vol 46. Sobriety Date 7/15/2014 (Pamela)

Pamela shares her Experience, Strength and Hope with raw emotion and earnestness. Halfway through her 6th year of sobriety, one may assume she has decades with the humility she brings to the table. And, one may think she has only a few months as she illustrates, with palpable desperation, the horrifying darkness of living with active alcoholism. 

What the listener will take from this share is HOPE. The hope of a better life, one filled with purpose, meaning, and above all: Freedom.

A story for those young and old in sobriety.

Quotes
“I was so afraid because I thought I was the only person in the world drinking this way.”

“The moment had come, I was tired, my body was tired, my mind was tired; everything about my life was exhausting, the game was exhausting to hide the bottles, to look for the bottles. . . I just couldn’t do it anymore.” 

“I somehow decided to be honest . . . if I am not honest with everything I am never going to survive this and I’m never gonna be free of this." 

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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 0:33

I call it the day that I walk towards freedom. First, I want to say that the one thing I learned while I was drinking, it's not that I learned it, but I knew it was that we suffer so greatly. So many people in the outside world don't understand our suffering and what we go through, not just with the drinking and the physical beating of our bodies, but of the pain that we go through in our minds, and that there's so much shame and grief of who we have become. And I didn't recognize it until I went to rehab that there were, excuse me, there was that little voice inside that kept telling you how negative you are, how bad you are, and then you continue to drink over all of that. So I just believe that alcoholism is such a true suffering. And um I'm praying that the outside world will someday see what it really is, and um that the stigma will be removed um from it because it it's just a terrible disease to have. Um, so I'll start with this. I by the end of my drinking, I was 51 years old. I wasn't showering, I was drinking a fifth of vodka a day. I was guzzling it down. I was drinking over everything that had gone wrong in my life or expectations that hadn't been met. I drank over the fact that when I was two years old, I had eye surgery and had to wear these coke bottle glasses, and thought to myself at two years old in 1965 that I was not like everyone else. And my little mind was already telling me that nobody else had glasses like that and that I was different. And I really do remember that. And it came perfectly clear that I was different because in first grade I had a teacher who decided to lock me in the closet because I couldn't do a little dot to dot where you follow the numbers. And she would lock me in the closet and let everyone else out to recess. And my little mind told me that it was because I wasn't like everyone else and that I was different. In sobriety, I learned that it was because this teacher was just a cruel person. So then I would drink over the fact that our family moved from uh Detroit, Michigan when I was a couple months short of 17 years old to Cincinnati, Ohio, which was so vastly different from what I had been used to. The neighborhoods were different, the people in Cincinnati were different. Not that they were bad, it was just a different culture. And so adjusting to that at 17, almost 17, was just treacherous. And I believe that my senior year of high school, I didn't necessarily drink, but I isolated, I didn't want to go outside, I didn't want to go to my my high school, excuse me, graduation. And um so I believe my alcoholism, the ism was already starting then. Now I did drink when I was in Detroit. I hung out with the crowd that drank. I liked it. The drug part, I had tried some drugs, I didn't really like the drugs, but I did drinking did make me feel like I was a part of the crowd, which always was something I was striving for for some reason. So obviously, when we moved to Cincinnati, I was definitely not part of the crowd, and um I had isolated. My parents were amazing people. My dad just passed away on December 29th. They've been married uh 57 years, I believe. Um, I grew up with three younger sisters, uh good Catholic family. We grew up with Polish grandparents, and I took Polish stance, and um, we had family get-togethers, and so I really did have more of an idyllic light um uh when I was younger. So the move was a catapult into something else, and I think that's where I started really seeing myself in a negative light. Then my mother, so after high school, my mother really pushed for college. She had not been able to go to college, she had been a stay-at-home mom, and she really wanted her children to get an education. I at that time wanted to go to Michigan State, but my mother really wanted me to stay in Cincinnati, and I ended up going to Xavier University. But to my chagrin, the place I really wanted to be at was Michigan State. And what I found in my sobriety was I was definitely a dutiful person, a dutiful daughter, a people pleaser. I didn't really have my own thinking. So I would just follow along, I would do what I was told and try to do my best, which I did at the time. When I went to college, I um paid for my education, and I found that there were other kids who didn't, who had rich parents, who got to party all the time, do whatever they wanted, and then go to class. And there was this anger that was building inside of me as to why I couldn't be one of those people. And I found that alcohol helped me fit in and helped me believe that I was one of them. And so for my four years of college at college, I drank a ton. I skated through college, even drinking. I held on to a couple jobs, uh, went to school, graduated with a 325, which is unbelievable when I think about it now, with all the drinking that I did. But the drinking made me feel like I was somebody else, and it was magical in that way, unfortunately. After college, I um at 25, I married uh my husband, who I had been dating in college, and we we got married, uh, had a very nice wedding, and three months later, I found out I was pregnant with twins, and I really wasn't ready for that, but I was pregnant, so there you go. And I remember thinking when the test came back positive that I wouldn't be able to drink. I absolutely remember that. That moment where I'm thinking for the next nine