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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. He introduced me birthday night and I rocked that night.

So, I'm Melanie Ciss. I'm a grateful recovered alcoholic. >> Um, my sobriety date is 1010 2002.

Uh, I actually made that date up kind of. I'll have to tell you about it when we get there. It it is amazing.

I I didn't know I had and we'll get to that part of my story. I had picked up so many desire chips like John and like a lot of other people chronic relapser or whatnot and took me a real long time, but I just stopped. This is the day, you know, looking at the it was sometime in October.

That's all I remember. So, friend suggested 1010 so I wouldn't forget it. And so, that's what we got is 1010.

It was sometime in October. They say they're nervous and they're I mean we were talking beforehand. They're both like I'm so nervous doing I'm like hey stop you know quit that.

My sponsor um told me one time informed me I would be doing the steps at our group and we have a pretty neat group. I I hope sometime get the opportunity to come and visit. It has been wonderful meeting all of you if I haven't met you yet.

Um hopefully we'll get to chat afterwards but everyone has been so nice and and so warm and welcoming and loving. And if you ever are in Dallas, please come by our group uh and visit because it's it's pretty amazing place. Um we were talking a little bit about it beforehand, but we have a lot of people because we just do big book studies and and so there was a lot of people that you know kind of know what they're know the book and stuff and my sponsor had told me who's only been at the group for like six months.

She goes, "You're doing the steps." I was like, "Oh." I was like, "Well, what if I vomit from the podium?" She goes, "Take a can." So, if I step away for a minute, my story is a lot like everyone else's. Um, a whole lot like it. I I started drinking when I was 10, so we're get to it real quick.

Uh, there's not a lot to say. I grew up in a in a in a wonderful family. My father's an alcoholic.

Uh, but I never saw him drink. I never saw him drink. I saw him go into the garage and come back in and kind of be different.

And I couldn't figure that out. You know, you start wondering what's in that garage, you know, what's happening out there. But I didn't know and I didn't see, you know, a lot of it.

I just saw his personality change. And thank goodness I understand alcoholism as I do today because it makes sense, not only for myself, but for a lot of things that happened around me as a child that I I didn't understand. You know, um my dad has a big family.

He's the Mexican side and my mom is just as white as snow, you know, blonde hair. And so, but on that side, there's it's the family is huge. She has like 14 or 13 brothers and sisters and six, you know, of the of the men, you know, all handfuls of them just alcoholism, just alcoholics.

My brother is, you know, also um alcoholic and and they haven't drank in quite some time and and uh they were able to do it without this program. I, on the other hand, absolutely unable to quit drinking without finding some sort of power greater than me and quick like. So I saw them do all this and I was I was a pretty good kid.

I got like in school. I was kind of like I am now, you know, just kind of chatty, real, you know, easygoing for the most part. Got like best citizen when I was in the third grade.

You know, I remember the shiny new outfit my mom bought me for the best citizen award. And and the only thing that I remember, and everyone's kind of alluded to it, and I've always had a really hard time finding words for it, was that that sense of being just, you know, so painfully different. I would look at the other girls at on the playgrounds or different people's houses and I would just want my insides to match their outsides so bad and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

And I remember being highly aware of that at a really young age. And it's so great to hear other people say that because I thought it was just me. I really thought I was just crazy and that if I had different parents I was very imaginative and just kind of you know u always I started lying at a very early age too.

I think like in kindergarten we went on a little field trip and I told everyone my dad had bought me the monkeys and you know just trying to always make myself just seem so much better than I was. My teacher even tried to correct me on that like Melan are you sure about that? Yes.

He those are my monkeys you know try to correct me. I know what I'm saying. But I just wanted to be anybody but me.

I I had traded places with anybody and that feeling would stay with me for a very very long time. So um my dad's a karate instructor and uh we started taking karate at a young age. And so those of you who keep picking on me, I tell you I talked to you outside earlier, I was serious about that.

Um, we were real active in in sports and stuff like that and did soccer and karate and stuff and my my brother excelled and and I would like try to do it and just this thing would happen where I would go so far and then I would just stop. I just I couldn't pull it through. I was so afraid.

Fear just companion, you know, constantly on my back. You can't do it anymore today. I try to love God more than that fear is the goal.

Um, but it was just always there. So, I would just drop out. So, at about 10 years old, we'll just get there.

There there was nothing wrong is basically what I'm trying to say. There was nothing to blame my alcoholism on. My parents are wonderful people and no dramatic abuse or anything like that occurred.

Um, by the age of 10, I remember I was at a friend's house and I have never been really concerned with consequences of any type. I'm really to be afraid of talking in front of a bunch of people about what God has done for me is just not really in perspective because I was never afraid to walk, you know, straight into liquor stores or some of the places that I've been. I've got no fear whatsoever to go do those things.

You know, it's just not there. And so I I had no fear of consequences. So my friend Courtney and I were walking home from school one day and we went to her house and she said, "Hey, do you want some of this and it was this blue liquid in a in a glass jar and it was mint leor in a decanter that I know today, but it was just blue stuff in a jar then.

And so she said, "Hey, do you want some of this?" And I said, "Well, yeah, sure." Because I did you ever question anything you put in your body? I never questioned much about anything. Here, take this.

Okay. You know, find about find out about it later. So, I I drank some and I remember the way that it tasted.

I remember that like it was yesterday. It went down and I remember it was kind of pepperminty and I remember it was kind of warm and I remember the way it went down the back of my throat and the way it kind of makes you tingle and it kind of gets to the tip of your nose and it went all the way down and everyone is kind of had a way of saying it but it was it was the magic. It was like wow what is this?

