vol 295. Continuing to Grow with Kristina G.

SPEAKER_00 0:01 We believe that alcoholism is a disease, and that Alcoholics Anonymous is one solution to that disease. I'm here to bring you the voices of its members. 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's Christina, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is March 21st, 2017. We moved around a lot when I was a child, and we moved around probably every year, if not more than that. But I became adaptable, social, and made friends very easily.

At age seven, my parents got divorced. And as a budding alcoholic with very few reasoning skills, I internalized that situation. And it was all about me. And I felt that that situation made me not lovable or not good enough.

And those things would follow me throughout my life. My mom remarried, and in sixth grade, my school had two classes. One was, from my perception, the smart class, and the other was the not so smart class. I was in the smart class, but my stepdad did not like the book that we were reading.

So I was moved into the other classroom. And I did not want to be seen as dumb. And I believe that that was the point in my life where I became an overachiever. We made a big geographic that year from California to Washington state.

And going into my seventh grade year, my stepdad took me school clothes shopping, which I thought was weird, and out for pizza. And at pizza, he asked if I wanted to be adopted by him. And I, being a sassy and stubborn tween, was an absolute no. He continued the conversation and said that if I wasn't adopted, my brothers wouldn't be adopted.

And I still was just not willing to do that. I just was not willing to do that. A few days later, my biological dad called me and he told me that I needed to be adopted. But what I heard was I was not lovable and I was not enough.

I was adopted by my stepdad. And as a tall, scrawny junior high girl at the time, I got bullied in school. But I got to use those adaptability skills and my social skills to make friends with girls who were much bigger and stronger than me who would protect me. I was a straight A student.

I was in sports. I was a good girl. And the first time I ever drank was at a family wedding. And my cousin and I went around, probably age 14, 15, I believe, and we went around drinking all the rest of the glasses that had the champagne in them because my family were not drinkers.

So there was a lot of half-filled uh champagne glasses that we devoured. But my drinking career really didn't start until age 17. And my first drink with my friend, we split a four-pack of wine coolers. We toasted to her stepmom and my stepdad, who I did not like.

And I loved the effects. I loved the effects produced by alcohol. And then I was left to my obsession. When, where, and how was I going to get the next drink?

My family didn't drink, there wasn't alcohol in my house, and most of my friends did not drink, and especially not like on a regular basis, to where I could really ask about drinking with them. So I remembered there was this teacher who would take kids fishing on the weekends or have them over for football games to watch football on TV. And I had heard that there was alcohol involved in some of those situations. So I decided that I was going to go by his house to see if I could get some alcohol.

I knocked on his door. He did not answer. And we lived in a very small town. And I tried the doorknob and it was unlocked.

So I decided to enter his house and hunt for alcohol in his kitchen. As I was in his kitchen looking for alcohol, I realized he was in the shower. But that didn't stop me. I did find alcohol and I took a couple of shots.

And that um that that you know, I'd had that obsession of how I'm going to get the drink, and now I'm having that allergy of it hitting my body. And I should probably leave the house before he knows that I'm there, but I did not. I actually sat down on his couch and continued to take some more shots. And he came out of the shower.

Yes, he was clothed, and he got very angry and asked me to leave. And I did. And I was drinking and driving, which is a big part of my big part of my life was drinking and driving. I drove to the school that night.

I was a cheerleader and I had to cheer for a football game. And by the time I got to the school, I was throwing up. I was sent home. I was kicked off the cheerleading squad.

And I told my mom, I'm a good girl, mom. You know, I don't drink. Like I was sick, I had the flu. And my mom went to the school board and she got me back on the cheerleading squad.

And here I am, you know, very early on in my drinking career, only drank a few times, and I'm cheating, I'm lying, I'm stealing, I'm already creating problems in other people's lives. I was again left with that obsession of how I was going to get the next drink. And so I put those adaptability and social skills back to work. And um, I decided I wasn't going to date the good boys anymore.

I was going to date the bad boys. And so I started dating someone who drank, and me and him and his best friend would go and you know hang out and create mischief. This is when my blackout career started. The first time I woke up and didn't remember what had happened, I woke up with Christmas tree light bulbs in my bed.

I had no idea where they came from or what had happened. Um, and what we had done, I guess, was that you know, we look, like I said, we lived in a small town. The town square had a Christmas tree, and we had taken a bunch of the Christmas tree lights, which back then, when you took a Christmas tree light out of the strand, the strand didn't work. So the tree was not lit up.

