vol 293. Seasons of Sobriety with Jeanette M.

Show Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

We believe that alcoholism is a disease, and that alcoholic synonymous is one solution to the disease. I'm here to bring you the voices of its members, and everyone that comes on the show, including myself, is an active member and has found recovery in the rooms of AA. As you listen, please take what works for you and leave the rest.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Hi, my name is Jeanette, and I am an alcoholic, and my sobriety date is September 1st, 02. I originally started going to meetings in another 12-step program. I started in 1985. A lot of my friends that are in the program stayed.

I didn't. So my story is that I got to the 12-step programs, but didn't necessarily get it right away. So I am uh grateful that I have 23 years sober. I'm grateful that the program always saved my life.

Every time I got to it, I am one of what's called an AA, a low-bottom drunk. So I'll start with what it was like and what happened, and then uh go into what it's like today. So I grew up in Northern California. I grew up in a nice little middle class town, and I had I'd say an average upbringing.

I was average middle class home, mom and dad, brother, sister, middle kid. Um, I joke and say that I have middle kid syndrome, but I'm not even sure if I know what that means because I've learned that my alcoholism is a is a disease of wanting more, more attention, more alcohol, more drugs, more sex, more whatever. So growing up, I had been taught values like we don't air our dirty laundry, what would the neighbors think? So there was a lot of what I perceived as secrecy.

And there was some slight, I don't know if you call it slight, but uh there was some molestation, there was some uh just didn't feel like I belonged. So I was always very tall, very skinny, like lanky, tall, uncoordinated. I felt different than everyone. I um was an average student.

I had, I found out later, um ADHD, and just had a hard time focusing and keeping on track. On my report cards, it would say things like, if she only applied herself, she would do so much better, or if she wouldn't talk so much. And uh, they called me a daydreamer. I think I was escaping before I found drugs and alcohol in um just my imagination.

So I started with alcohol at about eighth grade, I think it was. I was or the summer before, between eighth grade and ninth grade. I remember a girlfriend was babysitting, and she poured in from the bar where she was babysitting, she poured a little bit of each kind of alcohol they had into this Pepsi bottle and gave it to me, and I went home and I just guzzled it down. I had no reference with alcohol, and I remember I felt so good for like two seconds, and then the room started spinning.

I'm really lucky I didn't get alcohol poisoning. Um but what happened for me is it gave me this sense of relief, and even though it was a horrible experience in that I threw up all night, I I was emotionally a wreck. My parents obviously found out because I threw up everywhere, and I I think it woke something up in me at that point. I remember going to an allatene meeting around the same time with a friend of mine whose dad was an alcoholic.

I don't even remember hearing the word alcoholic or alcoholism. And I went to this meeting with her, and next door to the allatene meeting was an AA meeting, and she had told me before we went in, if they ask, tell them one of your parents is an alcoholic. So I lied and said my mom was an alcoholic. And when I got home, my parents said, Did they ask if one of your parents was an alcoholic?

And I said, Yeah, I said, mom was. And they started laughing, which I thought was weird. And they said, Well, you know, your dad's an alcoholic. I had no idea because my dad quit drinking on his own when I was three.

He had a massive heart attack. And I asked him, Well, why don't you go to Alcoholics Anonymous? And he said, Because I'll be damned if I'm gonna get up in front of a room of drunks and say, I'm a drunk too. So that was my reference point for Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'll be damned if I'm gonna get up in front of a group of people and tell them I'm an alcoholic. So when I got introduced to 12 step programs years later, I was like, oh, I know what that is. But I didn't realize I had prejudice against the program without even ever having experienced it. So what happened for me is uh high school, it was drinking.

I wasn't being a teenage alcoholic, I couldn't get alcohol readily. So I did a lot of pills. I my dad was uh prescribed back in those days for alcoholism. They prescribed Librium and Valium, and he had hundreds of them at a time in these bottles in his drawer, and I would just take them.

