From Food Cravings to Near‑DUI: A Journey to Sobriety

I got my phone up here because I don't want that five minute green light to go off and

not be sober again because that's real easy for me to do.

Okay.

Thank you, Abraham, for asking me to do this.

Not something I do very often and get real nervous about it.

Yeah.

Okay.

When you said you needed somebody for tonight, but if I couldn't January, my first thought

was yes, January.

Then I thought, no, I'll get it over with.

So thank you.

Thank you.

It really is.

It's an honor and it's a privilege to do this and thank you, Mariana, for your share.

That was really beautiful and I related to a lot of it.

The very first thing was I came in here judging, you know, I did.

That's all I did.

I looked and I looked for the differences all the time and when I did my fifth step,

I read my very first resentment to my sponsor and when it got to that fourth column, what's

my part?

She goes, judgmental.

Put down judgmental and I thought I was a little offended and I'm not a judgmental person

and boy do we learn a lot when we come here.

So okay.

So my sobriety date is April the 9th, 2018 and I have a sponsor.

Her name is Terry B. and I have three meetings that I consider home groups.

One is the Rose City speaker meeting in Sierra, well, it's Pasadena, the Sunday morning speaker

meeting at War Memorial Building in South Pasadena and a participation meeting Monday

morning participation in El Sereno meeting and I have commitments at all those meetings

and I love them all.

I love them all today.

So what do I want to do here?

Okay.

I guess just stick to what I was like, what happened and what I'm like now that's, you

know, if I do that, tell the truth, I can't go wrong, right?

So I grew up in a very loving, stable home, not here.

It was in Indiana, which I was, couldn't wait to get away from and there was no alcohol

use in my home.

I knew that I was loved and taken care of.

I had no reason to be an alcoholic.

If you're looking for reasons, I didn't have any reasons.

I always thought there wasn't any alcohol in my home because my parents do the religious

beliefs.

But at some point along the line, I started learning about uncle George and uncle Edmund

and realized that I think my father growing up had experienced alcoholism in his family

growing up and he took the approach of, well, if I don't drink, I won't be an alcoholic.

But I think he still had some ism there, you know, and he dealt with it by working.

He just was a total workaholic.

So I didn't have any alcohol, but I had food and I loved food.

It was the first thing that I turned to food and books.

I escaped in books and I ate and I got fat.

And I remember as a little kid thinking eating a candy bar and thinking the best thing that

in life that I could get would be a candy bar that I could eat and keep eating.

And it never ended.

That's the way I just wanted to keep going.

And my mother's reaction to that was to send me to Weight Watchers.

So as a young teen, I was in Weight Watchers and trying to stuff or fill.

I don't know what I was trying to do.

Later on in sobriety, I heard women say in meetings, oh, yeah, my mom gave me speed.

And I thought, I wish my mother had done that to me.

She sends me to Weight Watchers and I could have had like these little pills.

So then I went to college and then I found alcohol and I found keggers and I loved it.

I just from the get go, I love the effect.

I just and I always wanted more.

And I I kind of started off with a bang.

I was a freshman in college.

I had a friend who was a senior.

So he was, you know, had the idea he could get all the alcohol and we were out partying

one weekend, driving home, little podunk town in Indiana, one stoplight, three in the morning.

We'd been out all night and he's speeding through town.

And I turned and I looked in the alley and I see a sheriff's car parked in the alley

and I say, oh, he's coming after us.

And what I didn't know was that my friend already had two DUIs.

He did not want a third one.

So he just lorded and and we didn't get very far.

We didn't get my big police pursuit only lasted about a mile and a half.

And it ended with three sheriff cars in front of us and two sheriff cars behind us.

And they opened the car doors and they've got their guns pointed at us and they're yelling,

get out of the car with your hands up.

And I'm like, I think I was I was a chicken, I think I was on the floor of the passenger

seat and my friend gets out and I think, oh, thank goodness, it's over.

And they keep saying, get out with your hands up.

