Carolyn’s Raw Journey: From Goth Self‑Medication to Facing the Dark Road

- Thank you so much.

What time should I end at?

Okay, I'm writing it down to recall.

Hi there, I'm Carolyn, I'm an alcoholic.

- Hi Carolyn.

- I'm gonna change the view

so I can see all your lovely faces.

Well, so let's see, I'm really glad to be here.

Thank you for inviting me and hopefully I'll do well.

It sounds like a tall order.

I don't wanna get stuck drunk too long.

I wanna qualify a little bit.

I wanna talk a lot about like this year.

There's been some changes for me in my AA program.

All of us, of course, with Zoom and everything.

Some switches up with my home group and everything.

I'm glad to see Melissa's here.

She knows all about that stuff.

I originally was on the East Coast.

You know, sometimes people start with their family,

like what they grew up like.

And I was one of those people that swore up and down.

Everything was normal, everything was normal.

And I realized later it wasn't so normal,

but it was the only normal I knew.

And, but it doesn't really kind of factor in.

There's some outside issues,

maybe some relationship issues that can come from that.

But the alcoholism,

I can't say that it sprung up from anything like that, right?

Dealing with all of that directly

wasn't something that had to happen for me to get sober.

But I was led down a path as pegged as a mental health case.

And it was like, oh, we gotta find the issue, right?

Like if we could find that one crumb in the past

that started all of this, I would stop drinking.

'Cause they said I was self-medicating

for underlying emotional issues.

And now they like to say induced by trauma, right?

And they're like, where is it?

You know, and they, therapists and rehabs and things

would like try to dig in and find it.

I sort of started that round when I was pretty young.

I had, I speak sometimes about it

like it's colorful alcoholism.

Like there was self-injury and bad behavior.

And I was so goth, you know,

I farted clouds and black rainbows followed me, you know.

And like, I think I was awfully lonely too.

And in high school, it was Insta friends, you know,

like there we are, we can all come together

over these substances

and kind of have these fair weather friends.

And I treated people quite poorly.

I had no idea, you know,

it was very self-centered going all along

and making amends to friends.

You know, I'm having revelations like,

oh, I was this awful friend that was there

when I needed something and not when I didn't

and would expose people to things

that brought their life in a negative direction.

And, you know, so desperate and pathetic.

I mean, especially if I got up to 21 and could buy alcohol,

I would supply alcohol to minors.

And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm cool.

You know, they need me and stuff.

And it, and it was terribly sad

and had a lot of wrongdoings looking back at it.

But people were like, oh,

that's what it meant to be friends with you.

We knew that.

And I'm like, oh, geez Louise.

That they, you know, they knew my inventory.

I was the one that needed to catch up.

And I've had the opportunity to make living amends

to some of those people as well as time went on, as we do.

I would, you know, go to an outpatient program

and they'd have the little papers.

They're like, you need to go to meetings outside of this.

And I'd say, why?

You guys are gonna get me sober, you know?

And they, I'd look at these lists and I'd be like,

why is there two?

And they're like, oh, well, one's AA

and in AA they talk about God.

So if you don't like that, go to the other one.

I'm like, oh yeah, give me the other one.

And I would, I'd go a little bit.

And it was the saddest bunch of folks ever.

And I would, but I would go once a week

at the, off the workbook and everything.

And you know, I just would sort of lose interest

and everything would kind of revert back

to the same way it had always been.

'Cause I drink like I breathe, you know?

And I couldn't, I'd go to therapists

and I would describe the craving, right?

Where I would be laying in bed, having the spins,

like just pass out, you don't need to drink more.

And I'd reach under the bed and pour a shot

and take the water back with it.

And I'd lay down and be like, just pass out.

Like I don't need to drink anymore.

And knowing, like watching myself,

knowing I was gonna take another drink and another drink.

And I would sit there and spin this stuff

and they're like, do you want to stop?

And I thought about it and I was like, well, I guess not.

'Cause if I wanted to stop, I would, right?

I must not want to stop.

And situations that arise out of craving

that cause some men to make the ultimate sacrifice

rather than continue to fight, right?

This funny little sentence in the doctor's opinion.

And I couldn't see that that was exactly

what ended up coming up.

