vol 307. No Matter What with Sue S.

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_01 0:25 My name is Sue, and my sobriety date, I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is August 14th, 2003. I never plan when I'm gonna share. And so I have no idea what we're gonna talk about today, but we'll start with my story.

I grew up in a very religious household, and it was somewhat overbearing. My mom really was trying to save my soul, and she had a lot of rules about that. I couldn't listen to anything but religious music, not with anybody but religious people, and couldn't even celebrate certain holidays that she felt did not coincide with her religion. So that is the household that I grew up in, which may have been the perfect storm to lead to where I ended up.

I got sober really young, I got sober at 20 years old, and I didn't use for a long time, but I used as much as I could as often as I could from the time that I started. I had my first drink at 15. And in my household, my mom had always said, if you drink or use drugs, you will die. And so I didn't know, you know, anything about anything.

And I drank and I had a wonderful time. I was really good at it. Um, I was with a girlfriend of mine. We drank the same amount, she got very, very drunk.

I didn't. So I thought, oh my gosh, I'm good at this. And I finally felt that I could be my true self and I could not feel insecure, which I constantly felt before that. And so as soon as I drank, after the first time, I said, I want to do this as much as possible, as often as possible.

And why have I not been doing this my entire life? So I believe I was an alcoholic from the start. But having said that, and and then with the religious background and not having a lot of information really provided to me, I was willing to try anything that changed the way I feel. So once I tried alcohol and I didn't die, and then I smoked, you know, marijuana and I didn't die, I was, I was like, oh, I'm gonna shoot heroin, I'm gonna do maths, I'm gonna try some PCP.

So I was just kind of off to the races. In a way, that was great because I am an alcoholic and it got me to a bottom very, very fast. And I got sober at 20 years old, and I've gotten to have an amazing life working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for now over 23 years. Well, 22 years and um 11 months.

I will have 23 years next month. So, yeah, back to the religious thing, just because I think spirituality is such a big aspect of sobriety. So I grew up in a very religious household and I didn't really know another way. And I really did want to be good, do good, have a relationship with God.

And I I did try to do that within the parameters of what I grew up in or what my parents believed. I remember I would ask God to give peace to my family because my family had a lot going on. There was a lot of, so both of my parents did not drink because both of their mothers were alcoholics. Um my mom's mom, very severe alcoholic, and there was a lot of abuse and trauma.

And so I believe that she became exact opposite in order to try to protect me, and she was doing the best she could with what she had. Neither of my family, I never saw them drink. They were very, very involved in religion. My mom, probably more so.

They did, they grew up in these kind of crazy households. So there was a lot of domestic violence. What I've learned now is domestic violence. I didn't know that back then, but they just didn't handle their anger oil, they didn't, they didn't communicate well, and there was a lot of scary moments in my house from the time that I can remember from some of my earliest memories.

And I would ask God to change that. And I would ask God to bring peace to my house. And there never was peace in my house. And I got angry at God.

I can remember like around 14 before I had my first drink, getting really, really angry at God and saying, Well, if you're not going to change this, then maybe you don't exist. And kind of turning my back on God. So that happened. And then I started drinking.

Drinking was great. Started doing, um, I started doing math like pretty quickly after my first drink, probably like within a couple months. There was a girl at my school who was like, Oh, you should try this stuff. It'll make you really skinny and can help you get your homework done.

And I was kind of always an A student, and that was like, I put that on myself. I would get a B or something, and my parents would be like, It's okay, it's just a B, but I would be like, it's not okay. I have to have an A. So this girl at my school introduced me to that, and I thought it was amazing.

I didn't need, you know, to eat. I didn't need to sleep. I could get all this work done. I could swim really fast.

I was on the swim team, and I didn't feel like in my household when there would be arguing or craziness going on, I wouldn't feel the same anxiety that I felt. I just felt numb and it felt great. So I wanted to do that every day. And I pretty much started doing that every day after I started doing it.

Where that got me. So I I am a spiritual person. I do believe in higher power. And even though I had gotten mad at God at 14 and said that I wasn't going to believe in him anymore, I still would reach out to God.

And I was very, very, I don't know if indoctrinated is the right word, but I was raised to believe in God. But I was raised to believe in a particular type of God. And I would reach out to God during different times in my um addiction, and I would get into some pretty crazy situations. So um I graduated high school at 16 because I had skipped a grade and because I finished early.

So from 16 to 20, when I got sober, I attempted to go to like community college, but I was going to jail a lot. I was getting into a lot of arguments with my mom, particularly. I was running away from home. I was doing whatever I wanted.

I moved out at 18 and I moved in with a lady from work. Her parents were making mess in the basement, I'm pretty sure. So there was just a lot of craziness, and things were very different. And things got very um, I mean, I wanted to do, I I lived for experience.

So if I could try a new drug or do more, but it just got so dark and it became where I wasn't just uh able to use for the experience or drink for the experience anymore, but that I was um completely enslaved by it. So I couldn't go a day without getting loaded. And by the end, at 20 years old, I was staying under a bridge, which I thought was a good idea because I was beating the whole idea of having to pay rent, which was just a scam that the world tried to sell you. And I was shooting heroin every day, and I was shooting meth every few days just to keep it interesting because it's pretty um depressing when you're just shooting heroin all the time.

And I just I couldn't do anything else. Every day, all day long. That's what I was doing. And I didn't think it was ever gonna change for me.

I actually got sober on a resentment. So I had a boyfriend and I would live with him when he wasn't totally paranoid and crazy and kicking me out and throwing all my stuff out on the street. But when I wouldn't live with him, I would go stay under the bridge with a group of people that I knew. And I was in one of those situations where I was under the bridge, but I think my boyfriend was coming to like find me.

And I had gotten high with everybody and I passed out. I overdosed. And I remember waking up and they were throwing water at me from this little river that was next to the bridge, and they were slapping me in the face and trying to get me to wake up. And I remember thinking, if we can just get some mess, I can even this out.

