Blanche B. from New London, CT at the gay/lesbian Texas Roundup

If I were less nervous, I would have jumped up there. I'm Blanche, and I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I'm nervous. And I I am nervous. You know, I just asked Don a little while ago.

I said, do you still get nervous? And he said, yeah. So, but I know I must know my story because I was there for most of it. I got I say I say prayers in the morning and at night now, and I've been doing that for a long time. I heard a good version of, the serenity prayer that I use a lot, which is, god, help me not to be an asshole today.

Because that certainly describes, how I behaved when I was drinking. I would have told you, you know, people, I think, like to know how long somebody's been sober and how old they are. Well, you know I'm 42, and I've been sober 6 years, sober and drug free. I would have told you up until a couple of years ago that I grew up in a normal family. A statement which I now think is hysterical.

If if you met my family, you know, I am really the only normal one. I mean that. I am. But I didn't see drinking growing up. My father had a drinking problem, but it it was kept from me.

I was left with an uncle a lot, who was an active alcoholic and an abusive man. When I began to remember being abused by this uncle in the last year or so, I called my sister and I said, were you afraid of uncle Dusty? And, there was a sound. My sister and I are pretty honest with each other, and she said, no. She said, but I do remember the cattle prod.

You know? He used to chase us around the house with the cattle prod and stuff like that. And, I was terrified of him. When I was 5, I fell out of a truck and cracked my skull, and he came running down the steps to pick me up, and I crawled away from him. That's what I did.

He was a very terrifying figure of my childhood. Anyway, this is also gonna be out of order. When I was 13, my father was killed in an automobile accident and what had been a pretty, you know, I was a screwed up little kid anyway, because well, you know, this uncle was abusive and I was told over and over they love me and I knew something didn't add up about that. And, you know, basically, it's the same old story. What I what I saw, I was told I didn't see.

What I felt, I was told I didn't feel. And by the time I was 6 years old, I was furious and pretty crazy. And what I decided was I was told over and over that I made things up, and I've made a career out of that. That's what I do for a living. I make things up.

I write fiction and and I teach writing fiction. That's, You know, I I turned it around, being told that. The other thing I remember is being dragged around by my little arms, you know, and to to make me walk before I was old enough to walk. And, and they were saying, oh, is she normal? Is she normal?

You know? And, I feel like they got what they deserve. I got a lesbian overachiever. Alcohol, drug addict. Anyway, when when my father was killed, my family got really, messed up and and, you know, overtly.

And not only was I mean, my father went off to work and I never saw him again. He was killed in an automobile accident. And my mother shut down completely. We were prescribed tranquilizers, my mother and I, by a doctor and, it was a liquid tranquilizer that I think was something like NyQuil. You know, it had a sedative and it was alcohol based, and that was when I discovered, what alcohol and drugs could do for me.

And my mother didn't take much of this stuff, but I I was still renewing the prescription when I got married 5 years later. I drank a bottle of it when I got married and, I don't really remember much about getting married. I do remember that. I think I got married in a week. Because I have some memory of taking it off.

In the honeymoon suite in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, one of the nightmares of my life. I I got married a virgin, but not by choice. I you know, we kept trying and always one of us couldn't and and I think we got married so we could practice, you know, without my mother interference. She was not happy about me meeting this man, who seemed to me very much like my father. He wore grown up shoes, you know, the kind of black shoes that lace up.

I had never gone out with somebody who wore shoes like that, and and, I was in love. I said I wasn't gonna get up here and be funny. I drank alcoholically really from the time I began to take those tranquilizers. I drank and got drunk. I drank and threw up.

I drank and fell down. I felt like maturity was gonna be when I got to where I could drink and handle drinking. And it never occurred to me that there might be some reason why I couldn't handle alcohol. I just thought I hadn't gotten mature enough and that I would. And I went to college, early.

I thought I was in over a 2 year. I went to college at I've been 17 for about a week when I got to college. And, and I drank and I got asked to leave, after 2 years, and that's when I got married. But, you know, alcohol cost me alcohol began to cost me something serious when I got to college because I I couldn't do it and drink and I chose to drink. I didn't know I was making a choice.

Again, I kept thinking next time I'll handle it. Next time, I won't throw up in somebody's car. You know? It was, you know, the man I married wouldn't put up with my drinking. You know, it was like, okay.