And again, just causing, you know, chaos behind me and not thinking that I was, you know, I wasn't personally having any consequences necessarily yet, but just creating havoc behind me. Going into college, I had a really high friendship turnover rate because people got tired of taking care of me in my blackouts. Um, I never found it odd that I couldn't remember. Um, that was my normal.

Like, why could everybody else remember what had happened and I couldn't? So again, I decided to put those adaptability and social skills to good use and to find less judgmental friends, alcoholics like me, people who drank like me. And one of the places I found that was band members. I started dating band members.

And at 20 years old, I was able to get into bars coming through the back door with the band. We all drank for free. And that's what started my bar drinking career. My grandparents, I lived with them going to college at this time, 20, 21, 22.

And um, you know, I again still didn't have any serious consequences, but I was creating problems for other people. And my grandparents talked to me and felt like maybe I might have a drinking problem early on. I was, you know, 20, 21 at the time, I believe. My grandfather gave me a list of a couple rehabs that he wanted me to go find out, you know, how, like, if maybe I should go to those.

And so I went to both of those the same day, and they gave me this 20 question test. And being the great straight student that I was, I aced both tests, and both places said they had a bed for me today, and they felt that I needed to come in right away. And I was like appalled at that age, and you know, I just couldn't imagine that I was an alcoholic. And so I told them that I would need to talk to my grandparents about it.

So I went back to my grandparents' house, and what I told my grandparents was that they told me I'm not an alcoholic, and it's just a phase, and that I'll grow out of it. And so I'm lying to the people that I love, you know, and um and I would continue to put my grandparents through a lot, those years of college and um and and really in in the thralls of my drinking. I didn't get my first DUI until I was age 29, but still I didn't have a lot of consequences. I was in a drunk tank for eight hours.

I had a fine. Um, it didn't really do anything to wake me up at all. I didn't lose my license, or I didn't, I just didn't have any major consequences. What did um make me think about things was one morning I woke up in the bushes.

The sprinklers woke me up. I was in West Hollywood, which is not where the city I lived in. And I had no idea how I had gotten there, what I had done the night before, and why I was sleeping in the bushes. I assume I passed out.

I I I have no I to this day I still do not know. But that really made me think that there might be a problem. And so what I did was I made a geographic. I was living in LA at the time, and I thought, you know, this is just too big of a city.

I probably need to move to a smaller city, and so that's what I did. And then I tried some controlled drinking, started working out, you know, drinking less, trying to control that in my 30s until I didn't. And then I started back to the same type of drinking I was doing. I met a guy who drank like me, and I was in a long-term relationship with him.

His family drank like I did. They blacked out sometimes and couldn't remember what happened, and it wasn't a big deal. Like they just would ask, you know, we'd talk about it. And his grandmother would drink so much that she'd fall out of her chair and her wig would fall off.

And, you know, it was a funny, it was funny. It was like a joke, and and I felt comfortable and at home. The first time him and I woke up together and didn't know if the car was there and looked out the window and it wasn't, and we didn't know where it was, and we had to call friends to figure out where it was. That was when I knew he was the one, and I decided to marry him.

Somebody that drank like me. And I still had no serious consequences at that point. I I we him and I eventually went through a divorce, but again, to me, that wasn't that serious. Going into my 40s, I'm drinking for decades now, and I'm waking up every morning just feeling that guilt and that shame of not knowing what I did the night before, wanting to stop drinking and not being able to stop, going to work every day, thinking I'm not gonna drink, and really truly believing I'm not gonna drink.

But then, you know, by 4:45, wondering where which bar I'm gonna go to, who, where I'm, you know, with who, and and what's gonna happen. You know, that I and then I'm only gonna have two drinks and I'll go home, which which never happened. But drinking was my solution. And then it became my problem.

I got into another serious relationship, long-term relationship during that time with someone who drank like me. The more and the more and the more I drank, it just took me down this rabbit hole of deep depression. And I did seek medical help. I was put on an antidepressant, but I was not on, I wasn't honest with the doctor at all.

And so he had no idea that I drank the way I drank. And so I just got more depressed. You know, on paper, I had all the things. I I should be happy.