months I can't drink, and God knows what it's gonna be like raising children. So I always that thought is just important because it just shows that the the alcoholism was there because normal people don't go, oh, I can't drink for nine months. But I was thinking that, but I did not drink for nine months. I um I had twin boys, and uh I had to end up having emergency C-section, was it was really, really scary. But they both were great, six, four and seven, one in poundage, so I had almost 14 pounds of baby. Um, had my children, and I remember after having my children, it was if they were maybe like a month old, and my husband took me. I was I had a doctor's appointment, and my mom had my children, and we went to lunch, and I remember having two whiskeys and being so happy that I could have two whiskeys, and it I I remember this now as a sober person, that that was just so significant. The miracle is that while I was raising my children, I stayed at home with them, I had controlled drinking. So basically, if my mom and dad took my kids over for the weekend or we went somewhere for the weekend and they kept the kids, I would roll out the alcohol. And I was hearty crazy person. But I didn't drink very much. I might have a glass at wine at night, or if you went out with friends on a Friday night, but I didn't start my crazy drinking until my kids were later in high school. Um, so my kids grew up, they started to grow up, they played sports, and I was writing a World War II book at the time. Um, once once they were in high school, we had gone to Poland. I am of Polish descent, and I was writing this World War II book, and this is the day that I believe I crossed over into the abyss. I decided to kill off a character named William in my book, and before I did, it was one o'clock in the afternoon, and I thought, you know what? I'm gonna have a glass of wine because I'm really feeling sad about killing this character off. It's crazy, I know. So I poured a glass of wine, and it was magic. My day flowed, my words flowed, and I was in. My boys were 16 at the time, they were playing sports, they wouldn't get home till six o'clock. So what I did was was I I had one glass of wine, and then a week later it was two glasses of wine, and then it was a bottle of wine, and then it was a pint of vodka, and then it was another pint of vodka, and I was able to drink during the day and live in this unconscious freedom, and then by four o'clock, make some coffee, stuff myself with toast, and make dinner. They would come home and we do the whole family thing, and then when they went to bed at nine or 10, I would drink again. Pull myself out of bed, start that routine, and that's how it went. And they knew, they knew at that point that I probably had a problem. There were times when they would come home from football practice and see me a little buzzed up, and they would say, Hey, are you drinking? And I'd be like, Oh no, I had a glass of wine with Mrs. So-and-so, and and that's how I would do it. I would cover up. When they went to college being twins, they both went away at the same time. And that's when I knew all bets were off and I was in on the race. I knew it. I was so grateful to not have to be responsible that I could drink as I pleased. And of course, all of this that I'm talking about, I realized once I got sober at the time, I wasn't thinking, oh, I'm off to the races. But absolutely, but in my subconscious mind, I was. So years went by. I pretended to work on my book. I I tried to stop drinking here and there. I take a couple days off because my body was getting damaged. But it just continued. And the two pints, you know, one pint, you go to one cashier at the liquor store, and then you go to buy another one at three, you go to a different liquor store. Then I began buying more bottles, hiding them any in and everything from ornament boxes to lacrosse bags under mattresses, all of it. And it escalated to over a fifth a day or a fifth for the most part. And I am a little person, I'm only five-one. So you can only imagine um what I what it looked like. My husband and family were just desperate. My husband held several interventions, um, not professional interventions, but family interventions. One time my sons came home, they all locked me in the house. They said there's a problem here, you need to quit drinking. And of course, my alcoholic mind was always thinking, You all think you're better than me. Everyone thinks they're better than me. You're not better than me. And of course, all I could think about was getting through the intervention, them all leaving, and me going to get a bottle. And it went like that several times. So those are kind of the war stories. Um, there's a lot more, but we all we all have them. I'll just get to the to the chase here. There was a day that came, my husband had tried everything. At that point, he was we were just living together. There was no more relationship. My family had pretty much let go of me. There was nothing more they could do. I um I put the car in my garage. Sorry. I put the car in my garage, and the bottle fit of vodka was sitting on a table in the garage. And I took the key and I got into put the car in, put the key in, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, I can't live with alcohol anymore, but I can't stop. And I can't imagine stopping. I can't imagine going to a party. I can't imagine having Christmas without a drink. And I so I the best thing to do is end it. And the weird thing was I was cognizant enough to go in the house for a minute, get the dog, put him out in the yard in case I didn't want him to die along with me. Um, and then I got back in the car and I sat there for over an hour, I don't even know how long, and I was totally wasted and just crying and sobbing. And I think by the grace of my husband's prayers and my parents' prayers and my family's prayers, I and my kids, I got back out of that car and started screaming. I was sweating, and I just was screaming at myself, what is what is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? And then the best thing to do was find that bottle of vodka and drink it and just go pass out, which is what I did because I couldn't believe what I had just tried to do. Not too long thereafter, there was a day that came, it was a Friday night, and I cannot even tell you how many bottles I had in this house or what how much of them I drank. It was well over a fifth. That Saturday morning, I I woke up and I was sweating and