I think, oh, they mean me.

And so so I get out of the car and my friend, it could have ended so badly.

My friend had just put on a play for he was a drama student major and in the play there

was a gun scene and a starter pistol.

In the play, the gun didn't go off the starter pistol and the stage manager was behind stage

yelling bang bang.

So he took this starter pistol with him all night long because it was the big joke of

the evening and they're patting him down.

He's got a gun, check her.

And fortunately, we both came out of that alive.

The police officer was a sheriff.

He put me he must have thought oh, 18 years old cute little girl harmless and he opened

up the front door of his of the patrol car and let me sit in the front seat of the patrol

car and I go to sit down and his cap was on the seat his police his sheriff's hat and

I didn't want to sit on it.

So I picked it up and I put it on my head and let me suggest to you to never do that.

They don't like that because it's like the door gets opened, I get jerked out in handcuffs

and thrown in the backseat.

So that was my one and only big, you know, fun event.

From then on, it was and I would have thought at that point that maybe I had a problem you

know, because none of my other friends were getting arrested.

They weren't going to jail.

They weren't in sheriff's cars.

But to me and when I when I went to treatment, they asked me in the intake, you know, have

you ever had a police or have you ever had an arrest an alcohol related arrest?

And I said no.

And I from the bottom of my heart, if you've given me put me on a lie detector test, I

would have passed it because I felt like I was telling the truth because it wasn't my

fault.

It was his fault for playing the police.

It was a stupid law that an 18 year old can't drink alcohol.

I didn't feel like I had an alcohol problem, right.

So that's crazy how our brains work.

Just crazy.

So I left Indiana as soon as I could.

I came to California, went to school at Cal State Northridge, yay Northridge.

And when I got here, it was like 114 degrees and I was in this apartment with three other

women and three cats and no air conditioning.

And I just thought, what have I done, but it got better.

So let me fast forward a little bit.

I finished school, I got a job, I met a woman who I would eventually get married to.

We bought a house.

We adopted two children and I was doing all the things that I wanted to do in life.

I had a job that paid me well, I was able to buy a house, I had a family, but I was

just not happy.

Nothing made me happy.

And I couldn't understand it.

I would look at my friends and other people and I would think, what do they have that

I don't have?

And when I got here and I heard somebody say for the first time, they felt like they didn't

get the rule book to life or the guidebook to life.

I thought that was like a light bulb.

That's how I felt.

I felt like everybody else knew how to do life except for me.

And for me that I think that showed up most, it was in relationships, it was friendships.

I never felt like I could make that connection.

I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere.

When I left Indiana, before I was in California, I was constantly moving.

Indiana, go to Europe for a year, go back to Indiana, go to Washington DC for a year,

back to Indiana, back to Washington, back to Indiana, California.

And I would say, sometimes I would just say out loud, well, I have to do that because

I have to shake things up.

I need something different in my life.

I was always looking for something.

So I get here, life is, our social life just revolved around drinking everything.

It was, we go camping, we would drink.

We would go fishing, we would drink.

We would go to the bars on the weekend, then kids come along and that changes, you know,

you can't do that anymore, you can't have as many parties.

So what I started doing then was get the kids in bed, the wife would go to bed, and I would

drink and I would stay up, I would wait for everybody to go to bed and I'd drink.

And then in the morning to deal with that, lots and lots of coffee, coffee all day long.

And I never missed work.

I always showed up, I never drank at work, but as the day would go on, I would start

thinking about when I get off, well, is it time yet, I want to get home, I want to have

a drink, do I need to stop at the store on the way?

I was a big wine drinker in the beginning because if you drink wine, you're not an alcoholic.

And I could get wine at Bond's, so I'd go to Bond's, and then the next day I'd like,

well, I was at Bond's yesterday, I'll go get Trader Joe, and then after Trader, the next

day I would go to Pavilion because, you know, the checkers don't want to see me every day.

And then when I would go to the store to get the wine, I would have to have something else

in that little basket, right?

