Big Book thumper.” This sponsor changed everything by being blunt: if Jeanette’s thinking was so great, her life wouldn’t look the way it did. They dove into the steps immediately, and though Jeanette couldn’t see how any of it applied to her at first, she kept showing up.
The core of her talk is about action over thinking. She admits she was willing to say she was powerless over alcohol, but couldn’t see her life as unmanageable—she was young, cute, men paid her rent and car payments. Her sponsor had to point out that unmanageability isn’t about stuff; it’s internal. She could have the perfect life on the outside and still be unmanageable inside. Coming to believe in a Higher Power meant first believing she was insane—doing the same thing every morning and expecting a different result. She’d grown up spiritually confused with a fire-and-brimstone father and a Buddhist mother, so believing in a God of her understanding took work. But watching the program work in other people’s lives was proof enough.
The turning point was understanding Step 3 and action. She went on a spiritual quest looking for God in churches, temples, synagogues, and books, only to read “We Agnostics” and realize God was always within her. Her sponsor taught her that the Big Book is full of the word “action”—and even Jeanette’s cheerleading chant: “ACT-I-ON. You can’t think your way into a new way of living. You must live your way into a new way of thinking.”
Her Fourth Step inventory was lists: people who pissed her off, why, what it affected, and—hardest—her own part. Some column blanks her sponsor filled in by knowing her well enough to see where her mistakes were. Seeing her character defects in black and white made them impossible to deny. The pattern of her insanity was glaring. She took the Seven Step prayer asking God to remove them, though some days are better than others.
By the Ninth Step and the promises, some of her fears started lifting. She could look in the mirror. She realized she deserved to be happy. She learned that faith without works is dead, and willingness without action is fantasy—and she knows what that fantasy world looks like because she’s lived there.
Step 10 taught her about living with integrity. Today, when she treats someone badly, she feels it in her gut. It doesn’t sit well. She carries paper and pen everywhere because in 19 years of sobriety, she’s never found a problem she couldn’t get to the core of with a list and pen. Step 11 took time to understand; she thought meditation was hokey until she realized it’s listening for God’s answer after prayer. And God speaks through other people—a phone call, a meeting where she hears exactly what she needs, a stranger at Safeway. She’s learned to ask God to make His signs big, loud, and in neon.
Step 12 is her biggest gift. She carries the message not just to alcoholics but to anyone—employers, coworkers, people in her life still drinking. She practices these principles in all her affairs, which is harder than being perfect for an hour in a meeting. Real freedom is being the same person everywhere, not having to remember a story, not having to pretend to please or manipulate anyone.
Notable Quotes
You can’t think your way into a new way of living. You must live your way into a new way of thinking.
Willingness without action is fantasy, and I know what that fantasy world looks like. I’ve lived in it many a time.
If you do not feel close to God, guess who moved? Me.
My feelings are not fact. I can feel a whole lot of things that are not based in reality whatsoever on any given day at any given moment.
There is no difference. What you see is what you get. Period. To thine own self be true. Today I have the freedom and the happiness and the peace and the serenity.
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Step 2 – Higher Power
Step 12 – Carrying the Message
Willingness
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Step 2 – Higher Power
- Step 12 – Carrying the Message
- Willingness
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
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 and I'm an alcoholic. >> We share a sobriety birthday of December 11th of 1989 and for that I am truly grateful.
I also have a home group. My home group is the Nachis Valley AA group in Nachis, Washington. So most of my home group is here.
Um cuz we do together. Um so what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. I can't tell you a whole lot of specifics on my drinking because I was a blackout drinker from the very first time I ever took a drink.
So most of my what it used to be like was everybody saying, "Oh my god, do you know what you did last night?" And then they would proceed to tell me. And it usually involved on top of a table removing my clothing. Sometimes going home with him, sometimes coming to in jail, sometimes coming to in California.
Um I just I absolutely had no clue what was going to happen when I drank. There was never any predicting the outcome. So I took my first drink when I was 12 years old at a slumber party with a bunch of other girls.
There was probably 12 of us. Everybody took one sip. 10 out of the 12 spit it out.
Me and the other girl drank the rest of the fifth of vodka. I came to at 5:00 a.m. Three blocks down the road.