Now we're married. Now we're grown ups and you don't do this shit. And, I was real happy because here was somebody who seemed to understand the rules about life and who laid them down to me. And in the 7 years that I was married, I was married from the age of 18 to the age of 25, we drank a little wine with dinner, you know, because we were, like, California, I guess, yuppies. That's what we were.

And and, but in in the years that I was married, I went back to college. I graduated with high honors. I went to graduate school at Stanford and and, I did a lot of things that really, I accomplished a lot. I learned a lot. I know I found out that maybe I didn't know so much.

I didn't know anything. And and I went to school and I studied and I wrote. I thought that if I could be a writer, that I wouldn't be like other people, the same things wouldn't happen to me. That I would be a kind of star in my own mind and I wouldn't I wouldn't be from where I was from. And the things that have happened to me would mean something different from what they meant and that I would have some dignity.

So that's what I wanted to do, and I set out to do it. And I did it. I wrote it, you know, I've I've got a fancy grant. I did this writing stuff and I was good at it. I was terrified of it.

That's what I remember of the years that I was not drinking is being terrified and testing myself. And some most of the time, I came through with flying colors, but I wrote this novel and then I couldn't sell it and I failed. And that was coupled with a number of things. I did sell it eventually, but it was not it was 2 years before I was able to sell it. I also fell in love with my best friend who was not a man.

And, you know, I really thought this is the this is the worst thing I have ever done. This is the end of everything. There is no coming back from this. My husband was real reasonable about it. He said, you know, I think she's very attractive.

I'm attracted to her. I don't understand what you're so upset about. Well, I guess I knew it was the end of my my passing as a normal person, you know, I mean, in that world. And, anyway, all that stuff happened at once. I went off to join the revolution, in Boston and lived in a lesbian commune and took about 50 LSD tips, bought psilocybin back.

I bought 60 caps once and took them all. And, not not at once. It took me about it. Took me about a month. I don't know.

I was spray painting slogans on the sides of buses. I wish I could remember some of what I spray painted on buses. And I was trying to learn to steal for the revolution, you know, and all this crap. The truth was I was being led around by my crotch but that is just No. I can't say that in a straight meeting.

And that's, you know, I was just in love with one woman after another and just gaga. You know, we go spray paint buses now. Okay. We're in the revolution now. Okay.

We're in a we're arrested now. Okay. That's what I was doing. And and, after about a year, husband and Connie and I went off to Vermont for the weekend, and when I came back, half the group had joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, you can imagine what I thought about that.

And they told me I had a drinking problem. This was 1971, I guess. And, I went to a meeting to prove I was not afraid and, and then I moved to Vermont. I hated AA. I hated it.

I couldn't believe they're sitting there talking about God as a man, but they were sitting there and talking about God at all. That they had to meet and I went to was in the basement of a church. I thought, you know, this is a long way from being arrested in a demonstration. And, I just, I just couldn't get away fast enough. I moved to Vermont.

Had some mixed up years there. I guess I was already mixed up. But things got they get a little bit better and then they get a lot worse, you know. I moved to Vermont. By this time, I could hold my liquor.

You know? I didn't throw up anymore. I didn't even seem drunk. You know? I could drink and drink and drink and drink.

And, I was very proud of how much I could drink and the fact that I didn't fall down. And when I started to spur my words, I got quiet. And, you know, I just was I was a good person to drink with, and I could drive drinking. Y'all all know about closing your eyes so you can see which white line is the right one. Anyway, from from there, I ended up in in, what did I do?

I tried to kill myself. That's what I did. I I took a bunch of aspirin because this woman rejected me, took a 105 aspirin or something like that, with a bottle of brandy, and I ended up in the hospital with my stomach pumped. I think I I was numb, you know. It was I felt dead inside and I think I took, the aspirin as a way of trying to feel something.

Well, y'all, I woke up in the hospital and I felt something, and it was not good. Because when I woke up in the hospital, I did wanna die, and I had never really felt like that. It scared me real bad, and, I was so messed up. One friend wrote another friend's phone number up my arm on magic in magic marker and, put me on the train in New York to see my shrink. And I had to be picked up at Penn Station because I couldn't get a cab.

