From Early Exposure to Long‑Term Sobriety: Becky's Journey

Hi, everyone. Let me get my little... I'm now a colleague. My name's Becky Reyes, and

thank you, Karen, so much for asking me to come up. She and I have been going back and

forth since April, and the schedules haven't worked out, but I'm here today. Yay. So first

thing I want to say are three things that are really important. I do have a sponsor,

which I think some of you have met. She came up and spoke. Her name is Jeffy Ann. My sobriety

date is 21st of September, 2012, and I have a home group, and I'm current with my sponsor.

My home group knows that they're my home group, but the one thing I know, and hopefully I

can get to this... I ask God to give me the words and have me say whatever He wants me

to say, but what I know today... I love my home group, but what I know today is Alcoholics

Anonymous is alive and well everywhere, and I want to say hi to all the Zoomers, or online.

I'm sorry. Being online the last two and a half years really saved my butt, and like

I said, I hope I get to that. So I'm the eldest of four kids. I cannot tell you when I had

my first drink, but I can tell you the first drink that I remember. I was about nine years

old, and I had a cousin that looked at me and said, "Hey, you could roll with me and

my crew," and some guy handed me a bottle and a paper bag. Another guy blew some smoke

in my face, and I don't remember anything about that. And the next day, my cousin looked

at me and said, "You can roll with us anytime." We were so funny, and the one thing I know...

I know this today with all my heart is I'm not funny. One of my friends says, "My first

higher power was your opinion," and I so get that. So when she said that to me, I knew

I wanted to go, and I wanted to roll with them, and I wanted to do whatever I did, even

though I didn't remember what exactly happened. Shortly thereafter, my parents decided to

move us, and I can tell you, one minute I'm going to school with Santos and Smiley and

Lakeisha and Jerome, and the next day I'm going to school with Phil and Sandy and Craig.

And none of that makes me alcoholic, but I can tell you I needed a drink, but it didn't

take me long to find my people. So by the time I was 12 years old, I had my first consequence.

So the thing about my family is my dad did not drink. He does not drink. He's 84 years

old today and has not had alcohol touch his lip because of what he says, of what alcohol

did in his life, how it affected his life. I have a great-grandfather that I apparently

drank like and a grandfather, and my dad had, with the effect of alcohol, affected him.

So he made that decision early on. Obviously, he's not alcoholic, could make that decision.

And so the thing about my family is we were always getting together. It could be every

Friday night, we're all together, and there's alcohol flowing, music flowing, and it doesn't

matter if there's no baptism, birthday, or wedding, or something going. We were always...

That was always the environment. So when we moved, and here my parents don't drink, but

there's alcohol, they would get the alcohol, the bottles from the cooler, and they'd put

it on the shelf until the next party. And so here I am, I'm going to school, and I'm

just putting those bottles one by one in my bag, going to school, and wanting to be one

of the cool kids, right? And when they found a bunch of empties, all the cool kids ratted

me out. So anyways, what I learned from that consequence was that I could not drink around

my family, but I sought alcohol elsewhere. I sought companions that had actually friends

that had elder siblings so that I could party with them. And that put me on a trajectory

of putting myself in some very sketchy situations at a very young age, but I didn't care. It

wasn't something that was in my forethought. It was just about getting a drink and my party

on. And because I'm a blackout drinker, there's not a lot of... I don't have a lot of stories

for you. Like what I did, Patio used to say, she lived in the area that I live in, and

she died with over 40 years of sobriety, and she too was a blackout drinker. She would

say, "Well, if I knew I was going to have to tell my story, I would have paid more attention."

And I loved that because... But what I can tell you about me is my grand sponsor says

she split a lot of things across the bar for alcohol, and I did that. For me, it was relationships.

With my family, the ex-husband, friendship. I'm the girl that gets invited to a bachelorette

party and disinvited to the wedding. I come out of a blackout in Gilroy, California, and

I wasn't there buying garlic. I mean, it was just... I put myself in places and situations

that wasn't becoming really the person that I was raised to be. So not only did I slide

across those relationships and jobs and friendships, but also my integrity. So what happened is

I had my first drink at nine, or the one that I remember. But I didn't come to you guys

until I was a few months before I turned 50. So I was 49 years old. A lot of stuff happened.

