From Family Secrets to Sobriety: Linda's Journey

My sobriety date is September 3, 1994. My mom was a lawyer for a separate position at Burbank.

She joined us with a great team. Go to Bellflower because you'll see her there. So those are my stats.

So I grew up in North Miami Beach. I always had a great family. I didn't have any issues.

We always had everything I needed. Didn't always have everything I wanted.

You know, my dad was a lawyer by education, and he did what he chose to do.

He was owner of a liquor store in Miami. And so there was always alcohol in my home.

There was no, there was nothing special about it. My father drank Dewars.

When I started drinking, that's what I drank. I drank with my father. It wasn't a big deal.

I can't say he was an alcoholic, but he would do stuff like, you know, the little airplane thing.

Yeah.

So he would always have one on the drive-thru door from the store.

And when he was young, it was my sister and my dad, they'd get his drink ready for him.

When he opened the door, we should have it ready for him.

Well, he would do things like fall asleep at the dinner table with his coffee.

Yeah.

I can't say he was an alcoholic. You know, he would stay at home.

You know, he was just an orange man.

Well, my sister was the bad actor in the family. She was the one who started doing drugs early.

She was the one who got caught.

She was the one.

She was the one who, you know, always got in trouble.

And so nobody ever noticed what I was doing, which was good.

I started smoking pot when I was 14.

My sister turned 19.

So that's you.

You're 11 months older than I am.

Anyway, so we started smoking pot.

And, you know, alcohol was just not that big of a deal.

Back in, you know, I'll tell you, I'm 63 years old.

So that was like in the late 70s.

You know, everybody was doing drugs.

It was just a lot easier to get caught than it was.

If I would have, you know, nipped stuff from my father's alcohol, he would have noticed.

So I never did that.

So what I did was, you know, graduated school, stayed out of trouble.

But I was kind of with this double life.

I got straight A's in school, but I was smoking dope on the side.

I'd come home for dinner, and my mother would be angry, but nothing would ever happen.

So I did well in school.

I stayed out of trouble.

They were all good.

Went away to college.

And college, you know, now I'm out of the house, and now I can start drinking.

And I remember my very first drink.

I can't remember my first drink.

But I'll tell you.

Let me just tell you this.

When I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't think it was an alcoholic.

But I had never gotten in trouble behind alcohol.

I get arrested every day.

I get drunk plenty of times.

I don't know why.

I never got in trouble behind alcohol.

I knew I was a drug addict, and that's a big part of my story.

So if you don't want to hear about drugs, I'm not going to.

But I knew I was a drug addict.

So when I came in, I identified as an alcoholic.

And then I was an alcoholic addict.

And then I was finally just an alcoholic.

As an alcoholic, because I found all of those other things.

I was an alcoholic and a drug addict.

That separates me from you.

And I wanted to be a part of you.

And I needed to be a part of you.

I needed to get through it.

So I went to college.

And I did all the college stuff.

Got drunk.

You know, we had keg parties and did all that stuff.

Became a nurse.

And that's significant because I was out of nursing school maybe five minutes when I learned how to smoke a drug.

Where they kept them.

They kept them.

You know.

It was just kind of one of the perks of being a nurse.

You showed the pockets with the tissues and the hand lotion and the bag.

You know.

You know, nothing ever happened.

I just liked to get loaded and that was it.

You know.

So that was in Florida.

I went to school in Tallahassee and I worked there for a year.

Then I think about the things that I did with guys.

But I met a guy at a party in Tallahassee.

He was away for a minute.

Really.

And we spent some time together.

We went on a trip together.

And then he came back here to California.

And then I worked in Italian for a year.

And I just didn't want to go back to Miami where I was from.

So my first choice was to actually visit a guy in Colorado over here.

So I talked to the guy in California.

He goes, hey, come on here.

You know, for vacation.

So I came here.

You know, from San Francisco actually for a couple weeks.

And I decided I wanted to move out here.

So I said, hey, if I move out here, can I stay with you?

And he said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

He said, no.

So I moved to San Francisco barely knowing this guy.

I moved in with him.

I lived with him for, I don't know, maybe a year, a year and a half, whatever.

And moved into the city and started working in an ICU there.

And again, I did my SANS thing.

I've done my companions.

I don't know that I've called them lower companions.

They were all great people.

I always come in with my, you know, my best companions.

and moved into the city and started working in an ICU there.

And again, I did my same thing.

I told my companions, I don't know that I called them lower companions.

They were all nurses.

And I don't know, I worked up to the 11th shift.

And so what we did was I worked with this guy for about a year.

Then I moved into the city and lived with a girlfriend who was a nurse that I met.

And we were both working 3 to 11.

