Theresa's Journey: From Early Alcohol Use to Lasting Sobriety

Like I like my age, so.

(laughing)

(speaking in foreign language)

- Hi, my name is Theresa and I am an alcoholic.

(speaking in foreign language)

Hi, Abraham, thank you for inviting me to come and speak

and I am definitely grateful to be able to be sober

and speaking in front of a group of alcoholics.

Maria, thank you so much for your share.

Our stories are pretty similar.

First of all, let me, I'm gonna apologize in advance

if my cat gets in the way and distracts.

Hopefully she'll stay asleep.

I can't lock her in another room

because there is no other room, this is it.

So I apologize for that in advance

and welcome to anybody who's new or coming back to AA.

You know, I too was a chronic relapser

and each time when I would come back to AA,

I can't even really say I was a chronic relapse

because I never acquired too much time sober,

but when I would come back,

I always felt so much guilt and shame

and I came in with those feelings,

but through working the steps,

much of that has gotten better.

So my sobriety date is September 11th, 2002.

My home group is the Rose City Speakers Meeting

on Thursday night in Pasadena at eight o'clock.

I invite you guys to attend.

It is an in-person meeting, but it is a really good meeting.

My sober sister is here tonight.

I saw her earlier, my sponsor joined.

So I'm always good to have people that I know

in, you know, where I can see them as well.

So I have a home group, a sponsor, and a sobriety date,

and I was told to have those things

and keep them when I got sober

and to stay in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I have tried to do that to the best of my ability.

So let's see, I'll start with my family growing up.

I am the youngest of eight kids.

I grew up with feelings like a lot of us do,

you know, those feelings that not feeling good enough

or smart enough, pretty enough.

And I often felt that I was in the way

and because I'm the youngest of eight kids,

I probably was in the way, you know,

I was often told, you know, Teresa, get out of the way,

Teresa, you're in the way.

I mean, I'm the youngest of eight.

I grew up with a good set of moral values.

My parents were hard workers.

There is a lot of alcoholism and drug addiction

in my family.

I am the only sober person in my family,

but I want to tell you that my brothers and sisters

are so happy that I am sober today.

So what happened was like when I was about 15,

and I want to tell you, I grew up with God in my life.

I was raised Catholic.

I'm not a recovering Catholic.

So the God idea wasn't a big surprise

or something to overcome growing, you know,

when I came into AA.

What happened with this is when I was about 15,

I was hanging out with some friends.

Some of them were my age,

but some were like 10 to 15 years older.

And somebody handed me a paper cup full of something red,

and I knew it was alcohol, but I drank it anyways.

It was probably like Boons Hill or Mad Dog 2020.

It was something real classy.

And I drank that one down,

and I kept folding my cup out for more.

And nobody said, you know, Teresa just had one or two.

And I don't think I've ever had just one drink ever.

So with that, you know, I didn't.

And that's kind of how I have drank since that time.

And, you know, I didn't have like,

I didn't like pass out or throw up

or make a spectacle of myself that day.

But what did happen for me that day was my feelings.

You know, for the first time that I can remember,

I just, I was okay.

Those feelings of feeling shy and insecure

and not part of just weren't there.

I didn't feel smarter, prettier or any of that,

but those feelings of being self-conscious

just weren't there.

And that's what alcohol and drugs always did for me.

They changed the way I felt.

So I can say that the steps do the same thing.

They just take a lot longer,

but the result is more permanent as well.

So I didn't set out to go out and drink like the next week

or the next weekend.

My thoughts were not like, I can't wait to do this again.

But when I did drink throughout my teens

and it wasn't real often, you know, for me, I say that,

and it might be like once a month we did that.

And for somebody who's 15, I think that's a lot,

but that's how I drank.

And I had no knowledge of alcoholism at the time.

And anytime I drank, I drank to excess.

And I began to suffer consequences

and I began to do those things,

some things that a 15-year-old girl shouldn't be doing.

And I compromised my moral values.

And I had a lot of guilt and shame about that.

And I felt really bad as a person for doing those things.