I had a hymn, I had a house, I had a car, I had a great job, and I just could not find any relief. I could not find any joy. I just had this big black hole in my soul. And so what I thought would be the quickest and easiest relief was not to be alive.

And I found myself uh waking up in the emergency room. And there I got to use those social skills and that adaptability to talk my way out of going to a facility. And instead of going to a facility, uh, I thought my mom and my sister coming down and spending um the time with me, watching me to make sure that I, you know, wasn't suicidal again, would have been would be better. Probably wasn't, but um so that's what happened.

They came and and and hung out with me for a week. On one of the days, I had counseling. I was going to counseling at the time. They'd taken me to counseling, and then after counseling, they kidnapped me and they wouldn't tell me where we were going.

And we ended up at a round table pizza, and I walked in to find my brother, my aunt, my grandparents, and my mom and sister there for an intervention. They were telling me that they loved me and they wanted the best for me, but in that moment, I was completely not feeling love. I felt very judged. I was just in a place of not hearing them, not accepting that.

I was really, really rude. I I walked out on them and my grandfather chased me down and asked me to come back in. It was a it was a um, it was it was really a tough experience for me, and I'm sure it was for them. And when my mom and my sister left that week, they were very sad and and and defeated.

You know, it takes what it takes, and it what that wasn't what it took for me to be sober. And I continued drinking and I was continuing to black out, you know. That's just the way I drank. There weren't very many times where I drank and didn't black out because I was always missing the mark.

I was drinking everything that was in the house, or you know, everything I could get my hands on because I just wanted that oblivion. I just wanted that numb. I just wanted to not think anymore. My head, I was such an overthinker that my head was always going and I just wanted it to stop.

I just wanted to be numb. And um about a month after that suicide attempt, I drove in a blackout, I hit someone, and I went to jail. And when I came to, I was not in the drunk tank. I was in an orange outfit, I was in a pod, and I was scared.

And and waking up there, I knew that I never wanted to be in that place again. I knew that I needed help. I had conceded to my innermost self that that I needed help and I would have to, you know, seek treatment in order to get that. And I was in there a couple days, and as soon as I got out, I didn't sign up for my health care's one-year recovery program.

It was an outpatient seven days a week in the beginning, and I had to go to seven AA meetings. I really wasn't sure that I wanted to stay sober. I just knew I didn't want to feel like I felt. I was afraid of thinking that for the rest of my life I was gonna have to never drink again.

And I just wasn't sure that I could do that. But one day at a time, I've stayed sober since then. And step one of Alcoholics Anonymous says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. I was introduced to the we of the program when I started going to AA.

And I was trying to do what was I was told to do by finding a home group, finding a sponsor, and I had gone to quite a few different meetings, trying to figure out which home group was going to work for me. And I'd gone to this one home group quite a few times, and this one particular time I was kind of hiding in the back, like the newcomers do. And this gentleman leaned over and put out his hand and said, Hi, my name is Bruce, and that's my dad's name. And a lady came over to me later on that that meeting, and she brought me a phone list and said, Hi, my name is Susie.

And that's my sister's name, who's my best friend. She introduced me to her sponsor, whose name was Tamara, and that's the same name as my mother. And I knew in that moment that that was going to be my home group. And that lady who brought me the phone list, I asked her to be my first sponsor.

And she showed me my powerlessness and my unmanageability. I could not see that with having a job still and paying my bills, and you know, I just didn't feel like I was that powerless. I just didn't feel that unmanageability in my life. And I'm sure that all the people around me could see it clearly, but I could not.

And that's the amazingness of a sponsor is having them being able to show you your powerlessness and unmanageability. Step two is came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I had a really hard time with this step. I had an Abrahamic God of my childhood that I didn't believe in anymore and didn't want to believe in anymore.

I didn't want to say the word God. Um, I tried to use those acronyms, good orderly direction, great outdoors, group of drunks, and just none of that worked for me. And um, you know, my sponsor was so amazing. She took me to a different type of book study.

And even though I had heard many times in the rooms of AA that you could create your own conception of a higher power, those words jumped out at me in the book that we were reading at this book study that night. And um, I had a spiritual awakening, you know, my just everything opened up inside of me to be accepting of being able to, you know, believe in something bigger than me. I definitely knew it wasn't me, and I knew that I couldn't get me to where I could stay sober, but I just didn't know how to grasp um the concept of a higher power. But that night it it did um that night I did have a spiritual awakening.