I had drank all of my alcohol looking back at it.

And I was thinking, where is it?

Like, where did I leave this?

Is it at a friend's house?

And I got in the car and drove over to the friend

and it was snowing out there and woke them up

'cause it had been quite a while.

They didn't have it.

I didn't have a phone to be calling around.

I lost it 'cause I was drunk.

And on the way back,

I remember hitting a trashcan or something, right?

And I was found trying to drive the car full of smoke,

very rural area, no trouble with DUIs or anything.

I was a quarter mile from the family house

and trying to drive this car in a blackout

that no longer had a radiator or anything.

And to this day, I actually don't know

where I'd gone off the road.

And my dad was coming up the road and knocks on the window.

And I come to, and I start marching off all angry

and a neighbor ends up coming by with a tow truck.

Oh, you want me to haul that up to the yard?

And I get back to the house and it's just, here we go again.

The jig is up as it does over and over in a cycle.

And they're like, where were you?

Why are you drunk?

Like what happened to your car?

And I'm starting to make up stories.

And it's that situation where I, yet again,

I cannot blot out this intolerable situation

no matter how I'm going in and out of this brownout.

And I just want everything to go away.

And I like shrunk down to the ground

and started hitting my head,

trying to knock myself out on a stud,

but it was just drywall.

I put holes in the wall and my mom was like, no,

and grabs my head.

And I don't recall the rest of the night,

but the next morning,

not thinking that people had stayed home from work,

I'm like, I can't keep doing this.

You know, like I'm just tired of it.

I didn't want to find another drink.

I pulled out this vet equipment

I'd ordered off the internet

and started put large gauge needles in my arms

and started bleeding out into a trash can.

And, but you know, like my heart slows down

and my veins collapse and everything starts down to a trickle

and I'm still, I'm like, shoot, you know,

and I get in a bathtub and, you know,

I didn't know this and it was, I didn't,

I had three years sober before my mom ever told me,

but she could hear me drowning and I would sputter

and I would cough up the water

and she would hear the sound again.

She'd tap on the door, are you okay? What's going on in there?

And I was unconscious at that point.

And so she eventually ends up breaking down the door

and it's this girl in a bloody bathtub.

And I, for the first three years,

I would tell this story from only my perspective, right?

That self-centered perspective where I can't really see

what it's like for other people.

And you know, that I'm like, oh, they made, you know,

the EMTs and deputies, how embarrassing.

Some of them were from my high school

and there was the sheriff that had been at the high school

and people I'd been to high school with

were these EMTs and deputies.

And they made me get up and my mom puts a stack of clothes

on the gurney and they whisk me off.

And when I get to the hospital, like a good alcoholic,

like I start realizing where I'm at

and I start screaming out of van, out of van.

And the lady comes in with a little syringe for the line.

And the last thought I had was like,

it's probably generic, right?

And then I passed out again.

What I didn't know was that, you know,

from the family's perspective, it's this, sorry, the cat,

it's this crisis where like, it's always about me, right?

There's no one there to support the family, right?

She'd never been touched by the ghost of Al-Anon

and they never kicked me out 'cause it, you know,

it was a mental health, right?

And so she is just in hysterics

whenever this sort of thing would happen, living in terror.

And this one guy pulls her aside

the first time anyone had done this for her and said,

this is where we're taking her.

This is when you can see her.

And, you know, I just wanted you to know,

I went to high school with Carolyn

and she always seemed like a nice girl, you know?

And at the end of that call with my mom,

'cause I'd been calling her consistently

as part of my living amends every week.

And she just started rolling into that story.

And at the end, she's like,

hey, Carolyn, thanks for being real.

Like, oh geez, you know?

And the next thing I did was call my sponsor, right?

After something like that, really starting to see.

And I talk about like, I think we wake up slowly, right?

If I could really have seen everything

about all my experience all at once,

oh gosh, it would have been too much.

I couldn't have taken it.

You know, I would have ran.

Like I started seeing like, you know, all right.

Like, you know, I put people in danger

and this drunk driving is dangerous to other people.

And it's the things I did in the house that were illegal

and the people I brought around the family.

