Grace's 16-Year Sobriety Journey: Family Roots & Sponsor Support

- Please welcome me to the sauce aisle.

- Thank you for being so close with each other.

My name is Grace and I'm an alcoholic.

Thanks, Monty, for your 10-minute pitch.

I always like when there's somebody talking before me

because it just reminds me what my job is here tonight.

Karen, thank you so much for not giving up on me.

I think this is the third time that you finally got me out.

We had to reschedule twice before, once because of COVID,

once because of something else,

but it's an honor and privilege

whenever you're asked to come out and participate

in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous,

and I'm definitely honored to be here with you guys tonight.

My sobriety date is October 10th, 2006.

That's not my first sobriety date.

I just hope it's my last sobriety date, right?

I really struggled in my first year in and out of these rooms

until it finally stuck for me.

I have a home group, that specific group.

I have a sponsor.

I talk to her five days a week.

Even now with this many years of sobriety,

she says I'm not well enough not to talk to her

five days a week.

So I take sponsor direction for the most part.

And oddly enough,

that's the longest relationship I've had in my life.

She's been my sponsor for 14 of those 16 years

that I've been sober.

And I grew up in Venice, California.

Geographics are not a part of my story.

I live in Culver City, California now,

and that's like four miles outside of Venice.

I hear other speakers talk about,

I woke up on a plane on my way to France.

That's not my story.

I never woke up out of a blackout

to somewhere fancy like that.

I woke up out of a blackout on my way home from Venice Beach

trying to get home, but nothing that fancy.

And the funny thing is when I first came

to Alcoholics Anonymous,

I didn't identify with speakers who talked about blackouts.

I was like, I don't think I have that, right?

And when you're new, you start looking for the differences.

And I was like, yeah, I just never really blacked out.

Well, the truth of the matter is

towards the end of my drinking,

I was doing a lot of speeding cocaine.

So I wasn't blacking out.

I was rounding out, but you know,

and we'll get to that a little bit later.

I believe in singleness of purpose,

but I can't tell you my story

if I don't tell you about everything that I did.

I started with alcohol.

I ended with alcohol.

Alcohol is a big part of my life.

It's where I started.

I grew up as an only child.

I had two wonderful parents.

There's no abuse in my life.

There's no, I can't, I didn't come to AA

with this whole resentment with my parents

or anything like that.

I had a father, which I refer to as a functioning alcoholic.

And what that looked like to me growing up

is he would wake up in the morning,

take a shot of whiskey, go take shower, go to work.

And then on his lunch break, he'd sit in his truck

and he'd have a pint of whiskey underneath the seat.

He'd take a couple of shots then,

go back to work, come home, a couple of shots of whiskey

and a couple of beers and do it all over again.

I never saw that man drawn.

I never saw him.

So I talk about his drinking

because that formed my opinion about drinking early on.

I didn't think drinking was a negative thing, right?

And so it just, that's what I thought drinking was all about.

And I thought everybody's dad drank that way.

I didn't have any other point of reference

other than what my dad was feeling, right?

And it wasn't until I went to a friend's house

and spent the night and I was like,

oh, her dad doesn't drink whiskey in the morning.

And then I kind of knew we're a little bit different, right?

But like I said, there was no, I never saw him.

You know, he did everything.

He made sure my mom and me had a roof over our head.

I was well taken care of.

I wanted for nothing and I never went without food, right?

So I grew up in a loving family and he was strict.

He was very strict.

I definitely was treated like the little boy he didn't have.

And back then we have, you know,

in the seventies we had corporal punishment.

We hit our kids, you know, and I got spanked.

So, and so, you know, what happened was I never felt

comfortable and I thought being an only child

was the biggest part of why I felt the way I felt.

I thought if I just had a brother or sister,

I could feel better, right?

Now I didn't know that was gonna become the theme

throughout my life.

If I only had this, if I had this toy,

I would be much happier.

If I had that boyfriend, I would be that much happier.

If I had this much more money, I would be that much happier.

That can still be my attitude today,

even with the amount of recovery in my life,

if I'm not staying spiritually fit.