So when when I read the story in the in the big book where the doctor talks about like using all these different medications to try to um control like his every moment where he's using downers and then making it into the house and then using uppers to do different things. There's a story in the big book about that. I like super related to that. So, anyways, I remember telling them, like, if we could just get some meth, you know, and they went and did meth without me and they cut me off.

Could you believe that? They cut me off. And I was like the person that was always coming up with ways to make money. I was very um resourceful.

And so I was very pissed. I was pissed that they would go behind my back and that they would try to cut me off. And I remember thinking, fuck this, I'm getting sober. But there was a lot of other stuff that had happened along the way, like a lot of kind of dangerous situations.

But I remember thinking that, and I remember calling my mom and saying, I want to get sober. And she came and picked me up, and I had a warrant. I was gonna turn myself in on the warrant. So uh we go to the police station and they cannot find the warrant.

And I was like, okay, well, I tried. And I remember leaving, and my mom drove me back. I was gonna now this time. I guess my boyfriend wasn't mad at me anymore because I was gonna stay with him again.

And she was about to drop me off and she was begging me not to stay, that I should go home with her, that I should try to go to a program. And this is August 13th. And I said, Mom, I am gonna go into a program on September 1st because I had like a plan. And I I had had this whole thing where I thought I was gonna go into a program on September 1st.

And she's like, No, you need to go right now because if I drop you off here, you're gonna die and I'm not gonna see you again. Or, you know, you're gonna start using again. You're gonna feel better and you're gonna start, you're gonna start again. I remember telling her I'll be fine and going upstairs.

And she said she had a headache, so she was gonna just wait in her car in the driveway. She ended up calling my probation officer and the police department and making sure that the warrant showed up and they came and arrested me. She called and asked me to come down to her car, and she had the police officer waiting there. So I went to jail and my got sober in jail, which wasn't super comfortable.

But I remember that I had always read the big book because I had gotten sent to different rehabs or programs or AA meetings. I was Prop 36, so I was supposed to be doing a drug program, and I was on uh probation, so I wasn't supposed to be using, but I just did whatever I wanted at that time. And I remember that I had been told to read the big book before, and I thought it was from the 1800s. I thought it was about rich men who were stockbrokers who drank too many martinis, and I just didn't think it could help me at all.

I was young, I was a woman, I was not rich, I had been homeless, I used drugs mostly, and because alcohol is way too unpredictable. And I I just thought, how is that going to help me with my problems? But for some reason, this last time that I was in jail for drugs, because I do go to jail in sobriety, and we'll talk about that later, but um, I picked up a big book and it just made sense. It just all started to make sense.

And when it talked about like uh there's a story where they talk about a guy uh taking a bottle into a barn and just wanting to drink himself to death because he knew he could not stay sober, but he wanted to stop hurting his family and he didn't know what to do. I mean, I related to that, and when it talked about alcohol being our master and the four horsemen, I don't, I don't know all the exact words. I'm not a big book thumper, but those sorts of things I related to. And I was actually surprised that somebody or that a book had captured things about my thinking and about my internal feelings that I didn't think anybody else could have understood.

And so um, that was the beginning of me for the first time working steps, doing the program. Um, I got released from jail to an inpatient treatment program that I had been to two other times. And I had the same counselor I'd had the two other times that I went, and she had six years sober and she had been a heroin addict, and she was a woman, and she was now a drug and alcohol counselor. And I remember asking her if she would just start working the steps with me because if I waited till I got out of rehab to try to work the steps, I was not gonna make it.

And I was terrified that I was not gonna make it. So she said she would, but she wanted me to also try to find a sponsor and go to meetings outside as soon as I was able to, because they have like restrictions or whatever. I remember doing the steps the first time. I had read them plenty of times.

I had to come into the meetings, sometimes forced and sometimes not. And one thing I remember, even when I was forced to go to meetings, I did think that the people were very kind and loving. And I did think that it was a great program for living. I just didn't really want to do the not drinking and using thing.

But as far as like the general principles, I'm kind of a hippie where, you know, love, hope, and you know, those sorts of honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, those sorts of principles did not offend me. Even the idea of a higher power, especially a high power that isn't restricted to like one religious viewpoint. I mean, that was very attractive to me as well. I just didn't want to stop drinking and using.

But when I finally was going to meetings and really decided I was gonna work the steps with a sponsor because nothing else was gonna work. I mean, I had tried other things. I had tried going to church and that would work for about two weeks until I realized that I wasn't gonna not sleep with anyone until marriage, and I was gonna cuss a lot. So all the rules of church was not gonna work for me.

So I'd usually give up after a couple weeks. I had tried to not talk to anybody that I knew, all my friends or whatever that were using, that never worked. It would work for a little bit until I'd run into someone and then I'd be off. So I had tried these various ways to not use or drink, but none of it was working.

So when I finally had gone to jail that time and then gone to the inpatient, I was willing to try the steps. I said, I'll try these stupid steps. And I had read them on the wall and very good, I had very good reading comprehension. And I thought, okay, check, check, check.

You know, I could do them in my head by myself. I had never stayed sober that way. And so it was not until I actually was open enough to get a sponsor and work steps with a sponsor and take direction from another person that I was able to stay sober. And since I have done that, I have been able to stay sober and I have not had to go back to a drink or a drug.

So the program really does work. It's actually very simple, but it was very hard for me to get to that point. Anyways, I'm in rehab, and my counselor's kind of letting you do steps with her. I remember doing the four steps.

So steps one, two, three, great, totally good with those ones. I remember doing the four step and thinking, I don't have any resentments. And there was a lady that came to bring meetings through HI that would come in. And I remember talking to her and saying, you know, I'm supposed to be doing the four step, but I don't have any resentments.

And she said, Why don't you write about a resentment that you used to have and then just see what happens? And I've always been um told to pray before I do step work, pray before I write that God shows me what I'm supposed to see. So I did that and I started writing about my boyfriend at the time who had cheated on me and probably called me a cunt and you know, threw me out with all my belongings and all those sorts of things. And I ended up writing four pages about that guy.

And I was really, really angry. And I was kind of um I was kind of surprised that that I was so angry, but I was also kind of it felt like I was opening a can of worms and there was no need to do so because I had been so happy doing one, two, and three. Why did I need to do step four and open up all this horrible stuff that I don't really want to think about? And they said I have to do it, I have to do it to stay sober.