So we would get up in the morning, I don't know, 10 o'clock, whatever,

read the paper, drink a cup of coffee, do whatever we did all day,

go to work at 3 o'clock, get out of the living room, go to the bar,

hang out at the bar until the bar closed at 2, come home,

take whatever, get up the next day, do that.

Every single day we did that.

We had a bar that we went to and we had a bartender.

They knew us, you know, we felt safe there.

But I still wasn't really having any issues with alcohol.

I have to say that I was going to be an oxymoron,

but I had a couple of blockouts that I think I remember.

You know, I kind of remember.

But it wasn't like my blockouts were gone.

Like I never woke up, you know, like I heard somebody saying,

I never woke up saying, lover me.

I always woke up in my own bed.

I always knew where my car was.

You know, I drove drunk plenty of times, never got caught.

I just thought everybody drank like that.

I did all the stuff that alcoholic women do, you know,

especially in the 70s.

It was like, you know, people were, we were just, I slept around, okay?

I never stole drugs that I could get because it was nice to be a man.

I would just feel, you know, like, I don't know,

the heart unit, if you ever, if you ever get your brain to be,

it is, sorry.

Because if you were my patient,

I would hear you, you're certain.

So, I would just, I think it's a focus that,

oh, if you want, I would order my coffee.

And then I would, boy, I would, I would,

I would call your parents.

And 90% of the time they said, oh, much better.

I was like, oh, I'm sorry.

That's what I did.

And I'll tell you, when I was there,

and I, and she got fired.

And, and that didn't scare me and it didn't stop me

because I thought, well, she did an awesome work

and she didn't have to do it.

And I know, I don't want to talk to her.

I don't want her to go.

All right.

So, then I kind of thought, you know,

I've worked in the, in the, in the restaurant for 20 years.

And, you know, oh, and so that's why I started dating doctors.

And this is when I got introduced to more drugs

because instead of just an alcoholic that I was dealing,

I was like, okay, this guy,

I didn't, he was all about Quaaludes and cocaine and all that stuff

that I had never been introduced to before.

And he introduced me to that.

And I thought, well, since he's a doctor, it must be big.

I'm not going to do it.

So I would do it.

But he didn't like me to drink.

And so my first experience starting to hide my drink,

he didn't like it when I drank.

So I would have to sneak.

And so, and I did.

And he was also living on Quaaludes and cocaine

that he never noticed.

But, you know, it was my first, I, I wanted to drink.

I wanted my scotch.

And that was kind of what I needed to do.

Um, so I, you know, dated him for a little while.

And then I decided I needed to do something else with my life.

So I, I was looking around, well, what am I going to do?

And after some research or whatever,

I went, came down to LA to go to graduate school.

And the graduate school that I chose.

So here I am, a nurse who steals drugs,

who's going into anesthesia.

Okay.

Like the perfect setup for me.

Um, so I go to school.

My graduate program was two years.

And I come down here and I immediately find my people.

I find my bar to drink in.

Okay.

I find my cocaine connection and my sister lives here.

And so my sister would continue.

She's a makeup artist and she was in LA.

So she continued for her partying ways when she was here.

But right before I moved here, she got so drunk.

And I was so bummed.

She was going to be the one that was going to get me going, you know?

Anyway, so I come down here and I go to school and now I'm in school.

So I don't really have the opportunity to be stealing pills anymore.

So, um, what happens is, um, I,

I really was, I don't know.

I was just drinking and doing other kind of, you know, cocaine and all that weird stuff.

But then I, I got to get out and I go, I'm in anesthesia and there's not really any opportunity to do all the stuff that I like to steal.

So I have to clean until I read an article.

And what the name of the article was the premedication of infants and children, supentanil, um, the sublingual or buckle, which is under the tongue or in between the cheek and the gum, this narcotic, it's called supentanil.

I'm sure everybody's heard about fentanyl in the news lately.

So you have more famous.

Standard and then you have fentanyl 10 times more potent than morphine and supentanil 10 times more potent than fentanyl.

And so I read this article and I went bingo because I didn't have to inject it.

Right.

So, um, so I tried it and it worked and that started my descent into hell really.

So I'm still drinking and I'm still partying and now I'm feeling this drug and I'm, you know, slipping under my chug and I'm going to tell you, you know, time goes by and I realized that I'm addicted.

Now I'm physically addicted.

I said, Oh, this is bad.

I got stuck.

So I go to my sister and I tell her what's going on and she takes me to a meeting.

So I started, I think I went to my first meeting in like, I don't know, 89 or 90.

I realized that I was physically addicted and I was not able to stop using the drug.

But what I did do is I was able to stop drinking and I thought, well, okay, I can stop drinking and I'll just stop using.