But as a child, I didn't have these words.

I didn't know what those feelings were.

I just wanted, wanted, wanted, right?

And I think somewhere around the,

at the age of 11 is when I had my first drink.

And what that looked like was I took a couple of shots

off that whiskey bottle that my dad had in the refrigerator.

And what I remember about that was it tasted like crap.

It was horrible.

It burned, but something told me to keep going.

And I took a couple of more shots, right?

Then I got that warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

And what happened for me was I went in the room,

did a couple of cartwheels, somersaults, whatever,

and remembered that feeling.

I didn't become a daily drinker at the age of 11.

But at 13, when I got into junior high school,

you know, the uncomfortable feelings I felt at that age,

I mean, it's just being a teenager.

You know, it's just a combination of my alcoholism.

I believed I was born with this.

And being a teenager was just a,

God, I just didn't feel like I fit in.

And, damn it, I forgot to look at the clock.

What time do I end?

7.25.

- 8.25.

- 8.25, okay, great, thank you.

'Cause I'm not that go-over girl.

I'm not gonna make you guys sit here all night.

(laughing)

And what happened at 13, I got invited to a party.

It was a backyard party.

There was a cake beer flowing.

There was a band playing.

And I was getting really drunk off cake beer.

And what happened that night for me was,

felt like I belonged.

I didn't feel prettier.

I didn't feel anything.

I just felt like I belonged to this group of people.

I made out with a boy,

and I got really, really drunk that night.

Now, I woke up on Sunday morning,

and I was puking my brains out.

And I thought to myself,

I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life.

And I wanna tell you guys,

at the age of 13, that was my sole purpose in life,

was to be okay.

I found my solution.

I found what was making me feel okay

and that I could participate in life

and be a part of this group of people.

And that's what I did.

And of course, we couldn't get alcohol all the time.

And we did a lot of things.

This was back in the early '80s.

We pimped a lot of beer.

We found places they would sell us beer.

They weren't that strict.

We did a lot of things, right?

I spent my summers,

this is where we were off for summer in June.

We didn't come back until September.

So I spent three months at Venice Beach.

I grew up hanging out at the beach.

I lived just a few miles outside of Venice.

I lived in Mar Vista and it was a great time.

I mean, I could not, you know.

At 14, my mom came to me and said,

"You know, me and your dad are gonna get a divorce."

And I cried for one minute, one minute,

because what I realized was with him not in the house,

I could get away with a lot more

'cause my mom was far less strict.

When my father said Grace Elizabeth,

and to put my whole government name into it,

I knew I was in a lot of trouble.

And I knew if he was out of the house,

I could get away with a lot more.

And that's what happened.

Basically going into Venice High School at the age of 15,

my mom was starting to sew her own oats

and she was off dating and doing, you know,

the things she hadn't done in years

'cause she had been married to my father.

And you know, one time I used to smoke a lot of weed

'cause we could get weed a lot easier.

And I was not one who could hide being high, right?

When I walked in the house,

it was just a stupid look on my face, a big grin.

I could not hide.

I could not hide being high.

And my mom said to me and one of my girlfriends,

she said, look, I know you guys are out there

drinking and partying.

I would prefer you guys to do it at the house

where I could keep an eye on you

and I don't have to worry about you.

I was like, result, okay, sounds good to me, right?

And I think we all kind of grew up with one of those friends

and up until my father separating my mom,

I had a couple of friends like that.

And so I always spent the night out

when I was doing that kind of partying.

I never did that at home.

But now this is the summer that I'm going into high school

and me and all my girls,

we're partying so hard at my house that whole summer.

By the time I got to high school in that September,

I had to give myself a time out.

I was so drugged out.

I was just like, oh my God,

I just smoked so much weed and drank so much

that whole summer I was done.

And I got into high school and everything was good.

My first year I was an A and B student.

I was doing everything they were supposed to do.

I made the varsity softball team.

Softball was my passion.

That's what I wanted to do.

And then somewhere in 11th grade,

it all went to hell in a handbag.