And the big book talks about how alcoholics

lets us act extemporaneously.

And I believe that's what it did for me.

So anytime I had a drink or smoked a joint,

'cause my older brothers and sisters smoked a lot of pot,

it was easy to get.

And so I probably smoked more pot more frequently

than I did drink.

We had alcohol at home,

but I never went into our liquor cabinet.

It wasn't something I actually sought after like I did,

like was pot.

But anytime I did a drink or a drug,

it changed the way it felt.

And the things that I wasn't happy about doing

suddenly didn't matter anymore.

I was okay 'cause it changed the way it felt.

When I was about 20, I went back to college

and I discovered I couldn't remember what I was studying.

It didn't matter if I smoked a joint before or after.

So I just, and pot was making me paranoid.

And I talk about drugs because at any time in my life,

I have been able to stop the drugs when they stopped working

and pot wasn't working for me anymore.

So I just stopped it.

At that point, I wasn't drinking a whole lot,

but when I did drink, I always drank too much.

And I ended up getting pregnant at about age 23

and then we got married in that order.

And then we had my husband and I had our second daughter

two years later and we bought a house.

Occasionally on Christmas,

we might get a little bit of Coke and celebrate together,

but it was just a little bit.

And I've always wondered,

whatever happened to the rest of it?

I'm sure he must have done that on the side or something.

But if we went out drinking for a special occasion,

I always drink too much.

I never thought that, oh, we're gonna go out and party

and I'm gonna get drunk.

Never thought of it that way.

He'd say, you wanna drink?

I'd say, sure, but it was always too many.

And what happened was this.

And then my kids are growing up

and I have a full-time job.

We have a house together, my husband and I.

So I'm taking care of the house, the yard.

I have full-time job and Girl Scout leader, Brownie leader

and organizing bingo and school activities

and taking care of my two aging parents.

And then one day when my husband and I

are cleaning out the garage

and I guess my kids are about 10 and 12 maybe at that point,

my neighbor comes over and he says, you want a bump?

And we said, yes.

So we did a little bump and that was meth.

And then we got the garage done real quick.

And then we went over to their house

for some barbecue with margaritas.

And that quickly became a weekend thing

where we were doing the meth and the margaritas.

But I found it harder to get up on Monday.

So I started buying meth on the side.

And then for the margaritas, who needs all that filler?

I just started drinking straight tequila.

And the big book also talks about how women

are gone beyond recall in short amount of time.

And that is my story.

So as history likes to repeat itself,

I ended up having an affair with my next door neighbor,

drug dealer.

And within I think less than a year of the day

that my husband and I were cleaning out the garage that day,

I was in my first treatment center.

They had done an intervention on me, my family.

And I heard things in this treatment center

about the yes, how people talked about how they got DUIs.

Well, that hadn't happened to me yet.

Or they ended up in jail or a mental institution,

lost families, crashed cars, lost jobs.

None of that had happened to me yet.

And they told me,

you need to change your playground and your playmates.

You need to change everything.

And when I got out of that treatment center,

I hadn't even had a parking ticket.

So I really couldn't relate.

And they told me that I could never have just one.

And I heard it up here, but I didn't hear it here.

I couldn't really grasp the concept

of what that first drink does,

that it causes the train wreck.

And when I got out of treatment within a couple of days,

I was back next door and doing meth

and probably a day or two later, I was back drinking.

And that kind of started the downward spiral

of detoxes and treatment centers.

The first thing of the yes to happen

was I got fired from my job.

I lost my job.

They frowned upon me drinking at lunch.

You know, can't imagine why.

And it was a pretty good job.

You know, I had for about eight years.

That was the first thing to go.

And then the next thing is I totaled my car.

I drove drunk with my kids in the car.

And thank God nobody was in the car that day

and nobody was injured.

I was on my way to pick up my daughter from school.

And I totaled that car.

And then I got a DUI and I ended up downtown

in Twin Towers to serve just a couple of days.

But I tell you, I had never even had a parking ticket

and then I ended up in Twin Towers.

And that was just awful there.

I mean, it was just, I can't tell you how to provide.