So I started doing that. And so I did get through all the 12 steps. I ended up getting out of the inpatient rehab, and I went into a transitional housing unit, which was like a sober living environment for a few months. And there I got a sponsor, and she only had about 11 months more than I did.

And she took me through the steps. And every time I did a step with my sponsor, it was different than what I thought was going to happen when I read it on the board by myself, or when I thought I knew what it meant. When I actually did the steps, always it was different, and things started to happen in my life. So I came in at 20, and I, you know, was kind of low bottom, I guess you would say, in that I didn't have housing at first, and I didn't have a car, I didn't have a job.

I hadn't had a job for about two years before I got sober. So I had to learn how to do all those things. I had to learn how to sleep every day at a set time and then wake up and not go like three days with no sleep and then sleep for five days or the kind of crazy schedule that I had been on before. I had to learn simple things like brushing my teeth every day and showing up for things.

And showing up for a minimum wage job was the hardest thing I had to learn because I had been involved in some activities where I could make money pretty quickly. And so having to go to work for eight hours and make, I don't know, at that time, I don't remember what minimum wage was, but it was not very much money that I made in eight hours. And it was a horrible job. I worked at a pizza place in the mall and I had to take the light rail to get there.

And so I'd take the light rail from my sober living environment to the mall. And I would leave there smelling like sausage every day. And it was greasy and gross, and it was so loud because it was in the food court of the mall. So it just echoed with children screaming and babies crying, and it was so over stimulating and horrible.

And I had to learn how to do that, and I had to be willing to do that, and I was willing to do that because I didn't want to go back to drinking and using. So I um I started learning how to do stuff like that. And I started learning a lot about myself through the steps, and all this stuff was happening one day at a time, just one day at a time. I remember at the pizza place, I thought I was their best employee because I really took my job very seriously.

And, you know, a lot of the other people were just like high school kids that would come and they didn't really care. And I cared. I wanted to sell a lot of pizza and keep that place clean. And my boss, I smoked cigarettes at the time.

He goes, Can we go have a cigarette one day? And I thought he was gonna probably give me employee of the month. He probably was gonna tell me what a great job I'd been doing. And when we got outside, he said, Sue, nobody likes working with you.

And he said, You're way too stressed out. And this is just a minimum wage job. Like, you don't have to take it so seriously. He's like, when anybody goes in your area, you just freak out and you you're you're not very, you know, easy to work with.

And that was my first insight. I was actually on my fourth step when that situation happened. And I remember reading in the 12 by 12 at a bus stop, the part in the in the 12 by 12 and the four step that talks about we had never sought to be a worker among workers or a friend among friends. We had always struggled to be at the Top of the heap, or buried ourselves far below it.

And that is exactly how I lived my life. If I could not be the best at something, then I didn't even want to participate. And I was learning these things. It was so amazing.

And I still learn these things today. 22 years later, I'm still learning things about my life through the steps through the program. And I continuously do the steps in my life. And I continuously try to have a sponsor and sponsees in my life because I do believe that alcoholism is a lifelong illness and that the steps are my medicine and I have to do them on a daily basis.

But in the beginning, yes, the things that I was learning, it was these huge revelations. Oh my God, I didn't even realize when the four steps said that we had a part in things, I had never even, that had never occurred to me that I would have a part in things. And most of the time, I didn't really consciously admit to myself that I was angry with other people. I just got loaded and was angry and hateful and insecure with myself.

So I had a lot going on. So fast forward, I'm working steps, I'm going to meetings, I'm doing what I can. I get a car at about seven months sober. And that was exciting.

It just made life a lot easier and everything take a lot less time. And I could go to meetings out of the area and stuff. So at two and a half years sober, and everything in my life, especially like in the beginning, it was all marked by my sobriety. And I guess kind of still now it is.

I don't say like when I was 23, when I was 25, when I was 30, I usually say like when I had two and a half years sober, this happened. When I had five years sober, my son was born. So like everything happens in years of sobriety, which is an awesome gift of getting sober really young. But I tell this story because I want people to know that you can do anything in sobriety and you can still stay sober.

And this is a very embarrassing story for me, but I share it because I want people to know like just because you fuck up in sobriety, it does not mean you have to go get drunk. It does not mean that you're not worthy of the program. So at two and a half years sober, I had a situation where I got arrested for domestic violence against a boyfriend at the time. And I made the newspaper in my small town of Morgan Hill.

And I remember my mom called and said, You made the Morgan Hill Times. And I said, I don't care. No one reads the Morgan Hill Times. And then I went to a meeting, and one of my very good friends, who's still a good friend of mine today, he said, Was that you in the newspaper?

Did you try to run that guy down? And he started laughing. And I was mortified. I said, Yes, that was me in the paper.

And he said, Well, great. We're passionate people. Keep coming back. We want to see how this turns out.

And those are the kind of things that I got in sobriety, more support and love than I was giving to myself. So, anyways, I didn't really try to run him over, but I did drive recklessly. And I did have other issues other than alcoholism, which I learned how to work through with the steps. And I did, you know, therapy and I did my 52 weeks of domestic violence classes that they made me do.

And I remember when they assigned 52 weeks of domestic violence classes to me. I thought, oh my God, you have to show up on time for 52 weeks in a row. And punctuality is not a strong suit of mine, even to this day. And I just thought, oh my God, they should just lock me up because I'm never going to, I'm never going to be able to show up anywhere 52 weeks in a row on time.

But I did. I finished that. I finished 200 hours of community service over that incident. And I I learned a lot and I grew as a human.

Okay. And that has been my experience in this program. When I went to jail for that, when I was in jail, when that had happened. So it was this whole incident.

I had a good friend. She started seeing my boyfriend behind my back. It turned very badly. And they she came to my house to pick him up, and I followed them in a car.

It was a bad situation. And I remember that night thinking, I should call my sponsor right now. And I remember not calling my sponsor because I didn't want to bother her. I should have called her as I was driving, following them in the car and like totally pissed off, but I didn't do it.