And I just remember being so uncomfortable

and feeling like I just didn't have any friends,

which was all a lie.

Like I just went to my 35 year high school reunion

and nobody remembers high school the way I do.

Like that tells me everything I need to know

about my perception, about the way I saw things.

Everybody's like, oh my God, Grace, it's so great to see her.

I was like, oh my God, I didn't think she liked me, right?

To this day, I still have that off perception

about how I see myself

versus how people actually see me in that situation.

Anyways, so I barely, you know,

I'm not going to school in 11th grade.

I'm doing a lot of drugs, you know, I'm a pig.

If you tell me it's gonna make me feel great

some type of way, I'm gonna take it, right?

And this was the PCP days.

This is the eighties.

This is, you know, mushrooms and acid.

My best friend was selling a lot of acid

and I fried with her for the first time.

And what I remember about that was this.

I was in a nightmare for, I want to say 36 hours.

If you're not, you know, speed, it's a ride

you can't get off of, right?

Once you go ahead and drop that speed,

whatever happens, happens.

There's no control, there's no nothing.

And that wasn't for me, right?

So I tried different things.

So when I did it once, somebody, I tried PCP once,

I did that once too and I didn't like that, right?

I saw my girlfriend standing there like zombies

and they were just peeing on themselves

and they had no control what was gonna happen to them.

I never went out to get loaded

so that I could not be in control of myself.

That's always what I tried to do.

I just needed to get there, not way over there, just there.

But I could not do that, right?

And, you know, through the years

of being an Alcoholics Anonymous,

I told you guys I didn't know I had blackouts.

And then I remember sitting there

listening to a speaker one night.

And I was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,

Motorhead was the show

and Wendy O was opening up for Motorhead.

And I had a pint of Jack

because I was going through my Jack Daniel phase.

I drink a lot of Jack Daniels.

Problem is whiskey really takes me out

and it makes me really mean.

So I had to move on to other things.

I didn't drink it, of course.

But I remember, all I remember is ace of spades

coming on really loud and that's all I saw at the show.

My friends found me later on.

I was passed out in the bathroom with five other girls.

We're all laying there just passed out.

And I never saw a Motorhead.

Never saw a Motorhead in the Santa Monica.

Pretty resentful about it

because it's just a little too late for that.

But that's how we grew up, right?

Drink, drink, drink until you're just done, you're legless.

And that's basically what I did every time I drank, right?

And I hear speakers talk about,

I wouldn't trade my best day out there

for my worst day sober, bullshit.

You know what, I had a good time.

I grew up in Venice, California

when it was dog town and with suicidal tendencies.

And we had a great time.

I would never go back and change anything I did.

Nothing, right?

And it was a lot of fun until it wasn't fun anymore, right?

Until things got to me.

Things didn't get to me until I was about 36.

So there's a few things that happened

between me getting out of high school.

I had a lot of dreams and I had a lot of aspirations

when I was in high school.

I wanted to become a lawyer or I wanted to be a veterinarian.

I loved animals and I wanted to work with animals.

And soon what happened for me

was I made it through high school.

I graduated by the skin of my teeth.

But I told you about that 11th grade year,

I just wasn't doing well.

And all my friends were going

to Phoenix Continuation High School,

which was behind Venice High School.

And they were going to school and they were like,

they had to be at school at nine o'clock in the morning

and they were off at one.

They were making ass trades

and then they're off to the beach.

That's what I want to do.

That was me.

I was like, that's what I want to do.

They got it easy.

But there was a guidance counselor that just said,

no, you know, getting your GED and going to a continuation,

it's not the same as graduating.

And so he talked me into staying.

And what that looked like for me was six classes,

summer school and Saturday classes.

And I was, well, all my friends were like four periods

in their last year.

I was doing everything all, every day of the week.

And I played softball, which was important to me.

I didn't play softball in my 11th grade year

because I wasn't, I didn't have the grades.

So I managed to graduate high school by the skin of my teeth.

But by the time I got out of high school,

I had already traded those dreams and aspirations

in for king alcohol.