Not a stitch of clothes on. And that's pretty much what it looked like for the next few years. Um, you know, there were some outside issues that entered when I was in high school that kind of sped my disease along.
Um, I thought it helped me drink more when I took all that, but it in actuality just brought my bottom a lot faster. Um, the first time my family sent me to treatment, they did an intervention. I was 19.
Of course, I told them at the treatment center I could not possibly be an alcoholic cuz I wasn't old enough to drink. Never mind that I had been drinking on a regular basis for the last 7 years. Um, but um, I did not stay at that treatment center.
I only stayed for about 10 days. Um, and then I left because I was obviously not one of you. You guys were old and icky.
And so I I definitely did not belong. And so I left that treatment center. couple years later after that um I was in a car accident and broke my back the first time and um did not do anything that the doctors told me to do.
took a boatload of prescription drugs and a lot of tequila on top of that and um had my very first um stint in the hospital where they pumped my stomach and you know shoved all that charcoal down there which really does taste like you're chewing on a briquette then and that was my first experience with you know an overdose and um so my family decided that they needed to send me to treatment again. This time they sent me to Shik Shadel. So I Right on.
You know, aversion therapy. Drink till you puke. Okay.
And I'm paying money for this. Why? Cuz I do this at home every night.
Um completed that treatment. Didn't leave that one. Um, but it also nothing changed.
Nothing changed in my drinking behavior from that treatment center, you know, because I'd been doing that for quite some time. Um, had a um another overdose on on some outside issues about a year after that. Um, and then a year after that, I actually had my first um my one and only overdose from alcohol.
I had alcohol poisoning. Um, and uh I was unconscious and some friends um drove me to the emergency room, booted me out in the driveway of the hospital and left. Um, and that's where they found me unconscious outside the emergency room doors.
Um and when they did a blood alcohol level, it was 28 and um so they, you know, proceeded to pump my stomach again and do the charcoal thing and all of that. Um, and I still did not think that I had a problem. But that's when um, some concerned family members started dragging me to Alcoholics Anonymous on a fairly regular basis whether I wanted to go or not.
And I still thought you guys were kind of old and I still thought you were icky and you smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much coffee and you did not look like you were fun. You did not, you know. And then um my fiance at the time, his family did an intervention on him and and I told him when they did the intervention, "This is no big deal.
You go to treatment. It's kind of like vacation. You'll be gone for a few weeks.
We won't drink for a few months. They'll get off your back and we'll just go back to living our life like we had been." So that was our plan. That was our plan.
But between his family and my family, somebody came by and took me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous every day. And um somehow you guys became contagious. Um because um one of one of these people who took me to meetings on a regular basis would talk to me in the car all the way there and in the car all the way home and talk about um listening for the similarities instead of the differences because I was so special and different than you when I got here.
you know, I was 24 years old and had lost custody of my son, was um had been living in my car mostly, um was on the verge of losing my job again. Um but did not think my life was unmanageable. But you guys started talking about that jumping off place.
You guys talked to me about not being able to live with or without alcohol. You guys talked about um that loneliness, that hole in my soul that absolutely nothing would fill up. Um and I identified with that part.
I still thought you guys were old and icky, but I did start to identify a little bit um with your stories. So then, you know, I went to a meeting and said that I needed a sponsor and this lady um came up to me and gave me her phone number and I started calling her on a on a regular basis and she was a big book thumper, you know, and thank God, thank God she was a big book thumper and we dived right into the book immediately. Um, and for the most part, I did not see I would read those steps on the wall in the meeting.
I did not see how any of that pertained to my life. I did not see how any of that was going to change my life. Um, but I had this wonderful sponsor who told me she didn't care what I thought and that if my thinking was so great, I my life would not look the way it did if I was capable of changing my life on my own.
Um, so I decided after about it was I was probably about 9 months sober when I finally started taking this program seriously. And it just it still amazes me at how minute my willingness was compared to the real results that I got from actually applying these steps in my life and doing just a little bit of action. Um, you know, it was pretty easy for me to admit that I was powerless over alcohol, but it was really hard for me to understand that my life was unmanageable.