But what I did do is later on in the holding cell, I called my sponsor at like two or three in the morning. So lesson to myself in that situation is if it crosses my mind to call my sponsor, maybe I should listen to that voice instead of waiting until I'm in the holding cell to call her. So, anyways, I learned a lot of things through all of these things. But I'm sitting in jail and I'm crying and I'm thinking, God, what a loser.

I'm not even doing drugs or drinking, and I still went to jail. I am just the worst loser. I should just kill myself. I don't have anything good about me.

And I remember the mental health people at jail. Well, you never tell the mental health people you're thinking of killing yourself, but I did tell them that I thought I was a loser. And I was all upset. I'm crying.

I'm snot coming everywhere. And I remember that they were telling me, like, well, you started, you know, look at all the things you've done. You've got two and a half years sober and you're going to school. By that time, I had started going to community college.

And, you know, you're you're working. And they they were just naming all these things and trying to encourage me. So that was very interesting. But anyway, so I get through that situation.

And about 13 months, I quit the pizza place. I told the pizza place, I actually told them to fuck off, which felt great in the moment, but I ended up then not having any money and kind of being stuck and not having gas money, not having cigarette money. It was very depressing. And I remember talking to my sponsor at the time and telling her how upset I was.

And she said, Well, what do you want to do with your life? And at that time, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. And I had wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, even when I was all messed up on drugs. I just had known that no one would want me around their kids in that state.

But I said, Well, I want to be a teacher. And she said, Well, then you have to go to school and you have to get a degree and become a teacher. I said, Well, I can't go to school. I don't have any money.

I don't even have a job. And she goes, You can go to school for free. And she told me exactly what to do, to go down to this school, could talk to the financial planner person, and then I could go to school for free. So I did that.

And I started going to school, and I felt so stupid. I felt like I just couldn't do it. I felt like, what did I get myself signed up for? But I ended up one day at a time doing school, going to meetings, doing all the stuff that I was doing, and finishing community college.

I got my AA degree. And I actually did really well. And I got full scholarship to go get my next two years at uh San Jose State. I actually got all of my school paid for at San Jose State and I got additional money.

And so I ended up going to San Jose State and doing San Jose State and finishing graduating. I don't know if it's like Magna Cum Laude or whatever it is. I had really good grades. I um I did all that.

And it was just so crazy to me because I never expected that I could do stuff like that because I didn't really see myself in that way. So I end up having a baby right after finishing San Jose State, and I got to have him sober. And one of the things that I used to, I used to always be really angry that I found out I was an alcoholic really young because people would say to me, Oh, you're so lucky you got here so young. And I would say, You're so lucky you got to drink another 40 years than I did.

I was just really pissed off that I had to learn that I was an alcoholic and that I could not drink safely and that I had this disease. I was really mad that I had to learn that at 20 years old. And when I went to college and stuff, there would be other people just partying, like living their normal college lifestyle, and I didn't get to participate in that. But Dr.

Bob says something in the big book. I think it's Dr. Bob, and I think it's something about having used all of his tickets, all of his drink tickets. So I would say things like that to myself.

Well, I used all my drink tickets. I've had enough fun for a lifetime. And I would say stuff like that, and I would go to meetings and I would just talk about it and I would keep coming back. So I wasn't very grateful though that I had gotten sober so young.

But when my son was born, and my son was born when I had about five or six years of sobriety. And when he was born, I remember holding him and knowing that I was sober and I was going to be able to be involved with him. And that would never happen. That would have never happened if I had not gotten sober because I was, I might have had a baby, but the baby would have been taken away.

So I was just so incredibly grateful and I really didn't want to mess him up. He's now 17 and I've messed him up a bunch, but at that time I was just so grateful for my sobriety and the opportunity to be a mom and not harm this little person. So I I had my son and I had graduated with a cultural anthropology degree, and I was working at the best job you can do with a cultural anthropology degree. I was bartending and waitressing, and and I had some stuff happen that seemed horrible at the time.

I got sick and I had to take a week off of my waitressing job and I almost couldn't make my rent. I had to borrow rent from somebody. And I was like, oh my God, I have this little person depending on me. And I can't even get sick for a week and miss work.

And I'm just not financially responsible. I'm not stable. I just needed to get to be more financially stable because I didn't want to not be able to support myself and my son. And having my son changed everything in my perspective about, you know, supporting myself and needing money and stuff like that.

So I decided that I was going to go back to school. And I was like, okay, if I go back to school, I need a job. I need something that gets you a job. And I was like, I don't even know what jobs there are.

Like, what kind of jobs are there? And I just thought, doctor, lawyer. Those are jobs that if you go to graduate school, you can get doctor or lawyer. Okay, I hate blood, so I'm not gonna be a doctor.

I'll try law school. So I tried law school and I had never wanted to be a lawyer. I remember calling this law school, this little night school that I ended up going to, and asking them, like, what do I need to do? And they gave me a laundry list and it seemed so overwhelming.

I had to take the LSAT, I had to go get all my transcripts, and I had gone to like a bunch of different community colleges before I got sober. I'd taken a class here, taken a class there. So had to go figure out all that. I had to write an essay, I had to get like letters of recommendation, all of these things.

So I just started doing what the program says, and I did it one step at a time. I did it one foot in front of the other, and I ended up enrolling in law school. And I ended up finishing law school and doing night school, and I was working during the day, and I had my son. I started when he was about one and a half, and I finished when he was five.

And and I graduated as the valedictorian of my law school. It was a very small school though. So I say that, but it was I was a um big fish in a very small pond. I did that, I finished that, and I was terrified.

And I just took all these loans out to do it. I didn't even know why they would be giving me loans. It didn't even make sense. But I was kind of committed at, you know, in the second year, I'm like, I have to do this.

I have to pass the bar. I have to finish this. And I was going to meetings. I was still, even during law school working and having my son, I would go to at least three meetings a week.

I was still sponsoring people, I was still showing up because my sobriety, I knew that if my sobriety went, everything else was gonna go. And I knew that sobriety had to come first because otherwise I didn't have any of those other things in my life. So I did keep doing that. And my sponsor used to say, you're like the busiest person I know, and yet you still show up to meet me more than like some of my sponsees that aren't even as busy as you.