And what I did was I got busy

and I got a job at a veterinary clinic

and I started to pursue my dream that way,

but I had no motivation to go to college.

I just didn't want to do it.

I had parents who couldn't afford it anyways

and I certainly didn't have the grades

because I'd blown that up.

That was to become a theme in my life, right?

Blowing things up in my life

because alcohol became too important to me.

I'm sorry, I don't know what is happening in the back.

And so, I move along and I'm doing well

and I am my father's daughter.

I look just like my dad.

I go to work, hungover or not, it doesn't really matter.

I make my money and I'm 18 years old

and I'm months out of high school and I'm sitting there

and my mom's got me paying some sort of like,

I don't know, $150 rent 'cause in my family,

nothing's for free, right?

And I remember I was sitting there with a cold Bud Light.

It was all sweaty and I drink a lot of Bud Light

'cause I'm always watching my weight

and I was writing checks out for my little bills, right?

You know, we used to write checks back in the day

we did get to pay our bills online

and I'm totally, I'm 53, I'm old.

I'm dating myself here tonight.

And I remember writing my check out for my rent

and I'm drinking that beer

and I remember thinking to myself, I'm gonna drink.

I knew, I knew I had become a daily drinker at that point.

I had, I started drinking beer every day

at that point in my life.

My mom, she'd say, what do you want from the grocery store?

I say, just make sure I have beer, you know, and that's it.

So I become a daily drinker at that point

and I knew, intuitively I knew I was probably an alcoholic.

I don't know how I knew that, I didn't know anybody in AA,

but I knew I was an alcoholic, but I thought to myself,

you know what, as long as I pay my bills

and I go to work every day,

no one's gonna tell me about my drinking.

So at 18, I had that attitude that I'm gonna drink

the way I wanna drink for the rest of my life.

I don't identify with chapter three

where we, you know, did different things.

I didn't do a lot of that.

Even towards the end of my drinking.

Now I stopped drinking Jack

because it just got me too drunk, too quick, right?

I don't care if I'm fighting 'cause I'm a fighter.

I don't care, you know,

I'm out there brawling with the rest of them.

That doesn't matter.

I didn't stop drinking Jack 'cause I got into fights.

I just couldn't control it as much.

Then I moved, you know,

as the years went on my drinking changed a little bit.

I was drinking wine and nothing that fine, but just wine.

And you know, Red Bull and vodka was my drink of choice

towards the end and Jagermeister on the rocks on the side.

So that would be my bar back, right?

And that's the way I drink.

And I stopped liking the taste of beer.

So I wasn't drinking much beer towards the end.

But you know, I didn't do a lot of that changing up

and I didn't have a lot of repercussions in my life.

In my twenties, I went to work.

Like I said, I did all of the things I needed to do.

I went to work.

The hangovers were brutal.

I still went to work.

I don't know why I didn't drink in the morning before work

because that would have helped me.

And I don't know if I just didn't know about,

I mean, I knew about that on the weekends,

but for whatever reason, I thought I can't take a drink

and go to work because they'll smell it on me.

Now, I didn't think about how much I smelled

from the night before.

I can tell you at any given time I was driving to work,

I was never legally driving.

You know, I was always going to blow over the limit

going to work because there were many times I drank

until three o'clock in the morning

that I was up at seven to go to work.

That's not enough time, right?

Now, I didn't know that until I came to AA

and I was like, geez, I could have had a DUI.

There were so many times I had close calls with DUI.

I don't want to, people get all bitter,

but I never got a DUI in the 25 plus years

I was drinking and using.

I pulled over twice.

I got out of it.

It was the 90s.

I smiled, you know what I mean?

I got out of it, right?

I've been handcuffed plenty of times.

I hung around with a rough crowd in Venice.

Won't get into too many of those details,

but I never got arrested.

Came close, but never got arrested.

And only because I'm lucky, not any different.

I went through many periods of my life.

I was selling a lot of cocaine at one point in my life.

I had many eight balls in my car.

I got pulled over, they didn't search my car.

I got lucky, right?

I always had a tater of speed in my purse

'cause speed kept me going.

That's how I got to work in the morning.