I was when I was in there.

And the next thing I think to go after that was the oh.

So, you know, I'm on this downward spiral

of going in and out of treatment centers.

And, you know, I have to tell you,

I have these two little girls and by this time

I'm probably like two years into my drinking.

And I've kicked my husband out of the house

because he's kind of in the way.

And sometimes I would go to treatment centers

and then come home and go to AA.

And then I'd start drinking again.

And I like to detox at home and take phenobarbital.

And I really had the intention of not drinking,

but given my own device left up to my own choice,

if there's alcohol or I can get alcohol, I'm gonna drink.

So I was doing phenobarb and drinking.

And one day I called my doctor so I could detox at home.

She wasn't there.

And the doctor that was on call said,

no, we're not gonna do that.

You need to go to the hospital to detox.

And I said, well, I can't do that.

I might as well just kill myself.

No, doctors don't take that lightly.

So I hung up the phone and I told my kids

I was gonna go to the store and get something

to make them for dinner.

And as I'm backing out of my driveway

and I lived on a cul-de-sac,

I see LAPD coming down my street.

And I thought, oh, that's not good.

I pull back in my driveway and I went into the house

and I locked the front door and I went out the back door

and I hid in the dog house.

And I'm in the dog house and I'm thinking,

oh, this is where they're gonna look.

So I go back in the house and they're at the front door

and I opened the door and you don't have to do that,

by the way, if this ever, you don't have to do that.

And I see my neighbor, my drug dealer,

I'm having the affair with out front

and he's kind of watching.

And I want you to know, my kids are home at this time.

And so I invite them in because I don't want my neighbor

to hear what they're saying.

And after a short amount of time,

they decide that it would be better

if they took me into custody.

So they put me into handcuffs

and my two kids are in the front yard

and they walk me outside and they put me

in the back of the patrol car.

Originally, they were gonna call somebody

to come and take my kids.

But I asked them to please call my husband

and he said he would come home and take care of them.

So I ended up in a psych ward for three days.

But you know, my kids saw all of this happen.

And I would think that would be enough

to have me like come to my senses, but it wasn't.

As soon as I got out of that psych ward,

I was back next door doing meth and continued to drink.

What ended up happening is I kept going back

to Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I wanted to thank you guys all for that

because you have never once told me,

Teresa, you can't come here anymore if you're not sober

because I came many times when I was drunk.

And this one summer,

I had been in treatment for about six months

and I drank there and they kicked me out.

And I had a little bit of money

'cause my parents had passed away and left me some money.

So I had this little apartment and I was living all alone.

I was unemployable and I was drinking around the clock

from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed.

And every day I would say to myself,

I'm just gonna have a half pint

and then tomorrow I'm not gonna drink anymore.

And I would drink that half pint down

and then I would pass out and I'd get up

and I would start all over.

But I had every intention of this is gonna be

my last one and I would tell myself that all day long.

And I'd go through four and five pints of tequila

and I would pass out and I would wake up.

And then around seven or eight o'clock at night,

I would take maybe four nights off and I would drink it,

drink it down with some tequila

and I'd say a little prayer like this.

God, please don't let me wake up tomorrow.

I was really okay with dying,

but I didn't know how to do the living thing anymore.

And that one day I was supposed to take my daughters

somewhere and I had been trying to get sober that summer.

It was the summer of 2002 and I kept going back

to this book study, a women's book study.

And they gave me the cake commitment,

even though sometimes I'd show up

and I had been drinking at nine o'clock in the morning.

But they kept telling me, just keep coming back.

And so I kept bringing the cake and I kept coming back.

And this one time I was supposed

to take my daughter somewhere.

And I got three, four, five days sober maybe.

And then I'd feel uncomfortable.

This one day I just, I felt uncomfortable,

that irritable, restless, discontent feeling.

I thought, I'm just gonna have

that one little $2 bottle and then I'll feel better

and just get terrible, be okay.

And so I had that little $2 bottle

and of course it ended up in a step.

And by the time she got there in the afternoon,

I couldn't take her where she needed to go.