And I don't know, I just did that because I knew that I needed to stay close to the program. And it's still today, I stay close to the program because no matter what is going on in my life, no matter how good it gets, no matter how how much responsibility I have, my sobriety has to come first, or I'm not going to get to keep the rest of the things that sobriety brings. And my life has gotten really good. So, anyways, I finished law school and they have this thing you have to do.

It's called an application for moral character. So I take the bar exam, I pass the bar exam on the first time, but I cannot pass the application for moral character. The state is like, well, you know, they're you have to disclose like all of your past history, criminal history, you have to disclose everything. So they're sending me these letters requesting that I write novels about my history.

You know, what did you do to earn money when you were using drugs? What did you know? They want to make sure like that I have good moral character, I guess. So I'm just writing the answers and sending them back, and it's very uncertain.

I don't have like any time period of when they're gonna review anything or when they're going to approve anything. And I've already passed the bar, my loans are becoming due. I cannot get a job as a lawyer, and I'm just freaking out. Like, oh my God, maybe I did all of this and I'm not even gonna get to be a lawyer.

And I was working at this job. This is pretty crazy. I was working at this job. I had been working there for about two years.

My boss was an older man, an attorney, and he was very good, but he didn't know anything about my history or that I was in AA or anything like that. And one day he said, Can I bring my daughter to lunch with us? And I said, sure. And his daughter came to lunch with us, and the whole time during the lunch, I was thinking, oh my God, she's a friend of Bill W.

She's in the program. I don't know why I thought that. I don't know like what that was about. But uh it ended up at some point coming up, and and I said, Are you a friend of Bill W?

And she's like, Yes. And so we started talking about that, and it and it allowed me to open up to my boss and tell him, you know, because that's his daughter. And anyways, I said, Yeah, I am in AA. And at that time, I think I had 14 years sober or something.

And uh no, maybe I had 12 years sober. Okay, I had some years sober. So that boss ended up when I finally did get invited to go to San Francisco in front of the state bar, they had a panel. We had done all these letters back and forth, and they said, okay, we're gonna give you an opportunity to try to pass your moral character.

We're going to have you sit with a three-panel group of judges, they're gonna ask you questions, and if they think you have moral character, then you will get to be an attorney. So I was allowed to bring one person, and then I ended up bringing that boss whose daughter had also been in the program, and he was super supportive, and he was a very well-respected attorney, and that was a crazy miracle that happened because I'm in AA. Because what are the chances that his daughter would be in AA as well? So we go, he's super supportive.

I do this meeting with the panel. It was almost like an AA meeting, you know. They they asked me things, and I would be like, Yes, I did have anger issues. I did have an incident where, you know, I went to jail for domestic violence and sobriety.

I had to talk about everything with them. They asked a bunch of questions at the end of the meeting. They said, Okay, thank you. We'll let you know of our decision.

They didn't give me a time frame, they didn't tell me, you know, when. And so again, I'm just waiting. And during this whole time, um, after I'd passed the bar, I had been interviewing with all these big firms, and they one of them had offered me a job, and some of them had expressed that they would like to hire me. But then it was taking like additional months, and they decided they were gonna go with other applicants because I was not licensed.

So I'm like, okay, I don't have a job. Like, okay, God, I did all this stuff, and now I have no idea if I'm even gonna be able to be a lawyer, and I don't have a job, and I don't have any prospects anymore, and all these things that I thought were gonna be great, they're like hiring other people. So I was just completely devastated. I thought my loans are gonna become due.

I'm just gonna be completely broke. And the amount of loans I had, that was a lot of tables that I would have had to wait and a lot of stuff that I would had to do. I would have never, I would have never been able to pay anything back for my whole entire life. Finally, a couple months after the panel meeting, I get a letter that they were approving my moral character.

They were going to let me become an attorney. And I became an attorney in California, but I didn't have any job at that time and I didn't have any job prospects. During all of this stuff happening, I'm going to meetings, I'm sharing about it, I'm talking to my sponsor about it, I'm working steps on it, and I'm just freaking out because none of it makes sense. I had no idea where God was going to take me on that.

So, anyways, I became a lawyer. I end up opening my own office because I have no other prospects and I just think my life is over. It ends up being the most amazing thing ever. I end up doing much better than I would have done had I taken any of those jobs that were offering jobs to me.

And I end up, you know, getting to have a very good and comfortable life, getting to, you know, choose what kind of work I want to do and getting to be uniquely useful in certain situations because of that. And so all of that to say that sometimes, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. And I still don't. I still have no idea what I'm doing.

But now I don't have as much crazy things that could just completely fall apart, hopefully. But all of that time, I didn't know, I didn't know what was gonna come next. And I'm just doing the program, doing the things, going to meetings, talking to a sponsor, and God had a plan. God worked it all out, and He worked it out better than I ever could have imagined, you know.

So fast forward to today, I have 22 years, 11 months sober, and I have four children now. After I became a lawyer and I ended up getting married and having three more children, beautiful little girls. They're just amazing humans. I get to show up, I get to be their mom, and I get to have a lot of fun, and they are hilarious.

We do a lot of dance parties, and I've gotten to travel the world. I've gotten to go to, I think I counted it out, and it was 17 or 18 countries so far, but I'm trying to get to as many as possible, but there's like 197. So it's, I don't know if I'm gonna make it in my lifetime, but I'm trying. Definitely want to go to the ones by the equator.

And I get to, you know, I still run a business. I moved across the country, I moved to Florida for a year, and then I end up moving back to California, but I didn't move back to California where I had lived before. I moved to um, I moved to El Dorado Hills, which I had never heard of, and I absolutely love. And it may sound kind of crazy, but all of those things have happened one day at a time, and it's all been good things, and it's all been with God's guidance in a lot of ways, and just doing the program.

So yeah, I don't know. There's a lot to a story because you know it's 22 years and we're fitting it into a few, you know, 40 minutes, but hopefully that is enough. Was that a question? I think.