That's the kind of shape I was in. I stayed in New York a few days and then I went back and finished my job. I was teaching in Vermont. And, the next, year was real bad. Real bad.

You know, I didn't know whether I was in the post office or the laundromat. I really didn't, and I was afraid people will go figure out. I didn't know where I was and locked me up. And I was afraid of being locked up because I was a lesbian, and I was afraid if anybody tried to make me deal with that, that I might kill myself. It was one thing when I fell in love with my friend and had all these beautiful things that I had never experienced.

And it was another thing when I found myself picking up people in bars and, basically trying to get rid of my sexuality. And I now I see it as acting from a place where I hated myself. I hated myself, and that's what that was all about. Anyway, my life settled now in summer. I met a I met a woman who was married.

I bring that up because after we broke up, she got married again. And, and she left her husband and we moved in together and and my life got stable. It stayed stable for, 5 or 6 years. She she didn't drink much. You know, I lived in New York.

I had a drink. I gave dinner parties. I wrote another book. Everything seemed okay, you know? But I was still drinking every day and I began to smoke dope every day.

And I don't guess I was in the pills yet, but I would say from, like, 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, sometimes as late as 5, I'd check out. And that's what I call it. That's what I would call it. I'm checking out. I'd have a drink, light a joint, then I was gone.

I mean, you know, I couldn't even talk on the phone. And I thought that was reasonable behavior, you know. Don't call me right now. I'm stoned, you know. I don't wanna talk to you.

I don't know what I'm saying. And I thought that was okay. And, it got it got slowly worse. And when my relationship with this woman ended, I had thought, you know, the first book when the first book came out, I didn't feel any better. I felt worse.

That's when I took the aspirin. And, when this I thought if I wrote a second book, this time it was gonna work. This time, I was really gonna be different. I was gonna feel better. I would have somehow expressed my pain to the world, and it would be out of me and y'all's problem.

That's what I thought. If I could write a book, it wouldn't be my problem anymore. So I wrote a second book, and it came out about the same time that that, just Glover and I broke up. And I had another breakdown. That's what happened.

I went you know, I came completely unglued again. I was living in a hotel full of really really really old people in New York and, like in their nineties and put no relatives and and, it was, it was depressing. I was depressed. It was the right place to be, I guess. Anyway, I, one of my old writing teachers saw a piece that I wrote in a magazine and said, you you wrote me a letter.

He was really angry and he said, you know, you have real talent and you are throwing it away and you ought to go home. You don't know what you're writing about anymore. And, I went home. My drinking had started to outstrip my friend's drinking in New York by quite a bit and I was no longer holding it together. Now sometimes, I did socially unacceptable things when I was drinking, like cutting my wrist in an argument, Or, you know, I didn't know I was gonna do it.

I didn't have any idea. I was cutting up the chicken and the sink and my lover was giving me a hard time and I turned around. I said, you think you feel so bad. You you know, watch this. You know?

And I didn't have any idea that, that I was gonna do that, that I felt that way. I went to therapy. I said, this isn't working. You know? You're not helping me.

Look Look what I did. I didn't get it sewed up because I had some inkling that if I went to a hospital with this cut, again, I might be locked up. Again, I might have to deal with being a lesbian and, and a lot of other stuff. But that seemed to be the most frightening issue. And, another time I went through the house and killed all the plants when I was drunk, I pulled them out of their little box.

You know? I got up in the morning. There was dirt everywhere, and my little spider plants were all lying on the side. A lot of them lived. I replanted them.

That's a good illustration of how foolish I was, how melodramatic I was, and how much pain I was in because all of those things are in that little scene. I was trying to control my violence and my I was trying to not hurt somebody else and not hurt myself and I didn't know how to get that stuff out. I was always in the drunk when this stuff started or drunk by the time it was over. And then I moved back to South Carolina and I met a bunch of women who drank the way I thought the people should drink. And, one of whom I'm here with this weekend, And, my drinking got a lot worse real fast and my drinking got a lot worse real fast.

And I guess it all sort of culminated in, a friend of mine and I bought a 100 preludes together. Sixty 6 for me and 34 for her because I had a lover and I had to share mine. And she went home that night and shot herself on these clothes. And she's sober now. I like to bring that real fast.

