From Midwest Upbringing to Sobriety: Debbi's Journey

Hi, I'm Debbi, and I'm an alcoholic in recovery, a real alcoholic. Thank you, Abraham, for inviting me to come and share my experience, strength, and hope. My sobriety date, and Nancy, thank you so much for your talk. It was, I could really hear it, and it helped me.

My sobriety date is 12-16-16. I have a sponsor who has a sponsor who has a sponsor. Donna D. is my sponsor. My home group is the Pacific Group, although since the first of the year, I have returned to the Winner's Attitude 7 a.m. meeting in Sherman Oaks. A little more about that in a minute.

I went to, I grew up in a really normal family, I think, in the Midwest, small city.

I grew up in a small suburb. Actually, we were the fastest growing suburb outside of Chicago on the Northwest train line. My parents were high-profile people when they married. My mother was a flight attendant. My father was playing pro football. She lost her job as soon as she got married, and they had twins before their first anniversary, so he had to change his job because she just didn't make enough to feed a family in those days.

So my dad became a teacher and a coach, and then I came along, and then I think my parents would have had change.

I didn't have children until they had a boy, and thank goodness for my brother, my little brother. My parents did drink. My siblings might tell a different story, but to me, growing up, alcoholics were drunks who lived in the very dark bar that was right next to the fabric store, so you had to walk all the way around the block because the door was always open in the very dark bar, and that's how I related to it.

There was liquor in the house. I didn't think it odd that my father bought liquor in large containers and kept the large containers in the basement and poured them into quarts and kept those under the sink.

I also didn't think it was odd that my mother had a plaque. She used to say she didn't need a dishwasher because she had three of them. She had a plaque over the sink that had the serenity prayer on it, and every night doing dishes, I would read that, and I would wonder, that's very nice.

So she was a Catholic.

My father,

my brother believed in football, so we were brought up Catholic. Today, I can recognize that I was very different in a very different way from the beginning. I, of course, justified it because I'm stone deaf in one ear from birth, and I wasn't a twin, and I wasn't a boy, so I was kind of different. I didn't talk because my sisters had a language of their own, so I didn't talk until I was about three, and I also, I liked adults and animals better than my peers.

I began to

manage and

manipulate and control things

very young, and I had a lot of

adults buy into that and

support it. I decided

to leave the Catholic Church after

the Second Ecumenical Council because

how could they change this so

rapidly overnight? That made no sense

to me. I believed in that God

and those teachings, that

religion. I had taken it on

faith. I didn't quite understand the Holy Ghost,

but everything else, virgin birth,

everything else I could accept, but suddenly

It felt like overnight they changed it. Couldn't do without a God. Went looking for a God. Ultimately

embraced Judaism. Okay, now along the way my dad offers me a beer when we run out of Coca-Cola

watching football and I'm off and running. I become the supplier. I don't have a lot of friends

but once they knew I could get liquor I became much more popular. I didn't see it that way

because I also was given, I was given authority as a sophomore in high school. I was given authority

over a large group of a competitive drill team where my sister was in the color guard. They made

me the sergeant of the color guard. So I never asked how she felt about that. I didn't care. I

mean I didn't even notice. I mean if it bothered her she should have said something. So I, and that

allowed, we traveled. That allowed me to drink when we were traveling. If I wasn't an alcoholic

it didn't make me an alcoholic. But I spent a lifetime working around alcohol.

Alcohol was always available to me. So when I got to college of course I went to work in a bar

and more alcohol and then other things came into play. I'm still kind of managing everything and

all my girlfriends start getting married. My sisters get married. My friends, my college

people get married. No one's saying anything to me about my drinking until I break up with

my fiance. A 28 year old asked, I was 19, he asked me to marry him. My parents gave him the blessing

because his parents were big time drinkers. He was a big time drinker. He was a big time drinker.

Illinois farmers. So that was okay with mom and dad. When I broke up with him he sat me down and

said you just want to have more liquor, more drugs, and more sex. I said oh no I just don't

want to marry you. I think he was right. I think he pegged me from the get-go. I would go forward.