I can't just go to the wine, I got to maybe, oh, we need dish soap, I can get that.

So throw something else in there.

And then it would be even better if I would drive up, pull up to the house, and there

would be no cars there, nobody else home, just me, because then I could start drinking

immediately.

If there were cars there, it's like, I know I'm going to be looked at, I know I'm going

to be judged, and I don't want that to happen.

And then I started to feel sick and tired, and I knew that it was probably the alcohol,

so I would say, okay, I'm going to stop, I'm going to stop because I want to feel better

physically.

And I would go one day without drinking, and I'd be like, oh, look at you, good job, and

you can do it.

And then the next day, I would feel worse.

And I didn't understand that, how can I feel worse if alcohol is the problem, and I'm not

drinking and I feel worse, I'm going to drink.

And so it would last one day at the most.

And then when I heard it, the first time I heard chapter three read at a meeting and

the switching from scotch brandy, I was like, oh, my God, that was me.

I was like, I could drink wine because I'm not an alcoholic if I drink wine, and I loved

red wine, but then I would get really bad headaches.

And I'd say, well, it's the sulfites in the red wine, so let me switch to white wine.

And then the white wine, I would get horrible hangovers and feel sick.

It's like, well, it's too much sugar in the white wine.

So then I would switch to scotch, but I couldn't leave scotch out on the kitchen counter.

So I would put it up behind all the cleaning products right on the top shelf in the kitchen.

And there was one day when I had to get a step stool to get up there and I got the step

stool out and I'm pulling the bottle down.

My daughter, who was probably 13 at the time, walked in the kitchen and sees me and she

just rolls her eyes.

Oh, God.

And I poured myself a glass, you know, I just I kept doing it.

And so, yeah.

So this cycle drink coffee, drink coffee when I thought maybe maybe I've got a problem.

So one day I my medical insurance was Kaiser and back then you could just walk into their

chemical dependency unit and they would see you.

And I walked in and and I had an appointment with the counselor and sat down with him.

He said, well, you know, my experience, the people who have the most success in recovery

or are those who take charge of their own recovery.

And I just thought, well, if I could do that, I don't need you.

And I never went back.

And now I know it's like because I didn't want to stop drinking, I didn't want to take

charge.

I didn't want to stop.

And the other thing I remember hearing when I got here was once a pickle, never a cucumber

again.

And I think I think as I look back at my drinking there, I probably could have stopped somewhere

along the line and not become a pickle.

But if I really think about it, why would I stop?

I didn't want to.

I love the effect so much.

So I know maybe I could have stopped at one point, but at some point, I definitely know

I crossed the line and I it was beyond my control by that point.

So what happened was two things happened.

First was my wife got cancer and I was pretty much her caregiver and she died after like

three and a half years after her diagnosis and being caregiver, still going to work.

Two kids who are now they were both approaching 20 at that point.

They were older, but they were still living in my house.

Yeah, I remember thinking.

I remember thinking at one point, you know, when she dies, I'm going to be free.

This is the person who was my partner for 31 years.

And we raised two kids together.

And my thinking in the end is when she dies, I'll be free.

And what that meant to me was I'll be able to drink the way I want to drink because she

well, while she partied with me in the beginning, we were big social drinkers, partiers at some

point, she stopped.

She's one of those in the big book, they talk about those heavy drinkers who if they have

a reason, they can stop.

And she stopped.

And she, I always felt like, oh, she's looking over my shoulder.

I can't drink the way I want to drink.

And I had these fantasies of I will get on Amtrak and I'll take Amtrak and go up the

coast, sit in that observation deck, have my bottle of wine, have my book, look at the

beautiful scenery and travel and life will be great.

And the reality was I traveled as far as my couch.

I had the bottle of wine, no book, the television.

And I just sat on the couch and I drank every night and I would watch, I think at that point

it was Game of Thrones I was watching.

And the next morning I would have to go and look and see how much alcohol was left.

Do I need to go to the store?