And I started going and what happened for me was like, I wound up in a specific group.

I kind of bounced around the meeting.

I wound up in a specific group, which as you know, is a lot like this group, very structured.

And up to that point, I had been honest about, I would go to a meeting and I would say, I'm new, I'm new, I'm new, I'm new, because I just couldn't stop.

What I do when I went to the specific group, there's a lot of peer pressure to get them to stay sober.

So that didn't make me get forced to stay sober, which is starting to be lying.

And so when you said about being in the rooms for three years, that was me.

I was in the rooms for three years, in the specific group, going to meetings, not drinking.

Literally, I would go to a meeting like this.

We're going to be a break.

I'd go in the bathroom.

I'd get loaded.

I'd come back and I'd sit in my junkie and drink a cup or something like that.

She's like, hey, any junkie on here?

And I did that for three years.

And so what happened for me was God, what happened for me was God blessed me with sleep.

I'll tell you how it happened.

I was so done.

I was so out of my mind.

I didn't know what I was going to do.

I was out of my mind.

And so what I did was I started drinking.

And as soon as I took that drink after not drinking for three years, I felt like my shoulders had been up like this for three years.

And I took that drink and I was like, like that.

I just, I knew I was a drug addict.

I never thought I was an alcoholic.

But when I took that drink, everything just kind of relaxed and everything was just going to be okay.

And I thought, I'm not going to get sober anyway.

I'm just going to die a drug addict.

I might as well drink.

And I felt, why didn't I just drink the whole time?

I wasn't sober anyway.

I thought that if I didn't drink, I could use, you know, I could, I could get clean.

And then I could tell everybody, so I'm lying the whole time.

I took a dirty pick for a year.

I took dirty chips.

I did all that stuff.

And I thought about it.

I was like, I hated myself.

I thought the dirtiest dirt on the floor because I was such a liar.

And now I'm drinking again.

And now I'm hiding my bottles.

And I'm like, where am I hiding my bottles from?

Nobody's coming over.

I have no life.

I have no friends.

My sister doesn't even come over.

Just like I'm completely isolated in my house.

With my.

And now I'm not even drinking scotch.

I'm drinking vodka and coke or something, just to get it down, right?

Just the sweetness, just to get it down.

And and I'm just, you know, but I'm going to work every day.

And every day I would wake up in the morning and say, today's the day I'm not going to do it.

And as soon as I got in there, it's like being a bartender, being a drunk and being a bartender.

I couldn't not do it because I would get sick.

And so what I would do to cover my tracks is I, we had a few patients, you know,

the drug that I stole and the drug that I gave.

And so this day what I did was I signed

the same patient's name at two different places, knowing that I was going to get caught.

I just knew, didn't do it on purpose.

I just knew I went to bed that night, thought to myself, OK, tomorrow's the day I'm going to get busted.

And I was OK with it.

Sure enough, my supervisor came up to me that day and said, I'll talk to you.

And I go to the book, he goes, what is this?

And I couldn't lie.

Well, I know I'm the one who bought the patient's name or whatever.

Did we have the right types and balances at that time?

You just wrote down what you wrote down.

And I looked at him and I just shrugged.

And this my supervisor really liked me and I was still a good worker.

Forget it.

He really cared about me.

And so that started my journey of sobriety.

And so my my message is that I kept thinking that I could just get I'll just

get sober and then I'll get on it, I'll get sober first.

And then I'll tell you all what I wasn't going to change my faith.

Right.

That's my work. I'm going to have to get honest.

And because I was able to get honest with him, of course, they pulled me off the job.

They sent me to the lab. I got drug tested.

I got sent to treatment.

I went into the diversion program at the Board of Nursing.

The diversion program.

And I say and I hope you don't mind this for a bit.

I was their bitch for five years.

I did whatever they said.

I did everything that they said.

And, you know, it was really, really hard.

I was so, so, so grateful for the structure of diversion.

I don't think that I would have been able

to get sober if I hadn't been able to go into that program.

And I was very lucky because the culture

at my hospital then was I was able to go on disability.

I was off work for 10 months.

And I said for five years when I was able to go back to work.

It was very, very gratuated.

I was able to go back and not feel any meds.

And I could go back and only have one meds.

And then I could go and have a narcotic

because somebody else had to hand them to me.

And then eventually I had full privileges.

And that's how my career thing went.

So I was very lucky that I could do my job.

But for me, it was all about getting honest.

So here and now I'm in the Pacific group.

I'm finally sober.

And they have this Saturday night meeting called The Way of Lycania.

And the person who is leading the meeting calls on me and I come up and I go, oh,

you know, you know, I used to like to share because I like the attention.

But this was like, no, no.

So I just got up and I told them what happened.