Um, I was young. I was cute. Um, men are easy to manipulate.
They will pay your rent. They will pay your car payment. They will buy you anything you want.
Um, so I could spend my whole paycheck on drinking. Um, and so I did not see that as being unmanageable. I thought I was managing quite well.
Thank you. Um, and and you know, my sponsor explained to me how it was not about this stuff on the outside. I could drive the best car and live in the best neighborhood, you know, and have the perfect life on the outside, but inside I was very unmanageable.
Very unmanageable. So um coming to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. First I had to believe I was insane.
Um and I did not believe that you know when I got here I did not. But then again you know I had a sponsor who was in the book and so she pointed out that the book talks about the definition of insanity and doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. And I did that every day.
Every morning I would wake up and say, "I'm not going to drink today." And by noon I'd be obliterated, you know, and so it was pretty easy for me to believe that I had become insane under the disease of alcoholism. And so when I realized I was insane, coming to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity was something else. Um, I had grown up with the god of my parents understanding.
And my parents I I grew up religiously My parents were my dad was raised Pentecostal and converted to Methodist in the military. My mother was raised Buddhist. So I had these very opposite religious views from my parents.
So I was very religiously confused. I was totally spiritually when I got here cuz I never knew what to believe. And um on one hand I had this fire and brimstone hell and damnation god on my dad's side and and on my mom's side you know not that my mom practiced Buddhism but she preached it and so you know I had to be you know there's all these in Buddhism you know it's there's all these having having the right kinds of things in your life to attain the next spiritual plane, you know, and so if I was a good girl and I did what I was told and I listened well and all of these wonderful things, then then, you know, God would love me.
And so by the time I was, you know, in my teens, there was absolutely no way anything in my life I was doing was right. There was no God anywhere that was going to love me. So when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, you guys taught me, thank you very much, feelings are not fact, you know, cuz I felt unloved.
I felt unworthy. And the fact of the matter is is my family would not have kept treat sending me to treatment center after treatment center if they thought I was unworthy or unloved. Um, and I thank you for teaching me that my feelings are not fact.
I can feel a whole lot of things that are not based in reality whatsoever on any given day at any given moment even today. So coming to believe in that higher power, I finally saw God working in your life. I saw your lives change.
I saw your lives get better. I saw you guys get happy. So there must be a God that's working for you.
He may not work in my life, but he's definitely working in yours so I can believe that there is a God. Being able to turn my will in my life over to that God was something entirely different. Because I felt that I had grown up spiritually I went on a little God quest.
Went to a lot of different churches, temples, synagogues, read a lot of books. Um, what I found for me is that there are some core principles in every religion that is the same across the board. I figure that's the God stuff.
And the stuff that I can't swallow and the stuff that's different in every religion, I figure that's the man stuff and I can just throw that aside. Every book of religion was written by a man. And sometimes we have perception issues and we don't always write down exactly what we hear.
So I could just sweep that aside. And those principles that I found in all of the books of religion that I read are the exact same principles that are in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, so that was the basis of my little god quest.
And it was really funny because after I went on this little god quest, I run this wonderful chapter in here called we agnostics where it tells me exactly where is it. We found the great reality deep down within us. In the last analysis, it is only there that he may be found.
So, as I was busy traing all over town, everywhere, looking for God, the answer was in the book all along. As long as I'm still and quiet, he is always with me. Always.
I don't have to go looking for God. A friend of mine has a magnet on her refrigerator. It says if you do not feel close to God, guess who moved?
Me. So, so I was able to finally have a God of my understanding that I could trust enough to be able to turn my will in my life over to the caru. I didn't really know that what that meant, but I had a wonderful sponsor who pointed out all the directions in this book and how many times the word action is in it.
And there are some members of my home group that absolutely hate this, but I'm going to do it anyway because it is my favorite. Plug your ears, Rick. I was a cheerleader in high school.
Act I O N Action action. We need action. ACT IO N.
Action. Action. We need action.
You guys taught me that I cannot think my way into a new way of living. I must live my way into a new way of thinking. And absolutely nothing will happen if I do not get off my dead ass and do it.