I wanted to be in the business of music. So while I was paying off my college Pell Grant, I had to

teach for two years in the state of Illinois so that I wouldn't have a big loan. I was organized,

right? I figured out how to get all the liquor I wanted. I figured out how to buy a car. I figured

out how to make money, get what I wanted. But I had a boyfriend who I was about fourth in line for

his girlfriends. And that wasn't working out so good for me. And I really wanted to be in the

business of music. He was a guitar player in a band. So I left Illinois and moved to California

to pursue my career in the business of music. And I had a big career. My alcoholism took off.

And I had a big career in the business of music. And I had a big career in the business of music.

That need to control and that energy that some people liked, I think, you know, the willingness

to do what was asked of me allowed this to happen. But it also had my company put me on Valium

because they thought I, and eventually they had to send somebody with me to any kind of a gathering

or a convention because they didn't want me misbehaving. The last big tour I did, I hired my,

no. So that guitar player, I hired my guitar player. I hired my guitar player. I hired my guitar player.

Moved out to California four months after me. And I took a hostage because he didn't drink and he

would never buy drugs. Smoked a lot of pot. He was an outstanding guitar player. And I loved him. I

did. I loved him completely. I hired him on my last big tour. Five weeks, we were in Australia and New

Zealand together, hauling in money with another artist, just living the life. I came back. They

told, they fired my secretary. They told me I was going to be demoted. I just wanted to get at my

normal drinking and drugs. I was going to be demoted. I was going to be demoted. I was going to be

drug using. Oh, I came back with 200 hits of Percodan because it wasn't a class four drug in

Australia. So I'm, I'm just completely out of my mind. I said, no, you won't. That's, that's not

acceptable. And they said, well, you'll do it. Or, and I said, then I quit. And they said, well,

you're fired. So my behavior, my actions should have told anyone that I had a problem. God did for

me what I couldn't do for myself. My husband, we'd never talked about children after me doing

peace jobs for 18 months. He says,

and I got pregnant right away and I could not use or smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol or eat

spicy food. None of that stuff. It was just cold Turkey just stopped. But plus a lot of it had

calmed down because I was no longer had, had it readily available. I still didn't think I had a

problem. I thought I had a problem about after my second child was born and I had again, big job.

My husband is transitioning from being a road musician because we have two kids at home now.

The person he worked for, well,

he worked for Helen Reddy. Her career was, she was not, I needed to work to pay the mortgage. So

obviously I started drinking again and started smoking cigarettes again and went to marriage

counseling because there was something wrong with him. At this point, I recognized that I had a

problem with blaming other people. It was all the things outside of me. And I could look back and

say, oh, well, I'm going to change that. I'm going to change that by going to marriage counseling

and, you know, explaining why he's not the guy for me. The marriage counselor at some point,

asked me how much I drank. And I was, I said, well, I don't drink very much anymore. And shortly

he said, well, maybe you're an alcoholic and you should try AA. Don't challenge me. Went to my first

AA meeting in 1986. I spent 30 years being of service, making coffee, cleaning floors, shaking

hands, doing fourth steps. I will not say that I was sober a single day. I was abstinent. I didn't

realize that until the morning I woke up. I mean, and I,

I would have long stretches of, of abstinence, but I still was insane. I was carrying all,

I was cherry picking the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I saw the steps and thought,

my God, that is a program for living. My way, my way. And it was always my way or the highway.

On December 15th, 2016, I hadn't had a drink for a couple of years, but the revolving door was

getting closer together, closer and closer. I'd had a sponsor in 2010 who told my husband,

if she drinks again, she needs to go to treatment. I didn't have time to go to treatment in 2010.

I was still teaching. By 2016, I was two years retired and I was traveling. I was, I was running

away, but I was still going to meetings. Loved going to meetings overseas. Loved going to,

loved the attention that I got doing the things that I was willing to do, which was not,

not the program of Alcoholics Anonymous as written in the book. So on the 15th,

I made a decision to,

go out and pick up a drink one more time. Now at this point, here's what my drinking looks like.

And this is what it looked like, like from 2000 on. I would go to the liquor store after school

and I would pick up a four pack of Cook's Root Champagne, cold from the cooler and take the

screw tops off, drink it in my car, throw the bottles out on Chandler, maybe stop at another

liquor store and pick up a few more before I went home because I'm sure nobody could smell

champagne. I decided that I needed a little break from what was going on because my husband was

telling me how to deal with something that I felt he knew nothing about. And he, he had made,

I mean, we had to get a reason. I had to take him to therapy for six months to get him to

give our abusive son out of our house, our 26 year old out of the house. He was ripping my

husband's clothes. He was punching holes in the door. He was smoking pot all the time. Oh, so

that's why I would drink, of course, because, you know, I got all this pressure. The next morning,

that young man's schnauzer was dead in our swimming pool. And it wasn't because my husband

left the office. He was dead in our swimming pool. He was dead in our swimming pool. He was dead in our

office door open. It wasn't because the dog was sick. It was because Debbi took a drink. It's

because I walked away from responsibility and I knew I had to go to treatment. I wasn't toxic.