This is good you know and I stole my first pack of cigarettes that day. It was a big day. Salem menthols from Albertson's.

And every time I mention that, I always try to remind myself to get to that amend. And so this time I'm going to remember. Um, but I did.

I went in and stole this pack of cigarettes. You become real brave real quick, huh? And so I I did.

I only had like, you know, just a couple swigs. It wasn't like I was just riproing drunk or anything. But immediately I just felt, you know, so much better.

And so I got home. I remember I smoked those cigarettes. Felt real bad about it.

Tore them all in half. My mom comes in, do you smell smoke? Uh, this guy came to the door and he was selling something.

You know, I can lie on a turn of a dime. And she's like, oh, okay. I'm like, okay.

And so, but you know, that feeling starts to wear off and you just start thinking, where do I get more of that? Where do I get more of that? And so, I guess um people have asked me, "Where did you get liquor that young?" And I just would go to friends houses and I started drinking every opportunity that I got.

The first the next thing I drank was Jack Daniels with Coke. I got sick immediately. I have never been able to control the amount of alcohol that goes into my body.

I never started off being someone who could control it. I have never had the experience either of just, you know, being able to say this, I'm just going to have one and then over time I got worse. No, from the get-go I drink.

I have one. I seem to get thirstier, you know, and that one just, you know what, I'm going to get just a little bit just a little bit more. Just a little bit more.

Before you know it, I'm puking up Jack Daniels and Coke. And I think, well, you just don't drink that brown stuff. You know, it never occurs to me not to drink.

Maybe you shouldn't do that. You know, my mom doesn't drink. She's a normal drinker.

She has one and she says she drinks and she's like, "I just start feeling out of control." I'm like, "Yeah, press through, mom. It gets better." And she just stops. I'm like, "Didn't that irritate you?" No.

No. And so I got drunk. I remember getting sick on that stuff.

And that was the deal was just to change up the drinking. Like I said, I was 10 and from the age from 10 to about 15, that was pretty much what I did. We would go um I would skip a lot of school and stuff and um we would go to karate tournaments and different places and and there was a lot of older people older.

They were probably 16, you know, they seemed really old at the time. Um and they had everything that I needed. We'd go and we'd just drink as much as we possibly could and I'd get sick and sick and and I would just wait, shake it off, and then we'd do it the next day.

And and that's just how it went. and I have a lot of outside issues as well. And um we've, you know, combined the two and by the time I was about 13 or 14 years old, um I wasn't going to school.

I was very depressed. My I had gotten kicked out of one school already. And my parents had sent me to a private school somewhere in there to make it better because they knew if I got around the right kind of kids, which actually private school was much worse than going to public school.

Um yeah. And so we went there and they tried to fix me with doing that and it didn't work and I got kicked out of that school and I came back and because the problem was is that I I could not I couldn't not do what I was doing. I loved it.

The first time I just got completely out of my mind. I remember this girl sitting next to me and I grabbed her arm. We were sitting on the corner and I remember telling her, "Please don't ever let this feeling end.

I don't want to be just a little bit drunk. I want to be completely unaware of what's going on." We're talking about cocaine acts and crack addicts earlier, stuff like that. And I I'll I've done it, you know, and I'll I'll go through with it, but I I don't enjoy it because I don't know why anybody wants to be more aware of anything, you know?

I was like, why do you do this? And this is sucks, you know, cuz I don't want to be more awake. If I can just go right into the carpet and be asleep.

I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to know who I am. I don't want to be social.

I don't want to be laughing with you. I don't want to be here. And that was a problem.

I was very very sad as a kid, very very over-the-top emotional, you know, just if I cried, it would be like for a month. And we're talking in the hole. And mom wasn't real quite sure what to do with me with that.

And so at about 15 years old, um is when it all started coming to a head at that age. And I sponsor a lot of young people. So just just for the record on young people in AA, um I sponsor some amazing young people.

and and the feeling I had when I was 15 years old because what happened was um it had gotten so bad I wasn't going to school at all or anything and I very rarely and um one of my counselors was concerned and so they called my parents and and I remember sitting I had found out I was going to treatment because they needed to send me to treatment and I remember sitting out on the balcony real late at night and it was real dark and I remember crying out to God and just saying you know please help me my my cry to him has always been please help me or take me I don't care just one or the other please just figure it out quickly and that that feeling of of being, you know, dead here was no different than when I would sober up again at 30. It it doesn't change. And so when people say, "Oh, you haven't drank enough or you were too young." It's that's not true, you know, because to be spiritually dead is just that.

And so I have a lot of respect for the young people in this program. One, that's the people we're going to be leaving this program in their hands, you know, and so to teach them well would probably be better than say, you know what, you're too young to be here. So that was that.

Okay. Back. Um at 15, uh when I went to treatment, um John talked about last night.

I I I didn't actually have insurance, but it was uh the Plano Independent School District where I was paid for my treatment. And so it was beautiful. It was in the 80s, if y'all remember in the 80s, treatment centers were real big and they had charter and they had swimming pools and they had volleyball courts and we had biscuits and gravy for breakfast and stuff like that.

And at first they took me to the state hospital to Terrell State Hospital. And I remember us walking around there and thinking, "Daddy, you can't leave me here. You can't leave me here." And I'd repeat that again 15 years later, too.

Um, but I went into this treatment center and it was great. It was fantastic. I wanted to quit drinking.

Well, I didn't want to feel the way I was feeling. How about that? I I didn't know.

I just didn't know. And I would take any solution. They actually talked about AA in the treatment centers back then, too.

They gave us big books. We talked about Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, I went from that treatment center to a halfway house and spent about almost nine months of solid treatment.