So I got through school with Valium's Librium, and then I started finding other things, a lot of LSD, a lot of marijuana, a lot of um my sister, who's older than me, had a prescription for Koalus and Black Beauties. And I actually at that point got kicked out of my house and I moved in with my sister. I was about 15 or 16. And I would babysit my niece and she would pay me with quailes or black beauties.

Alcohol was always on the table. I discounted alcohol. So for years, when I got into early 1980s into recovery, I thought drugs were my problem. I didn't think that alcohol, I discounted it.

I thought, well, who doesn't drink? You know, so and then going back to my teenage years, I lived with my sister, and then I started running away from home really early. I started going to the part of town where women shouldn't go, kids shouldn't be, rough neighborhoods. I got a boyfriend that uh was abusive, and I had no self-esteem.

So I somehow believed that I that was okay, I guess. I'm still trying to figure that out. But that started me on a path of abuse with drugs, alcohol, and men. And I later moved, I was about 17, I moved out of state.

I met a man in the Navy, we got married, had a kid, and then I thought I had it all together at that point. It was basically a geographic for me. I had got away from the um people that were, you know, so much of an influence on me as a teenager, and I lived out of state, and then after my son was born, I moved back to Northern California, and everything went well for a short period of time, and then we found out my dad had cancer, and I ended up being his caretaker. I had a baby, a caretaker, a husband that I half the time I couldn't find when I'd come home because he'd be drunk somewhere, and uh he introduced me.

Well, I had tried IB drug use when I was a teenager, and we ended up becoming once my dad passed, I didn't know I was grieving, and so we got into IB drug use and alcohol, and that was our like mainstay. And so I hit a bottom at 21, ended up in my first program. They didn't have 12 steps uh in that program. It was an attack therapy program, basically like synonym, and uh it was a five-year program.

I made it seven months, and I did drink on one of my passes. Um, like I said, I always discounted alcohol, and that was the start of I think four or five recovery programs. I would gravitate towards seedy little bars, seedy little people doing seedy little things, uh, like I said, a lot of abuse. I ended up with a lot of convicts running and gunning, they call it.

I was the one that when they'd go to prison, I would take care of them. And it just became a lifestyle that I thought I was gonna live till the day I died. And about 1992, I met a man and we we were both drinking and using, and we decided to stop. We had both been in 12-step programs, and we couldn't stop, and that was another time I went to a detox.

Um, but then I found out I was pregnant with my youngest son. I was able to clean up with the program. I wish that I could have stayed sober that through that, but I didn't actively work a program. And I I I glazed over a part that's hard to talk about, but I had left the town I'm in now, gone to another town.

I was married to a man, this was about 86 or 87, and left town, changed my name. I went under an alias for a long time because he was so abusive. And he was also turning state's evidence against an organization, and I was afraid that I was gonna catch his bullet, so I I went real anonymous for a long time. But in that leaving town, I couldn't, I didn't stop drinking, and I ended up with some people in another state, and in a relapse, they one night brutally attacked me.

I got stabbed and uh choked and beat, and it all in front of my son, who was laying on the floor pretending he was asleep. I was able to get out of that a week later, and um they ended up going to prison after a trial, and uh I came back here and I dropped my alias because I thought, well, my alias isn't working, I'm taking me wherever I go. In Bill's story, he says, fear sobered me up for a bit, and I believe that that's what happened when I got those four years, is I was so scared, I was so traumatized by almost getting killed that I did work the steps, I did have a sponsor, but it's I I was living on fear, borrowed time, I thought. So when I got to the program again in 2002, I hadn't been to meetings in quite a while, ran into some people at a park that I knew in the program.

And I said, Why don't you why don't you come back? Why don't you go to a meeting? They didn't push it, you know, they they really practiced that attraction, not promotion. And so I went to a few meetings and then I ended up getting hepatitis, and I was hospitalized.

And to let you know what I was like at that point, when I started going back to the meetings, I was so obnoxious. I looked rough, I talked rough, I was on the streets basically. So I always say when I came in, I was a vision for you, you know, like our big book story. I I had lost all my little middle class values, I had lost all my ability to have a conversation.