And the next night I'd sit down, turn on Game of Thrones and I'd have to rewind and go back

to the beginning of the episode because I had no clue what happened.

I couldn't remember what happened in the episode.

And that was my big freedom.

And it was pretty miserable.

But I was still getting up and I was going to work every day.

And I was fortunate because I was pretty good at what I did.

I had a boss who liked me.

And when the day came when, yeah, and I was going to work irritable and discontent and

hung over and none of that makes you a good coworker or employee.

And I crossed the line at work and I knew that I was in trouble.

And I was close to, at that point I was 59 and I wanted to retire at 64.

And I thought, I went home on a Friday evening and I thought, I have just asked myself, I'm

going to be out of a job.

I'm going to lose my pension.

I'm going to lose everything.

And I got home and I looked in the mirror and I just was, I thought, who are you?

What has happened?

And I felt completely just dead inside.

And my two kids were still living with me.

I knew that my daughter was in her bedroom drinking and knew that my son was in his bedroom

smoking weed.

And here I was about to lose my job, lose my reputation, lose everything.

And I needed some help.

And I think I didn't know it at the time, but I think I did step one at that point.

It's like, I can't do this anymore.

I give up.

I surrender.

Back up a little bit, but three months before that I had driven down to San Diego, picked

up my daughter from her dorm room, cleaned out all of her stuff, loaded it in a car and

drove her back to South Pasadena because she had gotten in a fistfight with one of her

roommates because she was drinking, her drinking was completely out of control.

And I was all panicked about what am I going to do about my daughter?

And I started going to Al-Anon meetings and I would drive to the Al-Anon meeting and I'd

be sitting in the parking lot with my Starbucks coffee cup filled with wine, drinking the

wine just so I could go into the Al-Anon.

And it didn't take too long before I started to think, maybe I'm in the wrong meeting.

Maybe I should be checking out the AA meetings.

But that didn't happen until I was desperate.

And my job situation was part of that desperation.

And I called my boss on a Saturday and he's like looking at his phone like, why are you

calling me on a Saturday?

And I told him what had happened at work and I said, I need to take a little leave.

And he said, okay.

And I went back to that Kaiser chemical dependency unit, this time with my doctor scheduling

it.

And I did their outpatient program and I don't remember a lot about that outpatient treatment

other than the first day I walked in and somebody who'd been there for a while, they did meetings

every morning.

It was like an AA, well it wasn't, but it was a meeting every morning.

And this one guy looks at me and he goes, oh, sweetheart, it gets better.

And I needed to hear that.

I needed to know it would get better.

And because in the beginning it was really hard.

It was really hard.

I was counting days, counting days.

And the idea that this was forever was like, I couldn't accept that idea that I could never

drink again.

Alcohol was my best friend.

I could not imagine giving it up.

And I thought, okay, I'm just here to get the heat off at work.

I get things straightened out, then vacation's going to come.

I can drink, I'll retire.

I can drink and somebody said to me, well, don't think about that far ahead.

Don't think about when you retire just for today.

Can you not take a drink today?

And I said, yeah, that I can do.

And it was really one of those AA cliches, but it's like, it's how I had to do it one

day at a time.

And I was, but I was still convinced at that point that, you know, later on I'm going to

drink again.

So the outpatient program ends and they say, go to an AA meeting, go to meetings.

And I, so I Googled meetings near me and there was one just a mile from my house.

And then I was kind of terrified.

I kind of dreamed that night that I go to this meeting and I walk in and I see an empty

chair and I head for the chair and some woman would throw her purse on it or somebody else

would sit down.

Yeah.

So I get there and there was a greeter.

So if you're a greeter, like wonderful people who greeted me tonight, like, thank you.

She said, are you new?

And I said, yeah.

And she said, come here, you're going to sit next to me.

She took me in and she's, she had her stuff on one chair and she said, you sit here.

And then during the meeting, she explained things that were going to happen.

And she said, and at that time at this meeting, they don't do it anymore, but at that time

when you're reading chapter three and it says the delusion that we can somehow someday drink

again, you know, it has to be smashed.