I was vomiting, which I did almost every day anyway, but I was truly sick and probably should have gone to the hospital. And I didn't. My son was living with us at the time, he was 24, and he kept saying, Mom, you got to go to the hospital. I said no, and I slept for 36 hours. On that Sunday, I dragged myself out of the bed to find my bottle, what was left of it, gossel it down, go to the liquor store, buy another bottle, and then that night sneak into the family bottle of vodka, drink most of that, in which I put water in it to make it look like I had not drank. And the next day my son came home from work early, it was about two in the afternoon, and he said, Mom, dad and I know you put water in the vodka bottle. Something is wrong with you, mom, and he's like just so upset with me. And I just stood there, and then I walked away from him for a little bit, and then I finally came back in the kitchen and I said, Nick, call dad. I'm already drunk, I have to go to rehab. I'm sorry, I'm tearing off. Um, Nick, um I thank God for that day, and I know it's kind of a different bottom, but I had prided myself in being a mother, you know. I had tried to remain dutiful to my family and be good to my children, and there it was, my child, my adult child was telling me, reprimanding me that I had put water in a vodka bottle, and that was my loaf. And um, and it was just, it was just the moment had come. I was tired, my body was tired, my mind was tired, everything about my life was exhausting. The game was exhausting to hide the bottles, look for the bottles, over what you drank, what you didn't drink. I just couldn't do it anymore. And I and I was so afraid because I thought I was the only person in the world drinking this way, and I felt like no one would ever understand what was happening to me. And I had always tried to do the right thing in my life, and then all of a sudden now I was drinking and drinking and drinking, and it couldn't stop. And it was it was just terrifying. I mean, I sat in those shadows for so many years, so afraid, so desperately afraid, and what would people say, and just all of it, and um anyway, two days later I got into um a rehab called the Ridge of Ohio and here in Cincinnati, and it was a 28-day program, and I was really afraid. And I live in the suburbs, and I knew when the word got out that I wanted to rehab, there would be gossip, and I was fearful of that. But at the same time, I just didn't care anymore. I was just so desperate for a life and not the life that I was living because it was just such a hellish way to live. And um, so I got into this rehab, and the very first day they gave you a um a little uh form to fill out little sheets of about your drinking habits. And in one of the first papers, there was about 40 or 50 uh things, and they asked you to check them each off if that had happened to you when you were drinking. And I remember looking at the sheet, and I thought, oh my god, I can't I can't check all this off because if this is who I am, this is who I am now, and I checked it off. I I somehow decided to be honest by the grace of God at that moment. I thought, if I am not honest with everything, I am never going to survive this, and I am never gonna be free of this. And I call it a holy moment. I checked off every box that applied, checked it off, and I made that decision that that I was gonna do whatever I had to do in this rehab and listen to whatever they had to say and work really hard so that I could get my life back. And miraculously, I went through the 28 days. It was a 12, you know, the rehab focused on the 12th step. Of course, the powerlessness came easily to me because it was obvious that I was powerless and my life had become unmanageable. I mean, if you can't even shower every day and all you care about is drinking, there is a problem there. So it was, I was definitely powerless and my life was unmanageable. I wasn't doing anything. Um, and then, you know, turning my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him. I um had always been a prayerful person. I had grown up Catholic, I had been a prayerful person, but I had lost God in the mix because he wasn't saving me. And I kept begging him every day, please help me stop this. And so I felt abandoned. But when I was in that rehab, I came to a moment where I knew God was there and I believed in God, and I just asked for his help. And you know, some people call it higher power, whatever, but for me it was God, and and I just said, please surround me and protect me and help me. And I was able to move forward each day. I started a prayer journal in rehab, um, which I still do today, religiously. Every day I do a prayer journal and it has saved my life. I um I learned a couple things in rehab. The one interesting thing was the counselor there, one of the counselors said, a lot of times the woman or a man, depending, but she believed that my mother bear instinct overrode my alcohol instinct for a certain period of time. And that is perhaps why I was able to control it with as my boys were growing up. And then as they became more responsible and needed me less, the alcohol monster. Moved in. And I do think that's what happened. It just seems logical as to what happened for me anyway. I don't know if it happens for everyone, but it did. And I'm kind of grateful that when they were younger, I I wasn't doing that yet. But I know there's a lot of women and men that are. And you know, I I hope I pray and hope for them to find a life because alcohol just tears us down. Um the other thing in um rehab was we had individual counseling, which really saved me, and I could sift through those bad areas in my life, almost like helping me with step forward there. And my counselor suggested, knowing that I had was writing a World War II novel, she suggested that when I'm home, when I get home, I would write just whatever I needed to write down if there was a moment where I felt like drinking. And I did start to do that. And in essence, that's where my book kind of came in, and I'll get to that later. That's not that important. But I did, I would, if I hit a moment where I just wanted to get some vodka, I would write down some bad memories about what went on in our house. And then I would I began to write the triumphs that waking up in the morning and having coffee without getting sick, seeing the sunshine. I mean, that was so big because a lot of times I would sleep to like noon or one o'clock, you know, taking a shower, clean sheets. I