I was rough, and all that was was fear. I was so afraid if you got close to me, you would see the big gaping hole in my soul. So when I got to the hospital, there was only one or two people I could think of that were still talking to me in the program. And I told this story the other day, and someone said, Oh, how sad that people quit talking to you in 8A.

I go, they had every right to. I was obnoxious. I would flip people off, I would come in late, I would, I would just, I wasn't a pleasant person back then. And uh Andy, who has passed, he came to see me at the hospital.

And the one thing I couldn't get for years around here was basically the first three steps. I didn't understand complete defeat. Like I didn't want to give up alcohol. It was everything to me.

It was almost like breathing for me. And so when I was in the hospital, I asked Andy, how can you just believe? Like I thought AA was asking me to have this blind faith in something that I didn't understand. I had been around a lot of religious organizations for quite a while.

As a matter of fact, when that attack happened to me out of state, it was a it was part of a religious organization where that happened. So I was pretty mad at God or or people that said they believed in God. So I had a lot of prejudice where this higher power God thing that you guys seem to get so readily. Just believe, you know, just believe that we believe.

When I was in the hospital, I looked at Andy and I go, How can you just believe? And he said, You don't have to believe, just believe that we believe. And that that did something for me. It took the fight out of, well, you guys just believe which God, what God, you know, which religion.

And he was secretarying a meeting at a group I absolutely hated. I talked bad about that group for years. I love that group today. They absolutely saved my life and ended up being my home group.

Uh, it isn't today. I have a different home group, but I will forever be indebted to those people that were at that group. So I went to the meeting where he was secretarying. I got there right when the meeting started because I knew if I got there early, people would want to talk.

I didn't feel like talking to people. He was a secretary. I walked in the door. I put my hands up.

Where do I sit? He put me right up front, which I hated. I thought that group had way too many rules. And I thought one of their rules was newcomers couldn't share.

It's not, but I got called on, and I don't remember what I actually said, but it was something about being lonely and that I hadn't been hugged in a long time. I wasn't running with warm, fuzzy people. I was running with street people, I was running with convicts, I was running with people that basically we were in hell and um from our disease. And so when he told me to sit up front and I got called on, and I said I was lonely and I hadn't been hugging a long time.

After the meeting, it seemed like a bunch of people, I don't, I know it was at least three or four or five, came out to me and hugged me. And they said, and I was yellow from hepatitis if I had just got out of the hospital. I looked awful. I had super short hair from several tweak haircuts, my teeth were all jacked up.

I was so skinny from all the abuse, I had bruises everywhere. I was not looking good. And all these people came up and they wanted to hug me, and I knew I still had that smell that you smell from people that are in liver failure. Um, my my liver was distended.

I just I just wasn't looking like I was really gonna make it. And these people came up, and as they hugged me, they they said that when they got sober, they were yellow too, from different things, pancreatitis, all kinds of things. So, and they didn't say, keep coming back. They said, honey, please stay, we need you here.

And I just cried. I was just like, wow, like these people, I they just loved on me, and I was so not expecting that. I was expecting the harshness from the meetings I remembered in the 80s, you know, just sit down, shut up. Um, you can't say you're an addict, you can't say this, you can't say that.

That's what I was expecting, and that's not what I got. I got absolute love. I got um the warmth that I needed so badly, and I didn't even know I needed it. I remember later I said to people, God had to pick my sobriety date, God had to pick my home group, and God had to pick my sponsor because I wasn't able to do any of that.

I did pick the woman in the room that I thought would be the toughest on me. She was tough at times, but she was also one of the most loving people I'd ever known. Um, that was in June of 02 when I walked into that meeting. I did drink one more time in August.

Um, my sobriety date is September 1st of 02. I have no idea what was my last day. It was one, it was Labor Day weekend, it was either Friday or Saturday, and I just wanted to be honest to the best of my ability this time. So I just made September 1st, my sobriety date, because I want a good time.