Can I should I be done now? You could be done. Okay. I don't know because I just feel like I don't know where else to go or what I'm what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 42:38 No, I think that you just talking about your life today um and your beautiful family and um travel and all of these promises. What does your program piece look like 22 years in? Have you had any gaps of of not being active? SPEAKER_01 43:00 When I had about 10 years sober, I just did not want to go to meetings anymore.

And it's weird because I loved going to meetings. I loved going to meetings for the first 10 years. And then at 10 years, I don't know what it was. I just didn't want to go.

Like when I go, I'd be like, ugh, I hate going here. But I I wouldn't leave every meeting thinking that, but I just felt like there was a lot of resistance and a lot of trouble to get there. So I have had that was a gap, but I just made myself go. I just said, you know what?

You have to go, you have to take your medicine. You're an alcoholic. So I don't think there's ever been a time where I've told myself, you know, I'm not an alcoholic, I don't need this. And I do try to remember like, even if I don't feel like going, I have to go.

I need to go. Um, when I moved to Florida, it was really hard for me to get to meetings consistently. And it was really hard to get plugged in. And I actually was very scared because you hear like people move and then they stop going to meetings.

And I can see why someone would stop going to meetings because you leave all of your friends behind and you're in a brand new place where you don't know anyone and you have like time sober, but you don't have any of the connections. Like you don't have the friends or people that have seen you go through a bunch of stuff. So it just feels very disconnected. But even when I went to Florida, I I forced myself to go to meetings.

And it was also very hard because all of the meetings, so there was one meeting that was 11-minute drive from where I lived. That was the closest one. Every other meeting was 30 solid minutes away driving. And I have four children.

So it was very hard to like do that because it would be quite a big, I don't know why 30-minute solid drive, it just seemed very far. And the one that was 11 minutes from my house was only once a week. And it ended up they lost their lease six months into me living there. So we didn't even have that meeting the last six months that I lived there.

Those things have been hard, but I am willing to go to any lengths for my sobriety. I mean, I was pretty hardcore for my drinking and using. I would do anything to get fucked up. So I'm willing to do anything to go to a meeting to stay sober.

And there were also at certain times meetings that I didn't like, but if I didn't like a meeting, I can I just need to look for another one. If I didn't like one experience when I was getting loaded, I would have tried again with a different set of people or a different drug or something. So I try to put that same energy into my sobriety, and it's worked out very well for me. Well said.

SPEAKER_00 45:35 Thank you. Your commitment to the program and working the steps, you spoke about that a bit during your story. Can you elaborate on your experience with the steps for the first time? You talked about it felt like opening a can of worms and you struggled a bit with finding resentments.

Can you talk more about that? SPEAKER_01 46:02 So, I mean, once I wrote that first resentment down, the gates were opened and I found out I had all kinds of resentments and I filled up a whole notebook. But I felt like, why did I have to do this? Like, why do I have to?

I just want to not really think about those things. I don't on the daily feel angry at people. I don't want to have to open up all of that. But I was willing to do it because the program said you have to do it.

And the other thing for me, the ninth step was also very, very enlightening. And I always joke that the ninth step is my least favorite step. It's like super hard. So the first time you do the ninth step, you kind of can blame like a lot of your stuff on drinking and using.

It's like, okay, well, I was drinking and using, so I did all this bad stuff, and I'm gonna make amends for it. But doing ninth steps after that, like when you have to do, I don't know, I've done like other sets of the steps in recovery, like in sobriety, and having to make amends to people and sometimes having to make amends to people where they wronged you more than you feel you wronged them. But all you're allowed to do is look at your side of the street and take responsibility and clean that part up. That takes an amazing amount of grown-upness to do.

And it's very, very difficult. Like I hate that. I think that it really sucks. But as far as what it does for me, it's very, it's also very powerful.

Like what it does for me is amazing because before the ninth step, I felt like people were gonna know that I was junkie, that I lived under a bridge, that I was this, that I was that, all these things, right? And I felt like that was always gonna be a part of me. And it was always like people were always gonna just see that when they saw me. And I was never gonna be able to be like um a member of society or something.

I don't know. It's weird. And when I did the ninth step the first time, I started to become a member of society. I started to, in little ways, that stuff lessened and I became a person, I guess, of integrity or a person, like a whole person that could be a part of society, could be a part of a community.

So I think the night step gave that to me, but I really hate in when you're in the immediate moment of having to make amends to a person who really owes you an amends, and all you get to do is focus on your part. That is very hard. And um, I'm only willing to do that because I want to stay sober. I do not do that because I want to be a great person or I just want to be mature.

No, I only do that because I believe that if I do not do the steps, I will drink again and I will use again and I will be in a very bad situation. So that is the only thing that keeps me willing to do this program uh to the best of my ability. That's the end of that answer. SPEAKER_00 49:01 Yes.

Tell me more. I can say something about God. Oh, okay. So let's do let's do that.

Um, talk about talk about that. SPEAKER_01 49:14 So when I came into the program, I was willing to believe in the higher power that I had been taught about when I was younger. Um I didn't know any other higher power, and I was willing for that to be the higher power. But after being in the rooms and working the steps, my higher power has changed.

My higher power is whatever helps me to stay sober for that day. And it can be people, it can be things, it can be a spirit, um, it can be a god of a religion, but it's whatever helps me to stay sober that day. It could be a group of drunks, it could be music, it could be nature, it could be getting out in nature, taking a walk, it could be reading um religious texts like a Bible or, you know, any religious text, or doing like breath work or any type of thing. And that's been really awesome because it allows me to have a relationship with my higher power and experience that in a lot of different ways.

It's very freeing and it's it's awesome. Like I love it. And I love the part in the big book. It's it may be one of my very favorite things in the big book that says God does not make too hard of terms with those who seek Him.

The realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all-inclusive, never exclusive. I love that, and I've gotten to have such amazing spiritual experiences in the program. And they've just been bigger than the ideas about spiritual experiences that that I had that I was willing to accept when I came in. My idea of higher power was very limited.