But what I want to say is I really don't want to forget the last 12 years. Because I considered

alcohol to be working for me, right? But it was the last 12 years that I got injured on

the job. I had lived with him for six years, and I started taking solid alcohol. This is

Alcoholics Anonymous. I respect the traditions here. Three months after I started with that,

he ended the relationship, and I had nowhere to go. And called my siblings, each one of

my siblings. They didn't want to take me in. I called my parents. And I made that drive

from LA, where I was living with him, to South Orange County many, many times. But I will

never forget that drive that night. It was like this impending doom. It was like I knew.

It was just aimless. So for the next 12 years, all I did was just-- what I like to describe

it as is drinking was like a trash compactor. All my feelings, all the feelings of inadequacy,

all the things that I had lost, my victim mentality, I was just shoving it down, further

down, with each thing that I took and each drink. What happened for me is my dad retired,

and he sees me on a daily basis, like from morning to night. And by this time, really,

I'm like shuffling between basically two rooms. I'm not showering. I'm not brushing my teeth.

My mom would beg me to do something to change, and I just didn't have it in me. And so my

family decided I needed to go to rehab. And what I'll say is that I had no fight left

in me, absolutely nothing left. I didn't have the will to say, forget you, keep it clean.

I'm out of here. I'm not going to your rehab. I didn't have it in me to even do that. I

didn't have any fight in me. I didn't have a fight in me to even seek out anything else

to use. I was just, I was like a dead man pocket. So I had, like I said, it was a few

months before I turned 50, and I remember sitting on my bed and I prayed to God that

I hadn't prayed to in so, so long. And I asked him, and it wasn't to relieve me of any alcohol

desire for alcohol. It was just a realization that I was turning 50. I was like, God, just

help this, help me make this next year different. That's what, that was my prayer. I just wanted

something different. And so then the intervention happens, right? So I have this moment of grace.

And so then I have the intervention and I'm looking at them and I'm saying, I don't have

a problem. What do you mean? I haven't driven in 12 years because it's almost immediately

when I got to my parents' house, I got in two car accidents. Both were in the driveway,

so they took my car away. Just like I said, I explained to you the kind of life I was

living. And even a year prior to me getting sober, I had burned 60% of my abdomen from,

you know, just being shot out and, you know, scalding coffee. I had decided I needed to

heat the coffee a little longer. And anyways, I ended up being in a burning for a week.

And even despite that, I, there was no thought of, hey, maybe I need, like maybe even cut

back, nothing. So like I said, I'm set to rehab. And you know, there, I hear a lot of

things, you know, people give, you know, treatment, a bad rap or whatever, but I'm so grateful

that I was sent to the treatment center that I was, because what it turns out is that the

people that work there, most from what I understand now, like 98% of the people that worked at

that particular treatment center were active members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And what

was so awesome is that I didn't know I was being fed Alcoholics Anonymous, you know,

I, like I said, I was dead man walking. I was just like, what do I, where do I go next?

They gear me to the next meeting. You know, we went to a daily meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

They sent us to, you know, CA and another kinds of A's. And I learned to, you know,

open the book and read the book. I had my first, I'd say, spiritual awakening during

a meditation. You know, I actually got tossed and just lie there and just, you know, we

prayed and I, you know, I just recalled this like two days ago where I'm laying there and

just flood of tears. I hadn't been able to cry for years. Like I said, I was just shoving

all that, all those feelings were just shoved down, you know, by the alcohol. And so that

happened there. And after 28 days, I had a one of the counselors pulled me aside and

she had a directory that a paper directory with meetings highlighted. And she said, you

know, I really think that you would enjoy or get something out of these meetings that

I have highlighted. So if you can get a ride, because I wasn't driving you know, it might

behoove you to go. So there was a another woman that was around my age and we were just

road dogs. You know, she would pick me up at 6.40 in the morning and we'd go to the

7 a.m. meeting. After that we would go have breakfast someplace and then she dropped me

off and I literally, I think those first six, eight months, you know, I slept like probably,

you know, until I had to get ready for the next meeting. There was a lot of, you know,

I look back on that those first six to eight months and, you know, I really didn't have

the cognition, it's like my brain was just healing. And I mentioned that, I think it's

important to mention that because, you know, I would read the big book and even though

I could read the words, it just wasn't connected. It's like the synapses weren't, you know, working.