The way that I use fragility as a defense mechanism,

like where you can't talk to me about, you know,

what I'm doing with my life.

'Cause I'm gonna try to get the cat out of here.

You know, 'cause I'm just unpredictable

and I don't threaten you, right?

I don't know.

It's just these eggshells that people have to walk on.

So I was in there after that suicide attempt.

I couldn't stand, I still have a leaky valve, I think,

from that ever since then

with like some arrhythmia and palpitations.

And I was like, you know what?

If I'm not gonna die, I have to find a better way to live.

You know, I was in there with a lady who became agoraphobic

after her husband had committed suicide

'cause he had stage four cancer.

And I, it's just what that, I was like, all right,

so that's kind of off the table, but I'll tell you what,

you want me to get sober there?

And I didn't, you know, it was this grueling journey

of trying to stay sober and having these relapses

and being like, I'm not gonna drink.

I'm gonna take these boxes, of course,

even cough and cold and, you know,

and having the remorse coming out of that

and the, you know, the horror that everyone goes through

and marching off to these dual diagnosis,

polysubstance abuse, you know, sort of psych places

and all the bells and whistles and therapies.

And I drank the day I left there.

And I, they had some AA, I mean,

they had me in all the anonymous meetings.

I mean, they had me in the AA, the NA,

the sex and love addicts anonymous, self-harm anonymous.

They even have emotions anonymous.

They had that for my flat affect.

And, but I, you know, I was just sitting there in that mall

of like step one of identifying, right, of like, you know,

who's hurting today sort of thing

and never getting into step solution.

Like not even understanding that alcoholism

had this feature of craving where I needed more and more

in this insanity where I'd always start again.

And they would always, I'd leave a place

and say, you need a higher level of care,

but that doesn't exist forever.

It's not infinite levels of higher care.

It's really a trickle down effect.

And I love in one of our forwards where it talks about,

for those who've not yet found any other solution,

they should all be offered the opportunity

we have here in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I came across women who came into the treatments

and I was hearing that as we've got to go find those people,

meet them, tell them about Alcoholics Anonymous,

invite them to our meetings.

And that's what women did for me.

I mean, I would have just sat in there

and drank the day I left again,

but I was at a spot where people were very active alumni

and panels and women who would bring in meetings.

And I really started to see there was something there.

I didn't want to get locked up again.

I didn't want the naked body checks

and the 15 minute bed checks

and the prescriptions that were foisted on me.

And I was like, I've got to kind of figure out

what's going on here at Alcoholics Anonymous.

And, you know, getting got into the book,

they were like, read till your eyes bleed

and they won't bleed.

So just keep reading and, you know, getting busy.

There's this lady, there was an old timer to us at the time,

but she would take me on panels and she would say about it,

like, she said, well, Carolyn, you weren't gonna stay sober.

I didn't know what to do with you, you know?

And there were a lot of people

that were involved and around.

And, you know, my sponsor would say stuff casually like,

hey, you and Brandy should go to H&I.

And this chick Brandy, I was like,

you have a car and I don't, let's go.

And she didn't want to go.

And I'm real involved in H&I now.

I've been a member of that for many years,

done the jail and prison panels

and had a meeting routine that was very consistent.

Like they would tell us,

like the sponsor would tell me which meetings to be at.

And I didn't quite get it right.

I'd be like, well, someone's having a watch

and they're gonna take a chip.

So we're all gonna go to norms all night.

And so can I do that tonight?

And she's like, ah, you know,

you've got a routine meeting that night.

And if it's not a, like a routine's not a routine

unless it's routine, like why, how about next year

after you've built a foundation, if they do another watch,

you can go to that one, you know?

And I think a watch is more of a one-year thing,

but that's okay.

And you know, starting to catch the idea

or maybe one time I'd be like,

hey, Balboa Abroad's on Tuesday is an hour and a half.

I want to check out some other meeting.

And she was like, hey,

why don't you go to this Linhouse alumni meeting?

'Cause I have a sponsor over there

and there's no one else running with her in the pack.

You know, that was another thing is stick with a pack, right?

Get some people, yoke them up,

you're at the meetings together, you're rolling deep.

And then I went to that one.

I'm like, you know what, I don't like this one either.

I'm going to go back.