Because I honestly I can remember my last run, but I can't remember what date. I'd actually stopped. So uh it was one of the last days in August. So I got to this group that I thought I hated.

They absolutely loved on me. I picked the toughest woman in the room and I started working the steps. Uh, you know, we we talk about GOD. What was your G-O-D?

My G-O-D was gift of desperation. I was as desperate as only the Diane could be. My very life depended on this. I uh I didn't mention that prior to getting sober this time, too.

I had been hospitalized several times for mental health disorders. I was suicidal. Faist asked me, are you thinking about suicide? And I go, Well, yeah.

I didn't know though, till I got sober this time. It wasn't really that I wanted to die. I just didn't know how to live. I had no tools for living.

I had no coping skills. I had all this trauma that I thought, you know, why would anyone want to sponsor me? Why would anyone want to walk through this stuff with me? I don't want to do it.

Why would they want to help me? And what I found out is we help people because it helps us, you know, this altruistic movement, the big book talks about. I just put one foot in front of the other. I hadn't worked in over 10 years.

I was on permanent disability. Um, I didn't think I could ever work again. And somebody in early sobriety challenged me and said, Oh, you probably couldn't get a job anyhow. So I went and got a job to prove them wrong at a college.

And that job in a few months, they told me it was a temporary position. They told me that they were going to do away with that position. So I started putting applications in with the government, and I ended up getting on, and that actually was my career. I'm retired today.

All of this is because of Alcoholics Anonymous. Anything good in my life is because of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have the affection of my family back, which I didn't have when I got sober. My kids didn't trust me, nor should they have.

She goes, honey, we're on the phone. And I said, I know, but I'm so ashamed. And so she told me she closed her eyes, and I told her the things that I had left off of it. And then it wasn't for about a day or two till I realized I had no more secrets.

Someone in this world knew all of my life story. And that's when I got the relief. And we worked six and seven looking at my character defects. And then when I did step eight, I started to get scared about doing step nine, making direct amends to people.

I had to write a lot of dead letters. There was a lot of things that happened that that kind of lifestyle led to a lot of deaths, a lot of um just tragedies. So I I wrote a lot of dead letters. She had me write out the names of the people that I was gonna make amends to, and then put them in three categories.

I can do these amends today, the next category, I may do these someday. And the third category was I will never do these. She goes, honey, you did harm them. There's no if you don't want to, you don't want them to feel like they're being slapped in the face by if and and giving them a I'm sorry.

So she had me, she directed me on language to use. And so I started making my amends, and there was a lady that lived down the street from my my mother's house, and my mother had custody of my youngest son for a while. And when I had about 90 days sober, I didn't pray, I didn't talk to my sponsor, I didn't, you know, ask anybody for direction. I just went down to this woman's house because my son had come back to my mom's house crying that he couldn't play with this kid.

So I marched down there. I'm gonna explain things to her. And my goal is that my son be allowed to play with her son. And so when I got to the door, I had asked for her, she comes to the door, and I said, Can't my son play with your son?

And she said, No, I don't condone violence. And your son chased my son with a bat. And I go, Well, it was a woofle bat, you know. I didn't think that much of it.

It was plastic in my eyes. And she says, Besides that, we all know what goes on down at your house, and she was referring to my mother's house. So in my head, she just insulted my mother. And so I said to her, Well, you might as well get used to your kid getting his ass whipped because he's a little shithead.

And then I left crying, called my sponsor. She said, Oh, honey lamb, you didn't. She only called me Honey Lamb when it was bad. She said, Her name goes in the God box.

Well, I had been fighting this amends, the direct amends to it. I wanted to leave her flowers in a card, ring her doorbell, and drive away. I did not want to face this woman. And one day, Spirit of the Universe, God, whatever you want to call it, put it on my heart to go down there.