And my idea of higher power, as I've stayed sober and been able to experience a lot of different spiritual things, it has expanded. And I think that is a huge gift, an amazing part of the program. SPEAKER_00 51:11 Did you just quote the big book from memory? SPEAKER_01 51:16 I don't know.

I don't think it was perfect. I actually think it says to us, the realm of the spirit is all inclusive, or broad, roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive. And I didn't say to us when I said the quote. I think I misquoted it.

SPEAKER_00 51:31 Okay, but that's impressive. And you you skipped a grade and you graduate the top of your class, so you're super your brain works very well. Does that at times okay? You're also modest.

So the few times during your share you had an opportunity to to maybe even brag, but you didn't. And um, that is probably the balance of your your um humility that you've earned over over the years. Has your ego gotten in the way? Have you has that caused trouble?

SPEAKER_01 52:10 I don't know, but I am I actually constantly tell myself I'm not enough. So in my mind, what happens and what big huge part of my alcoholism is, is that I'm not enough. I'm a loser, I can't get anything right, I'm not I'm not working hard, I'm this and that. Like these are the types of things that I constantly battle.

So the idea I don't know. I'm not sure that I'm like feel or think that I'm better than other people. It's usually that I feel or think that I'm worse than other people. So yeah, I don't know.

So at work, I get probably if you ask people at work, they would think that I have an ego. Because I get very, I don't know. I'm I'm I'm a horrible person at work. Nobody should work with me.

I just want to say that. Um I don't know, but yeah, I do, so I guess in that way I struggle. But as far as like the program, I'm pretty willing to do whatever, even if I think like, oh, this is stupid. I remember my sponsor one time.

So I have a brother that has um some pretty significant mental health issues, and he probably will never live without those. And he has been in a bunch of institutions, he's been in the Napa State Hospital, he he um he was in an institution, and I remember he told me it's like a nightmare here. And I would go and visit him, and it looked like a nightmare. It looked like something out of a zombie movie because the people are all on meds, they're shuffling down the hallway.

It's just like this. I just would hate going to visit him, and I would just be so angry at God. I would say, Why would you make mental illness? Like if you know everything, then why are you doing something like this?

Why don't you fix this? You know? And I was so mad about it. And I remember talking to my sponsor, and she said, Why don't you invite God to your visit with your brother?

And I thought, okay, how do I do that? She goes, just before you go in, just say, God, I invite you to come to the visit with my brother. And I thought, oh my God, that's the stupidest thing. Like that's gonna change anything, like that is gonna make anything different about this.

But I said, Okay, I've asked her to be my sponsor and willing to take her guidance. I will, I will try it. Fine. I thought it was stupid.

I didn't think it was gonna do anything. So I'm in my car and I'm waiting to go see my brother. And I say, I say, God, I invite you to come to this visit with me to see my brother. And like every visit that I went to before that, I would get in the car and I would just cry.

I would just be so upset that my brother was in there, that I had to leave him in there, that, you know, all this stuff. So, anyways, I do the prayer thing, I'd go in, and I don't know why. I don't know why, but all of a sudden I started noticing things that I never noticed before. Like one, there was a game room, or not a game room, but like a TV room where they were playing um PlayStation.

And there were people playing together. There were like people playing each other on PlayStation. I don't know, it just something changed. And I realized like my brother, before he had been in that institution, he would just sit in a room by himself and watch the news and be delusional and think that all these things, like that he was God and all these thoughts.

And I thought, okay, here in this place, he's safe, and there are other people he can have friends, he can do things. There's a PlayStation room. There's I don't know, my perspective changed on that visit after I did that stupid little prayer that I thought was stupid. And so I started doing it every time I'd go visit my brother.

And I don't know, it's things like that in this program that it's not like I'm always like excited to do them, but I'm willing to try it. And my perspective changes, and and for my perspective to change as an alcoholic, that's a really good thing. SPEAKER_00 56:11 Let's talk about your family some more. Your mom called the police and your probation officer.

Were you super pissed at her? How did that um look? SPEAKER_01 56:21 I had called her and volunteered to go. I had volunteered to go down to the police station.

So I don't think I was really mad at her. SPEAKER_00 56:32 But like when you went back into your apartment with your boyfriend, you're thinking, okay, I tried it, didn't work. So when you got pulled back out and she kind of tricked you-ish, were you mad at that moment? SPEAKER_01 56:48 I don't even know.

I was so tired. Oh, and I was so I've actually read because I had to get the police reports for everything when I did my moral character application, and I've read like my statements to the police officers when at that particular arrest and other arrests, but I've read that one, and I was so tired and I was so sick. I mean, I can't explain it to you. I know it sounds, I mean, I only used for five years, but I I was at a place where I was very tired.

I was very sick. I really I when I read my statements to the officers at that time and stuff, I feel sorry for myself. I feel like I just want to take that person and be like, oh my God, you don't have to do this to yourself anymore. Because I was just a very sick, sad, hopeless individual at that point.

So I don't know that I was mad at her. I was just like, oh fuck, I gotta go to jail. I was I was not excited to go to jail, but um I knew that she loved me and she was doing the best that she could. SPEAKER_00 58:05 How is your relationship with her today?

SPEAKER_01 58:08 It's been up and down, but we probably have the best relationship that we've had in a long time, and that's through working the steps. She has a lot of her own stuff because she was raised by an alcoholic and had very severe, significant, like very bad trauma in her childhood from being raised by an alcoholic. And she doesn't see that as her problem or something she needs to deal with. I think Al Anon would be great for her, but she doesn't want to do that.

And so I have to detach with love and love her the way that she is, and also, you know, keep my side of the street clean. So it's a very that relationship has been a very educational one, but also a very trying relationship, but also I love her deep down or ultimate, you know, at the end of the day, I love her. And I do realize that we're both doing the best that we can. And she did a lot of good things, and her intentions, I think, were good intentions.

I don't think she ever was bad intentioned, even like raising me very overly overbearing religious. I think ultimately like she really believed that she's saving my soul and that my soul needs to be saved, and that that's what she can do for me by indoctrinating me. So I don't hold that against her at all. I don't know.