She's like, no, you're not, no more switchy-switchy.

You just, you stick with your meeting.

And I've had the same sponsor all this time, you know,

and she, and Tisha, I'll just say her name.

So it's, you know, Tisha's been really critical.

Like there weren't a lot of people chasing after me, right?

There was a little, people would talk some smack

about our home group 'cause it was too strict

or too busy or whatever.

And, but there, there wasn't really any other game for me.

It was a very annoying alcoholic.

I couldn't time conversations.

I would kind of steamroll everyone,

would talk about really inappropriate stuff.

I would walk into a room and kind of take it over.

And really I would just,

I would have whoever would take me in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And you know, I, to talk about this year,

it's been, it's been an interesting year for me personally.

It's, I think about coming around Christmas, right?

Like I have relationships with my brother, for example,

where this guy, when I did my amends,

he was, his response was,

"Well, we all got to grow up sometime."

You know, all right, fair enough.

That's not, that's not the whole story

of what's happening right now, but all right.

And I would call him on holidays, very distant.

And it wasn't until I started having some,

some issues come up,

like I was saying about the family stuff.

And I was like, something's wrong with me.

You know, there's, there's something funny.

And this sort of seems like some of that PTSD

I've heard about and I looked into it

and that's definitely what it was.

And I started talking to him and he was like,

"Oh yeah."

He's like, "I didn't know when

or if I should ever bring it up,

but I have this letter from your abuser.

What you're asking me is absolutely what happened."

And we started talking more about our family dynamics.

And he was like, "I thought you all were crazy,

that you just thought everything was fine."

And he's like, "I felt so alone."

Like when I left the family,

'cause he was much older than me

and he left early.

He was like, "You were like my first child to me

'cause you were so much younger.

And when I had to leave that sick family,

I felt like I was abandoning you."

I did not know that perspective, right?

Like, and so for him, for the first time in his life,

he had a family member because I kind of emerged out of that

and I didn't have to write them all off.

And I don't need the things from them

that I thought I needed when I was younger, right?

There was this empty bucket that I kept going to

when I was sick thinking there would be more in it

at some point and there just won't be.

And like being able to build new relationships

and being able to demonstrate these things,

like my father would for years, for years and years,

I mean, it had to be at least seven, eight years.

He had this negative way of beating himself up,

blaming himself for alcoholism,

wishing he had stayed with my mom.

I'm like, "I was 20 when you divorced, like it's fine.

Like you guys are so much better."

He's already married Kathy, I love my step-mom.

Like I went to their wedding when I had like two years sober

and he's doing great and I could, it was almost,

it started to get to a point where it almost annoyed me

and I was praying and trying to do some soul searching

on what to, what do I do?

Like, you know, how do we get this guy to quit?

And I, and you know, he also had this thing of,

well, you know, you blame the parents

and they can blame their parents

and they can blame their, all the way back to Adam and Eve.

It was the snake, the snake did it, you know?

And I'm like, "I'm not blaming anyone.

What's this trip he's on?"

And I told him, like, I sent him a text message actually,

I still have it, and where I was like,

"I love and accept you for who you are

with all of your shortcomings, both real and imagined."

Or I forgot how, I didn't say imagined, but, or perceived,

that's the word, it was better.

And you know, I love you, right?

And it's kind of that thing where he used to always say,

like, you can't love someone until you love yourself,

but I don't see that that happens so much

as someone has to demonstrate to us

that we are worthy of love, right?

Like, that was something that I could offer to him,

and it did, he never talked about his life,

his choices, his effect on me.

It never came up again without really talking about it.

But his only reaction was like,

"Well, you've come a lot farther than I have,

or may ever will, but it's fine, right?"

It's, you know, my mom at one point said,

"Carolyn, I do not know what empathy is,

but I will try one time."

And I don't know that she tried or not,

but I've been able to demonstrate that to her,

and that's something we get from the women around us,

we're taught, we learn when we're guided

by our higher power that we're connecting to,

and like the inspiration for these things comes along,

and this wonderful transformation can kind of come about,

and all these relationships,

maybe that's my Christmas story, right?

And so it's just interesting, yeah.

The family's been a really interesting thing,

and I really appreciate,

the funny thing is I wouldn't have appreciated that.

