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Hi everybody! My name is Sheila G. and I am an alcoholic.
I had my last drink at about 4 am May 19, 1992. My sobriety date is May 23,
1992. Someone
asked me to write my story, and encouraged me by saying that mine
is a success story, I am humbled for anyone to compliment me in that way (I do
pray that I am no-where near the end of this story either!).
I am in North Texas, and the way we do it here is to share about what it was
like what happened and what it is like now. I am a garden variety drunk, just
like Bill, Bob, Mary Agnes, I'm not less then or more then you or any one,
my progress is measured by my journey not yours, and I pray that if anything I
say is beneficial to you, that you will use it and remember to pass it on. I do
not intentionally break the traditions, I will warn you upfront that due to my
age and choices, my story is not that of a "pure alcoholic" (Like they
exist?).
First
things first I'd like to give a little credit to God, who I choose to call God,
for Loving me in spite of myself, to my Daddy for believing in me to my Mother
and my Mom, who always Loved me and to AA, especially the Shalom Group in Denton
TX who taught me how to walk in the Sunlight of the Spirit... I feel like
someone should be handing me a little statue right now, so I guess I need to
move on. :-) WHO
I AM AND WHAT IT WAS LIKE:
I am the youngest of nine children, born in Livonia Michigan in January of 1966.
Some of you may be thinking that you spilled more then I drank, and well, maybe
you did, that isn't the point. I was blessed to get here young, but not a moment
too soon. My Dad was once a member of AA, I don't remember any of that time, I
just remember him drinking, and dying. I found out about his 6 months of
sobriety after I was sober about a year.
When I was born my parents were relatively wealthy, Mother came from a
successful immigrant family and Daddy was successful at every venture he chose
to undertake. We lived in Highland Park Michigan, at that time an affluent
suburb of Detroit. As many of you know this was a bad time for Detroit, the late
sixties that is. I don't have real consistent memories of Michigan, just a flash
here or there, I was three when the riots came and we moved to Arizona.
This was an awful time for my family, giving up Mother's family home, uprooting
my Nana (her Mother) and nine kids, all to move west and make a new beginning.
My Dad's Father passed away right before I was born, that was the end of my
Dad's career in AA. Mother told me years later that these were the best months
of her life, the six months of his sobriety... Well she had a pretty crappy
life. Dad met and took up with a woman in the rooms, even went so far as to take
all of the kids to meet their new Mom, so AA and its people were not Mom's
favorite topic. Not during my growing up anyhow. I do recall a wooden plaque
that hung in the kitchen with the Long version of the Serenity Prayer, but in
our Irish Catholic home, another prayer on the wall was no big deal. Well I
didn't know it was. My
Dads drinking hit a new low after this time of sobriety, and with his drinking
violence became a way of life. Dad beat Mom. Mom beat the kids. The kids beat
each other. We had an incredibly violent home, looking back now I am astounded
that all nine of us lived to be adults. In Tucson our lives took a turn for the
worse, Daddy's drinking was spiraling out of control, he had also developed a
love for gambling and of course women. Mother threw herself into teaching and
being active at church, Nana lived with us and took good care of us as much as
she could, but nine kids and one 80 year old Grandmother in a house that was
possessed by alcohol and violence wasn't a very safe place for kids.
I guess if you believe in the genetic or the socialization theory you
could lay odds that half of us would become addicted, and you would win, in fact
I would go so far as to say you could bet that 100% of the children in my family
have grown up to fight their own addictions, some of us successfully, some of us
just switched, and well we are all still works in progress. Despite
my Grandmother's care, I was molested the first time when I was 4 and then
repeatedly through out my child hood, the last successful assault was when I was
14, at age 17 I managed somehow to dissuade the last attack. Funny but of all
the assaults the one that I managed to stop was the one that threw me over the
edge, and became my justification for drug and alcohol abuse for the next eight
years. I
do not remember my first drink. I remember my first drug.
I was 8 years old, smoked hash with a hitch-hiker my sister had picked
up. I began to smoke cigarettes when I was 6, but not regularly until I was 12.
