Sharon's 42-Year Journey: From Childhood Chaos to Lasting Sobriety

- Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Sharon, I'm an alcoholic.

- Hi.

- I wanna thank Scott for inviting me to be here tonight.

And I think it's great that you're a hybrid.

Oh, I'm hearing myself coming back at me,

but I think it's done.

All right, I think it's great that you're a hybrid meeting.

I love that we have these hybrid meetings now.

My sobriety date is September 15th, 1979.

So last September, I celebrated 42 years of sobriety.

Oh, thank you.

I have a home group.

We meet five days a week at 7 a.m. in person.

It's a relatively new meeting.

So it's my home group.

And I have a sponsor, I sponsor women.

I love AA and I love God.

And I like to say those,

especially the last two right up front

because that's not how my story starts.

I was raised in an alcoholic family.

So my life has been about alcoholism from the get go.

And I learned the ism very early on.

I learned about lying.

I learned about covering up.

I learned about fear and shame and hiding and pretending.

Just became all a normal part of life.

And the kind of personality that I had,

I was the kind of kid who at age five, five or six,

when people would come to the house,

I had one uncle who would give me a dollar

and I would go immediately up the street on the corner

was a candy store.

And back in those days we had penny candy.

And some of the candy was two for a penny.

You could get two red hot dollars

or two cowboy hats for a penny.

So I would leave the store with a bag

with about 130 pieces of candy in it.

And I would go and sit behind the garage

and eat it all myself.

That's how I roll.

I want it all.

I want more.

And so that's the way alcohol was with me.

I knew about alcoholism.

I knew my father was an alcoholic.

I would watch him in the morning,

have a shot and a beer for breakfast and he would go.

And I knew that I wanted that.

That became important to me.

And I didn't fit in.

I was never a comfortable person.

I didn't feel like I fit into my family.

I didn't fit in with the kids in the neighborhood.

When I got to school, school was a nightmare for me.

I didn't fit in there.

It just didn't seem there.

Bob Dylan has a song, "Joey" and he says,

"I was on the outside of every side that was."

And that's how I felt.

That's how I felt.

Always the outsider never fitting in.

And I stole my first six pack when I was about 11.

And I look at 11 year olds today

and I think they're so young,

but I knew what I was about.

I knew what I was up to.

And I proceeded then to start stealing liquor.

I would babysit and I would have a jar in my bag

and I would steal a little bit of this,

a little bit of that and pour from their liquor cabinets

or wherever their liquor was.

And then I would carry that with me

and just drink throughout the week.

And by the time I got into high school,

my best friend was dating a drug dealer.

So drugs became part of my story early on.

But the truth for me is I'm an alcoholic to the core,

to the core.

And I, for, again, going back to the young years,

I believed I was a bad person, very young.

I went to Catholic school and we go to communion

around age seven and Sister Mary Psychopath told me

that when I, not me,

but when if any bad person went up to receive communion,

the host would float away from them.

And I lived in terror that I would be up there

and the host would float away from me.

And this is at age seven.

I don't know what I could have done at age seven

to think I was so bad,

but I knew God didn't want any part of me.

And even though I went to Catholic school for 13 years,

I never believed that God loved me.

I was driving around, this was a couple of weeks ago,

and the thought crossed my mind.

I am living in God's amazing grace.

I'm just living in God's amazing grace.

And then I thought, well,

I wasn't living in God's amazing grace

when I was drinking, but yes, I was.

I just didn't see it.

I didn't feel it.

I couldn't own it.

It's always there.

It's always been there in my life.

I just couldn't get to it.

And by the time I got to A, I was a daily drinker.

I was a blackout drinker.

I did all the crazy crap that blackout drinkers do.

Just as a couple of examples,

I was living up in Plattsburgh, New York.

Bill mentions Plattsburgh in his story.

And I was passed out middle of the winter.

It goes to five below in Plattsburgh in the winter.

I am passed out on a snowdrift wearing just a black slip.

And if a friend of mine hadn't come along and found me

and carried me home and got me inside,

I would have died on that snowdrift that night.

Would have died.

And the thing that still puzzles me

is I have no idea where I got the black slip.

I mean, those kinds of things.

I was out, I was visiting friends

and I went out to dinner with them and they went home

and I said, I'll find my way back, I'm good.

And the next morning I couldn't find my wallet.

I'm at their house and I can't find my wallet.

And so they said, well, let's call the bar

and find out if you left it there.

And it turns out that I did.

And they were laughing at the bar

because the wallet was at the bar

and it was in my pants pocket.

So they were, I was a busy little alcoholic.