And I, when she came to the door, I said, I disrespected you. I said, I don't know if you know this, but I'm in AA, I'm in a program of recovery, I'm an alcoholic, and for in order for me to stay sober, I need to make right anything or anybody I've wronged. And I wronged you, I treated you disrespectfully. I I wasn't, I wasn't um pleasant, and I want to know how I can make that right with you.

And she said, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, that night, uh, my mom by then had given me a key to her house. She had a key to my apartment, and she called me and she said, Jeanette, your brother's blind drunk. And I she was watching my son that night, and I said, Mom, where is my son?

She says, I don't know. I left because your brother's blind drunk and crazy and angry. And so I called one of the moms of my son's friends, and she said, No, he's not with me. Call this other person, and that's the person I just happened to make amends to that day.

And I called her and she said, Yeah, he's here. I hadn't asked the woman in my amends if my son could play with her son. I had just asked how I could make right a wrong. And that night my son was safe in that woman's house.

My brother took a bat to someone in my mother's home that night, put 13 staples in her head. He went to prison. The spirit of the universe, or God, or higher power, whatever you called it, put it on my heart that day to make that amends, and that my son was safe. My brother went to prison.

He was able to get sober. He stayed sober for about four years and then drank again and um died of this disease a few years later. My life has been full of experiences, it's been full of gratitude. It doesn't block me from having a human experience, though.

I've had deaths in sobriety, I've had breakups in sobriety, I've fallen in love in sobriety, I've had all these experiences. I have made a lot of mistakes in sobriety, but the one thing I've done is I've stayed sober no matter what. Because of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, because of my trusted friends and sponsorship, I have become a woman of worth. I don't live the way I used to live.

When I got to AA, you guys taught me how to be courteous to people, how to not swear so much, how to say please and thank you again. All the values that I was raised with, but I I don't know if I forgot them or I just used what helped me survive the streets. I have a life I never could have dreamed of. I never could have dreamed of working for 23 years and retiring.

I never could believe that I would sponsor a woman and I'd get to see this gift of the light coming on in their eyes. I never thought my family would have me back in their lives again. I never thought I could be a good mom, a good daughter, a good sister, a good aunt. I am truly a blessed woman in recovery.

I just love my life today. I am so thankful to Alcoholics Anonymous. And my old timers taught me that gratitude is an action word, that I show my gratitude by being of service, to helping people where I can help, to just being a good human being. And when I make mistakes, I have steps to correct those.

I have the amends process. I have the ability today to live life on life's terms without putting alcohol or drugs into my system. So for that, I am grateful and thank you so much for asking me.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Thank you, Jeanette. I appreciate that. All of that. Oh, 23 years. And then you got to retire. What would your colleagues describe you as?

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Uh, funny. I the other thing I forgot to mention is the way I was raised, the family of origin I have, we have morbid sense of humor. We use humor to ease the the pain of life, I guess. So my colleagues would have to tell me, Jeanette, stop. I would have them laughing so hard. I was a good worker. I wasn't the best worker. I learned how to be average. I remember when I was new, my sponsor said to me, honey, you're just not that good at being that bad. And I was deeply insulted at the time. But what I learned is that I can be one of many, one amongst many. And I applied those principles in my work. They were a work family. I I'm still friends with those people today. We um we really were a family, and I wouldn't have known how to be part of a family if it wasn't for the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Oh, that's so sweet. You talked a bit about the program not blocking you from the human experience, and you talked about humor kind of lightening the weight sometimes that the human experience puts on us. What are some of the things that stand out in the last 23 years where you had to shake up or reimagine your entire program? Did that happen? Did you ever get close to picking up looking back? Or any tips of somebody struggling? I've heard about like the 10-year itch. A lot of people get stuck between 10 and 20. You don't see a lot of 15, 16, 17 year sobriety. I don't, I don't know if I'm just repeating what I've heard. Share with us your thoughts on all of that or any piece of that, please.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah, I I know in the home groups I've had the the birthday board is there's big gaps between 10 and 20. And I had a couple close calls when I was first sober, as far as uh I I thought about drinking and using every day for the first nine months. But what gave me hope with that was one, Dr. Bob's nightmare, his story in the big book.