When I was new hearing about those things,

I wouldn't have been real excited,

I wouldn't have recognized that's something I wanted.

There's something about coming to life here

that has made me even be able to appreciate these things,

and to see life in living color,

and to see value and meaning in people

and our relationships with each other,

and finding like our higher power demonstrating

and the things we can do and the things people bring to us.

So this year with my home group,

after we got out of the pandemic, we're back in person,

most of our meetings are in person at this point.

I've heard of some Zoom and some hybrid,

but especially with the ladies I was running with,

they were very anxious to get back in person.

And there had been these little things

kind of going on through the way.

During Zoom, my grand sponsor had a falling out

with her sponsor over Zoom and over mass

and outside issues.

And then she had a falling out with my sponsor

because my sponsor was in a hospital

with her sister dying of alcoholic hepatitis.

And her sponsor was like, "Where are you?

"You should be in these meetings.

"We have a strict routine."

And was like, "Your sponsors know where to be.

"Why aren't you here?"

And so they had a bit of a falling out, right?

And my sponsor has gotten a new sponsor down at Legacy.

And she's still spending a lot of time in Utah.

I'm waiting to see if she's coming back here.

It's tough to find a meeting hall

from what I was hearing from y'all.

It's tough to find a place to live,

a rent and get a lease somewhere.

And so she's working on it.

And I asked my grand sponsor, I was like,

"Are you gonna be getting another sponsor?"

And I've learned enough being around here.

I think that's pretty important

to have active sponsorship at every stage of the game.

And they decided when they didn't want a sponsor

to take a tack about, well, back in the '40s,

the sponsor just takes you through the steps.

I mean, you don't really need that guy, do you?

You're not raising him or whatever.

So it was very difficult for me

to be in this really tight-knit group

that was so insulated and to be like,

I do have some understanding of this program

and some expectations about what we should be doing

around here and made the split off.

It's just a Monday meeting.

I still see them all on Wednesday and Thursday.

We're all still pals.

We still go to the same detoxes to be helpful,

but that's a big deal.

Nancy knows it's a big deal around here.

And it has been very difficult getting,

'cause I've been connected in H&I,

and I've got old timers that were my service sponsors

going into the jails and everything.

And I ended up just going where they were at for Monday.

Like I'm not used to having choices in meetings.

And it's been so difficult that I just feel like

it's even that much more important

that I'd be able to do that

and be connected to A as a whole.

And some of the stuff like, oh, and it was 80% of the women.

I was sitting in that Monday meeting

and it's just emptying out.

And it kind of made me tear up a little bit to see that.

It's a remarkable change.

On our Wednesday meeting, there was one commitment.

She was the secretary, I guess,

and she would pick the leader

and keep track of what paragraph we were on.

And that was it.

And because she had left the group,

she's at the meeting, but she left the home group.

And so they gave that one commitment to someone else.

And I was like, I don't know, I think we need traditions.

I think traditions are pretty important.

I think we should have been doing that.

We were a very young home group in a,

like coming up, we had meetings in treatment centers

and then they got big and then they got a place to rent

and then they got bigger and they got bigger places to rent,

but we didn't ever incorporate traditions.

And that's another,

if I can tell you what didn't work out, right,

maybe this will be,

this tells us what we should be doing around here.

And so I looked around at our Thursday meeting

and we had created an oligarchy

and I was very unpopular for this opinion,

but I was like, there's three of us running the meeting

and we always, we're always leading it

'cause it was a book study.

And the person who's leading it is counting the cash.

I'm like, this is weird.

What are we doing?

And so we wrote up our script for our secretary.

Secretary's in charge of picking.

We like, we made motions.

We did the voting.

We did the, for the first time ever,

put all of that into place.

Thank you for the timer.

And yeah, it's growing pains for everyone.

And I was one of the leaders in that meeting,

the like static forever permanent leaders.

And the, you know, I went up to this one chick

who's got a little more time than me.

And I was like, I'm really looking forward

to you leading that meeting.

I think you've got a lot to offer

and I can't wait to hear it.

You know, I'm really glad you're gonna be doing it.

And she was like, oh, that's so great.