I was doing all kinds of stuff.

I came out of blackouts in places

with different people, with everything.

But I would say if I talk about,

if I think about what's the craziest thing I've ever done,

the craziest thing I've ever done,

I think of Jim's story.

Jim is the guy who was the car salesman

and he's out working for the dealership he used to own

and he's out and he orders a sandwich and milk.

And then he decides, he thinks,

I could put some whiskey in my milk.

That's the craziest thing like Jim.

That's the craziest thing I've ever done.

When I'm sober and I know that once I take one drink,

I'm gonna take another drink.

And then I have no idea what's gonna happen.

I have no idea where I'm gonna end up,

who I'm gonna end up with.

The alcohol takes over.

I turn my will and my life completely over to alcohol.

And that's the craziest thing I've ever done.

I've done a lot of stupid stuff, a lot of dangerous stuff.

But the craziest thing I've ever done

is taking that first drink

when I know where it's gonna take me.

But I'm an alcoholic and I'm bodily

and mentally different from my fellows.

And I am gonna take that drink and I was drinking to die.

I didn't care what happened to me.

I didn't care what happened to you.

I just wanted out, just wanted out.

And I thought that's how I would live out my life.

I would be an alcoholic loser completely checked out

till it was time to check out.

And I'm not one of those people who thinks,

well, if I drink now, I'll die.

That's not my fears.

If I drink now, I die.

My fear is that if I drank now, I wouldn't die.

And I'd go back into that horrible, lonely, angry,

godless place that I don't wanna be in.

I love my life in sobriety.

And when I got to this program,

I was so filled with shame, so filled with anger,

so filled with rage, so embarrassed,

so self-hating that I couldn't stand it.

I couldn't stand it.

I had no idea how to live without alcohol, no idea.

And to me, I was all, thought it was all about like,

how do I not drink?

How do I not drink?

How do I not drink?

The question should have been, how do I live sober?

How do I live sober?

But I didn't get it.

I didn't know what I didn't know

when I got into the program.

And I'm not, clearly from what I just said,

I'm not one of those people who was like,

I got to AA and I was so desperate.

I surrendered and I did what they told me to do.

And I felt at home, I hated being in AA.

I hated you people.

I hated the crazy crap with all your slogans,

let go and let God, live and let live, easy does it.

And they had that, they were all talking

about the footprints in the sand thing back then.

And I'd be like, these people stay up at night

thinking of crazy crap to say in these meetings.

And it just was horrible for me being here.

And I didn't, so all of these things are happening.

People would say to me, Sharon,

why do you even keep coming back?

Why do you come back?

And I think my spirit knew I needed to be here,

but my mind just fought it.

And I stayed with the, just say no, just say no,

Sharon, get a sponsor.

No, Sharon, work the steps.

No, those steps are vague and stupid.

I don't need those steps.

I have real problems.

Those steps are not gonna solve my problems.

Imagine that, those steps are so elegant and so beautiful

and are such a design for living for an alcoholic like me,

but I couldn't see it.

I couldn't get to it.

If they had a contest,

I would have won as Little Miss Contempt

prior to investigation.

That's what my sash would say,

Little Miss Contempt prior to investigation.

And I said no to everything.

I would do nothing.

I'd show up, I'd sit in the back and I just had contempt.

And I'd be like, oh, oh, and I got sober in Hollywood.

I don't know where you guys are,

but I got sober in Hollywood.

And people would be like, God gave me my own TV show.

Oh, God gave me a new boyfriend

and we're going bicycling in the South of France.

Oh, my new boyfriend says I don't have to work.

I can just devote all my time to writing my book.

And I'm like, God is giving me nothing.

Nothing.

I have no God in my life.

This sucks.

You people suck.

Where's mine?

I wanted, I thought just 'cause I stopped drinking,

all of this stuff should just start happening,

that I should get it all.

I had no idea about the work we do.

I had no idea that constant thought of others

and out of self into service.

I was completely locked in the bondage of self.

The image I have of myself in early recovery

is like a cornet, a cornet, a hornet in a coffee can.

And I'm slamming around inside this coffee can,

just slamming, I'm furious.

And there's no lid on it.

There's no lid on the coffee can.

I am just consumed by the bondage of self.

And later I realized the truth of it.

All my anger, all the contempt that I felt

was to cover up my fear.

I had too, by many fears,

my first fear was that AA was gonna work for all of you

and it wasn't gonna work for me.

My second fear was that God was gonna be there for you

and God wasn't gonna be there for me.

And my third fear was as soon as you found out who I was,

you were gonna throw me away.