And I told her she needed to take the bus home.

And she said to me, mom,

the bottle has always been more important to you

than we were.

And I said to her, and I believed this

with all my heart at the time.

I said to her, Jess, if that's not true,

I love you very much.

As she walked out my front door,

she slammed the door so hard that it broke the door jamb.

And when I woke up the next morning,

what I heard in my head was this,

that alcohol is my master

and I will never be able to have just one.

And that was September 11th of 2002.

And I haven't had a drink or a drug.

Now I had quit the meth a couple of years before

just because the only person who I knew to get it from

was my neighbor, my drug dealer neighbor.

And he wouldn't have anything to do with me anymore

'cause I was really, really crazy.

I mean, I'd be up on my rooftop

peeking in his windows at night.

Pretty crazy.

So I went back to that women's meeting that night

or to the women's book study.

And I said to my sponsor, I said, I think I'm done.

And she said, okay, here's what you're gonna do.

Now she would tell me, when she would previously tell me,

here's what you're gonna do,

I would say, I know, I know, I know.

And she told me, Teresa, you don't know shit.

That's why you can't stay sober.

And she said, you're gonna be of service

to the women here in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I said, okay.

And she said, you're gonna go to the meetings

I tell you to, and you're gonna have a commitment

at each of those meetings.

You're gonna do three a day during the week

and four on the weekends.

She said, you are unemployable, so you need to keep busy.

So I said, okay.

And we began to work the steps in earnest

to the best of my ability at the time.

And the book, it talks about how the steps,

how this program is designed for living.

And that is absolutely true.

And it was slow, it was so slow going.

That part about it in step one where we had to accept

we were alcoholic in our innermost self.

I finally got that, that I could never have just one

because when I had one, it set off the craving

and the craving set off a compulsion

that I was sure to have more.

So we're reading a lot about that daily reflections

right now that I love this part of the daily reflection.

So we started to go through the steps,

but my sponsor was very active.

And so we had a lot of fellowship going on

and the women in this program really pulled me up

by my bootstraps and held me close 'cause they kept me close.

You know, we went to, we had birthday parties,

we went camping, we did so much fun stuff.

We were busy, just busy, busy.

And, you know, in the days when it was hard,

'cause it was hard not to pick up a drink,

I just could not not drink for about five years.

I just couldn't not drink.

And man, I'm glad I don't have to go down that path,

you know, today, what a dark, dark place that was.

So we started to do the steps.

Like, sorry, I lost my train of thought,

but then I was talking about the women in the program

and the fun stuff that we did

because we still do fun stuff here in AA.

If it wasn't good, I wouldn't still be here.

When I think about having 23 years of sobriety,

I think, how the heck did that happen?

You know, and I know how it happened.

It's because of Alcoholics Anonymous and God.

You know, I have a God of my understanding today.

That's not the Santa Claus God I believed in,

but I kind of grew up with when I was a little kid.

I have a God of my understanding that I have a relationship

with and that I really try to develop that relationship

on a daily basis.

I don't do this program perfectly, far from it.

I make a lot of mistakes.

The God thing and turning my life and my will over

to the care of God in step three.

You know, that was a hard concept for me.

I didn't quite get it.

And then somebody said, "It's like getting out of bed

in the morning and you know the floor is there."

She says, "You don't question it."

It's the same thing with step three.

God is always there.

You're a higher power.

If you don't believe in God and you're struggling

with that concept, it's okay.

You know, just believe that there's something

more powerful out there than yourself.

And in four, when I did my inventory with my sponsor,

she, you know, she helped me see what my part and stuff was

'cause a lot of things I could not see.

I just didn't get it.

And she showed me what those things were.

And she said, "You never have to do this again."

And then she showed me my character defects.

Now my character defects are far from being gone.

You know, as much as I would like them to be gone,

they just pop up, but they look different.

You know, a different situation, a different year,

a different time.

Somebody shared in a meeting that went to this morning.

And she said, "You know, one of my character defects

is this, this, this, and because of that."

And I went, "Oh, I never thought of that,

but it made perfect sense."

