From Success to Sobriety: Deborah's Journey

I'd also like to thank the two colleagues and Chris, you guys did a great job, thank you very much, and I'd like to thank Mary Doherty and Chris for coming with me tonight.

We've gone to a lot of meetings together, and it's a lot of fun when you're asked to speak away from your home area to get in the car and go together to a meeting.

My sobriety date is February 1st, 2002, I'm in a home group, a specific group, and my sponsor is Betty Gates.

And my job here tonight is to tell you a little bit about what I was like and what I'm like now.

I am a Canadian-American, so if you hear the Canadian accent in my voice...

I was in a cold this week because I was there last weekend visiting my grandson that I have a little bit of my Canadian accent left.

If you hear it, that's where it's coming from.

And, you know, up in Canada, we say, let's go to the AA meeting, eh?

So, you know, my sobriety is where, you know, took my first drink and knew I was an alcoholic and blacked out and did all those things.

I actually didn't cross the line into, you know, full blown alcoholism until I was in my 40s. And I believe I was an alcoholic from the get go. I just didn't cross the line until I was in my 40s. And it's interesting that my mother, who is 15 years sober at this point, came into the program at the age of 29. And she also did not cross the line until she was in her 40s.

So, you know, for some it's sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. For me, it was a slow process. So I was raised in Canada. And then when I was 12 years old, we moved to Africa. So I really don't remember my first drink, because there was nothing dramatic about it. There was no age limit on the bars in Africa. In fact, there was no anything regarding that.

So I was allowed to go to the Gulf Club and have a drink or go to the local bar or restaurant and have a drink.

It was just, it was okay. And, you know, I was allowed to have a half a glass of wine with dinner when we were out for dinner and things like that. And that started me on being what I thought was a normie. I didn't even know normies and alcoholics.

I was able to drink normally. And I could take it or leave it. You know, one of our speakers mentioned being a designated driver. I was a designated driver often because I didn't care if I had anything to drink or not.

You know, I could have half a glass of wine and leave.

You know, I could have half of it sitting on the table, not even think about it. And so, you know, it went on like that for a long period of time.

And if you looked at me on the outside, what you would see is a very successful woman. When I came back from Africa, I went to university, graduated, got married, had my son.

And, you know, what you would see is a successful executive, you know, a good marriage, a son who was an international figure skater.

And I competed in a sport where I was ranked fourth in the world.

So you just saw this woman who looked like she had it all together.

And what I didn't know at the time was that I had a spiritual emptiness that I was filling up with all the time.

And, you know, I think that there were lots of symptoms that I was an alcoholic and heading for trouble long before I actually crossed that line.

I, in my sport, we used to party hard. We used to party a lot.

And, you know, every February, we would swear up drinking for the month.

There was about 10 of us that hung around together.

They all played the same sport.

And every February, we would get together on January 31st and we would drink like crazy until midnight.

And then we would stop drinking.

And we always picked February because it was the shortest month.

So it would be the easiest month to not drink.

And then we would not drink for that month.

And then on the 28th, we would all get together and we would stay not drinking until midnight.

And then at midnight, we'd start drinking like crazy and then party till dawn and have breakfast and all that kind of stuff.

And to my knowledge of that group.

So 10 people aren't the only ones that actually was and is an alcoholic.

They continue to drink normally to the best of my knowledge.

So for me, life went on and it was fairly normal.

And, you know, we moved around the country a lot, had a lot of successes, traveled a lot for my sport, traveled a lot for my friend's sport.

And what happens for me was that suddenly those things I described myself as external started to cool.

You know, I got past the promotion of work that I thought I deserved.

And not shortly after that, I started to lose competitions to people I'd previously beaten in my sport.

And my son at the time was, you know, hitting his teenagehood.

And it's perfectly normal for boys to want to distance themselves from their mothers when they're a teenager.

And I knew that was true, but it felt very personal.

We had traveled a lot for his sport together.

So we were very close.

We spent hours and hours.

Hours and hours every day together.

And when he started distancing me and not wanting to be around me, I felt very hurt, even though I knew it was normal.

And so I turned to my husband for support.

And he basically said, you've been ignoring me for 15 years.

You know, you know, you've been working in your sport and your son's sport.

And, you know, I feel like I'm below dog on your pecking order list.

And so I'm really not here for you.

So in a matter of a couple of months, I went.

And I went from feeling really good about myself because of all my external things to my external things starting to crumble.

And I went from being able to drink that glass of wine, not drink that glass of wine, to needing to drink 24-7.

And it happened really, really quickly for me.

And what that looked like was I just, white wine was my drink of choice.

And I love to drink white wine.

And what that looked like was on Sunday, my husband and my son would go.

I would go to yoga in the morning.

I would go to Costco to buy a case of water.

And then I would go to the liquor store and buy a case of white wine.

And then I would go home and pour all the water out of the bottles and take the wine and fill up all the water bottles with wine.

And I would put them everywhere, in the linen closet, in the car, in my briefcase, you know, under the bed.

One of my favorite things to do at night was to roll over in bed, reach under the bed and wrap one of those.

The plastic bottles, take a swig of it, like I'm rolling over, roll back over.

And my husband would just think I was rolling over.

He wouldn't even notice that I was rolling over.

And that's the way it went for me.

I just needed to be able to, you know, do anything without wine, so not being able to do anything.

I had to keep wine in my sports bag.

And before I went on to play my competitions, I was drinking before and during and in the breaks.

And, you know, obviously, it wasn't working out very well.

And I had a high-powered job, so I had to sleep.

Whenever I felt I was going to be drunk, I would call her and say, I'm not coming in or I'm going to see a client or whatever.

So I managed for quite some time to keep it away from the office environment.

And, you know, and what happened was there was a time when I had to do some performance reviews.

And I didn't want to go into the office.

You know, I was like, I have to not drink, I have to not drink, I have to not drink.

And we know how well.

That worked out for us.

And so I said, well, I'll just have one drink.

And that'll set me up for the day and I can go into the office.

And so I had that one drink and then I got in the car and I was driving to the office and I was like, I think I'll stop at the liquor store and get a bottle of wine just so I have it in the car for after.

Well, I got that bottle of wine and I drank that bottle of wine before I got to the office.

So I went into the office and I did those performance reviews.

To this day, I have no idea who blew the whistle on me.

But somebody recognized me.

I recognized that I was really drunk doing a performance review and told my boss.

And my boss didn't confront me at the time.

I don't know why, but he called me at home the next morning and he said, you were drunk in the office yesterday.

And I said, no, I wasn't.

I just had some wine at lunch.

And he said, no, you were definitely drunk.

And you need to not come into the office.

You need to go on Monday and see the corporate doctor.

And if you don't do that, it's a condition of employment.

And so.