But I don't know if y'all ever seen anybody's shot, but it is just horrible. It is truly horrible. And when I saw that, I had a moment of real clarity. You know, there are moments when you see yourself, you see your life, and you know this is a turning point. And I knew right then that the game was over about drinking.

I knew that it wasn't cool. It wasn't fun. It was we were dying. That's what this was about. We were dying.

And my friend, all that she did was have the guts to call the game. That's all she did. Now that was at Thanksgiving, and I didn't get sober till I didn't go to AA till March. Somebody told me that they heard a tape of me speaking, and I said that the reason I didn't do that was that I had to take the rest of the quavers. And that's right.

That's why I didn't, you know, I knew I couldn't do anything till the crayons were finished, and I was hallucinating a lot. It was bad. It was bad. Oh, I was living with one of my students who was 12 years younger than me who had been straight and, who I had applied with drugs and alcohol. And, one night, what actually precipitated me going to an AA meeting was that I tore up the apartment because she wrote on the cover of a magazine of mine.

She wrote a phone number on it. Her father's phone number, he was in town. Her parents were in town. And I picked up a piece of furniture like I was the Hulk and smashed it. And, and I started attacking her.

You know, character assassination? Most of us have either done it or been on the receiving end of it. You know, just an absolute attack on who she was, what she was like. And again, I had a kind of moment where I saw this person would have to leave me. I saw that anyone with a shred of self respect was gonna have to leave me.

And so I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll go to AA. That would mix everything up for a while and I might it it would seem so tentative, you know, that maybe she wouldn't leave. You know, it was really confused her. I knew that.

It was just absolutely outrageous, I didn't. So I went to the AME. It was in the courtroom in this in this little town, and people were sitting in the jury box and stuff, you know. I wish I back then, you know, I used to wear this big old leather cowboy boots and this big old black leather coat that came down to my knees. My hair was out here, and I went around in dark glasses and and, I thought I looked really cool.

Anyway, I went to say Amy and I wrote everything down because that was the only way I could remember anything by that point. And, people thought I was a nurse. I can't imagine why they thought I was a nurse. I just wanted to stay, you know. It's like, these were all kind of suburban people like my parents and, but there was a kind of, way that they were with each other that I found extremely attractive.

They looked right at me. They looked right at each other. They seemed calm. They seemed happy. It was like a kind of light that I was drawn to.

I just wanted to stay there. And, I asked somebody, I said, can I come to these meetings and still drink? And then the guy was only sober 6 months, and he didn't know the answer to the question. So he said he said, I don't know. So I said, okay.

I'll stop. You know? Because I was afraid they would tell me I couldn't stay there. And, but I didn't know how to stop. So this guy I thought was the leader.

I had a lot of trouble understanding there weren't any leaders in AA. He told me he said, can you stop for one day? And I said, sure. And, he said, okay. You meet me tomorrow night at 8 o'clock.

And he told me this place to meet him. And, he said, don't have a drink or a drug. Actually, he said, don't have a drink. I I I didn't know about the drugs thing. I didn't hear it for a long time.

And, I went to that meeting. I went late so nobody would talk to me, and he was chairing it again. Made me certain he was the leader. And he had me empty chair beside him and he carried it and I went up and sat down. And you know when he said, did you have a drink today?

And I said, no. And he said, I didn't either. No. He said, that's the whole thing. He said, you got it.

That's all you have to do. He said, don't have a drink every day. Go to a meeting, and you'll be alright. Now that was plain enough for me to understand. I could understand what he was saying.

You know, early sobriety interested me a lot because it was so awful. I'm not very interested in moderation. That is still true of me. You know? AA was the most extreme thing I had.

I mean, I couldn't believe it. I I mean, it was so extreme. It was more extreme than me and the radical women's movement. And spray paint. Yeah.

We were gonna be alcoholics. We were not gonna drink, and I began to realize that they meant it about these steps. You know, this wasn't like a church where they say something that they don't believe and pass the basket. Kidding. They weren't kidding, and I thought, this is really something.

Now these people think they go live like this. This is really something. I was fascinated. You know? Like, would it be possible to do something this hard?