After those long nights,

I started a couple of lines of speed and go to work.

That's my story.

That became the way I drink.

The way I could drink as much as I drank

is I had to do an offer to offset

what I was doing with alcohol.

And that's the way I drink.

So I'm going to fast forward a little bit to 36.

So let's go to 35.

I was 35 years old.

I'm in a boyfriend.

We're engaged.

I love him, right?

And he's, you know, got two kids.

We're playing house while we have the kids, 50/50,

and then we're partying while the kids are with their mom.

And we live in the marina.

We have a nice townhouse.

Everything looks great.

He's got a great job.

I have a great job.

At this point, I'm working at the university.

I work at UCLA.

And so everything looks good on the outside.

What happens is this.

In the process of selling that cocaine,

he, you know, I have syringes

'cause I vaccinate my animals.

He says, "I want you to shoot me up."

I was like, "No way," right?

My whole life, I thought anybody who was a heroin addict

is the worst of the worst.

They're the junk, the scum of the earth.

That was my attitude about shooting dope, right?

So he finally talks me into it.

I do it.

He's high, and he's looking like he's having a good time.

I like to have a good time, and I like to get up.

So I stick a needle in my arm.

I never thought that that would be my story.

I never thought I would sit up here and tell anybody,

you know, I'm a recovering addict too.

But that is who I am, right?

That took me so quick.

That happened at 35.

I got sober when I was 36.

If I didn't do that,

I don't know if I'd be your speaker here tonight

because I was making it work.

I was making it work.

I don't know if I'd be here tonight and be your speaker,

but that took me down.

And so I'm grateful for that.

And that's my journey, and that's what brought me here.

And what that looked like was a lot of shame.

A lot of shame.

I was shooting dope at work.

I was doing it, you know,

I don't want to snort sweet anymore.

All I want to do is stick a needle in my arm with cocaine.

And that's it.

That's all I want to do.

And that takes you down fast, right?

And what happened for me was in February of 2006,

I did what I normally do.

I made a vodka in Red Bull.

I went in the bedroom, shot myself up,

came out about five steps out of the hallway,

and fell out and had a seizure.

I woke up with my boyfriend on top of me,

and he was like, man, I thought you died.

I said, what's wrong with you?

Get off of me, I'm fine.

You're so dramatic, right?

Now I imagine looking back on that, he was scared.

He's seeing his girlfriend flip flop on the floor

like a fish out of water, and that's pretty scary.

But I didn't feel anything.

That's his experience.

I was fine, right?

But that started my journey.

And that's what I refer to as my purgatory.

From February to October 10th,

I could no longer continue drinking

and using the way I was doing it.

I was now in, I can't stop doing what I'm doing,

but I know I can't continue doing what I'm doing.

And so that started my journey

in and out of the rooms of alcoholics.

Anonymous, I went to an Ed-A meeting.

I couldn't do it.

It just, I didn't identify.

It was, people were sad in this meeting.

And I was like, why would I do this?

Why would I sit and do this?

So I couldn't do that.

And I knew alcohol, well, not at that time

I didn't know alcohol was my problem.

I thought if I could just stop shooting Coke,

I'd be good, right?

And what happened was I sat in enough meetings

of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I caught alcoholism,

and I realized alcohol has always been my problem.

If I don't drink, I'm not shooting dope.

I've never had the urge to shoot cocaine

since I got sober and stopped drinking.

But when I drink, that's what I do, right?

And so, and you can throw a bag of Coke on the table

and you're like, hey, let's snort this.

I'm like, nah, I don't do that.

You got an outfit, I'll shoot it.

You know, that was how it happened for me.

So I went on one last run about the 5th of October

and I was up for three or four days.

I had called out sick.

I had a lot of sick days.

It didn't matter.

I just called out sick.

And I had been going in and out of the rooms

and I talked to this lady, Toni,

and I finally called her on the morning of October 10th.

And I said, Toni, I need your help.

And she said, I've been waiting for you to make that call,

Grace.

And she said, you're a slipper and you need Pacific group.

And when she, I didn't know what that meant

and I didn't care.