She said, there's going to be a loud noise in a moment.

Everybody stomped that wooden floor and it shook the room.

And I love that.

I love that because it's like I could, it was this physical connection to that, you

know, smashing that delusion.

And I, I still today, they don't, somebody complained, I guess, I don't know, but so

I still kind of just lightly stopped so I can feel it inside of me and then they said,

you know, if you're new, stand up and tell us your name.

And at that point, those are the kinds of things that I would never do.

I would never do, but for whatever reason I did, I stood up and I said my name and there

was this woman sitting right in front of me.

She turns around, sticks her hand out, shakes my hand, says, welcome.

And then after the meeting, she asked me, do you have a sponsor?

And I said, well, how do I get a sponsor?

And she said, well, I'll be your temporary sponsor.

And then she wrote down Rose city speaker meeting Thursday, meet me at this meeting

at seven 30.

And that's, again, one of those things that I would like, no, I'm not going to do that.

I mean, I looked how far it was, it's like, you're going to have to drive 23 minutes to

get there.

I don't want to do that, but I think I was just struck willing.

I don't know where the willingness came from, but I'm so grateful.

It did.

And I went and she became my sponsor and she got me a big book and she said, write your

sobriety date on the inside of this cover.

And you never have to have another sobriety date again, hold on to that date.

And in the beginning I started making my, my big book, I've got tally marks for every

day and kind of like, you know, when you're in prison, they never because I'm so all

because that's kind of how it felt in the beginning.

And and I, I felt kind of like a fraud, you know, they would read the traditions and that

tradition three, the only requirement for membership is a desire to start, stop drinking.

I still wanted to drink, so I must not be doing this right.

Or I shouldn't be here cause I still want to drink.

And then I got reassured.

It's like, no, that's, that's normal.

That's the disease.

And if there's just 51% of you that wants sobriety, that's enough, you know, you don't

have to worry about the 49% of you that still wants to drink, just keep coming back.

And there was one meeting where they, they would say, and I would keep coming back.

And you know, I really believed it from those people at that meeting.

I didn't kind of always feel it, but at that meeting I did.

And I, I needed that.

I needed to feel like I belong somewhere.

And then somebody said, well, you need to get a commitment at this meeting.

And I was like, I'm just, I'm showing up, I'm showing up and you want me to volunteer.

And when, and I was like, but again, I said, yes, and I did it so contrary to my normal

way of being.

And that was that first meeting that I had gone to.

And when I went into that meeting the first time, everybody was smiling, laughing and

hugging and talking all those things that I wanted in life, but I didn't have.

And I looked at them and I thought, oh, they've all got history.

There's no way I do not belong here.

I don't stand a chance.

They're they already, they're a clique.

They know each other.

They've got, but what I did was I took that coffee commitment.

I had to get there an hour and a half before the meeting.

This was a big speaker meeting at that time with a break.

And so, and we made tons of coffee.

And then at the break, I had to serve the coffee and I'm telling you, it only took one

or two weeks and I felt like I belonged in that group.

So commitments, commitments are a good thing, you know, if you don't have one, get one.

I strongly recommend, okay.

So my daughter, I was maybe 40 days sober and I went home and my daughter was still

drinking and she had a six pack of beer in the fridge.

And I said, and I'm trying to like set boundaries, right?

And so I go and I say, okay, you know what, I can't have any alcohol in my house.

Please get rid of the beer.

You get a drink, go do it someplace else.

She opens the fridge, takes out the six pack, she hands it to me and she says, you can have

it.

I don't want it.

And I thought, you don't want this beer.

Why do you not want this beer?

And she said, why do people not drink?

And I just thought, oh God, you're pregnant.

And she was pregnant.

She was 21, hadn't completed any college, hadn't passed any of her courses.

The father was not somebody I cared for.

They were not married.

And I was like 40 days sober.

And so immediately my head goes to, why are you doing this to me?