mean, we become, it's like we're learning to walk again and we're learning to live in the land of the living. And so that progression was amazing to me, and just being grateful for those little miracles. And every day was a miracle to me. I when I the day I got home from rehab, we had they had taken us to an AA meeting every night. So I was very familiar with AA. I remember the first night I said, I'm Pamela and I'm an alcoholic. I never felt so free and so comforted, and that people understood me. Um, that the day that I got home from rehab, I went to an AA meeting that night, which was one of the meetings that our rehab had taken us to. They are now my home group and have been for six and a half years. And I just I needed it, and I would do one or two meetings for the for my first year, I would go to at least one meeting a day. I feel like it's my injection. Instead of drinking the vodka, I drink up a meeting and I drink up some coffee, and I'm with people who understand me with compassion, and and I'm able to help people now. Um in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I've sponsored people, and it's amazing. It's an amazing group of people who, without judgment, love one another. It doesn't matter where we come from, what kind of car we drive, what kind of career we have, we're in it together. It's it's it's been the most amazing team for me. I I I can't even begin to thank God for it because I would not be where I am today with without it. Um, for sure. I I just have to say that. Um so I have to tell you, so a couple weeks into AA after rehab, I was praying for a sponsor. And ironically, I was at a Monday night meeting, and I see this woman come toward me. Her name is Carol. Her excuse me, ex-husband used to coach my boys in football. And I look at her and I say, Carol, are you supposed to be here? And she starts laughing and she said, Pam, are you? And we just boomed laughing. And I had not known she was NAA. And I asked her to be my sponsor that night. And we have she has sponsored me since she's been amazing. We worked all the 12 steps together, and we have a friendship and a sponsorship. Um, together I can call her at any time, and I'm just grateful. So I always want to tell people pray for the right sponsor, and they will come. They I really believe they will come, and I'm blessed in having having her. Um, so the other thing I would like to say is because I think this is so important. When we surrender, and then we we change our lives and we are willing to do the work because there's work involved. You know, it's a day-to-day victory every day, it's a day-to-day job. The counselor and rehab told me that recovery is a lifestyle, make it a lifestyle, and I have. But the promises come true, the promises are real. Family, my family has mended. My family has mended. I on my one-year sobriety date, we bought a little cottage in northern Michigan. So, as everyone remembers, I wanted to get back to Michigan. Well, on my one-year sobriety date, we bought this little cottage on Grand Rivers Bay, and um I I am blessed to have a little place of of uh paradise now up there, and that that was a promise that came true. The other thing is I believe that our gifts and our talents are exposed once we are sober, and as we walk the walk and the light keeps shining, we begin to see them, and everybody's gift is different, but but we we come to find out who we are, and we are transformed and we are given our gifts back, and those gifts override the want to drink anymore. Those gifts give us such a sense of freedom and sobriety. I I I I tell everybody, wait till you see the transformation, it's so beautiful, and I know it has been for me too. And you know, and I know I can honestly say that with my book, I I never thought I was a good writer because alcohol told me that I'm not. Well, I can now surely say that I'm a decent writer because we're always negating who we are, we're always negating our gifts when we're drinking. Everyone has a gift, everyone has goodness, and we're just unable to recognize it and say it. So I'm grateful for that now. I can't do math, I'm not a good baker, but but I can write, I can absolutely write. So I have been blessed with that, and um once we find our purpose in this life, which I I do a chapter on that in my book, we've got a purpose in this life. We find our true self, we can run with it now, and there's just such a sense of freedom of that. Um, and I do sponsor people, I am a big Twitter person. I've um met so many amazing Twitter people that I have helped. They have helped me on Twitter in the recovery posse, and I feel very blessed in that. I have gained so many sober friends, and I've lost other friends, I've lost some friends along the way, 25-year friendships. But in the end, what I knew was we were just drinking partners, we weren't really friends. So there's life changes and there's life alteration, but they're beautiful, and we can walk through this life, and we're free of of self. We see ourselves in a in a better way. And I just want to give hope to everyone out there who's still struggling in the shadows. But I'm sorry, you don't know why I'm tearing up that there is there is light, come into the light, there is courage, you will find your strength, there is hope, there is forgiveness, and that our disease really makes monsters out of us, and our families don't recognize any us anymore, but they will again, they will again, and there is hope, and I am grateful for the six and a half years that I've had, and I I live one day at a time, and I'm grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous and for the rehab and for all the amazing people that I've met. And I just I'm just so glad and that I've made it this far and that I'm okay in saying now that I'm an alcoholic. It's not a stigma, it it's it's strength. I am I am strong and you can be strong. And I'm just really wanting to show everyone that that there is hope and recovery and there is life in recovery. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Thank you. I was getting emotional with you. You did such a such a thorough job of describing how exhausting it was. Yeah. Keeping up with life. I not showering, you know, getting sick. I mean, there just you just took me back to how dark, like you said, in the shadows that kind of existing is. It's so easy to forget after a few years of sobriety, but you brought me right back there. Yeah. And freedom today.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