So I spent two years showing up at meetings,

getting crazier and crazier

because I'm not working the steps.

I'm not getting the help that I need.

So I'm just folding in on myself.

The bondage of self is really tearing me apart.

And so I decide,

I mean, little things were starting to happen,

but the biggest change, the biggest,

well, first change that started to happen,

an understanding that I got,

I'm sitting in my Sunday meeting,

I'm sitting next to this guy.

I'm like, not talking, not doing anything.

And a drunk comes in the back of the room,

guy who's drunk and he's yelling and he's carrying on

and he's calling people names.

And the guys got him and got him some coffee

and sat down with him.

And the guy sitting next to me goes,

"Oh, I hate that, I hate that."

When they come in, "I hate that, don't you hate that?"

And I suddenly realized, no, I don't hate that.

I am that.

I would be way more comfortable showing up,

making a fool of myself, yelling, calling people names,

than trying to show up and be a responsible caring person

because I didn't know how to do that.

And I didn't want to admit

that I didn't know how to do that.

That was a big realization for me.

So I'm keeping this up for two years

and at two years I decide I can't take it anymore.

You people need to know exactly what I think about you.

Like you really need to know exactly what I think about you.

So I go to this meeting on Hollywood Boulevard

at the old USO Club.

And when they say, "Okay, it's open for sharing,"

my hand shoots up and I go off like Linda Blair

in "The Exorcist."

I'm calling you people blankety blank hypocrites,

blankety blank liars, blankety blank this,

blankety blank that.

And those people just laugh, they just laugh.

So I thought, well, they're gonna come up at break

and tell me that I have to leave

because I'm not talking the AA talk.

And they came up to me at break and said,

"We hope you come back.

It's great you can get in touch with your anger like that

and we hope you come back."

Now I was convinced that as soon as you saw who I was

and how I was feeling, you would throw me away.

But what I realized that night is

I was the one throwing myself away.

AA never throws anybody away.

Every time I didn't put my hand out

to a newer person in the room,

every time I didn't put my hand up

to identify as an alcoholic,

every time people would give me their phone numbers

and I'd throw them away,

every time I didn't call someone,

I was throwing myself away.

And I had to learn.

I didn't, I thought I should just get this program.

I thought I should just know how to be sober.

And that's not the way it was for me as an alcoholic.

I had to become teachable.

I had to become teachable.

And shortly after that, I was at another meeting

and they were sharing,

the leader was sharing about his daughter

who was dying of cancer.

And he was talking about how grateful he was

to be a sober alcoholic and a sober dad

to be there for his daughter.

And I got called on to share that night

and I started crying

because my father was dying of cancer at the time.

And as soon as the meeting was over,

I ran for the door because I didn't need your sympathy.

I didn't need your pity.

I had to get out of there because I had cried.

And I swore you people were never gonna see me cry.

And a guy stops me, he says, Sharon, wait.

And he says, my father just died of cancer.

I know what you're going through

and I want you to know I love you.

And I said, thanks, bye, and hit the door,

being the giver that I was at the time.

And I decided I'm never going back to that meeting again.

I never wanna see any of those people again.

And I had to stop because that's what my drinking was about.

Can't go back there.

Can't look that person in the eye again.

Gotta get out of here, can't go.

And I thought my sobriety cannot look like that.

I have to be able to go anywhere.

And I went back and that guy said,

I was afraid you weren't gonna come back.

And I'm glad you did

because I feel like I have a friend here now.

And I, the image I have that day

is that I had this big stone wall around me

and I was on the side of it

that was dark and damp all the time

that I was alone in this darkness all the time.

And when he said that, it was like some of that wall

just crumbled away, just a little piece of it.

And the sunlight of the spirit came through and touched me.

And I'd like to say it was a wonderful moment

because really all I wanted all my life

was for someone to care about me.

And here was this person caring about me

and it actually hurt.

I didn't know how to take it in.

I didn't know what to do with it.

I felt so uncomfortable.

But once I was touched by the sunlight of the spirit,

my heart started opening to this program

and I became teachable.

And I finally got a sponsor

and my sponsor was this woman

who I had seen at meetings.

And I had said, well, she only sponsors popular people.

Oh, she only does blah, blah, blah.

Oh, she's this, oh, she's that.

I'm not gonna ask her to sponsor me.

And when I finally asked her to sponsor me two years in,

she said, of course, sweetheart, I'd love to.

And she told me that I had to be

a loving and forgiving person.

And I thought, oh, geez, I've made a huge mistake.

This woman is crazy 'cause I'm all about payback

for wrongs real or imagined.