You know, coming from like the, you know,

the, the guru or whatever she said.

And I, and I thought she was messing with me

and I was like, she really feels like that.

I would, I want to lift up the women around me, right.

And into commitments and into like,

I just couldn't believe it, right.

That, that like, there's this,

there could be that kind of,

it's like an inferiority complex made me sad, right.

And I'm jazzed about it.

I'm jazzed about some of the changes that are happening,

but it's been, it's been uncomfortable, certainly.

It's been, you know, the indecision

and some of the things that were kind of hidden by that

have had me looking at issues of like, you know,

well, how, how do I know if I'm doing well

around this program?

I don't have this really like,

well, if you're at this meeting and if you do the,

like, I'm the kind of, I would try to go to those meetings.

Like I'd tell my sponsor, I'm feeding blood.

Should I go?

No, I was like, I think I was like, I'll be there.

I'll go to detox.

I think I should go to like urgent care after.

She's like, oh my God, you need to go now.

Like I'm dedicated to out the wazoo and to just be like,

okay, well, if I do these things they're asking

that are really particular, then I'm doing good.

And I'm having to turn more to my higher power.

And sometimes I've seen,

my heart goes out to like people who alone

left that home group, just striking out on their own

because there's such a loss of identity

and so much indecision of like, am I doing well?

Am I, am I still a valuable member?

Will somebody tell me that I'm doing well?

And it's been a very,

these are things that I struggled with personally.

This isn't anything on them.

They didn't do this to me.

But these were the things that I think I was struggling with

coming in, being new, being like, am I worthy, right?

I was always prone to having like morbid reflection

and beating myself up.

And I would, I'd be like, oh, I shouldn't think like that.

It's too self-centered and I shouldn't,

this is very not helpful to anyone.

And we can't have morbid reflection.

It's gotta go, I try to beat it up some more, right?

If I beat myself up and then I'm like,

oh no, no, no, don't do that.

And having to kind of bring in some of that compassion,

I learned through walking through

that really nasty family stuff

and having to take some self-compassion

and getting through that and seeing how that fits in

to sort of that depressive type of alcoholic

moving through this program,

getting more involved in A as a whole, like really go.

And I used to be more like that.

I think as time went on and I was just only

in the same meetings with the same women,

I lost sight of some of like some of the things

that are really important, especially through the pandemic.

Like putting my hand out to a newcomer

is something I'm redoing now where it had,

we haven't really seen as many people

or as many clubs that are just mixing and mingling.

So there's kind of a revival going on for me now.

I know maybe it sounds scary and sad,

but I really feel hopeful

and I feel like it's gonna really be a good time, right?

For that transition to start being a part of A as a whole.

And I'm covering the coffee commitment.

I've been having a good time on the holiday

covering all my friends' panels, right?

Going out to the homeless shelter last week,

two panels in the past week.

And I'm so glad to be here with all of you.

And yeah, I'm not sure what to do

with my last five, six minutes or so though.

Trying to think.

It's something that when I hear Sponsey

talk about the way that they hate themselves or whatever,

I say, you know what?

That's gonna get a whole lot better

when we start behaving better.

When I start like getting into a better way of life

and I'm on this honest basis

and my higher power is gonna enable me

to live up to some of these ideals I've had,

like it's gonna get so much better.

But what I'm getting an answer to now, I think,

is that little nagging doubt

and no matter how good I did,

I always had a little bit of something

that was still covered up, right?

And so I was telling one, doing a fifth step reason,

I was like, and if there's a little bit left over,

we're gonna get to that too.

We have a solution for that as well, right?

Whatever dwells underneath

after we've gotten on a better basis of life.

Yeah, thanks for letting me share, you guys.

- Thank you, Carolyn.

- Thank you so much, Carolyn.

- For having me.

Thanks, guys.

- Thank you.

- Merry Christmas, guys.

- Merry Christmas.

- Merry Christmas.

- Merry Christmas.

- Thank you, Carolyn.

- Thank you.

- Bye.

- Bye.

- You know what else I'm doing?

- Merry Christmas.

- Bye.

- See ya.

- Bye, guys.

- Bye.

- Thank you for having me, Carolyn.

- You too, thanks for having me.