My Grandmother died when I was eight, shortly after her death my parents
declared bankruptcy Mothers car was picked up by some scary guys Dad had bet it
and lost in a poker game. Dad lost his business. Mother got fired from her
teaching job at the Catholic school. All of us children got expelled from the
school, we lost our house, and Daddy went in the hospital and was diagnosed with
Cancer. Eight was a bad year for me I guess. My Mother, Father, and 7 of nine
children moved into a 3 bedroom one bath house that Daddy called a tin Lizzie
house, it was, to him, the ultimate failure. Over
the next four years I smoked a lot of pot, as often as I could, and drank pretty
regularly, Daddy had made arrangements for my big sister to baby sit his
favorite bartenders kids, there was an endless supply of alcohol at their house
and they became my best friends, me and my brother 6 years my senior. I never
got caught that I recall, and really it didn't seem to hamper my life at home or
school, we were sneaky enough and my parents were wrapped up in their own hell
on earth. My
father died 3 months after my twelfth birthday this was the beginning of black
out drinking for me. Over the next 5 years I did not live in any one State for
more then 6 to nine months. Mother sent me away to live with brothers, sisters,
in-laws or anyone who would let me live there. I dropped out of school
permanently when I was 15 having successfully completed only the 8th grade, I
couldn't imagine going to high school until I was 20 so I just quit.
So many things happened that I was able to feel sorry for myself about.
It would take a year to tell it all. My
Mother went to work at the Sheriffs office after she lost her teaching job, and
after Daddy died she brought home an inmate, that was to be my step father, he
was a heroine addict, a pimp and a con man to the extreme. Mother got fired from
another job, and I guess for her this was the final straw, she began buying and
selling large quantities of marijuana, and I became her dealer when I was at
home. My stepfather was a piece of work to say the least and it was many years
later that I finally was able by the grace of God to forgive him. Their main
source of income over their 15-year relationship was insurance fraud. They
supplemented this with international drug trafficking.
Also at age 14 I was diagnosed with endometriosis, a disease that can
cause sterility when not controlled. Of course in my chaotic life I never
received treatment and by the age seventeen was told that I would never have
children. So
by the age seventeen here is what I was, a young girl with no place to call
home, a feeling of not fitting in, a world of resentment blame and shame, anger,
sexual problems fear and sorrow. All that on the inside and on the outside a
young attractive girl who could lie right to your face and make you believe that
you had lied, not me. I learned a lot in my home and I was very well versed in
manipulation. I was also addicted
to amphetamines and weighed in at 90 pounds at 5’10”it wasn't a pretty 90
pounds either. I
got engaged several times before I married at age twenty, I know I was looking
to all of those men and boys to save me. I got lucky in the one that I did marry
he never beat me, and didn't kill me, even when I betrayed him by getting sober.
I, like many drop-outs got into the service industry, worked in restaurants and
grocery stores for the first 8 years of my adult life, I was pretty darn
successful too, rose to the top in several ventures and thought that I was king
of the world many times, there was always something that caused me to fail
though, someone who didn't appreciate me or someone who just didn't understand.
I became very paranoid and began drinking daily to pass out by the time I was
23. My
husband drank and used drugs with me, we were quite a team and when he was at
work I drank and used drugs with his friends. I was an unfaithful wife,
especially in my heart. During my
marriage I grew in many ways, including getting off speed and gaining almost 200
pounds, when I sobered up I weighed in at a delicate 260.