And a lot of expletives, but I had heard just enough in meetings.

I had heard restraint of pen and tongue and I kept my mouth shut.

I kept my mouth shut and I just said, well, whatever you want to do, I'm here for you.

Went to my bedroom, shut the door, started to cry and call my sponsor.

And my sponsor said, you're going to be okay.

This might not be such a bad thing.

You're going to be okay.

And I'm like, you don't know.

You don't know.

But she stopped drinking from that point on and she did not drink her whole pregnancy.

And it was like getting my daughter back.

It was wonderful.

It was like she, this was a kid who said, I'm going to be the 27 club.

I'm not going to live past 27.

I've got nothing to live for.

And now she had a purpose.

She had something to live for.

And she had this kid.

And so I got to be there sober and experience the birth of my first grandchild and having

a baby in the house and, and then about baby was about two months old.

And I noticed she was starting to pump the breast milk and save it.

And I started figuring, Oh, she's figured out she can drink pump, dump it out.

And she was, and then three months she just switched to formula because that was too much

work.

And at four months she was drinking again in my house pretty regularly.

And so I said, you know what, this is a sober house.

If you are going to stay here, and I probably would do this.

I don't know if I do the same anymore, but I said if you want to stay here, you have

to go to meetings with me.

And she laughed.

She laughed in my face and she said, I'm not going to do that.

And she packed up the baby, packed up the boyfriend, packed up her car and drove away.

And for three days I didn't know where she was.

And I was really terrified for this, mostly for the baby.

I was really terrified.

And it was a Tuesday night, three days, I'm on the couch and I want to drink.

Not because I want to drink, but I want to obliterate.

And I thought it's Tuesday night, I've got the cookie commitment, a day at a time meeting,

I have to go to my meeting.

And I got up off the couch and I stopped at the store and I bought the cookies and I went

to the meeting.

And by the time I got home from the meeting, I didn't feel like obliterating anymore.

I didn't.

And, and I went to bed and around midnight, I hear the front door open and she came home.

And if I had chosen to drink that night, I would have ruined everything.

I mean, one, my sobriety and two, she would have come home to that old familiar scene

of me passed out on the couch with bottles all around.

And, but she didn't, she didn't come home to that scene.

And in the morning she came and she said, I'm sorry, where are those meetings you want

me to go to?

And, I wish I could say that those meetings stuck, they did not stick.

She went to probably half a dozen.

But she's, she's not sober today.

And I worry a lot, but, you know, she knows, she knows where to come if she wants, if she

wants to stop, she knows where to come.

So what I learned from that was, number one, commitments can save lives.

And number two is when you get in those feelings, when I get in that feeling of just overwhelming

life sucks, it's never going to get any better.

It passes.

It, the feeling passed.

All I had to do was wait it out.

So commitments and meetings.

What else do I want to say?

So for me, when I came in, yeah, see, I went on too long.

And then I'm not looking at these lights, so you might just have to pull me off because

I will probably miss the lights completely.

But I just want to say that I think these steps are miraculous.

It's crazy to me how they work.

One minute.

Okay.

Now I see a light.

Steps for me are not one and done.

The steps I have to do daily, I have to do this whole thing daily.

One of the things that my sponsor tells me all the time is read pages 84 to 88 in the

big book.

She would tell me that in the beginning and she would ask me, did you read it today?

And I go, not yet.

Did you read it today?

Not yet.

But those pages have offered me the most guidance and the most help.

And I don't start at 86.

I started at 84 because it's got that little part in there about we're not cured.

We just have a daily reprieve.

And it's a contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.

And that's something I have to work on every day.

I've got to pray.

I've got to meditate.

I've got to do the readings.

I don't do it perfectly.

I will open up my daily reflection and I'll see, oh, the date was two days ago.

No wonder I'm feeling irritable and discontent, but when I get back into it, I'm okay.

So it's not okay for me to coast because if I coast, I backslide.

So thank you for listening me.

Thank you for having me.