My sponsor did. We talked about what a beautiful moment that was, and how we both just um grew from that that passage that we are reading in that book that we are reading that night. Step three is made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. You know, our will and our lives are like our thoughts and our behaviors.

Again, I was still a little like I'd make my own conception of this higher power, but what was that gonna look like for me to turn those things over to something that I wasn't sure that I knew what that was or that I even trusted. And the first time going through the steps with that sponsor, we got down our knees and held hands, and I just did not have that aha moment, you know, saying that third step prayer. But they say you don't have to do the steps perfectly, and and other people talk about this huge aha moment or burning bush. That's just not what I had, but I was able to stay sober for that year.

The next year I had a different sponsor, and he took me to a cemetery, and he said that no one here will be impressed with you. He wanted me to do this ceremony uh for my third step, but we parked my car at the top of this little hill, and I had to walk down a ways, and then I had to do the ceremony, and then I had to yell. I made a decision. And I had to yell it loud enough for him to hear it.

And doing the third step that day was so healing and so um, it was just another spiritual experience for me, where you know I had the chills and I was emotional, and and I really felt in that moment that I am going to do this. Like I'm I'm in this no matter what. My brother died six years ago, and I'm so grateful that I was at an AA meeting. My mom tried to call me several times, I didn't pick up, and then my sister tried to call me, and I knew something was up, and I went outside and my sister told me what had happened, and I just fell apart in the parking lot.

And luckily, someone was out there smoking, and they must have gone inside and and said something during the meeting, and five women came out and surrounded me. And had I not been at an AA meeting that day, I don't know what I would have done. But I know that after that, I wanted to drink every day for a really long time. But because of the foundation I had, because of the sponsors I had, because of the friends I had, and I was able to talk through that and know that I didn't have to drink no matter what during such a horrific experience for me.

My brother I talked to every day, and he was gone. But I didn't have to drink. Step four made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. This is where I got to make a list of the people I resented and who were the reason my life was the way it was.

So I thought, until I did the fourth step, and the magical thing about it was I got to see my own mistakes, my part in all of those situations. Step five is admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I'd made so many geographics in my life that no one really knew me. Even my sister.

She didn't know about the early part of my life. She's 10 years younger than me. And so she just she knew about the times I drank when I was with her. But again, like just no one knew me completely.

And so to sit and tell one person everything about myself and especially about my drinking was very cathartic. I got to sit there with this person and without judgment, with only love, acceptance, compassion. It was so beautiful and healing for me. Uh, this step was was really amazing.

Step six is we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. I got to break down my character defects in this step. My top three are control, manipulation, and self-absorbed. I got to look at, not just those, all of them, but I got to look at when I'm in those character defects, what are those behaviors look like?

What am I doing? And what are the opposite of those behaviors? And what does that look like? Step seven is humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.

You know, we continue to ask, it's a constant process of asking. For me, it's knowing that I have a conscious choice to be able to make when a situation arises. I can throw myself on the floor and throw a temper tantrum, or I can pause and I can decide how I want to react or how I want to be. I can choose a different way.

But sometimes I choose to throw myself on the floor and have a tantrum. And most of the time now I get to choose something different. Step eight is made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. I used my fourth step and all that list, but I also had to add quite a few people on there that I wasn't resentful to, but also that I had harmed along my way.

Step nine is made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. I thought my sister was going to be my easiest because she was my best friend, but she wasn't. She wasn't the easiest. I got to sit down and I got to hear how my drinking made her feel.

I got to hear how scared she was when we were on girls' trips together. It was just me and her, and I'm obliterated. I'm making a scene, I'm embarrassing her. We're getting lost, and I'm not helpful.

And then all of a sudden I'm paranoid and thinking the bus driver is kidnapping us. And, you know, she just got to tell me all those things. The last time I was with my sister and I was drinking, she had gotten free tickets to the Amy Schumer concert. And I created such a scene at that that she didn't get to enjoy seeing Amy Schumer.

But sitting across from her during that amends, you know, I got to tell her that that's not the person I want to be. And that's not who I want to be for you. And making that amends healed our relationship. She started sending her kids down to me on the summers to visit, you know, for a time.

And I got to have relationships with my nephews that I never would have had had she not trusted me again. Had I not been an AA, had I not done my amends, her and I never would have mended that relationship the way it was mended. The one person I did not want to do my amends with was my brother. I had lived with him for several years.