And I thought, "I do that."

You know, and that's another thing I love

about this program is that, you know,

I never stopped learning ever.

I never, I will never graduate from Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's a life journey and what a gift that is.

One of the things I heard when I first came in

was about my, "It's not so much about the drinking."

Well, when I, the first couple of years,

it was about the drinking for me.

My first year was very, it was hard for me not to drink.

As much as I wanted not to, I prayed real hard not to.

And so when people would say, "It's not about the drinking,

it's about my thinking," I just didn't get that.

And I thought, "Well, take a drink

and then tell me it's not about the drinking."

But today I get it.

It's the part in the book that says

we had to get down to causes and conditions.

It is definitely my thinking and how I react to situations.

And, you know, I want to talk about step nine and the amends.

So a couple of years ago, I've made my amends,

but a couple of years ago,

one of my brothers came down from Wyoming

and I hadn't seen him for about 20 years.

And I hadn't talked to him probably about that.

Maybe 15 to 20, because he had said something

probably in a drunken stupor, but it frightened me.

And I just stayed away from him,

as did most of my family after that.

But he was coming down to stay with my brother

up on the Central Coast, and I was invited to go up,

and I really didn't want to go.

So I called my sponsor and I said,

"You know, I think I owe him an amends,

'cause I've never made an amends to him."

And we talked about it and I decided to go,

because that's what I was taught here.

You know, you make direct amends when you can.

And I went up there and my nieces and,

some of my nieces and nephews were there.

My brothers and sisters were there,

'cause we hadn't seen this one brother, Mike,

I would say his name, for quite some time.

And, you know, the opportunity to make an amends just,

it wasn't the appropriate time.

And, but I was willing to do it.

And just in that willingness to do it came

a lot of forgiveness and a lot of healing.

And I think there was healing on both of our parts.

And we hosted this at my brother Gerald's place.

And he, you know, this year has been a little difficult.

We, my brother Gerald passed away this year,

and it was very hard on my family.

He passed away from treatment, the treatment of cancer,

not the cancer, but the treatment.

But thank goodness for that treatment,

because it gave him 20 more years of a really good life.

And I had a chance to make, you know,

to bond with him and to be closer to him.

And after he passed away, you know, I called my sponsor

and I said, you know, I can't remember

if I made amends to him.

But that was the first thing I thought about is,

oh my gosh, did, am I good?

Did we leave on good terms?

And I got to be there close with him

when he was unconscious.

And I called, a couple of my sisters couldn't be there.

So I called them from his hospital bed and he's unconscious.

And I said, hey, you want to talk to Gerald?

And they were so grateful for that little opportunity

to be able to talk to him.

And whether he heard them or not is not the point,

but they got to say goodbye, you know,

because I had gone up there,

made the day trip up there to be with him.

And, you know, all of that

is because of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Yeah, and the end result of that conversation

was my sponsor came to the conclusion,

yes, I made amends.

You know, I thought, oh yeah, no, I did.

We were good.

You know, this program, like I said,

I don't do it perfectly.

I make so many of the same mistakes over and over.

I feel like that little Duracell battery guy

that runs into the wall and just,

I'm like, when am I gonna learn, you know?

But I don't do it intentionally,

but it just seems like a good idea at the time.

And there I go again.

But thank goodness for Alcoholics Anonymous

that it doesn't say I have to do the same perfectly.

Otherwise I couldn't be here anymore.

It just says it's progress, you know,

progress, not perfection.

And so I get up and I try again to do it better.

Maria, you said it perfectly.

You know, we get up and we do it, keep it simple.

We just try to do it good today.

You know, try to do the next right good thing today.

So Abraham, thank you for letting me share.

I wanna thank all of you for being here

and for being present in Alcoholics Anonymous.

You guys have saved my life.

You know, I, and I have gotten,

I wouldn't like to say beyond my wildest dreams,

but a life I didn't know I wanted or needed.

And I've gotten that through AA, so thank you.

(muffled speaking)

- Oh look, I'm right there.

Welcome to the Quality of Life,

Saturday speaker meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.