So what happened is there was, you know, someone was trying to get me, someone at the literature

table was trying to get me to get another book at a meeting I was at and I said, you

know, I'm having a hard enough time with the big book. So I finally got, I had like this

moment of being honest because I, you know, still I want to have this presentation like

I got it together, you know, right? Even though I'm not understanding, I'm still, I'm starting

to shower every day. And, and so I was on, I had a moment of honesty and I told her I'm

not understanding what I'm reading. And, Patty looked at me and she said, you know, we have

a bunch of tools here and I'll call it synonymous. You know, we have the big book on CD. If you're

having problems, maybe if you listen to it, it would help you. So I started listening

to it. And then I'd hear speakers at my meeting and I would buy that CD and, and I would listen

to it and listen to it because I could hear, I would hear the message there in the room,

but it was, it just didn't stick, you know? So, so I would listen to it and listen to

it and it really, really helped. And it was so funny. I was sharing this at another meeting

I was at not too long ago. You know, I used to hear, listen to the stories at bedtime

so to go to sleep, right? So about a year ago I was in traffic and I still have my tape,

my CDs in the car. I still have a CD player. My car's that old. So I stuck in one of the

stories and I started to get sleepy. I'm like, Oh my God, I can't listen to the story. That's

what I would do when I first got sober, listen to the stories and that would put me to sleep.

But anyways, I so as I'm, you know, starting to get a little more physically sober you

know, I'm going to meeting. What I heard was go to meetings, get from it, right? Go to

meetings, get a commitment. But I missed that third leg. You know, I missed that recovery

part, you know? And I know today that's not what they were saying to me cause I know these

people that I was going to meetings with. And so even though I had a sponsor, I wasn't

in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wasn't doing any of the step work. And so I started

to get restless, irritable and discontented in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm starting

to judge you. I'm starting to judge all your share. I'm starting to judge all your behavior,

you know? And so here, you know, and I currently live in South Orange County, you know, so

my big Wednesday night meeting there, it's called the South Coast Speaker meeting in

Laguna. It's otherwise known as the Chuck C meeting. And and that's, you know, guy walks

in and I look at him and I sit there and I go, man, another guy that doesn't look like,

you know, what is he going to share to me that he doesn't know what I've been through.

He doesn't know what my childhood was like, you know, I'm thinking all this stuff. This

is the kind of thoughts that I was having. And so, you know, he starts to share and he's,

you know, it had taken him three hours to get from L.A. to the Wednesday night meeting.

And I'm still judging him, right? He's talking about how he worked all day, left his family

early in the morning and he took him three hours to get there. And I'm like, OK, whatever.

And then he's then he starts to give us a Friday day home group and his sponsor. And

then he says, yeah, he goes, you know, he goes, I thought I was Mexican until I was

18. And I sat down, I looked and was like, what? You know, so all of a sudden I started

to listen. Instead of judging him, I started to listen to what he had to say. I had that

moment of grace once again. And I've had that moment of grace many, many times in the 10

plus years that I've been here. And that night I heard the message of Alcoholics Anonymous

and it made me want to be an active member. It made me want to be a part of. And I started

to see, you know, I got a sponsor that took me through the steps as it's outlined in the

Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can tell you today that it has internally rearranged

me. You know, I have found a God here that, like I told you earlier, I really didn't believe

in, or I had sought, I think I'll say. And all it was really was, you know, a moment

of being honest. I've had moments of being open-minded and I have moments of being willing.