I hadn't gone a day without a drink or a drug in at least 11 years and, you know, the idea that I could actually not do it, you know. So I was interested in it. They told me what to do, so I stayed home and I cried and I whined and I crawled around the apartment and I ate candy and I drank Gatorade and I hallucinated. I've had all this therapy. You know, I had lots of therapy.

And the, when I was I guess about I was in withdrawal and it that's maybe 3 or 4 days and my lover was washing the dishes and it started sounding like machine gun fire and I was standing there like this. And I know what I'll do. I'll call this guy, the leader. You know, I so I called the leader and, and I said, I said, it's washing the dishes and it sounds like machine gun fire. And I expected him to say, you know, what are your associations with machine gun fire?

Is there something you could listen to that would make you feel better? You know, 6 years of therapy turned on its head. Right? So I said, well, I said, I live across the the street from the beach. I could go listen to the ocean, you know.

And, he said, well, why don't you go listen to the ocean? You'll probably feel better. I don't wanna tell him that I was scared to cross the street, but I went out and stood on the balcony and I listened to the ocean and I felt better. You know, the idea that I didn't have to figure out what was wrong with me, you know, that, I could not drink one day at a time and maybe I'd find out there wasn't so much wrong with me. I didn't believe that drinking was my problem.

I believe that I was an extremely sensitive artist, stormy and temperamental, and that this was the cost of my creativity. And, but drinking was ruined in my body, which concerned me a lot. And, and I could see that I really needed to stop it. I had no intention of stopping drugs when I came to AA. None.

And, I figured as soon as I felt better, I was about to do drugs. That's what I did. And, you know, just a little bit, I couldn't sleep. My sponsor said nobody ever died of lack of sleep. And, but, you know, I couldn't stand the anxiety at night.

I really just wasn't, I wasn't prepared to give up drugs. If I'd known the amen I had to give up drugs, I don't think I'd go on, you know, not when I did. But I did, I had a marijuana slip, a pill slip. 1 marijuana, my sponsor would say, now you could drink it if you don't stop this, so I'd stop it. I didn't know it was an a a slip or my head got drunk.

I don't know. But the last thing I did was cocaine and, I did it for about 5 days and I did it around the clock and, or all the time I was awake. And, You know, I thought that it was very unsophisticated about drugs that was my opinion that I just knew all the stuff about drugs and you know, everybody in AA drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. I didn't smoke cigarettes, and I certainly didn't see what was wrong smoking dope, you know. And, anyway, when I came off of cocaine, 5 days after I came off of cocaine, I had a psychotic break from coming off of cocaine.

You know, I don't think I'd ever gotten into cocaine if I hadn't been told that it was not addictive. And, I told somebody a year later about this minor break with reality that I had here. And, she said, oh, yeah. Cocaine psychosis. We see it all the time.

I mean, she was a therapist and I thought you know, I don't know what was happening to me when it happened to me. If I had known what was happening when I started, I would have gone to a hospital. But, by the time it was full blown, I really could not go to a hospital. I was too paranoid and, it lasted about 36 hours. I think it was the beginning of real compassion for myself because part of me was across the room watching me screaming and carrying on and saying I still kill myself.

And the other party was across the room thinking, what is wrong with her? What is wrong with her? Help somebody's gotta help this person. That was me getting outside myself finally and and that was the beginning, I think, of me recovering for me to understand that this person who was suffering so much was not all of me. There was another part of me.

Me. So everybody knows what early in the COVID is like and it's not, it's not fun, but it is interesting. And, you know, at 90 days, I thought I had graduated and, because I felt better. You know, you feel better and you start thinking, I'm not getting an alcoholic. This was all a bad dream.

And, but I had been warned that that would happen and I didn't drink or do a drug. There are milestones in my recovery turning points. And there are 2 things I didn't say when I came into AA. One was that I was a writer and the other was that I was gay. I got sober in South Carolina and I was pretty sure I was the only gay person, who was sober in South Carolina.

I knew there were a lot of people who drank, but I thought I was the only sober one or the only one trying to get sober. And that was pretty much true. There there weren't many people, many gay people getting sober. We now have a gay meeting. But it was, you know, the topic would be honesty and I would go home and cry myself to sleep.

I just knew that these people, if they found out I was gay, that all this mouthing about honesty would come unraveled before my eyes. I would lose my belief in AA and I would be back where I started. So I didn't wanna say I was I couldn't take the risk. And, the other thing I began to realize after a while that I went to all the meetings with my lover. Everybody knew I was gay.