He was my drinking buddy. He was also actively drinking and in his addiction. And he frequently called me when he was drunk and it would say really mean things to me. And so I was really worried about doing my amends with him and him saying some things and us getting into like another argument.

He had seen me doing all my amends with my family. He had asked me when I was going to do my amends to him. And there was just this real block for me that I was not going to do my amends with him. Like I did not want to do it.

And of course, my sponsor said, then you need to pray for the willingness. And so I did that, but it took several months. And um, all of a sudden, I just decided it's time to do that amends. Even though I was nervous, I got to sit with him.

And again, this was another very beautiful healing amends that I did not expect it to go the way that it did because he never once said anything mean. He cried, I cried, we hugged, and we were able to heal that relationship. Not all amends go beautiful and healing for everybody. I know that, but most of mine did.

I did do an amends recently that did not go that way, and it was very unexpected for it to kind of go off the rails, but I did sit and listen. I got to hear that person's side of things, even though it was something that I just my perception of what had happened was not that at all. But I got to sit and listen, even though it never got to the point where he accepted the amends, really, or you know, that we hugged it out. Um we still have a relationship, and it just wasn't that beautiful ending, but I got to clean my side of the street, and he got to hear that.

Step 10 is continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. For me, continued is the optimal word in that. You know, we continued, meaning we already are taking inventory. We've already taken inventory in step four, and now we're continuing to take that inventory.

I get to now, when I say something mean to someone, usually out of fear or because the situation didn't go the way that I had that expectation it would go. I get to sit in that for a minute and it doesn't feel good physically for me. Now that I'm not drowning or numbing my body with alcohol, I get to feel those feelings. And when I do something that isn't right, my body feels it.

And then I have to clean that up, and I have to clean that up right away. Step 10 also says, what we have is a daily reprieve, contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And I love that. That it's only daily that we get the reprieve.

Step 11 is sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Again, the word that I that stands out to me is improve. We've already created this conscious contact through the steps that we're doing, especially in step three. And now we're improving on it.

And the way you improve on it is by doing it more. Um, for me, that's meditation. I've been I have had a meditation practice way before I got sober, and so that's just what I do for me. Last year with my uh sponsor and my sobriety sisters, we did a book study on emotional sobriety, which was incredible.

And just recently, I did a book study with some friends on mindfulness and recovery. And it it was very much about meditation, practicing that pause. I'm really good at meditating and for quite a while in the morning, but I didn't really have anything that I did like throughout the day necessarily or even at night. Sometimes I would meditate at night, but I just didn't have that daily routine down.

So let's say things went off the rails, went sideways during my work day, like you know, that would that would kind of get me, and I'd get up in my head and and wound up about things. And so this uh mindfulness and recovery was teaching us to take moments throughout our day to check in with ourselves to see. And what I have been doing now is I set an alarm on my phone, and I set an alarm every hour uh during the day, and so what I do every hour is I at least pay attention to my breathing. I just pay attention to my breathing, which brings me back to now, the present moment, right here, right now.

Sometimes I get into gratefulness and I think about how grateful I am for my job, especially if it's you know something in my job that's frustrating me. Um, sometimes if I have time for like a five-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute meditation, I will do that. But mostly I'm just bringing myself back to now so that I'm not reeling about what happened yesterday or before that, or I'm not future tripping on what could happen in the future that I could be worried about that really probably isn't going to happen. I try to just bring myself back to the present moment and paying attention to my breathing at least an hour every part of my day.

Step 12 is having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. You know, in the appendix in the back of the book, it talks about the spiritual awakening, a spiritual experience being a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism. And that's what I've had personally.

I am sober. If you have any days sober, you've had a personality change, you've had a spiritual awakening. You know, it also says there's a vast change in feeling or outlook, a profound alteration in your reaction to life. You know, to be able to see my part and to make amends is a profound alteration to my reaction to life because before I would blame, like it's their fault that I feel this way.

And now I get to take responsibility for every situation that I'm in. You know, the acceptance is the answer part in the book. I'm paraphrasing this, but I use this a lot. When I'm disturbed, it's about me.

It's not about what's outside of me. It's about me and how I'm reacting to it, how I'm responding to that person, place, or thing not being acceptable to me. Part of my vast change in feeling and outlook is I'm not depressed anymore. I don't wake up with guilt and shame.