And I said, I didn't want to tell you that I'm a liar.

I can't tell you the truth.

I tell you the truth. You're going to kick me out.

You know, why are you out?

And of course, I got a round of applause.

And everybody was still kind of a lot like you guys up here.

The energy here is so friendly and kind.

And I know that you guys are awesome, too.

And so that started my journey in sobriety.

And I'm looking at the clock.

I'm like, I have 20 minutes.

I don't have a lot more to say.

But what happened for me, I got my job back.

I got full privileges.

And I was invited to speak on something called the Physicians Wellbeing Committee.

And the other name for the Physicians Wellbeing Committee used to be

your position, which is an idea of what we did.

Only non-physician women have been told this year, because I'm a retiring assistant and I'm giving up, you know,

I'm so blessed to have been at that job for 30 years.

So, sobriety has been the greatest blessing for me.

And I'll tell you, if you're new, if you're a woman, or even if you're a man,

if you're new, my sponsor said to me when I was brand new,

is that I'm on a dating restrictor with no one to date for a year.

And I'm like, a year?

And I'm like, a year? Now, nobody was asking me that question.

And what that did for me was, it didn't have to be a year.

I didn't have to worry about who was he talking to, where was he sitting,

what was he doing to me, you know, how did I look.

I didn't have to worry about any of that.

So it was a blessing.

And then a year and five minutes.

And so I met someone, and literally, you know, did what I do.

And that's OK.

I mean, that's just what I did.

And it wasn't a boyfriend.

I just kind of met him.

And I went surfing.

And I said, I'll take care of you.

And then I had this long distance relationship with a student in Oregon.

It was not a long distance relationship.

He didn't come down anymore while we were dating.

He had a girlfriend.

And I told him that I know him.

And I didn't know that until the last time he told me she was there.

And, you know, and it never stopped me before.

Because for me, you know, your boyfriend, if you like him, he won't be OK.

So if you like him, he won't be OK.

So I want a boyfriend.

It just made me want to be a little bit more, you know, a little bit up there.

And so, like, you know.

Well, I have a list of things.

Anyway, I used to go out to coffee at meetings.

And the guy used to walk up to me.

We had a big table with ten people in it.

And there was a guy there.

And he would say something real.

I wasn't trying to pretend.

Was there anything that I liked or wanted them to come by to his phone?

But then when we got to the next meeting, they said, what's up?

Yeah.

So then once in a while, I was riding my bike along the ramp there.

And we stopped by a couple of people that were playing volleyball or whatever.

And we just hung out and then we left.

And at the way of life meeting, this guy comes up to me and said, hey, we both have a bike ride.

And I said, how do you know I have a bike?

Oh, yeah.

And I didn't even notice him.

And the moral of the story is we started dating.

And so, you know, just first friends like to do stuff like go for a bike ride or go for a hike.

Yeah, well, I'm going to do one.

And first perspective, I was like a 40 mile

migrant the whole time he was talking, asking me about how do I know if a girl likes me?

And I thought, OK, he was talking about some other girl.

We were just friends, right?

So we didn't date for a while.

And then we started dating.

But I didn't.

I did it completely differently.

I didn't look at the phone while I'm at Doreen.

I didn't obsess on him.

I didn't think about him all the time, like, why isn't he calling me?

And then all of a sudden, he's also trying to make whatever.

And, you know, things just kind of progressed.

And we've been married almost 20 years.

And the moral of the story is, do you think it's a negative thing?

And that's what I have learned.

That works for me.

If I, my character, these ones are the things that used to protect me from whatever.

And when I got sober and I wrote my

commentary and I did my fifth step, my sponsor said, OK, these are defects.

These were all of the things that I used in my life to help me live.

And so if I don't have those things, what am I?

And who am I? And how am I going to survive?

And what I found was that those were things that no one was certain.

And I had to learn how to take those defects and turn them into assets.

So, for example, I found that I was really controlling.

So if I just do what I tell you,

I'm going to be fine because I'm right.

And so I'm very organized and I will organize you.

I'm sorry, I'm working.

Meetings give you relief, that's true.

And that has been, I have found that that is true for me.

Working the steps have been the absolute magic of the program for me.

So we, my husband and I have a sober home and, you know, we don't have any kids.

We have dogs. Our dogs have never seen us drink.

We don't have any puppies.

We have a new puppy and a new dog.

And, you know, I go to four meetings.

I sponsor others.

And, you know, I know I'm really, really early.

I'm like, I know I'm really early.

And so I know I've left out, look, stop it.

Yep.

Like, like,

you know, it's like a 10 minute super set.

This told me everything.

And and I am so grateful.

And thank you all for asking me.

Thank you so much.