'Cause what had happened for me is I was out of answers.

I had no more friendly direction to go

and I was willing and I was desperate.

And if you're new,

and I saw a couple of people raise their hands,

I hope that's where you're at.

I hope that you get to keep your seat

and stay in these rooms.

'Cause my life has been amazing

ever since I've made that decision.

And she took me to a meeting and it was a ticket meeting

and they gave you a ticket at the door.

Your number got called,

you go up to the podium and you share.

And I wasn't sharing.

I could tell you that I wasn't raising my hand.

I wasn't doing any of that stuff,

but my number got called that night

and something bigger than me.

And I choose to call that God

dragged me up to that podium that night.

And I said, my name is Grace and I'm an alcoholic

and I need a sponsor.

And that started my journey in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I'd like to tell you, I never looked back.

That's not true.

I don't know about, I don't know,

60 days into my sobriety,

I was starting to feel better physically.

And all of a sudden I realized what I got locked into.

I don't know if you know the Pacific group.

They're a bunch of Nazis.

It's crazy.

And I have a meeting every night.

I have a commitment every night

and I'm going to watches and I'm doing this

and I'm doing that.

I'm like, this is crazy.

How did this happen?

I told my sponsor that I had, I said,

what happened in '90 and '90, right?

And she goes, yeah, we don't do that here.

You're going to keep that commitment

till we change secretaries.

And I started to learn early on.

I'm grateful for my home group.

I love my home group.

I wouldn't have the life I have today

if I didn't have the home group I have.

And I started in the step work

and bless my mom.

I remember writing my steps out

and I remember writing out my amends

and I remember saying to my sponsor,

I never stole from my mom.

I never did anything like that.

I was out and I was out on my own.

My father had passed away when I was 21.

I had gotten a little bit of money.

I moved out at 22.

I was on my own self-supporting.

I never stole from my mom.

I don't know why that was such a big deal in my mind.

And my sponsor said, hold on a second.

Did you not call your mom for three weeks at a time

and make her worry about you?

And I was like, well, yeah, yeah.

And she said, you stole a good night's rest from your mom.

That's what you stole from your mom.

And I needed my sponsor to show me that.

I didn't know I needed to make an amends to my mom

'cause she would.

She would call me and I wouldn't call her back

'cause I was busy living my life, living my best life.

And finally she emailed me at work and said,

can you just let me know you're still alive?

And I would call her and go, why are you so dramatic, mom?

Why are you so dramatic?

Her only daughter.

She just wanted to know her only daughter was alive.

And so what happened for me is I was still,

I was in that relationship with that guy

that I told you about him and I was getting sober.

He was struggling and he wasn't getting sober.

And so I would be at the meetings

and the ladies I started to make friends with, which I did,

they told me straight away,

find some ladies to hang out with, they'll save your ass.

They'll take care of you.

And I did and I got some close friends

and I was coming home and he was passed out on the couch

and there'd be a bag of Coke on the table

and I would walk right past all of that, go upstairs,

lock the door and lay in bed

and hope that I can make it through that night, right?

Because I'd lost my obsession to drink,

but I didn't lose my obsession to shoot, right?

And if it was there, it was like, you know,

it was really hard for me.

And the ladies that I was sober with, they would say,

you know what, Grace, you gotta leave him.

They'd be like, but I love him, right?

We've seen those couples come into AA together

and they're like trying, you know, and they're just both,

you know, and that's what we did to each other.

You know, one minute he was trying to stay sober

and I'd be like, no, let's get some alcohol.

And then it would be vice versa.

We would do that to each other.

One time he called me a bitch one too many times.

And I said, that's it.

I was three months sober and I left.

My step-sister that I had through my mom's second marriage,

she lived a block up the street from my mom

and she had an extra room and she had a blow up mattress.

I spent my first year on a blow up mattress

going to meetings seven days a week and staying sober.

And that's what I did in my first year.

And so as I got through my step process,

my sponsor had talked to me about my mom and making amends.

And so what I'd started doing is I'd get up

on a Sunday morning, walk down the street

and go hang out with my mom and she'd make breakfast, right?