And I got involved with the groups in San Antonio and they had big clubs there. They don't really have clubs in Dallas anymore. I don't know if y'all have it here.

And that's all they would do was kind of play dominoes at one part. You'd see a few people laying on the couch and we'd go and hang out and and it was fun. I got a sponsor.

I don't know if I did any work really, but I had a sponsor because they told me to get one. It's funny like we think people know what that means immediately. You need to get a sponsor.

If you're brand new, you have no clue what that means for what, you know? And so I just did and got this lady and and um I ended up coming back home and stayed sober for about four years. And um everyone thought it was really great to have this young person coming.

I had my little big book. I still have my first big book. I sat and took so much time with highlighters highlighting everything.

So if you sat next to me, you'd like, "Wow, she knows her stuff." I didn't know anything. I knew lack of power. That's my dilemma.

Lack of power. I had no clue what any of that meant, though. And so I I went to a lot of conferences and and I I felt good.

I must have done enough of something to be able to stay sober that long. But about three years into sobriety, what I remember very painfully well is sitting on my bed with the 12 and 12 in hand, my big book in hand, reading it. I'd gone to so many meetings at this point, too.

I had heard I know how to rarely have we seen a person fail. I could do it drunk. You know, I still kind of zone out when we read it because I've just heard it.

I don't mean to. It's just I've just heard it so many times, you know. And so I remember just thinking, uh, there's got to be more than this.

Because when I was in the rooms of AA, I was great. I was real sweet. I knew kind of how to pull it off in there.

But once I left those rooms, disaster of a human being. Still couldn't go to school. still felt uncomfortable in my own skin.

Still was borderline suicidal at times. You know, I had no idea how to have relationships. That thing that I had was still following me around.

That spiritual sickness that we talk about, that spiritual malady that gets inside. So, I threw my books down and said, "I'm too young to be an alcoholic." I threw them down. And as you know, once that thinking sets in, there was nothing that was going to keep me from drinking.

I called the therapist back down in San Antonio and I said, "I'm thinking about drinking." He said, "Well, come down." He flew me down and we were talking and he said, "Well, Melanie, do you know God?" And I thought, I remember thinking, "What? What does that have anything to do with the fact that I want to take a drink? Did you not hear what I'm saying?

I want to take a drink, but I wanted him to move me into sobriety." You know, say something real profound like, "Really bad idea, Mel. I know it's a really bad idea." Oh. And he didn't he was unable to he didn't move me.

So, I came back and I met at the bar that night drinking on Lower Greenville in the area where we are drinking margaritas, getting sick. I'm not one of those kind of people that maintains well uh that goes to work. I I hear that there's some people that can go to work um when they're drinking and that's just not me.

Um I fall apart very very quickly. Within a year I'm back in treatment again and I've still got insurance. And at this particular treatment centers where they started loading me up with meds and they said, "You know what?

you need this and we think you're bipolar and you might have chronic depression or you know maybe manic depression and we're going to need to be on um this anti-csychotic and we're going to give you this and that's where I started loading up on psych meds. Psych meds and hospitals are huge part of my story. I did stay.

I thought it was comfy. Steve talked about that yesterday or Friday. I would have stayed.

It was comfortable. I love going to hospitals today because I'm just comfy. I just kind of fit there.

It was so much easier to be crazy than it was to be an alcoholic. And you don't have to be responsible. I go in, you don't have to pay bills.

Everyone feels sorry for you for a while. Poor me. Great meds, you know, kind of shuffle around.

And so they gave me that. I remember they could see I knew it. I'm crazy.

I'm crazy. That's it. And then they loaded me up.

They said, "We're going to need you to go to outpatient." I didn't learn anything, you know, other than you're such a bright, beautiful young girl. Why are you doing this? You have so much going for you.

Why are you doing this? Like, I don't know. I learned that.

to go to outpatient. Went to outpatient, went to a few AA meetings. It was all right.

Found a HIMYM. That's part of my story. My MO is and then I found a HIMYM.

And it was usually at the treatment center because that's the best place to find a man. >> Yeah. I usually tell people that they were broke just out of jail or living with their mom.

Please. Me. I'll take it.

My poor mom. When I made amends to her, like I don't know, like I was a year sober. She's like, I said, "What can I do to make it right?" And we go through it.

And she goes, "Can you please just not bring any more boyfriends home for like a year?" I'm like, "Okay, I can do that. I've called my father." She's like, "Okay, well then you're definitely doing that." Cuz I was just always bringing the next solution through and you never knew what it was going to be like. You know, it could be someone with a flying high mohawk or it could be someone, you know, you just didn't know what was happening.

But, you know, they were usually from treatment. And that's what got me out at that point. And I went to AA a little bit and spouted off a few great things.

And I guess, you know, I always still don't like it when it comes around the room. I still like to pass and because I just don't know so much what to say. I don't go to a lot of discussion meetings anymore, so I don't have the experience as much.

But, um, I decided it wasn't for me. And for the next like 12 years, I would proceed just to try to control my drinking. What I decided was that I would study wine for a while.

And so, I did that. And I decided I needed to learn how to drink like an adult. And so, I would try to watch you and I would watch my friends.

And I figured out what they did was they drank and then they went to work in the morning. So I tried real hard to do that. You drink and then you go to work.

I like I told you, I studied wine and and did that for a little bit to the point that I subscribed to Wine Spectator. So the magazine so I could put it on my table so people would understand why you keep a red bottle of wine under your bed to keep it dark and at a certain degree. And whoever invented the martini is a genius to drink straight vodka out of a pretty glass.

Get yelled at if you're drinking it out of the bottle. Huh? But not when it's in just a >> shaken glass.