I was married to Tom for 6 years, we bought three houses, a couple boats,
cars, and stuff. We appeared successful, had credit cards and lots of stuff, but
somewhere we missed something. Our life was miserable for both of us, we lived
to drink and drank to live. I still recall him saying once "there has to be
more then this to life" Well yes there is. When
I turned 25, I was hit with an enormous depression, I looked at my life and
hated everything, hated what I had become. Hated how I looked, what I did and
what I had not done. I had always wanted a child, a little girl of my own. I
also wanted a college degree. After 5 years of marriage and surgery and
treatment there was no child, and Tom didn't want any. He had two from his first
wife and did not share my desire for children. He also did not share my
enthusiasm for education, it was not a priority to him, if anything he only
wanted me to have a trade and may have supported attendance at a trade school if
I was interested. Fortunately/unfortunately
I failed miserably at dexterity testing and the employment office encouraged me
to go to college not become a tradesman they said I just didn't have the manual
dexterity to be a machinist. So I went to work as a baker and left that dream on
the shelf, I would take it down and look at it once in a while just to keep the
resentment but only completed two semesters when I did finally get into the
University. Just long enough to convince myself that I was a failure and a
quitter. Somehow
I began to associate my failures with my drinking. I began that horrible battle
of trying to control my drinking, gave up all drugs even cigarettes and was just
going to drink on weekends, or only beer and then I was going to not drink. I
would pay the "bank" three dollars a day for every day that I did not
drink, and then if I did drink I took out five dollars as punishment. The major
flaw with this arrangement was that I was the bank. It was a joke. Every form of
alcoholic insanity marked the year between my 25th birthday and when I ran into
the lady who would lead me to AA. Everyone
in my tightest circle, husband, best friend, brother, husbands best friend, all
of them went to jail for a DWI in that year. I was the only one and truly it
became a deterrent, I damn near gave up driving all together. I bought a house
in the middle of the Oklahoma wilderness up in the Arkansas area, I was going to
move there and live a good drug free life, I lasted three days... Well not
really I had all the pot I could ever smoke growing on the property thanks to my
neighbor, and the drive to the border for beer was only 5 minutes. So those
three days were not spent sober, I just gave up on the geographic cure and got
lonely. WHAT
HAPPENED: I
returned to Texas and my husband, got a new job, thought I would try giving up
cigarettes because maybe that was the real problem. Gave up all drugs, except
alcohol of course and then my drinking multiplied by leaps and bounds. Three
jobs lots of friendships and the loss of two homes later, it was March of 1992,
and I was hung over at work as usual. I needed something to take the edge off. I
went to the convenience store across the street from my job to get some
cigarettes and Mountain Dew to get the day going and a lady held the door for
me. I recognized her as someone that I had spent many evenings with drinking and
drugging, but someone I had not seen in a few years as our circles of friends
had changed. Then something hit me, she looked very different, her eyes weren't
red and for the first time I could remember she wasn't staggering.
Her name was Chris J. I had
known her for years she was a dope head and a big time alcoholic (well that is
how I had judged her...a real loser in my book, but good enough to party with).
There she was and she was sober at 11am, wow something was definitely
wrong, Chris started every day with a Michelob, a joint and a handful of pills,
that was how she had been for ten years that was who she was, I had never seen
her sober in 10 years, and there she was with clear eyes and a smile on her
face. That was the really strange thing the smile, I couldn't ever remember her
smiling, she was the most miserable person I had ever known and here she was
smiling. It caught my attention, then she really got my attention when she
declared that she was sober, and had been since November of 1991. Wow,
for someone who couldn't make it 24 hours that was an eternity. This opened the
door for me, and I took about five minutes to tell her that I had been trying to
quit drinking and drugging and I was having trouble with it. She asked if I
really wanted to quit, and I said, well I think so. I'm not sure. I can remember
feeling a wave of fear, and a feeling of curiosity, not really hope, but
interest. She asked if it would be
all right for her to come see me at work and I said yes, I was the manager after
all!!! So
she went her way and I went mine and I thought a bit about her, but then went
about my day as usual. She came to see me at work and I don't remember if it was
that day or a few days later, but she was persistent, she came and she listened
to me cry, blame, rationalize, and justify my drinking for hours at a time, she
heard all the stories all the excuses and she kept coming back, she met with me
at least once a week, brought me a big book, a desire chip, she even brought her
teenage son to apply for a job. He was an active member of Alateen. I did hire him. Between
March and May of 1992, my drinking continued. Chris continued to listen to me
and she was very active in AA, she told me she loved me every time she came, and
left with the admonition that God Loved me and a hug every time, I wasn't
getting many hugs anymore as I had come to a place where human contact was
painful for me, and I didn't really want that kind of intimacy not even with my
husband. My life was filled with superficial friendships and grandiose ideas of
my importance in the Republican Party and in the Chamber of Commerce by day and
then at night the club scene and motorcycles. It was all so unreal, and
somewhere inside me I knew that it was all a lie, I just couldn't find the truth
anymore, couldn't imagine what it was, my one thought about the truth of my life
was that whatever the true Sheila was, she was a disgusting joke of a person who
couldn't possibly measure up, and if anyone ever really knew me they would never
love me anyhow, so why bother. During
this time a friend from the past, a "real alcoholic" named Eric showed
back up, he came to my home on May 18,1992 with two quart bottles of Bud, and
informed me that he had spent the last two years sober, in AA, and that he had
decided to drink and decided that he wanted to drink with me. I hadn't seen Eric
for a little over two years, he had been arrested for selling machine guns, and
several DWI's. My husband and he
had been best friends but somehow in the drinking Eric and I had developed an
inappropriate friendship that led Tom to tell Eric to stay away from our home
and me. Honestly I was afraid of Eric, he had a crush on me and he made bombs
for fun, not the kind of guy I wanted mad at me. And honestly I did love my
husband and did not want to leave him for Eric, so needless to say this blast
from the past was frightening, but I let him in. Eric
was truly brilliant, and I did enjoy talking to him, he was one of the only
people I knew who didn't think it was stupid that I wanted to go to college even
though I was a grade school drop out. Eric
thought I was smart. He bought me
books as gifts; I’ll never forget that about him, he saw something in me, that
person that was hiding under all the drinking and false airs. He
got to my house about 8 PM and we drank the night away him asking me about my
drinking history, me telling him about Chris, sometime in the evening I got out
my Big Book, we drank every drop of alcohol in the house.