So your book you had mentioned that you something started your book, and can you talk about how your book came about through your sobriety?

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure I can. Um, I I was just writing all that stuff down. I never planned on a book, never planned on anything. It was it was helping me get through my my first year basically. And there was a man, um, I would send him some excerpts. There was a there was an older gentleman, Mort, who um took me under his wing when I got in an AA, and he was always at all the AA meetings. And he said, Oh, send me something you wrote. I just would love to read it. And he kind of suggested, he said, you know, Pam, I've been reading some of your things, and you might want to think about a 90-day journey or something. Um, so he kind of got my mind thinking, and um and so after I wrote all the 90 days of different things, triumphs and and bad things, and you know, heroin moments, and I uh suddenly this day came where something just told me to put this in a book, and I had written my family a letter on my first Christmas. Being Polish, we do a thing called a Patik, and we pass bread around and we asked forgiveness to anyone in the room of anything that had happened that year. And so what I did was I I wrote the thief. I wrote the prologue, not knowing it was going to be a book yet, but it it's just a little story of the thief and how it comes to kill and destroy us, and that we end eventually find the light. And I tried to explain what had happened to my family, and then I wrote a personal letter to each person, which I gave them after after I passed bread to everyone, and I read read this and then gave them, made my amends that night to I don't know, 16 people. It was crazy. Um and from that moment on I thought, oh, I uh people would read the the little thief part, and people would say, Can I borrow that to read to my family? I need to show that to my sister. I I owe her an apology. So I gave it out kind of, and somehow it just developed. Um, letting go of the thief, it became letting go of the thief because the thief comes to kill and destroy, and it just it just turned into a book. The the the thing that terrified me was whether or not to put my name on it, because now people would really, really know who I was. But I just decided that if I don't put a face in a name, it's not real. People need to see a real person who struggled with alcohol, someone who lived in the thubur, because everyone thinks it's just the bum, you know, they they put down the bums on the street, but never anyone in the suburb, never anyone that that, you know, lived a decent life. There's this misnomer. And so I put my name on it and I went with it. I pushed the button, and the interesting thing is the woman that received the manuscript emailed me that very day and said, I just want you to know that my husband is celebrating 11 years of sobriety today, and that's when I knew it was the right thing. So I made it a book.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