And now she's telling me I have to be loving and forgiving.

I was like horrified.

And I had real problems.

I mean, I needed a job.

I needed a boyfriend.

I needed a car.

I needed all of this stuff.

I had problems.

And the book seemed inadequate.

The steps seemed inadequate.

God, I didn't trust.

And I had to learn how to use these tools

that were put in my hands.

The book is a textbook on how alcoholics can live life.

It tells me what to do when I wake up in the morning.

It tells me what to do before I go to bed at night.

It tells me what to do if I'm angry.

I mean, it lays everything out for me.

I couldn't see that.

I'm on every page of that book.

I couldn't see that.

I had to get over myself.

My recovery has been me getting over me,

Sharon getting over the bondage of self

again and again and again.

And the steps, I just, I want to jump ahead.

You know, when I'm early in my sobriety,

I was talking to this woman and I said,

I felt like I'm walking, I'm going through a maze

and I'm slamming into the wall and I get up and I run

and I slam into the wall and I get up and I run.

And she says, Sharon, stop.

Just why don't you sit down in the maze

and let God guide you?

And I was like, that's unacceptable.

Tell me to dye my hair.

Give me something to do.

Don't tell me to sit down in the maze and let God guide me.

That's really stupid.

That's what works for me today.

You know, once I got, I came in here with a God,

again, Sister Mary psychopath.

I'm really afraid of God.

God's going to punish me.

God's going to shoot me to hell.

AA gave me this loving God, this amazing, amazing loving God.

And I got my God sort of set up in my head

when I heard that joke about the guy on the roof

in the flood and he won't get in the boat.

He won't get in the helicopter and God says,

I, you know, I wanted God to do it my way

when God didn't do it my way.

I just said, well, God doesn't care about me.

That's it.

'Cause I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it

and if God didn't do it, then God doesn't care about me.

I had to learn about life on life's terms.

I don't get a boat in life on life's terms.

I just get to show up and be a good participant.

And if I read the book and if I work this program,

I show up and I get to be of service.

So fast forward about nine years ago,

my sister who had Down syndrome got Alzheimer's

and she had been living in a program,

an adaptive living program.

And when she couldn't walk anymore,

she moved into my house with me

and I had to work the steps.

I had to use the tools that were presented.

When she was first diagnosed,

I can remember sitting on the couch,

not wanting to get off the couch,

being all like, oh, what am I gonna do?

How am I gonna handle this?

Oh, oh me, me, me, me, me, making it all about me.

One of my big character defects.

And what I had to do is I had to pull step one in.

Sharon, you're powerless over your sister's Alzheimer's.

Yes, your life is gonna be unmanageable.

Accept that, don't fight it.

Acceptance is the key to all my dilemmas.

The book is clear about that.

Acceptance is the key to all my dilemmas.

Then I had to get down into step two

and look at my insanity.

For me today, my character defects,

if a situation occurs, it's just a situation

until I throw my character defects at it.

So when I'm sitting on the couch being depressed,

being angry, filled with self-pity,

filled with self, self, self, self, self, anything,

I'm not gonna be of maximum service in God's world.

I have to get over myself one more time.

So I have to look at what my character defects are,

my fear, my self-pity, all of that.

And then I have to get it down into step three.

I have to get all of that to God

so that I can be restored to sanity.

And what I learned, I learned so many things.

These steps are incredible.

And one night my sister was having trouble breathing.

I don't know if any of you have experience with Alzheimer's,

but it's a terrible disease.

And she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't walk,

she couldn't talk, she couldn't lift her arms.

She lost the ability to do pretty much anything.

And she had trouble breathing at times.

And one night there was an incident with her breathing

and I started to panic and I took care of the situation.

I did what I needed to do.

And when she was all settled down,

I was in the living room pacing, pacing.

And all of a sudden the words came to me,

"Sharon, why don't you sit down and let God guide you?"

And I sat down.

Now what I have learned about the 11 step,

when I turned 50 many years ago,

I gave myself a silent meditation retreat as a gift

because I was having trouble.

I'm not good at it, I'm not a good meditator.

Like sit down 20 minutes every day, blah, blah, blah.

Still not good at that.

So I'm at this silent meditation retreat

when the first thing they say is,

"Okay, we're gonna sit for an hour."

Oh good, okay, let's sit for an hour.

By the end of that hour,

I wanted to get up and kick everyone

in that room in the head.

I wanted to scratch their faces.

I wanted to scream.

Yeah, I did.

Yeah, I did.

And what I realized at that silent meditation retreat

was I had a little bit of work to do,

but meditation is not only listening to God.