I'm not wondering what I did the night before. I know, I know what I did the night before, you know. And I get to use my adaptability and social skills for good, not for manipulation purposes. Throughout all the steps that I did in the book, there were spiritual awakenings, spiritual experiences happening.

I just have to be aware enough of them to see them. I'm sure there were a lot of them that I didn't catch, but I know that other people saw them also in my life as I was going through the steps. And for me, for this alcoholic, I continually have to be in the steps. I didn't just do the steps once.

Uh, one of my sponsors, we did the steps four times in one year. And she continued every single time I would we'd meet uh weekly and I'd bring an issue to her. It was a four step, a four-step, a four-step, a four-step. So I became really good at doing four steps, which is why I like the tenth step better now, because I want to be able to get it done right now instead of having to go back and and and write all that about it.

I don't mind, I love four steps too, but I definitely it helped me be better at a tenth step for sure. I get to carry this message to alcoholics and anyone who greets people, says hi, has sponsees, who shares their experience, strength, and hope, we're carrying that message. There's so many different ways to carry the message to the alcoholic. You know, and we get to practice these principles in all of our affairs.

I practice them at work. You know, I get to say I'm sorry when I snap at someone at work. I get to, I get to have these friendships, but we of this program where we get to go to lunch or dinner or wherever and hang out and have these raw and vulnerable conversations that you wouldn't normally have out in the wild, out in public. You know, we we we just we have a certain language that we speak, and we just we're just so open about talking about our feelings and where we're at.

And you know, with my friends specifically, it's just an amazing relationship to have people that I know I can call at any time. And when I'm hurting, when I'm struggling, you know, they're gonna be there for me. I love Alcoholics Anonymous, I owe my actual life to it. Everything I have today is because of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'm so grateful for all my sponsors for taking me through the steps so many times, and mostly for keeping me honest, not just honest with other people, but the thing that I have the most trouble with is honesty within myself. I can I can bamboozle myself, I can tell myself I'm okay with the situation and not be okay with the situation. So I love the fact that that you have these people in AA that that give of themselves so freely and and just really you know check me on who I am and and who I'm being. Um, I want to thank you for the opportunity to let me share today.

I'm Christina and I'm an alcoholic. SPEAKER_00 39:06 Thank you, Christina. That was lovely. Oh, thank you.

You did a lovely job. I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Okay. I'm gonna go back to I think I'll do chronological.

Well, I maybe I'm gonna start with just the loss of your brother and my condolences. That sounds awfully crippling. Um thank you. Yeah.

And six years doesn't seem like that long ago. No go back to childhood now. You didn't want to be seen as dumb. You tried really hard to to um present uh a certain way, and you also mentioned feeling not lovable and not good enough.

How are those two presenting today in your life? Does it present today? Have you just you don't think about it? Did the steps touch?

SPEAKER_02 40:18 It does present today, it's just maybe presents differently. So as far as like feeling dumb, I you know, I've been in a profession for like 37 years now that um that I love and that I excel in. And so I know I know what I know. Like I know I'm good at what I do, and and that gives me a lot of confidence, especially, you know, career-wise.

I think sometimes when people talk about certain things that I'm not um up on, that I do start to have that sense of, uh-oh, I don't want to have this conversation because I feel dumb and I don't know how to, you know, to add to this conversation. But again, what I do for me is I just I just get in, I just pay attention to my breathing. And it just takes me to now instead of thinking, thinking back about, you know, being dumb or thinking forward about I'm not good enough, is what I do. Um, I absolutely still continue to have the problems of not being good enough or not being lovable, especially in relationships.

Um I have in the past tended to pick people who were not emotionally available so that it would um reinforce that for me. Luckily, you know, through book studies, through talking with my sponsor, uh, through a therapist, I'm working on those things. That the first thought is I'm not good enough. That's why this person doesn't like me.

And then I go, that isn't true at all. Whatever that person is going through is about them, it's not about me. And I get to say, I am good enough. But it's still a struggle.

My first thought is I'm not good enough, or I'm not lovable. For sure. But that's that constant, continued conscious contact with my higher power and staying in like true self to know that I am. I am who I am, and it's good enough for the right person.