I spent a lot of time on my couch. I spent a lot of time on a bar stool living in someday Isisle where everything would be wonderful. But I never left the bar stool and nothing ever changed.
So you guys taught me wonderful things like launching into vigorous action and into that fourth step we went. And my sponsor taught me that a list is from top to bottom and not from left to right. So only worry about that first column first.
Everybody who pissed me off. That was the easy one. Why they pissed me off that second column came pretty quick too.
you know that what it affected got a little grayer and shadier. I don't know. They just pissed me off and I don't like them.
It worked, you know. But that that last column, that fourth column, that looking at me, the looking at my mistakes, my part, um that column was a blank in a lot of places, you know, and thank God that I had a sponsor who by that time knew me fairly well and could show me where my part was and what my mistakes were. So that when we were done with that, I had this wonderful little list of character defects that some were quite obvious, some were pretty subtle.
Um, and so I could better understand and start seeing the pattern in my life of my insanity of doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting something different. And I got to see that in black and white. And it's really hard to dispute your character defects when they're glaring at you from that piece of paper, you know.
And so we immediately got on our knees and said the sevenstep prayer, you know, and I tried to become willing for God to remove all of those. Some days are better than others on that. You know, there are still some days when my character defects are pretty blatant and glaring.
Um, you know, I still have an ego the size of Texas. That hasn't changed. I just don't act on it nearly as much.
I try to I have tried to stop the practice of unnecessary disclosure. Not always successfully. I still like that shock value of what my life used to be like compared to what it is today, you know.
But I I do ask God to remove my shortcomings and and some days I am a shining example of this program and other days I just don't drink and you know and then from that list from that fourth step we made the list for my amends which on that day I was probably only willing to make amends to about 10% of them. Um, but again, it amazes me how just a little bit of willingness on my part followed with a little bit of action nets some pretty big results. And um you know in the process of that ninth step is when you come to the promises in and the ninstep promises is you know when I get to know a new freedom and a new happiness and that was pretty cool you know because some of those fears started to go away and it became easier to look myself in the mirror and to be able to start seeing a little bit of selfworth that maybe I was going to be okay.
Maybe I deserved some of these promises and that it was okay to be happy. And um I am still greedy. I know that none of the results in my life would have happened without the work, without last weekend at at the Yakama Valley Roundup, my friend Effie showed me this card and on it it says faith without works is dead.
So then willingness without action is fantasy. And I know what that fantasy world looks like. I've lived in it many a time.
Even in sobriety, I can go to fantasy land pretty easy where I want things to change and I'm willing for them to change, but I can will it with all my might. If I don't do anything, nothing will change, you know. So I know that as long as I am willing to get into action, then God blesses me with some absolutely amazing gifts, you know, and so I'm still greedy and I still want more.
So we continue to take a personal inventory. I'd like to tell you it's every day, but that would be a lie. And I said I would try not to lie today up here.
So, um, you know, I take I try to take one every single day, but it doesn't happen every single day. Life happens and sometimes I'm tired or sometimes I forget or sometimes I just don't care. And I don't want to know if my behavior harmed anybody today.
Um but I do continue to take personal inventory and today as the result of these steps you know these I have morals I don't know where they came from I caught them from you and so when I do treat somebody badly and I know I've done it. It does not sit well with me. I can feel it in my gut.
things are not okay in my world. They may look okay on the outside, but from the inside looking out, I know that they are not. Um, and so that's a pretty good indication that I need to do a quick little 10st step and take a little inventory to find out what's going on.
Um, some days that's right away. Sometimes it's a couple days down the road when it becomes uncomfortable enough. Sometimes it has to be downright painful before I am willing to take a look.
Um, but I always know what the answer is. You know, it just amazes me that I have yet in 19 years of sobriety come across a single problem that I could not get to the core to with a piece of paper and a pen. And so, you know, some pretty good tools.
I carry paper and pen with me everywhere. Um, you know, and I get to seek through prayer and meditation, which I really did not understand meditation when I got here. I thought it was, you know, some hokey 60s thing where you sat in the lotus position and didn't work for me.
um you know and and I have um read some books on meditation and gotten a little bit better understanding of what that word means for me. I know that what I do doesn't work for everybody. Um but the basis of my meditation is prayer is when I talk to God.