So I refused to go to, to, um, to detox. I re, thank you. I refused to go to detox. It took me,

it took me about three weeks because this was Christmas time. I knew I had a couple of, I had,

I had been in and out of, I'd been around Alcoholics Anonymous so long that I had seen

other people change. I knew it worked.

But every time I drank, I would lean into the part of chapter five. Well, maybe I'm just mentally

ill. I would find any excuse than to face myself and to face my alcoholism, my addictive personality.

I did not want them to give me drugs. I went right back to the 1970s when I was put on Valium and it

just, it just skyrocketed. I must've had four doctors giving me pills because if one worked,

four would be better. Um, and I, I had two places that,

that I could go, that I had seen work with other women who I thought were, were, were never going to

get sober. Um, and one of them was Glendale Adventist, alcohol and drug. The other was

Friendly House. One was six months, one was 28 days. So, and, and even as I'm headed, they wanted

me to see a psychiatrist so that who would guarantee to them that I wasn't going to come

in and kill myself. Oh, also I, until I was 30, when I had that first baby, I used to think that

I'd be dead by 30. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

that was okay. I'll just be dead by 30. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. I don't

even know where this thinking came from because it certainly wasn't my family. We were hardworking.

I had principles. They just all went by the wayside. It was, what can I do? How hard can I

work? What can I get? What can I get? What can I get? So I, uh, I finally got to a psychiatrist.

I got into GADS with a whole bunch of other very different people. I'd been listening,

I'd been listening to AA. We, we wouldn't mix.

We're not people who would mix. But yet I had been mixing with alcoholics for 30 years.

I was always most comfortable in a room full of alcoholics when I was not drinking. Or it was

the pity party because I'd picked up a drink one more time. That's selfish and self-centered.

I understand that today. Oh, big problem for me. My whole life has been this way.

I took a hostage with my husband and he became my gatekeeper because he didn't drink or use.

Like I did. He had other character flaws, but those two things, he did bust me in the nineties,

uh, took, took my access away, which gave me my teaching career. So, so already God is doing for

me what I couldn't or wouldn't do for myself. I taught two years in the seventies, 20, 21 to 23,

and I didn't teach again until 45. And I ended up with a, just an amazing, amazing career that

was very fulfilling. And so I go to this, I go to GADS.

And the second day I'm calling my husband on the payphone and saying, ah, this might've been a

mistake. This, you know, I'm not sure because they're, a guy has a, an alcohol seizure on the

couch while they're checking me in. There are heroin addicts there who are, who have just

gotten out of five days of detox. Um, there are meth addicts who are saying, I can't wait to get

out of here to get back to it. There are young people who've been in, in treatment. This is like

their 12th time in treatment. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't

know. I don't know. And I'm going, ah, maybe, maybe, maybe I can, but I stayed and they worked

me hard. And, and I just became very focused begging because God had tapped me on the head

with that dog, literally. And I just kept thinking about that one more time. And then I began to

think about all the times I had been saved through no action of my own. Uh, I ran a sports car into

cornfield one night. Uh, I drove a car 200 miles on a new year's Eve. And as I got to the end of my

trip, the steering column went out. Oh, of course I was drinking the whole way. Those 200 miles. I

had a six pack. Um, they told me at the end of 28 days, they said to me, you, um, if you want to go

to days, you have, oh, they brought meetings in every night. They brought an AA meeting in. If you

want to go to days and not stay through the meeting, you have to tell us what meetings you're

going to go to. And you have to get a

sponsor. The first meeting I went to was an unfamiliar meeting. Donna DeHart was at the

podium. She's 22 years younger than me, but she's telling my story. She's got a son that's,

she loves. It's just the bane of her existence. Um, she had been in Gads. I said, can we get

together for coffee? The next day at the end of coffee, she says, here's what we're going to do.