He thought about drinking and using for oh, I think it was two years, if I'm if I'm remembering correctly, and he didn't. So I knew it was possible. I had such a history of relapse prior to getting sober this time, though. What would go through my head a lot in meetings was why are you in a meeting?

You should be getting loaded, you should be drinking, you're wasting good time. I mean, there was so much self-dialogue going on. And I remember I was in a newcomer's meeting one time, and this guy shared his experience with that. He said, My head told me every day that I was wasting good drinking time by being in an AA meeting.

So what helped me was being honest with people. Like I'd have to tell on myself, hey, I'm my head's telling me that I should drink. It wasn't just the sad times that I felt like drinking. The summer came around.

That was drinking weather to me. Like I love to have a cold beer in the summer. And my mind would picture the the ice cold beer, and and it would say, you know, beer, what beer's nothing. And I used to think, yeah, who can't have two beers?

Well, I can't. I found out because I have a physical, it sets off a physical craving for me. I did have a couple close calls. Let's see.

Um, I forgot to mention too that I've got a I've gotten a lot of outside help with the trauma stuff too. It the steps were imperative, but I also needed to to um get some outside help. And I think it was around 10 years or 12 years. I was so in my job while I was still working, I worked inspecting drug and alcohol programs.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah, I don't know why that made me laugh. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Yeah, it was a great job. I loved it, but I just felt stuck. I felt like, okay, I've done the steps, I've I've worked the tuitions, I have sponsees. I I just felt stuck.

And I remember talking to one of the directors of this program I I was inspecting, and I said, and he had, I think, he's somewhere between 20 and 30 years at the time. And I said to him, Can I ask you a question? And he said, sure. And I said, Did you ever just feel stuck?

And he goes, Oh, you're in the desert, you're wandering in the desert. He goes, That will pass, you will come into the promised land. But there are times in sobriety where it feels like we're just wandering through the desert, looking for direction, that we're seeking something new. And I've had to revamp my program several times because the more time I get, the more safe I feel, the more I can uncover, discover, and discard in a new way truths that I was a I was too afraid to look at when I had 10 years.

I thought when I hit 20 years, I would be everything would be wonderful. I would rise above the human experience, I would just kind of float around, everything would be wonderful. And that hasn't been my experience. I have been this holiday season, I have been depressed.

I have been um we lost a couple of home group members in October, and uh, I had a loving pet die in my home. I've I had a good friend that had 45 years that passed. Being sober doesn't exclude me from my emotions, and it doesn't exclude me from having this human experience with an array of emotions. The good news is though, I haven't thought about drinking or using.

I know that this too shall pass. I believe that today. I know that I've had moments where uh a couple of years ago I was I was in a relationship and I and it broke up. And I wanted to drink really bad, but I didn't do it.

I I was with my trusted friends, I placed myself in a secure environment, meaning I I hung out with my women friends, I I talked to my sponsor every day, I talked to my trusted friends every day. I did a lot of journaling, a lot of writing. Um, and it passed. So I think if I could give anyone a message, is what helped me a lot, the good times and the bad times, is this too shall pass.

I'm not immune to life experiences. I get to experience everything. They told me when I got sober, you'll feel better, you'll feel everything better. And and I think that has been my truth for this length of sobriety.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

I was waiting for the cliche, the cliche, it's not a cliche, it's just really well said. We will feel the good news is we will feel everything. The bad news is we will feel everything. Yeah, yeah. So true. But I love this too, shall pass. And a really good friend of mine who helped me feel very safe in the rooms, old timer, Gary says, he actually shared on here. He was like, I think one of the first 10 episodes. Gary says, get through this and you get through it sober, and it makes you strong for the next go around, and there will always be another go around. And it's so true. It is, and you get a few of those experiences of. Getting through a hard time, whether that hard time is in the first nine months or in the ninth year, or for you, the 19th year, we can use those past experiences to build on the believing. We know this too shall pass, but the believing in our heart that this too shall pass, and I will get out of the desert to reprieve in a matter of time. In the meantime, I will place myself in a secure environment. I will journal. I will pick up the phone. I'll get outside help. I'll do all the things. My only choice is not picking up or feeling like this forever. There is another scenario.