She stuck me full of pancakes and I'd watch football

with my mom and my stepdad all day on Sunday.

I got like 50 pounds heavier

in my first year of sobriety.

But that was my living amends.

My mom knew where her daughter is.

My mom tonight went to bed at 6.30

'cause she goes to bed really early

but she knew where her daughter was gonna be tonight.

I live with my mom now and I take care of my mom

because we had lost our stepfather about five years.

Oh no, more than that now, maybe 10 years ago.

And I thought she was in a house by herself.

I said, mom, I should just move in with you

and I'll pay the property taxes, blah, blah, blah.

There's no reason.

And I should have never did that.

That was way too early

'cause now I've been living with my mom

and I didn't think about what I was giving up

when I decided to move in with my mom eight years ago

or something like that.

And I remember telling my sponsor,

I'm just gonna move in with my mom.

She goes, hang on a second, we should talk about that.

I said, oh no, we're like the best of friends.

We were, we were super close.

I called her every day when I left work.

I talked to her all the time, went by on the weekends,

picked her up, we went to breakfast.

We did all this stuff, we were best friends.

I've done four inventories on my mom since I lived there.

So she's gotten old and a little curmudgeon

and she's ornery and she's gotten a little mean, right?

I moved in too soon.

I didn't realize I was giving up my autonomy, right?

I didn't think about that.

I'm a single woman, I'm dating.

Yeah, I'm not dating anymore.

I live with my mom, right?

And I didn't think about those things

and she didn't need me then.

She needs me now.

Alcoholics Anonymous has given my mom back her daughter.

She has COPD really bad from choices she made smoking

her whole life and she's on oxygen.

I take her to her doctor's appointments.

COVID, while that was the worst thing that ever happened,

COVID really helped me because we work remotely now

and they don't bring us back.

I go to work two days out of the week,

mainly because I need to go to the office

and get away from that lady for a couple of days, right?

I love my mother and I'm gonna take care of her

because I am it for that, right?

But it hasn't been easy, right?

It hasn't been easy.

And I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you guys

and say I've always lovingly just taken care of my mom.

I haven't, it's been hard.

The good news is I have a sponsor

who has some similar issues with her mother

and she's ahead of me in that journey.

And so I get to look at her example

and I get to follow her example.

And so that's what my home life looks like today, right?

I was lucky enough to still keep that job at UCLA

and I'll have 24 years this November at UCLA

and I'm really lucky.

That's not, that's God's grace.

It's not something I deserve.

I was, you know, the one decision I made early on

when I got sober was this.

I didn't go to my boss and say,

hey, I have a chemical dependency problem.

I need to go to rehab.

I did not want that on the record for myself, for my career.

I knew that much.

So I really sweated out.

I did it the rough way.

I went to the marina center meeting at 6.30 every morning

for my first 90 days.

And then I did seven meetings at night, all Pacific group.

And that's how I got sober in my first 90 days of sobriety.

It wasn't easy, you know,

I'm not saying I'm better than anybody.

If I could have went to rehab,

you can trust and believe I would have went to rehab.

I think that would have just been a really great way

to get sober.

It was rough, right?

But because that was such a rough way,

I never want to do that again.

I remember it like it was yesterday

and I'm almost 17 years.

And I remember that like it was yesterday.

I don't, I don't want to,

I don't want to start that process all over again.

So I still have a great job.

Man, you know, oddly enough,

when you start to show up for work

and you really do your job and you're not hung over,

you start to make raises and you get, you know, promoted.

And I have a really great position

and I'm super happy at my job.

And, you know, I just feel blessed.

I definitely don't feel like it's something I deserve.

I definitely feel like I got really lucky

in the process of the way things happen.

You know, I talked a little bit about the gentleman

that I was with when I got sober.

His name is Neil and what happened for him.

I talked a little bit about his story.

We were friends, you know,

thank God that my sponsor taught me

we don't shoot our wounded, right?

She says, people are going to be in and out

and we don't shoot our wounded.

We just welcome people back and that's it, right?