Meditation is when I get to try and listen for the answer. And I can tell you in the 19 years that I have been sober, not once when I am being still and quiet have I ever heard a booming voice say, "Janette, this is what you need to do." Never happened. But I can pray on a particular situation or a particular problem and my phone will ring and there will be another member on the other end.
Or I will go to a meeting and hear something that I need to hear the solution to my problem. Or I will run into somebody at the vegetable aisle at Safeway and they will give me a suggestion. Nine times out of ten the answer that I am seeking comes from you people.
You know I don't know how to listen for the voice of God. Haven't learned how to do that yet. Um but I do know that the voice of God definitely comes through you and that I can hear.
So whenever I am praying on a problem and then I'm listening for the solution, I always always when I pray ask God to please make sure that if he's going to send me a sign or a me messenger um make it big, make it loud, preferably in neon because I can walk by anything and not see it. It could be as big as Mount Reineer. Big huge sign.
Janette, this is the answer. I'll walk right by it and not see it. Um, you know, I am I am grateful that there are enough people in this program who loved me enough to tell me the truth when things don't look right in my world, when I don't look right in my world, um, and when my behavior is not right.
I have friends and loved ones in this program who will come say, "What the hell is going on with you?" You know, I'll be just dying the clouds, not paying any attention, just going on my merry way. And um you know, thank God, thank God that you guys let me know when my behavior was unacceptable. Thank God that you gave me suggestions on how to change that behavior.
You know, when I got here, I was shocked and amazed that there were men in this program who thought I was less than morally upstanding woman. And then somebody at the club said, "Well, you know, if you don't want to be treated like a maybe you ought not dress like one." So I started wearing different clothes, you know, pants, covered myself. Oh my god, that stuff works.
People started to treat me different, you know, but there were still some some people who treated me the same. And then somebody made the suggestion that maybe you ought not to act like a So I started to change my behavior. And uh I said last night that I am you guys have smoothed off the rough edges and somebody said that they thought my edges were still pretty rough a little bit around I was still rough around the edges a little bit but they're fairly new in the program and they have absolutely no clue.
There was an old-timer there at the meeting who had known me since the first day I came into the program and he said, "Are you kidding me? That's a lady today. She is nowhere near rough around the edges like she was when she got here, you know.
And so then we come to step 12 where I get the biggest gift that this program has. The I love all three parts of the 12step. I love the fact that I have had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.
You know, for for years I thought that that that God consciousness and that relationship with with a God or a higher power was going to come from reading the right books or going to the right church. Um, and the fact of the matter is is that you guys not only showed me how to have a spiritual awakening, you held my hand and walked me through having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. I get to carry this message and not only just to alcoholics.
When I carry this message, I get to carry this message to those people in my life who are still drinking. I get to carry this message to um anybody, anybody. Um I changed jobs this year, but I used to have an employer who were who was quote unquote normal.
He was a normie. Um, but was anytime anybody got in trouble with their drinking, they all just send them to me. Go see Janette.
She'll give you some kind of book and some schedule and she'll take you to a meeting and you know, but had I not been carrying this message, they would not believe in this program. They would have not sent those people my way, you know. So, I get to carry this message to alcoholics and anybody else and to practice these principles in all my affairs.
That was the hard part for me cuz it's really easy for me to be perfect and spiritual and patient and loving and kind for an hour every day in a meeting. The hard part is doing it at work, doing it at home, doing it at Walmart when somebody has well over 12 items in the checkout line and I'm in a hurry. Um, today I get to try to be loving and patient and kind everywhere I go.
So that the person that I am out there in the real world is the same person that you see for an hour every day in a meeting. And there is no difference. What you see is what you get.
Period. anywhere you see me, you know, and that is true freedom to not ever have to try and remember the story I told you. To not have to try to pretend to be somebody that I am not, either to please you or to manipulate you, whichever works, for whatever I'm looking for.
Today, I don't have to do that. Today I know what it means on my coin when it says to thine own self be true. Today I have the freedom and the happiness and the peace and the serenity and more than anything I ever thought I wanted or could have ever asked for when I got here.
Thank you for my sobriety. 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.