And talked all night about our drinking histories and what it had done to
our lives. Sometime during the night Eric convinced me that not only was I a
True Alcoholic, he was too, and there was a way for both of us to get sober.
Eric left at about 4am after we smoked and drank everything in the house.
I would not see him again for 7 years. Honestly I thought he had either died or
gone to the pen for good that night. (I saw him at church on Mother’s Day in
1999, clean and sober 7 years, married happy daddy of two beautiful children,
we've not seen each other since, but it was a gift to find that out.) After he
left that night, it was just my Big Book, my desire chip, very foggy and
emotional heart, God, and I. That
was it, I was beaten, and I surrendered to the fact that my life as I knew it
was over, I clutched that chip I read the words "to thine own self be
true," and I prayed the most powerful prayer of my life. "God, please
don't ever let me do this again." I
fell asleep, had to work that day, went in hung over as usual and did what I had
to do, I don't recall much about that day, when I got home from work Tom and his
best friend Robert were there. They were drinking Cokes, very unusual, I went to
the fridge to get a beer and there weren't any. Tom was mad at me for drinking
up everything in the house and had made a decision to not replenish our supply.
I whined a bit and asked him to go to the store, he said no, if you want beer,
you go get it. So you see, it wasn't me sticking to the idea of sobriety, it was
definitely God doing for me what I would not do for myself. For that afternoon,
that was more then I was willing to do to get a drink. I decided to go to bed
instead. When
I awoke for work the next day, I remember hearing a voice that I choose to
believe was God, saying to me "Sheila, it has been 24 hours since you had a
drink, you never have to do it again." I went to work. My Alateen worked
that day. His Mom came to see me; he made me a double chocolate shake to take
the edge off, and really helped me a lot that day. I had started to shake and
was very jumpy. I got more jumpy
the further away I got from the drink, the shakes got worse I got to where I
could not sleep, when I did fall asleep the nightmares were awful. On the fourth
day I decided it would be all right to smoke a joint, no I didn't ask anyone, I
made that choice by myself, it helped the headache and I was able to sleep. Well
gratefully Tom wasn't too hip on the idea of sharing his pot with me, he was a
bit irritated with my new found self-righteousness that I wasn't drinking, and
he was not going to help! Thank you God! So that was my very short trip on
marijuana maintenance. It was May 29, 1992 when I attended my first AA meeting.
The 6 o'clock Friday Night Closed meeting of the Shalom group in Denton Texas,
it took me a while to get up the courage to go, and Chris was kind enough to
take me to the first few meetings. WHAT
IT IS LIKE NOW:
Well, briefly. Nine Years, 6
months, one daughter, a college degree, a fulfilling career and two marriages
later some wonderful guy in an online group asks me to write my story.