So I did that for a while and I thought I was choosing to do that. I thought I'm making the choice to drink the way I want. I want to be drinking this much.

I want to be doing what I'm doing. I will never be as badass as. My father was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1995 for drinking and driving.

And um I remember at the time I was drinking uh a lot and thinking how could he thank God, you know, I would never ever do something like that because it was just so easy to you know judge and and think I'm just not that wouldn't do that. And so my drinking continued but it just wasn't that bad. I would stop in intervals and and go to AA for a little bit and I would hear people go around and they would talk about their drinking.

First step meetings are are weird to me and they're still weird to me because we sit down, you come in, you get your desire chip and they say, "Oh, we're having a first step meeting." It's not really a first step meeting really because everyone just kind of goes around and tells you how much they drank. I I don't really care how much you drink. I I don't I can't stop my drinking, you know, and and while that is so helpful on a one-on-one basis, you know, in just a little bit, but that seemed to be all it was.

Well, I did this and I did that. And so, you know what I did? I tune in to you men who drank a lot more than I didn't think.

Well, I haven't done that. I don't share a lot of stuff from the podium that or you know the things that happen because some of it doesn't happen to people. Some women never leave their house and they don't have the consequences that some of us have had.

Some people don't drink themselves to the point of DTS. That doesn't mean you're not an alcoholic. And so for years, I would listen to people go around and say that and I think, I don't need to be here yet.

I don't need to be here yet. And then I would hear people raise their hand and say, you know what? Um, I'm so and so and I'm choosing not to drink today.

And I think, how do you do that? I want to do that. I want to choose not to drink today.

I'll choose all the way to the liquor store. I'll pray all the way to the liquor store. Um, and so I would go to these meetings and get chips and I decided that AA didn't work and so that I didn't want to go anymore.

I tried NA for a while but when they shout out we and I'm not saying anything about the NA program other than it just was a lot for me. I was like, "Wow." It's like being at Rocky Horror Picture Show. We, you know, and we my god.

Um, sorry. But in like 1995 and and I worked in there. I was able to keep jobs and stuff like that and I traveled the country a whole lot and and was always just kind of moving around geographical cures.

I I did a lot. I opened restaurants for a big company and um followed him around for a while uh opening restaurants and we lived all over the country and and I got married somewhere in there like in 1997 or something like that and because I was in Las Vegas and I met this guy at the poker table and it just seemed like the thing to do and that's just you know how I am. That's how my mom and my parents and everyone always perceived me.

Well, she's just Melanie. She's just doing what she's doing. I'd go on a trip and I'd call back and say I'm not coming home.

home. She'd be like, "Okay, because just these random things that I do because I just want to feel better somewhere and it has to be well, I haven't tried Florida yet. You know, I haven't tried Las Vegas yet." Married a really sweet man.

It's just amazing the people that we run over. Um he's wonderful. I had a had a child and and everything.

He was he was fantastic. I didn't know him but for all of a month. Um but uh I just thought if if if I got married and he had a kid, I thought that would fix it.

I thought, well, maybe then I could stop doing what I was doing. I'm also a thief, recovered thief. I started stealing at a young age, too.

And at this time, in about 95, after I had opened restaurants and stuff like that, I was doing some accounting for a a business, a a club that I was working for. I I still count on my fingers to do math. I have not one class of accounting.

And so, um, I did some creative bookkeeping and embezzled a little over 100 grand from this company. And um for no reason other than I just want to feel better. I just want to feel better.

Put myself under the knife a couple times. Just the women may get this more than the men for just plastic surgery galore. It's not here.

I don't have to worry about looking because I wanted to be I wanted to be better. I just wanted to I hated being me and hating just isn't the word. The depth of the self-hate just was so huge.

Suicide attempts were huge for me. I was constantly in the psych word on suicide attempts. And so I'm stealing this money and I'm getting married and it's all about to come down.

I'm not drinking to the extent that I would be. And I would never would have thought in my life that my story would end up the way that it did. Um I end up moving to Arizona because that's where this man lived and and I came home within a month.

I remember my grandmother had died and and I was drinking enough. You know when you drink just enough to kind of just tick you off? You can't drink the way you want to really because of the people that are around you and I was just drinking enough and had enough just to make me real irritable.

My grandmother had died and and I remember him and I had gotten in a fight and I was tearing him up and down and and I said something and he said, "You know what?" He goes, "You are the most evil person I have ever met and I hate you." And I remember thinking, "H but not as much as I hate me." And I was I was evil to the core because I can tear you up because this this thing of how much I can't stand myself in my own skin. The only way I know how to get that out is to rip you up and down to get some temporary relief. And I was very abusive to him and I was very abusive uh to his son.

That that's been something that has been difficult. that was something to come to terms with, you know, and it just it's mindblowing, you know, to come to terms with the uh the havoc that we reap on other people and the the amount of abuse that we, you know, give off even though seemingly we're just as nice as can be, right? I get people sometime I'll walk into a group, oh, you're our speaker, but you look so nice.

I'm like, yeah, okay. It's taken some time to not, you know, do the things that I did. So, I came I came home and um we got a divorce and I remember I went and stayed with my mom.

I usually lived with my mom. I don't think I lived alone until I got sober this time. The only time that I did before that was uh because I was stealing money and could support myself, but I never had a job where I could be self-supportive.

I never could make a living. I couldn't do anything. I just would drink all night and pawn all my stuff and stay living with my mom.

And I came back and I wasn't making enough money. So, I moved to Arlington and I met another hymn. And I remember when I met him, I told my mom I couldn't stand him and so I moved in with him the next day.

And um I'm my poor mother. I moved in with him and he was we can find some of the best men out there to take care and it was either going that way or the other. I was either taking care of them or they were taking care of me.