You're going to meet me at this meeting. We're going to get together on Sunday. You're going to

meet me at this meeting. You're going to get a commitment at all of your meetings. And we're

going to get together on Sunday. You're going to get a commitment at all of your meetings. And we're

going to go through the book. We're going to go through the steps. And I said, yes, ma'am. And

then that's what we did. Um, and she is still my sponsor. I think in the past I was looking for a

buddy, but I'm not a real good friend. I have, like I said, in the beginning, I have a lot of

trouble with adults, with other adults. I'm getting better. I'm recognizing that it's my

character defects. I'm not honest. I'm still not honest. I find myself saying things that

aren't quite true. Now, what I've told you tonight is all, that's rigorously,

honestly honest. Um, the treatment focused on only on one, two, and three. And by doing that,

I realized that as many times as I'd, as many sponsors as I'd had, as many meetings as I'd

gone to, I had never admitted that my life was unmanageable because it was so big, always so

big. And, and that one time in the nineties, when I really blew it up, my husband caught me because

I had started smoking crack with a woman that I met in AA.

Whose father was dying of ALS, which my mother had, was also dying from, but she was dying in

Arkansas and he was in Toluca Lake. So I bonded with her and she smoked crack recreationally.

And I had no more, I didn't do that. And I, she ended up blackmailing me. Um, she had, yeah,

she had a plan obviously, but, and I crashed, uh, I crashed my, my retirement plan from USC.

I'd worked there three years while my husband transitioned to the real estate industry really

hard and also had an affair with the nanny. So it's like, I'm carrying all this crazy baggage

that just doesn't matter because we were married 48 years. We were together 50 years. He died in

November only because I was sober, only because I was working a program, only because I realized

step two, never admitted that I was insane. I could be crazy, but I'm insane. I have alcoholism

living in my head. I'm an alcoholic of the most basic kind.

It lives in my head. I will do anything alcoholically, meaning I'll start on a path

with something and take it to an extreme until I'm stopped. So once I started drinking during

those 30 years, I had to be stopped. I had to be caught by one of my kids, by my husband,

by the neighbor boy at Rouse. Cause I'd lost my car. It sounds funny today, but it certainly

wasn't funny when it happened. It was embarrassing. Um, and then I would go back to AA. Why? Because

of that third,

a desire to stop drinking. Oh, I had a desire to stop drinking. I could stop drinking, but I

wasn't addressing the problem. And number three, that Gads helped me with, I never made a decision

in all that time. I had never made a decision. I was great at making amends. I went to the owner

of the Troubadour with a check in hand to tell him how much money I'd stolen from him. When I

was working as a waitress, they had to teach me to steal money. The other waitresses, I couldn't

figure out how they were walking. I couldn't figure out how they were walking. I couldn't

figure out how they were walking. I was walking out with a hundred bucks and I was walking out

with five. Yeah. You rip off the record company, you rip off the patrons and here's how you do it.

He looked at me like I was insane and said, look, I don't even remember you donate it to someone,

which I did. And I have continued to do that. So today, you know, today I'm just grateful that I

lived long enough to understand this is a, I only have today. We all only have today. And I do the

same thing Nancy does. I have a process in the morning that I get up. I go to a chair. I don't

look at my phone. I don't go to my email. I don't answer the phone. I go to a chair. I breathe. I

pray. That's my meditation in the morning. And today I go to a seven o'clock meeting after that.

A lot of times I walk because that's my method. I think about, I have no problem with God. I am not

a very diligent religious person.

but luckily we did have a congregation around us when my husband passed that helped walk us

through that process because I never could have done it alone. It was so, it was, it was inevitable

but it's, I had five weeks but I really didn't think he would die but I didn't know how he was

going to come out of there. So I appreciate religion but I work a spiritual program and I,

I, when I'm anxious or upset, I'm learning to give it to God. Don't hang on to it. Give it to

God. Call my sponsor. I don't like to call my sponsor. I don't like to be honest with her. I

call her every day at 8 45, any day that I don't see her in a meeting and I've done that for nine

and a half years. I also, I look, I have a list of the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is,

I have to have, I need visual things. I need things that can, can help show me the path of

what's going on. I need to know what's going on. I need to know what's going on. I need to know

I love, I love Nancy's suggestions, lists, things. I have, this year, it's the principles.