It was obvious, you know. And I began to realize that that, I was the one. I was the one who had the problem with being gay. These people didn't have a problem with me being gay. I did.

And that I thought people wouldn't like me, that I needed approval, that, that I thought that being gay was wrong, that I had somewhere bought into the idea that I was sick, that there was a cause for why I was gay and someday I was gonna get well. And I did it. My family still claims to. Couple of years ago, I asked my mother to buy me a skirt and she said, don't do this for me. They're really shy.

You know, they really you try. I didn't do I didn't I didn't say I was gay because I thought it made me worse, and I didn't say I was a writer because I thought it made me better. You know? Because I had such an invested idea that being a writer was somehow you weren't a person anymore. You were a writer, you know.

And, this is an idea that I had suffered terribly over and it is amazing that I was still clinging to it, but I was. And, once I was sitting in a meeting reading the galleys of a book and and this guy, I respect a whole lot, came over to me and he said, what you reading? And I said, you know, the galleys of a book look different from a regular book and it's it's the proofs of before the book is printed. And, it was a way of saying, I'm important and I read galleys. And so I'm sitting there reading these galleys and he comes over and he asked me what are and I tell him and he says, I have never known anyone too dumb to get sober, but I have known many people too smart.

Make sure you're not one of them. That was very good advice. And my sponsor I got a sponsor real fast. He said to me she said, keep it simple stupid. It was one of the first things she said to me.

And I was thrilled. No one had ever called me stupid in my life and I knew it was true. She said, you didn't even get here by being smart. So forget what you know. It's only gotten you in trouble.

And that was right. You know, it was right. I had never let myself be taught until I got into AA. I had never listened to anyone. Why should I?

The authority figures I grew up around were demented. You know? They were sick. They were they what they told me about me wasn't true. But when I got in AA, what people were telling me to do was write, and it was based on helping me get well.

And it wasn't based on, it was love. It was love. That's that's what it was. And and, you know, I didn't know what to call it, but I I knew it. I felt it.

I felt it. I like to say that that, you know, love is about listening to somebody and not trying to fix it. You know? And in AA, people listen to what hurts, and they don't try to fix you, and they don't try to say, oh, it's not real, and they don't try to say, oh, everything will be alright, and they don't try to say, oh, it doesn't matter. Now, They let you be upset.

Then you're not upset and it works. You know, it really works. And, in a a was the first time that I think I have been truly loved in that sense. I was accepted. And then the problem became how was I gonna accept myself, because that was hard.

Finally, when I've been sober a year, I got up on New Year's Eve. I was the speaker and I said I was gay and I cried and, you know, no one fell out of their chairs. No one threw up. No one ran out of the room. It was fine.

It was fine. It was part of my story. I thought That was all. And, that was great for me. That was the kind of acceptance I didn't have at home that I had never imagined.

I really hadn't imagined that. It wasn't that they didn't have problems with it. Of course, they did. You know? It was that what they cared about was me and and my sobriety.

And if I needed to get up and say I was gay, that was fine. They weren't gonna give me a hard time about that. So I began to, somebody told me to pray on my knees. I started doing that. That's why I really did not want to do that.

You know, I felt like people were looking at me. I'm home alone. Right? But I feel like somebody's watching me. You know, it was me watching me.

It was me seeing this as humiliation. And, you know, it's an ancient posture of humility. That's what that's what being on your knees is. It's got nothing to do with Christianity. It's got nothing to do with being a Baptist.

It's got nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with, for me opening myself up to experience God and to listen and to tell the truth. And, and I try to do that with my high power. I've been through a lot about, about spiritual things and, you know, I I like in the 11th step where it says, to improve our conscious contact with God. The idea that that we're trying to improve our conscious contact improves that we've it implies that we've been an unconscious contact all along.

And I like that idea. I like the idea that that, God doesn't turn me loose. I turn God loose and I try to stay clear about that. Sometimes Sometimes I lose my faith. And again, you know, I've gotten clear that faith is not a feeling.

So if I lose it, it's okay. Faith is a decision. It's a decision I made when I took the 3rd step. It doesn't say the 3rd step turned our life and our role over to God. It's just made a decision All of that, the other thing in steps I like to point out is that it says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.