And he was taking care of me. And he let me drink as much as I wanted to. And he we decided I needed some therapy at one point.

And um I was actually working at a bar at this point. And so I could drink as much as I wanted. And my drinking would take on a whole different face because one of my counselors, I told her how much I drank and she said, "Well, you know what?

We need to put you on anti-depressants one." And she goes, "You really shouldn't drink on them." I'm like, I could you can drink great on anti-depressants, especially if there's any of them have a little sleepy eye on the bottle, you know, may intensify effect. Okay, this is good. Um, and she gave me clonopin of which to not drink so much with.

And I didn't know, you know, that those pills break down, you know, my body reacts the same way to to those chemicals as it does to alcohol. It's causing the same thing. And so I would, it said take one as needed.

That's a lot. I think the liquor bottle say drink responsibly or something like that. Okay.

So, I was working this guy was taking care of me for the next uh five years. Um the first two years I remember well. It was a bunch of taking handfuls of pills in the morning.

I was going I was running like 15 miles a day. I I cracked my shins from running so hard because I'm just trying to fix it. And I would tape them up real tight and take handfuls of volume and go and run it out, come home, take handfuls more, pull up a liquor bottle, go to work, sit down, take deep breaths, do a couple shots because I knew it was going to be on for the night.

And I'd go in and I'd do that repeatedly. And that went on and on and on and on. Finally to the point where I decided work was really inconvenient.

And so I decided to quit working. And I informed him of that. I'm not working anymore.

And he said, "Okay." And so I went home and I proceeded to try to drink myself to death. And it's it's it was amazing. Um I remember most of the stuff that happened.

I went had a series of psychotic breaks in that time. They were always rushing me to the hospital. They had me on Meerel for for a while.

If you're familiar with some of the old school antiscychotics, that's some one floor of the cuckoo's nest stuff. And I was on Meerel for a long time. and and because they were trying to get my sleep patterns back and and it was just crazy.

And Hal Doll was a good friend of mine for a while and and and I mean it was just amazing that I was even able to exist or walk at this point. And I remember the first time I was trying to get down the stairs and my legs shook. I didn't know what that was about until I got to AA this time that the reason that I was shaking and couldn't walk and couldn't drive and couldn't move my hands was because I wasn't having enough stuff in me.

I didn't know. I thought I was just a nervous wreck. I would leave the bottle under the bed and as soon as the sun would come up in the morning and it would come through the little blinds, I'd want to just pull it up again right out because I don't want to be conscious of what's going on.

And I'm going to aa in the middle times and I'm trying to do the next right thing and I'm asking people what should I do and they said you know what sweetie it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. thinking it's not going to be okay because I'm getting sober for a little bit at a time for like two weeks.

I remember and I remember the man I'm living with coming in and throwing, you know, pills at me or a bottle at me and goes, "I know this is what you really want because I like you so much better when you're drinking because I'm a wreck when I'm sober without a solution." Maniac of a human being. It's just terrible. And so I'm doing all this.

I've I've got atrophied muscles. It's terrible. What's going on?

I know at this point too that I'm going to go to the bathroom all over myself when I go to sleep. And so instead of that being like something to be concerned about, you just lay down towels, right? What does the doctor's opinion say?

Our alcoholic life becomes the only normal one we know. That was normal. That's okay.

It's all right. You just lay towels down. Drinking was not an option.

I didn't know there was a solution to be found. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I do not It pains me what has happened to our fellowship today.

Because I've come in with a desperate desire to stop drinking and I can't figure out what's wrong with me. I went to a group one time that I had gone to and and I asked this lady who was like 20 years sober. Well, she had come up to me and I picked up another desire chip and she knew me from when I was a kid and and she said, "Melanie, what happened?" And I remember thinking, "Good God, if you don't know, I don't know what happened.

Why did you go back out?" This is a silly question because I don't know. Did you work the steps? You know, no.

I didn't know. So, I went home and I opened my big book at after that meeting. I remember.

And I found that part once in a while he may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, say he has no more idea of why he's drinking than you have. I have no idea why I'm doing this at all.

I've been to some of the best addictionologists in this country and have had, you know, all kinds of therapy and healing the child within and, you know, all the courage to heal stuff and the shame spiral and John Bradshaw, whatever. Doesn't matter. What child are you?

Are you the scapegoat? Are you the clown? Are you?

Who cares? Triggerless galore. Breathing in and out is a trigger for me.

Did you wake up? Yes. Drink.

And so the guy I was living with at the time, um, this is all real fuzzy to me. Um, he called my dad and told him he couldn't take care of me anymore because I'd become a full-time project now. You, you know, just I had to be, you know, at any time with some of the other stuff I was mixing it with, you know, it just at any time anything could have happened.

And um, horrible catastrophic consequences that occurred. And so my dad came and picked me up and they took me to the hospital and um it was one like John's talking about which we go to now is a state funed facility. I ran out of insurance at like 19 and so um I remember we pulled up and it's by the missions in downtown Fort Worth and like a lady got killed on the doorstep, you know, and I mean it's a not safe kind of place.

And I remember we pulled up the first day and it was very dramatic just like we like. And and um they said, you know, she's going to die within, you know, such and such time, 24 hours. and you take her to the emergency room.

And so they did that and you know how when you're shaking it out too and and you think you've been asleep for like hours and it's been like two minutes. You look at the clock you're like, "Oh my god." You know, and it's just and you just to move your head an inch and everything comes out and it's just painful. And my dad's covering me up with newspapers cuz I'm cold and I'm laying on the floor trying to get checked into this hospital and it's just a mess.