I'm looking forward to reading it.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's pretty raw.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

It tells the truth. It's that takes a lot of courage. That takes a lot of courage.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

It's okay. It's all good. It's it's it's it's been really it's been cool. I I like I said it was selling, it's selling in the UK and stuff. And as long as it helps people, a lot of people are using it as like a daily along with a daily reflection. So they can because the pair, there's only like four paragraphs in every chapter, and it's just boom, you're in our mind. So but I do want to say one last thing about this. More the man that helped me at the beginning was 20 years sober, and um he went back out, decided that it was time to start drinking again, and he died in his home with alcohol everywhere. So God bless him. He's my angel.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Well, we can't end on that. I know. I'm sorry. No, no, it's okay. It's I appreciate the truth because you see people that have like 15, 18, 20 years, and you you assume they're safe now and they're not. And that's why we keep coming, that's why I keep coming back because exactly my program gets stronger year over year, and we almost have the same sobriety date. I just have a couple months. Mine's January 2014. Wow. We my program has to get stronger year over year. That's and so there's and I made a comment to somebody the other day at a meeting has 18 years, and he said something, and I, you know, my program needs to be stronger. And then when I shared, I I said, Yeah, your program really should be stronger by this point. And I felt bad for saying that, but I think that honesty, I mean, people know that's what they get from me, that direct rudeness that gets me in trouble at work. That honesty is we get that in the rooms, and I need that direct people calling me on my shit. I don't need you to sugarcoat, I don't need you to beat around the bush. Tell me if you think I need to be doing better because that's what's gonna make me better. These rooms make me better. Hearing that this guy helped you and then went out, like, oh yeah, what am I gonna do today for my sobriety? And um speaking of which, I'd like to hear you talked about a prayer journal. I would like for myself to hear more about your prayer journal and what you do today, um, in terms of maintaining the sobriety that you have.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

So um, as I said before, yeah, I I I I buy these little journals and I just fill them up. And every morning I I go into my quiet space and I always begin with thank you, God, for my sobriety today. Uh you could read six and a half years of journals, and every one of them starts with that. And then I usually do a couple grateful things about my sobriety. So uh, for example, I I somebody just asked me to sponsor them. I'm grateful for that. Thank you, God. You know, I I thank you for the strength I had on the vacation. You know, I remember when I took my first vacation, I took my prayer journal with me. I was terrified, but I would write every morning, thank you, God, I could lay on the beach and I didn't take that drink. Thank you, God. Lounge chairs are really awesome to read in, and I don't have drunk. You know what I mean? So I would find the littlest things and the biggest things to be grateful for. So I write that in my journal, and then I just go with I pray for anybody who's in addiction or still suffering or someone who's struggling, I write all their names down. I mean, I have I probably have 20 Twitter names in my prayer journal of people that I know are struggling on Twitter. And so I write down people that are struggling. I write down specific prayers in my family or with my friends or anybody in need, and I do it every single day. I mean, I've missed here and there, but yeah, it's a beautiful gift, and it makes you it makes you review your day the day before and all the things you can be grateful for. I am a huge AAA meeting person. I go to meetings pretty much every day. You know, with COVID, I I've been going into the England meetings in England. There's recovery hour, her meetings are amazing. So I've done a lot of Zoom and have met so many people around the world. It's incredible. But I stick with the program, I talk to my sponsor at least once a week, and I speak at meetings. Sometimes I'm quiet and I listen. But yeah, I follow the program. I I'm not letting it go. And I will tell you, because of Mort, I learned that that day after that happened that recovery truly is a lifestyle. Because if someone can go out after 20 years, I certainly can after six and a half. And that really it almost put the fear of God in me. And so I worked a bigger program after that.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Said like a good Catholic girl.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Yeah, just like a good Catholic girl would, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Oh, also I was raised Catholic, but um oh, that's funny. So I I appreciate I appreciate Catholicism. I'm just no longer a part of it. Uh I get it. Yeah. But when I want to feel comfortable and cozy and safe and connected, I do walk into a cathedral downtown where I live, and uh the smell, the atmosphere, there is some sort of like mother's womb or something. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what a psychiatrist would say about that. But um you talked about, so you did mention Twitter and you talked about um actually Sandra's post from Recovery Hour was just posted on keepcoming back.net so you can hear her story, and she is an amazing storyteller. She is the storyteller. Oh, she is. So if you can, for our listeners who aren't familiar and to school me a little bit on what you find in Twitter around recovery and what you offer.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