SPEAKER_00 42:37 It it reminds me, and I feel like I've mentioned this in in recent episodes in the QA. So sorry if the listeners have to hear it again. But I recently named that voice that tells me anything negative. She has a name, her name is Victoria, and so I can shut her down when she starts to tell me I'm not smart or I'm not good enough.

SPEAKER_01 43:02 Yes, I love that. SPEAKER_00 43:04 I don't know if it's gonna create multiple personalities and I'll regret it later, but it helps. SPEAKER_02 43:10 It's okay. I'm a Gemini, so I already have them.

SPEAKER_00 43:13 Oh, perfect, perfect. Name that jerk. I'm going to. Um, I really liked how you connected it to being present, though, and your practice of step 11, and that makes good sense.

You talked about a couple of things when you were in the early steps. What and you mentioned about a spiritual awakening, and you and your sponsor both grew from a passage in a book, and then you and I was gonna ask about that, but then you said something about uh uh your other uh male sponsor took you, had you do some sort of ceremony, and that sounded really interesting. And so um I would love to hear about either or both of those. SPEAKER_02 43:56 This um yeah, so I I honestly can't.

Even remember the book, but we went to like a Buddhist book study, and it was a book by Kevin Griffin. I know that. And I believe it was like the 12 steps, the Buddhist way, or you know, something like that. And it was it was like step two that they were talking about, and and it was the same thing that I'd heard many times, but somehow I just heard it different that night about being able to create your own concept of a higher power.

And I think maybe the fact that reading a book that wasn't saying God just maybe opened me up more, like the willingness to listen to that step instead of staying shut off when I hear the word God is what like kind of catapulted me through that step into acceptance of that. SPEAKER_00 44:52 And that makes sense if you think of spiritual awakening being translated as a shift in thinking or perceiving. I resonate with that since I had such a problem with the word God when I got here. Um you talked about, let's see.

Oh, the ceremony. Did you want to talk about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_02 45:21 So um, you know, it was it was all about like the five senses. And it was just about like feeling the dirt and and um smelling the air and hearing what was going on, like just it. I mean, to me, he wasn't necessarily about meditating, but for me and my meditation belief, I felt it was just getting in touch with with here and now, what was going on right here. What do I see?

What do I smell? What do I feel? Those senses, you know. And then just and just getting in touch with with my with my true self to me, my innermost self.

That um, yeah, I mean, the I can just say my true self, and then yelling that, like it took me just to a different place. Like it wasn't like I was in my head thinking about it, I just did it. SPEAKER_00 46:16 Like it became a tactile experience, exactly. As opposed to a book one, yep.

SPEAKER_02 46:24 You know, getting on your knees. I mean, that's that's tactile, I guess, in it in itself. But for me, that just didn't give me that aha moment, that spiritual experience for me, and and the way he did it did. And I've heard other people in meetings talk similarly about him, um, not at a cemetery necessarily, but where they had to yell it from someplace.

So, you know, that was that was just something that he did with his sponsees. SPEAKER_00 46:55 That's very clever. You talked about an intervention. Do you think that that was a bad idea for your family to do that?

Uh a good idea, a neutral or hard to say. SPEAKER_02 47:12 You know, I mean, I've thought about saying, and you know, when I speak about maybe an intervention isn't a good thing. I I don't know. I don't know.

I I assume it was part of my journey that I needed that to get me to where I needed to be. It was not pleasant for anyone, so I'm my family definitely says they would never do another one. But at the same time, I had a sponsee who had an intervention by her kids, and that's how she went to rehab. So I think it's just different for everyone.

I wouldn't say don't do it, but I would say, you know, I don't have any expectations around it. SPEAKER_00 47:52 That's good. That's good. SPEAKER_01 47:56 It can go the way I went and like, hell no, or it can go the way she went and be like, I'm I'm heading to rehab.

Yeah, yeah. SPEAKER_00 48:03 I can see it going both ways, and I've heard it going both ways. I can I think if I were a family wanting to do one, I would fear breaking relationship with the person. SPEAKER_02 48:16 Yeah, because when someone's not ready, they're not ready.

Yeah, yeah, you know. But but what was the reason that my sponsee decided to go to rehab? I mean, she was scared. Yeah, she was scared that her kids that she would lose that relationship with her kids and her grandkids.

So that was enough for her to decide that. You know, that wasn't enough for me. And and I didn't really believe I was gonna lose the relationships. I mean, maybe they weren't gonna be the same in my family, but my family's pretty tight.