In his opinion I am a success, and I do believe that I am in many ways,
but most importantly I am still sober. I have had a lot of thorns with my roses
in this journey called sobriety. But in my opinion, what makes it all a
"success" story rather then a failure is this: In all of this, and
there has been a lot of fun times, I never quit trying to grow spiritually and
that is what it is all about. Through
the power of the steps I have come to know myself in ways I never thought
possible, and I have allowed others to know me. The steps exposed the truth that
I was afraid of Love and dying to experience it. In AA I was able to admit my
weaknesses and my strengths to myself, and then to another person. I asked God
to heal me, and he did. I was blessed in my first year sober to be relieved from
my two "biggest" reasons to hate God and the world, my diagnosis of
being sterile was proven wrong and my life condemned to the limits of being a
high school drop out, well that was changed when I was accepted into Texas
Woman's University. 4 years, a million meetings, and a lot of BS later, I
graduated with honors. I got a job working for our Governor.
I was blessed to meet some incredible people, and I got to travel all
around the country. My
marriage failed early in the program, I focused too much on trying to change
him, and was honestly searching for a way to kill the pain. I went a little
crazy, tried to kill myself, and had to go into the mental hospital at 4 months
sober. While I was there I met a man who attended my home group.
I fell head over heels (no puns), and spent the next few years diligently
practicing the thirteenth step. All I can say about that is if you wanna try it,
it is incredible, exciting, fun, and a wonderful way to learn powerlessness at a
whole new level. I wouldn't trade that time in my life for the world. It was a
training ground for who I am today. I
gave myself honestly to another person, and I never could have done that before
AA. I was faithful and open with him. I had never been honest or open in a
sexual relationship before. It didn't work, we both failed in lots of ways. He
relapsed, I went psycho trying to control him. We both screwed up, we both lost,
and we both gained a lot. After our
7th or 10th break up, it was finally, really over. I
spent 3 years of sexual abstinence. I needed it. My sexuality was very wounded initially from the sexual abuse
as a child, but more significantly by the way I lived as a young adult. Again,
this is just what I needed. It darn sure wasn't easy, and there were many times
I wondered why I was doing it. But then there was something that happened. I
sought a relationship with my higher power in a way I never had. And he was
there. I
found a church, a place to grow in my Love of God, and I was led to grow and
learn and somehow at some point I had an incredible change of heart and soul. I
recommitted my life to Christ in October of 2000. Since that time, it is almost
like the first year sober, everything has changed. First I had to change jobs. I was recruited by a substance
abuse agency in January of 2001 to help develop new programs. This is one of
those things I said I’d never do sober, work in the field that is. But they
got me when they told me people were dying. I don't counsel, just because for me
I can’t. What I do is write grants and get funding for new programs.
I also do a lot of community work. Getting people involved and helping to
educate people. I don't use my membership in AA in my work. But I don't avoid
breaking my anonymity if I truly believe that someone needs to know.
In
the last year or so, I met three men who asked me to marry them, and darned if I
didn't think they were all sent from God. But time has a way of disclosing our
true selves, and only the third was really sent from God.
Tommy and I were married June 30th of this year. I think that is the
success story that inspired Ross to ask me to write. Ours is a simple success.
Two people who were injured, who had sought the Lord, and been healed. Two
people who were happy in their relationship with God, but still didn't want to
be alone. We met on the Internet, in a cyber church of all places. Turns out he
lived 7 miles from me, he is 7 years younger than me. He is sweet and kind.
Doesn't drink or use any illicit drug. I don't know if he will ever seek solace
in Alanon. Sometimes I think he should so that he can learn our language. But I
don't push him. His journey is a Spiritual journey and it is in line with the
one I have chosen. We
have been blessed with an incredible ministry to young people. Who knows where
it will take us? Just for today, I continue in AA, and the blessings continue.
Sometimes the blessings are disguised as painful experiences.
Sometimes they are just beautiful. Tommy is a beautiful addition to my,
and my daughter Sarah's life. So far it’s been pretty good. I almost died less
than a month after we married, and even that was a blessing.
It humbled me and it made me cigarette free. But that is another story. Today
I am a winner, I haven't had a drink all day. Everything else is just fluff.
Thanks for encouraging me to write this; sorry it took me so long, and sorry I
could not do it is 6 paragraphs. I guess I need a little more ego deflation. God
Bless you all, and I sure hope that somewhere on this journey we can meet and
you can tell me about your blessings.
Love and hugs, Sheila Click on the icon above to send mail to Sheila.
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