SPEAKER_02 44:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

I'm on my soapbox again. I did this on the last episode. I'm like, I have a lot to say. Maybe I need to journal, Jeanette. All right. Okay. So 1985, you went to your first 12-step program, and that was a while ago. And then you've been you've been sober since 2002. You've probably seen a lot of things change in the rooms. Anything name or come to mind, rather, that you want to share? Um, good, bad, otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

Well, I told you I was in a program in '82 and it was uh hardcore. And I remember while I was there, once we got so far in our stay there, we could go with someone to, you know, go shopping or do whatever. And this guy asked me if I wanted to go to an NA meeting, and I looked at him and I said, Why? Like I had no concept about 12-step.

Why would I do that? I'm already in a program. Isn't that overkill? You know?

But I wished I had been more exposed to it back then. But the so the changes that I've seen just in the recovery programs is a lot of 12-step influence, you know, and I and I love that because we offer a solution. The other things that I've seen in the 80s, people were tougher. They would almost yell at you, sit down, shut up, take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth.

You need to listen. If we wanted what you had, or if we want to know how to work the program, we'll ask someone who knows how to work the program. You don't, you know. I mean, they were just tough.

They're really tough. I think, too, we learned a lot from people telling people we don't take nothing no matter what. And they were referring to spike medication. You know, in the big book, when it says we will learn more, I think that people have learned a lot more about alcoholism, is diagnosed as a mental illness, but there are other aspects of mental illness too that I know I experienced and I know other people's experienced.

And I think back then a few people were adamant that people shouldn't take psychiatric medication. And I think that's softened quite a bit. Thank God, because we're not doctors here, we're not physicians. I don't think it's safe for people to tell people that are not in the medical community, not doctors, to not take medication.

And that was a big thing in the 80s. People were adamant, and there was a lot of um misunderstanding of that back then. The other thing that I like today is when I got sober in the 80s, we didn't count days our first 30 days. We just like, do you have 30 days or don't you?

You know, and then you'd raise your hand and nobody said, Hi, my name's Jeanette. I've got two days sober, like I see more now. When I got sober, I was spun out. I I remember there was a guy on my home group, Paul.

I'd walk in and go, Hey, Jeanette, how are you doing? Today's your 13th day. And I go, Is it okay? No, I couldn't put both sentences together for like a year.

I was just gonzo'd. And I see a lot more patience in AA today, in some ways with people. I see more softness. I kind of miss the more direct stuff sometimes, but because that was my that's my remembrance.

Go over there, find your seat, sit down, don't get up during the meeting. Uh, if you want a cup of coffee, get it before the meeting, get here early, see if you can help, stay late, see if you can help. I mean, you were real direct, and I needed that because I, like I said, I couldn't put full sentences together for a long time. Um, but yeah, I see, I see a lot more compassion.

I I what I love to see now are the people right around one or two years that are just on fire for this thing. It gets me so inspired again. It's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

This is good stuff. I forgot.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Yeah, yeah. Like that enthusiasm that we could do anything, come on, you know. We used to kid too, like back in the 80s, they didn't you didn't they didn't ask you how you felt, what was going on in life. They would say, get in the car. We're going to a meeting. Get in the car. That was a big one back then. Get in the car. And um, so now it's kind of almost like a joke. Come on, get in the car. We're going to a meeting.

SPEAKER_01 49:58

Yeah. Oh, that's good stuff. Okay. Two final questions.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Is there anything that you left out of your story or that you're thinking of now that you would like to share?