It's the 12 principles that go along with the step. And that's when I realized, oh, you're

saying things to people that you think they want to hear. I'm also, I'm not patient. I'm very

self-centered, very self-centered. There can be very little demonstration of humility. My sponsor

recently said to me that my son, who is now also sober, said to her, I wish I had the mom at home

that I see in meetings. Well, you know, he's 42 and he's made a lot of mistakes and he hasn't

worked in over a year. And my sponsor just looked at me and said, do you want to love your son or do

you want to control him? That's, that's an old habit. That's alcoholism. That's in my head.

That's my alcoholism trying to alienate me from where my heart wants to be.

Where my heart was when I was a little kid serving drinks or, or bringing peanuts out or

doing washing storm windows, which you can not relate to, but these are things that you put on

the outside of your house in the winter and you take them off in the spring and you put the screens

on. And I could never understand why my daddy made us wash both sides of the storm windows

in the spring when we put them in the garage. And again, in the fall, when we put them back

on the house.

They weren't dirty anyway, but I did it, you know, but, but that was me. That was me as a kid.

I did it. I did it. I did what I was asked. So I got very lucky with a sponsor who had a really,

was working a really good program. I got very fortunate with being in GADS, which doesn't even

exist anymore. And just focusing on those one, two, and three, one, two, and three, one, two,

and three. And they gave me tasks. And now I'm learning. I cannot live in regret, remorse,

or resentment. I,

I talk with my children. I, we, we all realize that my husband, who he was, he was a loving,

caring man, especially with his clients and other people. And he was a provider and he had a goal.

Our goal used to be the things that we did together, like those babies. We made a, a Redwood

tub appear in our first home on a hillside that, cause we wanted it. He had, he had changed and I

had changed. And so I focus on how I,

loved him and the good times that we had instead of the rough times. My alcoholism would like me

to think about all the negative stuff, but this guy was not negative. He was doing the absolute

best he could, just like my parents did with what he had. And I, I will be grateful and love him

always and honor, honor his memory and try to try to fulfill his goal for the whole family.

Something else I do. Now this was given to me in 2012. This is a written 10th step that I look at.

Every night before I go to bed, before I thank God for another day sober. Thank you.

And it's real simple. It asks when we retire at night, where was I resentful, selfish,

dishonest, or afraid? I was never afraid of anything until I got sober. And even like three

or four years in to my sobriety, I still didn't really think I was afraid of anything. And then

my sponsor one day said, Debbie, what about all that anger? What do you think is charging that?

Because I would still get,

really frustrated with other people's behavior. And don't we all have a lot to be frustrated about

today if we engage with it? And then I realized, she said, let's talk about what, what's the fear

underneath the anger, because my anger has been driven by fear my whole life. So today I can,

I can see those things. I can recognize them. I can write about them. I can take care of them.

And I have to, if, if I write on this sheet, I have to tell, I have to read it to her at 845

in the morning. So I try, I try to do a lot,

better and mostly it's, it's, I was dishonest. And it's not, it's not big, it's not big lies.

It's like little, little things. I don't want to go to lunch with you. So I tell you, I'm not feeling

well. Anyway, thank you all. Thank you again. Thank you for having me. I hope that was useful,

some part of it. And I hope that you got to know me a little bit. I love other alcoholics. They

save me every single day. Thank you.

Bye John.

Bye.

We have breakfast. We have a nice meal.

Bye.

Oh my God. When I walked in, I was so happy to see them. It was like, oh my God,

David and Debbi are still here. And Shane, so many people. Oh man, they're still great.

Debbi was supposed to come with me. I'm absolutely good. Absolutely.

It was such a pleasure. When I walked in, I, I actually started,

I started crying the first meeting I went to because I was losing my mind. I walked over to

the hall. I walked to the park and Debbi and David were there and Sammy was there making coffee. I

mean, I'm, I'm not sure. We have a lot of, but yeah, it's a good, it's a good meeting and we

have, we, it is hybrid. So you could join us on zoom, winnersaa.com. Thank you so much. I'm glad

you were all there.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

It's at Radford now, 7 a.m. every day.

Everyone says it's great.

It got really well organized.

Is it 7 a.m.?

Yeah.

I've just ended.

You've practiced a lot.

If you did, I didn't notice.

All right, Nancy, so take care of everything.

Okay, okay.

Do your business.

Do your business.