And I've not done this perfectly by any means, but I stayed. And it's so, you know, yes,

having the physical sobriety is great, but, you know, having recovery for me has really

just been the game changer for me. I will tell you guys what it's like today. A couple

of things, you know, I'm still living with those parents. I have called my sponsor many,

many times over the time that she has sponsored me. My current sponsor has sponsored me for

a little over seven years. And I've called her many times saying, I need to move. I need

to get out of here because in my selfishness and self-centeredness, you know, I'm like,

no guy's going to want to date me living at my parents' house. You know, that's all I'm

thinking about. I, you know, my mom's driving me nuts, you know, all that, but I, you know,

in those moments, I always forget about what they've done for me. Right. And here, my parents

are now 82 and 84. And, and I can tell you over the years that Duffy has sponsored me

many, many times, she has said to me, be grateful for the role God's assigned you. And it would

stay here. And I would hang up that phone and I'd be pissed off, you know, and call

her again. And I complained, she'd say, be grateful for the role God assigned you to

stay here. So two and a half years ago, you know, during the shutdown my father had to

have a surgery. You know, we weren't allowed to go see him. It was something he had, it

was eminent. He had to have it or else he could possibly be paralyzed and end up in

a wheelchair. We almost lost him during that surgery. He lost use of both of his arms.

And I can tell you, I now know the role that God assigned me and why. And I am so grateful.

And trust me, I'm not grateful 100% of the time. You know, I have my moments, but I'm

so grateful that I'm there. I'm grateful that I can help my mom. You know, my dad's a very

proud Mexican man. We, you know, we don't hire people to do the things that you need

to do for him. You know, so she's just, she's exhausted. Fortunately, he's gotten some use

of his arms, but doesn't really have the strength. So, you know, I'm there and I will be there

as long as they need me. I know that today. The other thing that's happened, you know,

I had a sponsor early on that looked at me and said, well, you know, I know you can't

work, but you're not going to go to AA meetings every day. You've got to find something that

you can do. So she just pray about it. So I prayed about it. And it's amazing how this

happens. Like within literally within two weeks, I had somebody calling me and asking,

they had gotten rid of their, their nanny. They had to fire. And they asked me if I would

help out with their, their son, babysit, their son all days a week. And, you know, I don't

have children. I told her, you know, I told her what my, where I was at. I was just about

two years sober. Her son was 15 months. And I can tell you, I feel like, I like to describe

it that we grew up together and I got to see myself through that kid's little eyes, the

good, the bad, and the ugly, you know, and my heart just broken open. Like I did not

know I could love another human being that much. Like I love myself just fine, you know,

but, you know, to that kid with, you know, I'm putting something in my mouth and he's

grabbing for it wanting to eat. I'm like, this is mine, you know? And but, you know,

today, you know, I haven't taken care of him for self a couple years now. And I miss him

every darn day, you know, and I, you know, I shared my love for sports with him. He's

now 10 years old and plays football because I taught him about football and, you know,

we're going to go to the Rams training camp in Irvine. And I just, it just brings me so

much joy, just the thought of seeing him, you know, brings me that kind of joy today

that I can do something for someone else. And pretty much the last thing I want to talk

to you about, I, because it, you know, I want to be honest with you guys, you know, I recently

did, I recently did a fifth step with my sponsor and you know how they describe the, you know,

doing the steps, it's like, you know, uncovering, discovering, discarding, it's like peeling

the onion away, right? Well, I describe myself like a Maui onion, because it's big, right?

And the way I look at it is like the deeper I've gone, you know, the thicker the skin

is. And this one was deep, this one was tough, you know, I left that fifth step feeling just

leveled by the things that my sponsor, you know, said to me. And, you know, I have a

very good friend who I consider a spiritual mentor. And he says, you know, we can't heal

from that, which we don't acknowledge, right? So, so I just prayed for the willingness to

hear what she had to say. And, you know, and when I did my thorough seven step, you know,

turn the good, the bad and the ugly to God, you know, to remove those character defects

from me. But that week that I did my fifth step, I had what was led to me was this, Dr.

Bob had a plaque on humility that was on his desk. And I'd like to share it with you, because

it's been, it's really, it's just been very profound to me. Okay, so this is what he had.

It says perpetual quietness of heart, it is to have no trouble, it is never to be fretted

or vexed, irritable or sore, to wonder at anything that is done to me, to feel nothing

done against me, it is to be at rest when nobody praises me. And when I'm blamed or

despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel

to my father in secret and be at peace, as in a sea of calmness, when all around me,

all around and about me is seen trouble. And that's from page 222 of Dr. Bob and the Good

Wolf. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you.