It's just a mess. and he takes me back to this place when they'll let me in. I remember asking him, the first time they wouldn't let me stay is because I didn't know the date or the president or my name.

And so I remember asking him, "Who's the president and what day is it? Cuz I got to get in. Just who is it?" And so I'm signing in and I'm going in.

The problem was though, and the treatment, I'm sure, was great. I shuck it out, got sick with the rest of them. I think on my third day there, I found my new boyfriend.

He was a heroin addict. Um, treatment is just funny. If you've been, you're all going to be best friends and you're all going to go to meetings and we're all going to move in together and we're going to have coffee afterwards and it's going to be great, yada yada yada, you know.

And so I I kind of shuck it out. The thing was is that I had no desire to be sober. Sobriety wasn't what was on the forefront of my mind.

I didn't want to be sick. They pulled me up out of that. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be alive today.

But I didn't come thinking I want to quit drinking. I was could I was okay living and dying just the way that I was. And so about 3 weeks out of treatment, I broke my foot and I had had some surgery.

So I went and live with my brother for a little bit and they took me back to this treatment center after that and ended up leaving because I got pneumonia. But I had some surgery, was living with my brother and they were bathing me cuz I I couldn't bathe myself and they cut all my hair off. was real matted and stuff and and I remember they cut it off and I didn't have a place to live because when I went home my one true desire was to get back into that house of of my ex that had brought me to the hospital.

That was what I wanted more than anything, not to quit drinking. And so that I went home, knocked on the door, he wouldn't open it all the way because there was already someone else there. And rightly so, I'd been sleeping in my pee for like three years, you know.

And so I came back and moved to a Oxford house, a halfway house that's here in Dallas. Now, you couldn't have convinced me otherwise that I wasn't ever I was never drinking again after that. Ever called a sponsor that I knew that I had worked the steps with before or not worked the steps but had been to AA with before and I called her up and and she said, "Melanie, do you think maybe you should work some steps?" And I said, "No, no, no.

It's okay. You don't understand. I'm never going to drink again after what's happened to me.

It'll be okay. She's like, "All right." You know, and so nine months later because he pissed me off. It was another he.

This he was orchestrated. Um it is amazing what God will do with some of your circumstances. I love I love God for doing the things that he's done for me.

has taken some of the most horrifying and horrific things of my life and made them into the most beautiful beautiful things. And I met this guy. He was a forced age alcoholic.

He um we buried him. I I can't remember. I think it was like I I can't remember.

He was 35. He drank himself to death. That was like a year and a half ago.

I met him. I thought he was great. And um we met and I needed to leave the halfway house because you can't live in the halfway house and and date someone who's smoking crack.

I don't know what that rule's about. So they said, "You can either pick him or stay here." And I said, "Him, you're kicking me out." You know, all I could hear was you're kicking me out. I chose to do that.

And so I left. And because he was sick a whole whole lot because he was he needed detox on a on a constant basis. Um, I got to do that kind of traveling around, which is why I also enjoy being a member of Alanon because that's a whole you don't even know what that if you haven't had that experience of taking care of a drunk, you're missing out.

Um, that was something. We were constantly in emergency rooms and and uh watching that and the tragedy behind that. and we ended up at this place called um Soulless Outpatient and I met this lady named Wanda and she just happened to go to Primary Purpose and um I had already um relapsed when I met him.

I remember how it happened. I remember we drove up to Centennial which is closed now but it used to be next door to where I live right now and we drove up in there and I remember he had made me so mad and I walked in and I grabbed a bottle of wine because I could always drink wine. I can drink wine.

My mental says as much drugs as I poured down my body. What my mental obsession surrounds around is I can drink. I can drink.

I can drink wine. And I walked in there. I remember pouring the glass and I remember taking a deep deep breath cuz I knew.

And I took that drink and I I tried not to tell anyone. But then I'm off on the stages of a spree and it was just it was just with the two of us together. It was kind of it was just a wreck.

So we're at this outpatient place and Wanda um asked me if I need a detox. I said no. And she said, "Have you ever heard of primary purpose group?" Well, all the time I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous in Dallas, which has been more now than like I came in at 15 on B36 this year is I'm more in AA than not, you know, and so I said, I had never heard they were big book thumpers or stepnazies.

And I remember thinking, no, I I haven't I don't really want to go to your AA thing. And it took us like three months to get there. And when we finally decided to go, she told me specifically who to get for a sponsor.

She goes, "You got to go listen to this guy named John Kelly and do the foundation meeting over there and you need to get this sponsor and her name is Dara." And it was at this point and it was one of those, you know, brief moments of of clarity that I thought my step one happened out there. A friend of mine says this and it makes so much sense to me. I finally got step one with that last drink.

Aa put the words to it for me this last time because what happened when I took that last drink was I totally realized I am going to drink no matter what. I'm going to drink no matter what. It doesn't matter what now.

I now I've run the gamut on everything. I've done exercise. I've done how many self-help books?

We ought to open a self-help book store. We can make some money. I've got so many self-help books.

Actually, I think I've gotten rid of those and kind of reading the other stuff. But self matters. That's a good one.

That shouldn't be in the hands of an alcoholic. That's by Dr. Phil.

Maybe I'll give that to my sponsor for Christmas this year. No. Self matters.

I've done all that. Been to every hospital I can be. You know, I've done it all.

I'm not in denial. Clearly not in denial. I'm thoroughly aware of what's happening to me.

I like that. I heard that on a thing. These people are not in denial.

Not. I know I can't drink. And so we went to this meeting and I put him in the foundation meeting because I've been an AA before.

So I put him in there with John Kelly. Didn't meet John. Then walked up to this little lady there.