SPEAKER_02 50:11

I would like to share for the women that are new, because I still, you know, it says we will not regret our past or wish to shut the door on it, and that our past is our greatest asset when we're working with another person individually. A couple of things I got taught early on is I don't have to share the gruesome details at group level. We share in a general way. I used to just blow people out in meetings, I would just dump, right?

And my sponsor pulled me inside. She said, Honey, we share in a general way. The other thing is now after sharing my story, and this happens almost every time I share my story, I feel the sadness of the person that didn't have sobriety. I feel sadness and shame for the woman that was undignified, that all I really was looking for was comfort and love, but it led me down a path that of violence, of just compromising myself physically, mentally, and spiritually.

And it will become our greatest aspect. I met a woman the other night at a meeting. It was her first day, first time at a meeting. I don't even think she had 24 hours yet.

And she was escaping a violent environment. And I got to share with her honestly what that was like for me. Leaving a town from a women's shelter, going to another town, changing my name in between the towns to be in the recovery house, because my husband at that time was stalking me. Um, that he had the FBI, all these people looking for him, and they were looking for me because they he said he wouldn't testify unless they found me.

I I remember the terror of that, and I remember trusting just a few people, and I remember what I told this lady the other night is your head's gonna lie to you about drinking, using, and about him. Don't listen to that. Listen to the the people that you trust around you, listen to a sponsor, listen to, you know, if you need outside help while you're working the steps, go for it. Like, this is not just survival, this is about recovery, this is about recovering from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

And um, it made me feel good that I could share that with another woman. I don't condone what happened to me, I don't condone being assaulted, I don't condone being savagely beat, I don't condone any of that behavior, but the other thing that I've learned from that was a gift of forgiveness that I never would have been able to experience without those. I uh I was in a in a prison doing HI work when I was able to just see the inmates in the meeting. I just was in another AA meeting.

They just happened to be dressed in blue, and all of a sudden, my higher power put it on my heart to forgive the the two men that um attacked me. And what a gift! What if I started bawling like a baby in this prison? And because I wasn't gonna let go of that.

When we would do the prayer, how it came to my attention that I needed to work on forgiveness was the prayer at the end of the meeting, the the our father, the Lord's prayer, when it says, forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who trespass against us. I never really heard that. I probably was thinking about, oh, I gotta get to my car, I gotta go shopping. You know, I I I blanked out until one day I actually heard that prayer.

And I would go to my old timers and I said, Does that mean that I'm gonna be forgiven on the merit that I forgive? And they'd say, Yes, honey, that's what that means. I'd go, bullshit, and I'd ask someone else. Because I remember doing that prayer, hearing hearing that section of the prayer, and it was on my heart that the uh I needed to forgive those two guys that attacked me.

And I during the prayer screamed at God, No, they are not getting off the hook that easy. I will never forgive them for that. And then to be able to experience the forgiveness was mind-blowing to me that that this process of the steps that I thought was going to be so mundane and so boring, it's you know, it says we are not a glum lot. I thought, God, this is so lame, you know, and to be given these gifts, forgiveness and compassion and hope, and love and generosity, and just they're just such wonderful gifts that I never expected.

I thought I would just stop drinking and using drugs and somehow pull myself up by my bootstraps and just trudge through this life. But I it's been so much more than that.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

That's a beautiful addition to your to your shared Jeanette. I love it. It was spoken with such like calm and love, and I really like that. Okay, final question for the listener who is suffering. Besides what you just left them with, what final message would you like to leave for them?

SPEAKER_02 56:02

I think going back to some of the language that's newer from the 80s, I hear that I am part of the no matter what club. And I think if you're new and you have anything that anybody says, me or anyone else, ask them, hey, what do you mean by that? So be patient with yourself, be patient with your higher power. Those are the things I was told when I was new. And so I think getting answers to questions is paramount in recovery. So to the newcomer, I would say, don't be afraid to ask questions, don't be afraid to ask people to go to if they invite you to coffee or or you're lonely, invite them to coffee. Just get to know people.

SPEAKER_01 56:58

This is a great gig. For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcomingback.net.