It doesn't say as a result. It says as the result. You know? That's amazing. That's quite a promise.

That's quite a promise that if you work the steps, you're gonna have a spiritual awakening. Now, you know, how does rarely have with me a person who was thoroughly followed up half? I, of course, assumed I was the rare one, you know, and that I wouldn't everybody was gonna get it but me. I wouldn't get it. And, but I kinda hope that statistics would be on my side about this.

I heard that doctor Bob said if he could change one word in the big book, he would have changed rarely to never. But then I heard a different story about it, but he said, if they'd have changed rarely to never, somebody would have gone out and getting drunk gotten drunk just to prove that it's wrong. That seems right too. I didn't do the 4th step till I was sober two and a half years because, see, I'm a writer. And writing stuff to me means something different from what it means to you, you know.

I mean, I'm a teach so, you know, it's like I wasn't gonna do it. I told my sponsor and my lover every bad thing I had ever done and I thought that was the 4th step. That wasn't the 4th step, although I do think it was probably helpful. The the, when I finally did, this guy said to me, he said I was explaining to him why I didn't have to do the 4 step in writing. And, and he said, well, you know he said, that's fine for you, he said, but I did it the way I was told to do it.

He said, I wouldn't trade how I feel for anything in the world. And that was not how I felt. I would have traded how I felt for how he felt in a heartbeat. You know? I could see the difference in how he felt and how I felt.

So I started doing the 4th step. It wasn't long. You know? Because I was so eaten up with resentment. I was really eaten up with resentment.

And, you know, somebody got me once to make a list of the people I have loved the most, who had meant the most to me in my life and to make a list of the people I have resented the most in my life. The top 3. 2 were the same. So what that meant was watch out if I love you because sooner or later, I'm gonna hate you. You know?

That was my history. I hated all of my ex lovers. I mean, big time. I had a hit list, you know, people that that I would like to see run all my of trucks and stuff. And, you know, I had sort of based my character I didn't think of myself as a victim person.

I thought of myself as a vengeance person. I would wait a long time to settle a score and I was proud to be like that. You know, I was proud to be the kind of person who, you know, if you did something to me sooner or later, if I ever got the chance, I'd get you back. And, you know, what's underneath that is victim. That's what's underneath that.

But I couldn't look at that because that's too scary. But doing the 4 step, I got all this, you know, crap out. And, I had this nice little straight lady sponsor. So I was gonna do my fist step with, and I go down there and read this thing. And, you know, it was my big moment.

I'm sitting there crying, telling all the stuff I've done. We're sitting in the kitchen and our kids are coming in and saying, Mommy, can I have a popsicle? Stuff like that. It was not the drama that I thought. And at the end of it, she said, I know how you feel.

And I thought, is that possible that this woman knows how I feel? And she did. She was able to relate to my tales of horrors. She was able to relate from her own experience to it and the feelings were the same. The and I began to see all of my horror stories as mere details.

Mere details. That's all they were. They were just my little story. Not special, not different. And I gave up a lot of my specialness when when I did the 4th step, and it felt great.

And when I see this woman in a meeting, it I feel this kind of, warmth toward her that's wonderful. I want to just talk a little bit more about what happened in my 5th year sobriety. I began to achieve about 4th 5th year a lot of calmness, a lot of success in my career, and something was missing. I didn't know what it was. I I was also sexually dysfunctional when I when I sobered up, which was pretty upsetting to me and, that stayed true for a long time.

And I knew that if I allowed to say that if I allowed myself to to drink over it, it would never I really had to settle it with myself. If I never write another word, if I never have sex again, I'm not gonna drink or do a drug. That's just gonna be the way it is. And, yeah, I wish wish I could say that that all that got straightened out in, like, 3 weeks or something, but it didn't. And, the 4 steps taken a lot of it out because I had so much guilt.

I had so much shame. I had so many things I had done that I was was certain were different and horrible, and they weren't. And, a lot of that began to to heal, but I did begin to realize that maybe there wasn't something sexually wrong with me. Maybe I was not living with a person that I was sexually attracted to. And that was real scary because I had been with this person for well, we were together 6 years, and I had been sexually attracted to her.