I I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to do that to my kids, but I don't hold that against her. Unless I'm mad and then all of it comes up. I'm just kidding. SPEAKER_00 59:53 I love how you work the program.

You roll it into your life um just the same as you roll brushing your teeth and making your bed. It's just um who you are and not something that you do. And that came through during your story. Um, I think I have three questions.

So when you were drinking the first time, 15, you felt like your true self, you said. Um the thing that I love about you is that you appear to show up as your true self. You are uh I would say on the spectrum of eccentric, and um you um are really enjoying life. You just simply enjoy life.

Do you feel like you're your true self? Or you talked a little bit there in the QA too about maybe some negative feelings about yourself and your own character. So how is that play between the two? Your true authentic self, but you still have some really negative feelings about yourself and your worthiness and your intelligence and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16 So I feel like it's not separate. I feel like I definitely am my true self today, and sobriety taught me how to do that. Like I learned that in AA. And I feel the negative disposition in my thinking, I think it it does relate to my alcoholism, the mental part of the alcoholism.

And I think it's something that I have to continue to be aware of and to be willing to move away from. So when my mind says, You're, you know, you're such a loser, you didn't even finish everything on your to-do list today, like, God, you're lazy. Look at you. Now you're just sitting and watching TV.

When I get those things, thoughts, I need to be aware of them. And I need to be like, you know what? You did a lot of things. Uh, some I had a friend in the program that told me she used to do something called a done list.

Instead of a to-do list, she would do like a done list. Like, what did I do today? What did I accomplish? Because I'm the kind of person where it's never going to be enough.

I could work all day and be like, oh, but I didn't finish this one thing. And and what is that? Like, that's that is ego. In a way, that is ego.

So I think those things are not incompatible with being part of my true self. It's just a piece of myself that I have to be conscious of. And it just exists. It's not, and I can try to have a different thought or I can try to be more realistic.

And a lot of times, one thing that the program has taught me, and this is awesome, because I talked about being really serious, taking things really serious. And the program talks about not taking ourselves so seriously. And so I definitely laugh at myself more, even my character defects. Like, even when I do stuff and I'm very lucky to be married to someone in the program, you know, he'll he'll kind of joke, do you want me to get you a table, a table for one at your pity party?

You know, we'll kind of like just make fun of it. Like, yeah, this is, you know, that's not realistic. Like, come on, you you're being unrealistically hard on yourself. So I I don't know.

So I think that's just part of humanness, and it's okay. And I'm learning tools to deal with it. And it actually comes from the program, the tools that I'm learning to deal with it. So I want to share one more thing about my mom.

Please. And I I want to share one more thing about my mom and the way that the program works. So I I am in a good financial position these days. And um, my mom loves K-drama and she loves like K-pop music.

She loves everything to do with Korea. And I said, mom, do you want to go to Korea? I'd like to take you on a trip to Korea with the grandkids. And in my mind, and in my intention, it was I'm happy that the place that I am in life, and I would love to share that with my mom and to do something that she would really like and it created good memories with her grandkids and like do a bucket list thing, like help her achieve a bucket list thing in her life.

And she was like, Yes, I would love to do that. And so we go on this trip to Korea, and my mom is being my mom, and I am being me. And we're on this trip in Korea. And if it's uh so she went for the whole month.

I she went for a whole month. I couldn't take that much time off work. I went for 12 days that during the time when she was there and brought the grandkids. And for the first nine days, we did pretty good, but there was like these things that are happening because of our relationship and because it's not perfect.

And on day nine, we got into a huge argument. I mean, a really pretty bad argument. And I actually got out of a vehicle like at a red light in Seoul, which I don't know, it was pretty wild. But and I just couldn't stay in the car with her anymore.

We got in this huge argument. And we didn't talk for the last three days of that trip, and we didn't talk for about a year after that by her choice. And I tried to do my best to clean up my side of the street, like pretty quickly after that situation, probably like within a month of us getting back. And she didn't want to hear it, she didn't want to talk to me.

And I go to this meeting and I'm all upset because I've like a lot of years sober, and this stuff just keeps happening because it's life. And I shared about it at a meeting, and this guy, he had like, I don't know, 40 years sober something. He goes, You got a C. And I'm like, What?

He's like, Yeah, nine out of 12. That's a 75%. That's a C. You did good for 75% of the time.

And I was like, Oh, thank you. I've never thought of it that way. But these are the types of things that happen in sobriety. You know, I was feeling just like a horrible person.

Me and my mom got in this fight, this beautiful thing I wanted to do to her now is just this horrible memory for her or whatever, and we're not even talking. And so that I don't know, but AA gives me a different perspective. And it did end up working out, and I was able to take responsibility for my side of the street, but I also didn't take responsibility for things that were not my part of this the street. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and so that is a huge gift that I've gotten from AA. So I don't think like things become perfect just because you have a lot of ears of sobriety, but my life is good. So I don't know if that makes sense. SPEAKER_00 1:06:40 It does, it absolutely does.

And I appreciate the the honesty about it. When I was new, I got sober in a room of old-timer men, and they do not talk about what they're doing on the side of the program in terms of any bad behavior. They pretended that they were angels, and so it was a surprise to me as I started to go to more meetings and saw the truth of the matter, which is we don't become perfect human beings, but we do get more and more tools along the way to handle being human beings. Okay.

So is there anything that you left out of your story or that you're thinking of now, in addition to that, that you would like to share? And we can pause and see if anything pops up. SPEAKER_01 1:07:33 I think I jumped in at every opportunity to be like, wait, I want to share this. So I think I'm good.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:40 Okay. Um final question. For the listener who is suffering, what message do you want to leave them with? SPEAKER_01 1:07:50 Just keep coming back and never give up.

So if all you can do is get to a meeting today and you're still getting loaded, you're still drinking, just do that. If you can pray, if you cannot drink or use today, do that. For me, I could not have stayed sober a full 24 hours, probably, unless I was in jail. Like it was not gonna, I was not gonna be able to.

I know I had like said I was gonna try. I would say that all the time and not stay sober for full 24. So just come as you are and keep coming until something changes, and just don't give up because you are worth it. SPEAKER_00 1:08:36 For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcoming back.net