So, you know, I I'll be honest with you. When I first went on Twitter, I did it to get my book promoting because I self-published, so there's no promotion, and I absolutely hate promoting. I it's not my thing. I just don't like it. At lockdown, when we all locked down last year, I decided I'm not promoting books, I'm not doing any of that. All I'm gonna do is sit on Twitter and help people. And that's what I did. I would I would inbox people, they'd write something like I'm struggling today, I'd tweet something back, and that's what I that's what I do. Even now, there's a there's a guy that just got 15 days, it's a big thing, and I congratulate them. So I try to be a cheerleader in terms of yes, you can do this. 15 days is amazing. And along the way, people's stories and their struggles remind me of me. And I have to remember, you know what, I was there too, and it keeps me grounded. Um, so I love that about Twitter. I love the recovery path. Sandra and I have become friends, by the way, which is really interesting. And um, so it's just been an it's it's it's almost like the like people in in in addiction, the door is even opened wider now because we're all over the world and we can meet on Twitter. So it's it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

I like January when everyone's doing dry January.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

The buzz on Twitter about that, and kind of watching people realize for the first time that stopping isn't as easy as they thought it was gonna be. Exactly. And then those that are not alcoholic but stop, and they're just so much happier and healthier. And alcoholism is or alcohol is such an acceptable behavior, certainly here in the US. It's yeah, people don't even consider stopping drinking.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Well, it's uh it's unfortunately a part of everything. I mean, not that I bowl, but you go to bowling leagues and they're all drinking, you know, everything is about the drink.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

My son's soccer party was literally in a bar. Um I think this isn't gonna be long for us.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

It's like, oh my gosh. I know somebody that was giving a first birthday party at a bar for their first their one-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

Yeah, and I don't, we don't, we're not judging those people. We're just we're just giving evidence that there's we're so desensitized to it, we don't even think that it's abnormal. That's just exactly yeah, but exactly. Think about a pot bar. We're all gonna have our son's first birthday at a pot bar. You know, like not normal, man, not normal. No, no. So I it's been a pleasure, and I'm looking forward to getting your book. I love my daily reading stuff. And I have one final question, which you talked about a bit at the end of your share when you talked about um, you know, the freedom and the hope and getting out of the shadows. But final question for anybody listening what that may be out there still struggling or not sure if they're an alcoholic, or has bad opinions of AA in the rooms, what do you have to say?

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Oh, that's a tough question. I always say so for the people that are trying to decide whether or not they're alcoholic, that if you are if you are doing anything outside what a normal drinker might do, for example, a more normal drinker might go to a bar and and have two drinks, or they might even get a buzz once in a while and you know have a weekend blitz or whatever, or they a normal drinker can have half a glass of wine and throw the other half out. Those are just a couple examples. If you're not able to do that, if there's something where you're always thinking about the drink, you might want to think about there's something going on that's not as normal as you'd like it to be, you know. Um, but to reach out, I know there have been, there's always gonna be an AA meeting that doesn't suit someone, uh, maybe the way they do things, or perhaps the people in the rooms. I mean, we're we're human beings. If if you happen to try it and it's not what you thought or you weren't comfortable there, find another one. You know, we have to sometimes we have to search a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcoming back.net.