So I didn't ever think that I would lose the relationships. But my sister and I definitely became strained during that time. We probably didn't talk much for quite a few months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:00 Oh, it's such a such a hard thing for families to go through. You didn't mention the program by name, but I do think it's okay to do that because it has such success rate. And that I'm assuming the program you did was a Kaiser program. SPEAKER_02 49:23 Yes.

SPEAKER_00 49:24 Okay, I have heard amazing things about not heard, I have watched people have amazing results from the Kaiser program. SPEAKER_02 49:36 I have three other girlfriends who went through that year program with me and we're still all sober, and we still hang out, we're still very tight because we had to listen to each other for a year. Tell our stories over and over again, and we still go and and hear each other, you know, chair and everything. And we get together, I don't know if it's once a month, but I mean, some of us are still going to meetings together.

There's a few of us that still go to meetings together weekly, so I love it. SPEAKER_00 50:05 They're doing something right with that program. Exactly. I want to know where the missing car was.

SPEAKER_02 50:13 Um, I believe a friend of his drove us home. Okay. And they had his car. So we had to make a few phone calls that morning.

SPEAKER_00 50:23 Yeah, I've been there. It's not cool, man. Not cool. But I've heard worse wake-up stories, so missing cars, not not that bad.

SPEAKER_02 50:35 Yeah, waking up in the bushes in a different city was was a perfect scary. SPEAKER_00 50:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's see. Do you have any vices today?

SPEAKER_02 50:50 Vices. SPEAKER_00 50:50 Yeah. Do you have a vice today? Like, um well, maybe a better way to put it is is there anything in your program right now, or character defect, or habit that you're working on, or not doing like a good habit that you want to, you know, get it?

SPEAKER_02 51:10 Well, uh so I've gone through the Kaiser Medical Weight Management Program. I've been on it for over a year now. I've lost over 55 pounds. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So in my hit for Kaiser, another yeah, in my drinking career, it was beer, so it packed on a lot of weight. And then after beer, it was sugar. And um, so yeah, I've I've lost quite a bit of weight in the past year, which is really good.

And um I'm still not great at exercising, but my other, like my other addiction that I have really bad, that I'm actually this week I've come off of. I just started this on Monday, is diet Pepsi. Hmm. I would drink, oh gosh, I don't even know how many.

Um, like four diet pepsies to like two liters of diet Pepsi a day. And I would say, I'm not drinking alcohol, so what difference does it make? SPEAKER_00 52:12 I say that about my coffee. SPEAKER_02 52:14 Yeah, so it started hurting my stomach, and then a couple of my friends started like a cleanse.

Um, no sugar, no flour. And so I started that on Monday, and yeah. SPEAKER_00 52:29 And today's Sunday, so how's it going? I want a diet Pepsi every time I think about it.

All right, sorry. SPEAKER_02 52:40 No, no, no, it's all good because you know I get to make that conscious choice today. I get to choose that. I can go, you know, I don't have diet Pepsi at home anymore, but I could go to the store and buy one if I really wanted one.

I get to choose that, and I'm choosing not to. Yeah. SPEAKER_00 52:57 Good for you. SPEAKER_02 52:57 Those are the adult choices I get to make today.

Yeah. I'm not just making them subconsciously because I'm just muddling through the day and with a hangover or drunk or whatever. I get to I get to choose my path, ma'am. SPEAKER_00 53:11 What a blessing.

SPEAKER_02 53:13 Mm-hmm. SPEAKER_00 53:15 Okay, I am down to my final two questions. Is there anything that you left out of your story or you're thinking of now that you would like to share? And we can pause and see.

SPEAKER_01 53:28 No, I I I think I said it all. Okay. SPEAKER_00 53:33 You sure? SPEAKER_01 53:35 Yeah, I forget about it.

Yeah, I forget about it. SPEAKER_00 53:37 Perfect. Sometimes people will say, Yeah, I said it all. But then they keep going, and then there's like more trickles out.

Yeah. All right. So, final question for the listener who is suffering. What message would you like to leave them with?

SPEAKER_02 53:56 You don't ever have to drink again. You know, that the steps work. I was a daily drinker that would drink to oblivion, and I never thought I could quit. You don't ever have to drink again.

SPEAKER_00 54:16 For more information, read the first one hundred and sixty-four pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, or visit keepcoming back.net.