And he was a wounded, he was wounded.

And he really struggled.

He picked up a heroin addiction along with his drinking

and he would try to use heroin to get off the alcohol

then alcohol to get off the heroin.

It was just this vicious cycle that he was in.

And he would call me when he'd be at his worst

and I would always take his call

and I'd pick him up and bring him to some of my meetings.

He knew some of the people I went to meetings with

and he would stay for maybe,

I don't know if he could get 30 days,

but he would be in and out, in and out.

And somewhere when I was about five years sober, you know,

he was starting to show end stages of our disease

and it's pretty ugly and it's a rough way to die.

And he had called me, it was a Friday evening.

I had been on my way home from work and he called me

and he said, I just got out of the hospital

for pancreatitis again.

And you know, I'm gonna go to the Marina Center.

I said, hey, I'll meet you at the Marina Center.

I got time, I'm right by there right now.

He goes, no, Grace, I take it up enough of your time.

Because I used to take his calls

and he was a real self pity kind of guy

and I would never put up with it.

I was like, look, he would be complaining about his family

not wanting to watch him die, right?

Like he, you know, his family would kick him out

and say, we can't do this anymore.

And I would tell him, they have every right

not to watch you die.

Your oldest daughter doesn't wanna talk to you

because she doesn't wanna watch you die.

You know, I would just tell him the way it is

'cause I was getting recovery, right?

So he goes, no, I've taken up enough of your time.

And I said, no, I'll meet you down.

He goes, no, it's okay.

And I said, all right, but I love you.

Let me know how the weekend goes for you

and give me a call on Monday, right?

Well, the phone call I got on Monday was his daughter.

And she said, you need to come to the hospital.

We're gonna take dad off life support.

So you need to come down here so you can say goodbye.

You know, I've had a lot of deaths in my sobriety.

I lost my cousin that I was super close to in my first year.

And I learned, I learned the importance

of being able to make that phone call to your sponsor

because when my cousin died,

we were at the Memorial service,

everybody went to the bar to get a beer.

I wanted to go to the bar and get a beer

'cause I know what a beer will do for me.

I know what six beers will do for me.

But I called my sponsor because I had had a year of training

to call my sponsor no matter what.

And then not too long after that, I lost my grandmother

and I was super close to her.

And she used to send me cards,

cheering me on for my anniversaries.

And every time I got a chip

and she was my biggest supporter, right?

Now it was a big loss.

And I lost a couple of friends in sobriety.

And I kept thinking, why is God doing this to me?

My sponsor said, God's not doing this to you,

but God's allowing you to be a tool

so other people can see that you can stay sober

through this amount of grief, right?

So by the time we got to this point with Neil,

I wanna say this was the hardest death I had suffered

in the five years I had been sober

because I didn't understand why God felt the grace

to allow me to be sober and why he could not get sober.

I knew that he didn't have to die.

He could have gotten sober.

So it felt horrible to watch him die.

He was bleeding out from every orifice.

It's just a horrible way to see somebody die.

But I got to be there and I got to be there

with his ex-wife and his two daughters.

His ex-wife, we always had a contentious relationship.

But that day we were together and we came together

and we sat there with that man

and watched him take his last breath.

I talk about Neil's death

because I don't ever want his death to be in vain.

I want anybody out here who's an alcoholic

to understand it is a rough way to go.

That is our journey if we continue drinking.

And I know that would be my journey

and I'll forever be grateful

that I fell into Alcoholics Anonymous,

that I think that miracle thing happened for me,

that I was desperate, willing all at the same time.

And I took that step through that little crack

in the window that they talk about.

And I fell into Alcoholics Anonymous.

Tonight I get to go home.

I get to be with my mom.

I get to be a loving daughter.

I get to go to work on Monday.

I get to do my job.

And I say, I get to do my job.

I don't always feel grateful to have that job

but I get to do that.

I'll take a phone call from my sponsor

at 6.30 in the morning.

I'll call my sponsor at 6.45

and that's gonna be my life.

I'll forever be grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous

and people like you guys.

So thanks for letting me share.