Real little lady. Looks real sweet. Looks real nice.

I walked up to her and I said, "My name is Melanie and I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous for like 15 years and I can't quit drinking and I just I don't know what to do. And she said, "Well, are you willing to go to any length?" Oh, let me back up. You know what the first thing she did?

She qualified me as an alcoholic. No one had ever done that to me before. Qualified me as an alcoholic.

I didn't even know you could do that. Did you know you could do that? Find out if they were real drunk.

See if they need to be here. Shocking, but true. Cuz she wanted to know what fellowship I belonged in.

A because if I needed to be an NA or CA, she was going to make sure that I got there because my life depends upon getting hooked up with someone who understands my problem. It does is there's that's just kind of how it works. And so she asked me those things, two questions on page 44, not a million.

Can you control the amount of alcohol you put in your body? No. Never was real interested in controlling the amount of alcohol I put in my body.

When you honestly want to, can you stop? No. go home and read this beginning of the book preface and she meant the preface through page 43.

Call me. I went home and I read that the preface by midnight I was done. I don't understand today.

I've got people that it just doesn't work well with me with people I sponsor. I just got fired for being really really mean. Um just a couple days ago because I don't understand here do this.

No. Well, I really don't have time. I've got to go to a movie instead.

I didn't have time. I was ready to do the work and I went and read it and she sat down with me and we talked about step one and we talked, you know, I didn't work step two. John kind of talked about that last night.

It wasn't something that I worked. It was something that occurred between us and it step two and the rest of steps that I had attempted to work over the years because I've written four steps before. They were like Snoopy writing, you know, it was a long dreary night, you know, once upon a time and then this happened.

but never like the steps were outlined out of the book. And so they never had any, you know, the steps never had anything to offer me because I never knew the first one that we were powerless over alcohol. Our lives had become unmanageable.

I had an unmanageability list the size of and she sat me down and and it was really Cliff Bishop. It was really John Sponsor that I heard in a foundation meeting. He's talking about these things and I understood the allergy at this point.

And at first I thought the allergy was what they just told you like I'm allergic to broccoli, you know, just because you need a good excuse to tell people when you go to a bar, just tell them you're allergic to alcohol. And but when I finally understood that every time I drink that it, you know, I don't have the power to control what I that made sense to me. I understood that.

And then he started talking about not having the power to choose. Well, I had never heard that. I always heard people say, "I'm so and so and I choose not to drink today.

that well that's not what being an alcoholic is because he sat up there and he said within a week or a month and it was like a flip book going through my head all at one point if you remember that moment when it all clicked for you I remember it. It was like experience after experience after experience after experience after experience. This is why because I'm going to drink no matter what happens to me.

I It doesn't matter if I don't want to. It doesn't matter if I go to a hundred meetings a day. It doesn't matter if I go to church every single day.

It doesn't matter if I love God. It doesn't matter if unless I have a bodyguard with me or someone's going to lock me up. I was taking dope out of people's mouths in treatment trying to get stuff.

Save that for me. I have a germ thing now, too. And that just told you a pray of the wrong things.

So, they told me that and I remember it all going click, click, click, click, click. Have lost the power to choose. Have lost the power to choose.

I have a mental obsession that's going to condemn me to drink and I have a body that's going to ensure that I die because of that. I was thinking, "Oh my god, I am screwed." Like, "Oh my god, what do I do now? Now the rest of the steps make sense." You know, people aren't really enthusiastic about the steps cuz they don't have to be.

No one's told them they're going to die of alcoholism. We just tell them, "Here, it's going to be okay, sweetie. you just keep coming back.

I told some of my sponsors, I'm just constitutionally incapable of getting it. She's like, Melanie, people that are constitutionally incapable don't even know to ask that question. It's like, damn, that was my out the crazy thing.

But that worked. And only at that point did the steps have something to offer. So two went like that.

I wanted what that woman had. We did step three. Wasn't a big thing for I mean I didn't have any big bright lights.

We hit our knees in this little room. I said the prayer. I got up and said, "What now?

Just what now? What do you want me to do now?" She sent me home in my forep. I got it done.

I came back. Um we did our fourth step, my fifth step, and we did it in a room and it didn't take that long. She was very disinterested seemingly in some of the stuff that I thought was going to blow her mind.

And we sat down and and immediately it started to make sense. You know what this selfishness thing meant. Apparently that's pretty important.

Selfishness, self-centerness is the root of my trouble above everything. I must be rid of that. Apparently that's important to know why.

Maybe I didn't know. I just knew how to spout it off after a fist with my sponsor. Um you know why?

You're selfish and self-centered. And I knew why. And so I was able to get through the fistep.

She told me a few things. Um, she wanted me to quit dating the guy that I was seeing at the time and it was this one and it was a it for my circumstances it was right. And I remember having to make the decision of putting a first or a man first and it was she gave me a little time.

I had six, thank God for six. I prayed to for willingness. I prayed for the truth to be willing to do anything.

And within a couple months I said goodbye to that. And for the first time in my life I put AA first. And it didn't have to make sense to me.

The steps didn't have to make sense of what I was doing. doing the steps aren't to be intellectualized and and make sense. I just did the next thing that was in front of me.

And I did that and she got me going on my amends and you know I started going through amends process making amends to people. She taught me about 101 and 12. The amend stuff has been amazing.

Um I didn't think that I could I knew how to say I was sorry. I didn't know how to make it right. Making amends to my family has been the most amazing thing over the years.

My brother has two little boys now. At the time when um after I'd made amends, it had been like a year or so after um they called me. My mom has a 13-year-old.

We're 23 years apart. My brother has two now, but the one was born. And they both had called me like a day apart from each other.