You know, they say prayer is talking to God,

meditation is listening.

It's a way to emotionally detox.

I physically detoxed a number of times.

I know all about that.

I didn't realize about emotional detoxing

that when I get filled with some kind of emotion,

if I can sit down and connect to my breath

and connect to God, I'm okay.

I'm okay right in that moment.

When my sister was with me,

every day I would say,

"Sharon, be where your feet are,

"not where your mind wants to go."

'Cause if I go into the past, I get angry.

If I go into the future, I get scared.

But if I stay in the present, I'm okay.

I'm okay.

And God gave me the resources and the love to get through.

I believe we can get through anything

we have to get through sober

because we get the love and support that we need

from this program to do that.

And I had heard the difference

between having faith in God and trusting God.

And having faith in God is believing

that God can push a wheelbarrow across a tightrope.

I think God could do that.

My God could certainly do that.

But trusting God is being willing

to get in that wheelbarrow.

And when I first heard that, I was like,

"Oh, I don't think so.

"I don't think I'd get in that wheelbarrow."

But what happened to me when things got really bad

with my sister was like God picked me up

by the back of the neck and sat me in that wheelbarrow.

And when I was calm, everything was fine.

If I started flapping around

and getting all upset in the wheelbarrow,

then it became scary.

So being able to sit and quiet myself

was not only good for me, but it was good for my sister

because I could be present.

Thank you, okay.

So I go to 825, we said, right?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay, good.

So, okay, now I've lost,

I go into these mental blank spots.

I'm gonna go into a different,

the other thing I learned in that time,

that seven years my sister was with me,

my prayers used to be, "God, make this stop.

"Make this go away."

Well, it's not gonna stop and it's not gonna go away.

And what I held on to was the second part

of the serenity prayer.

The part where it goes, living one day at a time,

one moment at a time,

using even adversity as a pathway to peace.

And that's what I looked for was that pathway to peace.

And it's all here in this program.

It's all here.

You know, when I was first getting sober,

they used to say,

"Well, sobriety has to be the number one thing in your life.

"Everything else comes second."

And I'd be like, "I don't think so.

"I think a job is really important.

"I think a relationship is really important."

I didn't get it, I didn't get it.

And then I heard someone say,

"Okay, when you get sober, you get a one.

"It's all you get, you get a one.

"But then let's say you make a friend,

"then you get a zero, and now you've got 10.

"And then maybe you get a job, and then you get another zero

"and you've got 100.

"And maybe you get a bicycle.

"So you got another zero, and you've got 1,000.

"And then you get your car, and you get this,

"and you get that, and you get more and more zeros,

"more and more zeros.

"So you go from 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 100,000

"to whatever you go to.

"But if you take the one away, all you have are zeros."

And that hit me, that hit me.

I can't put anything ahead of my sobriety,

because my sobriety is what holds me up.

God holds me up.

So I went from this angry, resentful, shame-filled person.

And I was at my Sunday night meeting one time.

And like I said, the slogans, when people used to say,

"Let us love you till you can love yourself,"

I'd be like, "Oh, God, why, why, why, why am I here?"

So I'm at my Sunday night meeting,

and this new girl comes in, and she's pissed off,

and she's really kind of a little nasty person.

And I loved her, because I saw myself in her.

And I said, "I'm gonna talk to her after the meeting."

And by the time I got out to the parking lot,

there were three women talking with her.

They were kind of surrounding her.

And I heard her saying, "Don't give me that AA."

And I was like, "You go, girl.

"You make those three women earn their sobriety tonight.

"You give them a run for their money."

And what I saw, I get these awakenings, you know?

This program is so elegant.

What I saw was three women pouring love

into an empty vessel.

And that young woman couldn't feel it in that moment.

But that was gonna keep happening to her.

And that's what kept happening to me.

I came in an empty vessel,

and new people kept pouring love into me,

pouring love into me, pouring love into me,

until I could feel it, until I could live in it,

until I could own it, until I could give it away.

And I'm so grateful to this program.

I'm so grateful to the alchemy of this program,

where our horrible pasts, our unfortunate pasts,

become our best assets,

the things that made me so ashamed

I can use to help other women today.

What a gift that is.

What a blessing that is.

I'm so grateful to this program.

I'm so grateful that I didn't drink myself to death

because of all of the things I would have missed.

I would have missed taking care of my sister.

I would have missed having a quiet head.

I would have missed gaining self-esteem.

I would have missed having a loving God in my life.

And I'm so grateful that I stayed for the miracle,

and thank you all for listening to me tonight.