I guess they were both taking trips. and they said, 'We were wondering if it would be okay if we could, you know, put in our wills that you would take care of our children if anything was to happen to us. And um, you know, people like you and me who can't I can't stay out of institutions.

That is my mo institutions or I will drink myself and I'll just sit quietly and now because of the grace of God supposed to be spirituality meeting but because of what he is able to do with someone completely broken you know they want to entrust me with their children and that just it it amazes me it's very humbling because I shouldn't be breathing in and out and it was through that process that we were able to do that in 10 which I learned about step 10 and I'm going to try to wrap it Um, I never even knew anything about step 10. I thought step 10 was for people who were sober like I don't know 15 years because no one ever talks about it. You know, no one ever wants to talk about step 10.

You know, I thought it was just some elusive step that I don't know. I don't I had no clue what it was for. And so I learned that, you know, I must continue to grow in this program and stay connected to a higher power or else I will die.

I must continue to awaken or I will die. And so the beauty of the program is a design for living that works. Come to find out, you still get to be really painfully human at times.

And I still get afraid and I still, you know, get angry and I still get resentful and and still have some, you know, issues. And luckily, the program is designed that I can use the tools that were laid at my feet and get to get closer to the God of my understanding through prayer and meditation. I was raised Southern Baptist as well.

I didn't really have a problem with God. I just thought God had a problem with me. And so to to be able to have and to be able to apply my faith today is something that just amazes me and to be able to be a, you know, to want to hear from God and know he's not going to strike me down in any given moment.

Step 12, though, I thought step 12 was for people that were two years sober because people kept saying that you can't sponsor anyone until you're a year sober. Um, apparently if you read the book, the black parts, it says that the first 164 too. The stories are great, but it says nothing so much will ensure sobriety as intensive work with other alcoholics.

Thank goodness for good sponsorship because my sponsor immediate was like, "This is we're going to be at Salvation Army on this time." And and I got a little thing to do at a hospital. I was following a friend of mine around and we started going to this place called Timberlain and we go and they just want me to read the big book and I remember the first time I stood up there and I remember just reading about the allergy and I read the little paragraph and I sat down and I thought I was going to die because I just did it because my sponsor told me to cuz she said this is it. This is what's going to ensure your sobriety.

And so I went and we go and I go to this one hospital now and I've gotten to work with other women. I remember the first girl I got I thought I'm going to kill her. I'm going to say the wrong thing and I'm going to kill her.

No, you you can't really say the wrong thing. Well, you can, but not if you're in the book. You know, go to 90 and 90 is is not really going to work.

And and some of the things that I know that we say at from the podium isn't to bash alcoholics anonymous. There's nothing wrong with having a a meeting of discussion, you know, but it doesn't say anywhere in the book that what I need to do is go dump my problems on the table today and then I'll feel better. It says selfishness and self-centerness is the root of my trouble.

And if I'm just going to a meeting to tell you how my day went, what that just it just doesn't make sense. It goes contrary to the principles of the program. It it doesn't go in line with what we're supposed to do.

And so I think that's why we're so encouraged and and I'm so glad that I am just almost whipped into the position of being helpful to others. That is where my solution is. See, if I get disconnected from this power that I have found, I will drink again.

And for me to drink is to die. If you don't know that, that may be why you're a little less than enthused. because you may not understand or maybe you've kind of just lost touch of what what is your truth.

I've been absolutely raised from the dead. My job description is carry this message to another alcoholic. Everything else just kind of falls in place.

At my job, they call me the This is the funniest thing ever. They're like, "You're our little poster child for work." I'm like, "Oh my god." You know, like I just want to call someone and go, "You got to You're not going to believe this. I am a thief.

I embezzle money on my own with this face on. So you would never know. That's why God takes people like me and you so people don't question the fact that it's God and only God that is able to produce in us the personality change sufficient to overcome alcoholism.

That's why I love the enthusiasm. I haven't ever met Jimmy Jack before and to hear some of the stuff that comes out of some of the people's mouths here and to hear that they're still doing big book, you know, work and we're working with others intensively and this is what we do because that is what we do as a fellowship as a whole. If we don't do that, why would people come to Alcoholics Anonymous?

Doctors are right to not send them to us because it's boring. You come in and so and so who's been sober 25 years, and this is my experience, it may not be yours, who's had the same problem that they had last week and last week and last week and last week. And you think, if that's sobriety, I'd rather be drunk.

25 years miserable. No. No.

It was never meant to be like that. When I heard Cliff Bishop share those things that he did, what I remember thinking is, I knew there was more. I knew there was more.

And there's more. We are. And what I'm going to wrap up with is um what it says in there's a solution.

Um I'm not a very good big book thumper because I don't know what page it's on, but I'll find it. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we have never dreamed. That part.

Didn't that part seem hokey to you a little bit? It did to me because I didn't understand what they were talking about. We've been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence.

I tried to get rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence ever since I was 10 years old. I just want to not be. And so, if it's anything less than amazing, I won't stay.

And the way to be able to to do that, to to keep that going and to stay free, because if I'm not free, I'm going to drink, is to do what they tell me to do. And that's why they set it up the way they did. I have to have a continuous outpouring so God can pour everything that he's got for me into me.

But if I'm constantly filled with Melanie, he can't do that. So he set it up beautifully to work on all of us so we can just give it to the next guy that's coming in. Because without that, our fellowship will cease to exist.

And we have to do that. And that's why I I so appreciate everyone here who's had all the questions and and those of you who are on the firing line. And um I want to thank you for just being interested in anything that I have to say and thank you for inviting me to your conference and I hope to see y'all again soon.

Thank you. 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. >>