The Duluth Roundup in Duluth, MN

Hi, everybody. I'm grateful. Alan. I'm, my name is Kerry Kay.

Every time I stand up and do this, my heart feels like it's going to jump right out of my chest, you know, and I know that God is here in the moment. That's going to slow down a little bit. I was speaking in North Carolina one time and I said, my heart's going to just jump right out of my chest. And a lady in the front row says, wait. Well, let's hope not. You know,

I'd like to thank the committee for asking me to come and share my story. It's always an honor and a privilege to be asked to come and share my recovery in Al Anon.

It's a lot of work to put these together, so you guys have done a great job. Let's give him a hand.

Welcome to the newcomers. I'm glad that you're here. They told me when I came here if I heard something that resonated with me to stick around and and welcome to your new life.

So with that being said, I'll tell you a little bit about what it was like, what happened and what it's like today. And my knees are going to stop knocking here in a minute.

I, I, I don't know if you can hear it, but I have a little bit of a drawl. I was actually born on a 500 acre cotton and soybean farm in in the near little town called Sledge, Mississippi.

And Sledge is a home of Charlie Pride. That's its claim to fame. It's it's a little dot on the map. Yeah, totally Pride. It's about 50 miles South of Memphis, TN where we lived about 8 miles outside this little town. And

my grandmother ran a little country store. So we had a family farm and my grandmother have to like paint a picture with words here. That's how southerners do it. And sometimes we take a long time. Let's hope I don't take too much. So my grandmother was a matriarch of the family. She we had a little country store. She did and she ran it. And

my father was the youngest of three children and the other two children moved away. And there was number active alcoholism in my in my family growing up, but there was alcoholism in my family. I didn't know what it was until I got here and caught it from you guys. You know how that works. You know, you learn all about it once you get here. There was no active drinking in my household. But what I know is that my father never, it was like he never cut the emotional umbilical cord for my grandmother. And so it was always like him. Everybody was seeking her attention and approval. I was seeking his attention and approval,

mother's attention and approval, because that's what that's what we learned to do because she ran everything. She was like God. And my, my, my mother was 16 years old when she married. My dad and I came along when she was 18. When I was seven years old, they divorced. They divorced. And I think that, you know, my mom, my dad and my grandmother, there's one too many people in that marriage. And one of them had to go, you know,

So when I was seven, they divorced when I was 7.

And what I remember is getting up and walking down the little hallway and I found five little suits of clothes hanging on the closet door and a note for my mom saying I'm gone. I love you. Well, at 7 years old, I don't have the the ability to discern why she's left. And it's not about me. So there's this huge abandonment wound that I now have. My mom's gone, and it's my fault. And around that, I have vague memories around. That one's very distinct. But I remember one time, too, my dad, I think it was prior to that, setting us down. My brother and I, I have a younger brother, two years younger

and you know, it's amazing. The family disease of alcoholism to me is, is like we, you can have like a bunch of people growing up in the same house and everybody has a different experience because his experience is completely different than mine. My father set us down and asked who we wanted to live with, my mom or my dad. Well, I'm not a parent. Well, I might be, I'll tell you that later, but it has a whole another part of my story. But at that time, like, I don't think that a 5 year old and a 7 year old really should choose who they need, who they want to live with. You know, that was a lot

responsibility in that choice. Well, we had a lot of land and everybody we knew was there. So we said we want to live with my dad. My mom goes away, live with her mom, who's a paranoid schizophrenic. And my mom didn't have a lot. She didn't have a lot materially. And for many years, I thought that my mom had left me. And later in my recovery, I learned sometimes I jump around in my talk, I'm not doing this. This is coming. So however it comes, let's go. You know,

I think that like I thought that my mom didn't love me, but what I realized after a lot of inventories in a man's with my mom is my mom really made the ultimate sacrifice of love for me

to leave me in a place where she knew that I could be provided for materially and have a lot better opportunities in life that my dad could give that for me. And and it was the ultimate love. I think that that she's shown and and I didn't see it that way at all. The way I'm affected by the family disease of alcoholism is I have a distorted perspective. And you're going to hear a little bit more about that as we go here. So my dad remarried right away because apparently that's what my family does. People can't be alone. And he married a gal who was from a city and she couldn't make cornbread and we didn't like her at all.

You know what I didn't know here? Again, a lot of what I learned is in hindsight, she I did not know this until after her death. Probably. She was raised in an alcoholic home. Her father was an alcoholic and she was in charge of taking care of her siblings. And when he would come in at night drunk, if she hadn't done something right, he would beat her and put her in a closet. Well, I think that she was looking as my dad is, is like a savior because she had a hole in her heart too, right? And my father, he didn't realize it, but he set me up to be pitted against her on the day that they married because he said you'll never come before my

ever. And for some reason, because of how she was wired, it was like on between me and her in competition for my daddy's love. And so I also didn't know until she had passed away that she had had a, a daughter when she was young out of wedlock that her family made, they made her give it up for adoption.

And I think she saw me as maybe being that daughter that she never had. And she wanted to dress me in like frilly little dresses and stuff. Well, I'm here to tell you, we're out in the middle of nowhere. It's like, it's, it's, it's pre Beverly Hillbillies type, you know, not, I mean, way beyond Dukes of Hazzard. We're out in the middle of nowhere. We don't have a phone for like 3 miles from where I live until I was 13 years old. They finally paved our Rd. when I was like 11. I mean, really, we're out in the sticks, you know, and

they taught me to chew tobacco when I was, you know, five years, seven years old. I learned how to drive when I was five. I could shoot. I got my first shotgun when I was eight. Who wanted lace that did not work with the wood, you know,

So I didn't want the things that she wanted. And we began to butt heads very quickly.

I was supposed to have one of them a boy, and I was first born and wasn't. So he just thought he just raised me like 1, which was good until later when I went a little farther with that he thought was good, you know, and that he had some ideas about that, too. But so shortly after they were married, she began to be emotionally abusive to me. And I wouldn't have used those words for it then, because the Southern people discipline their children pretty strictly, you know, And but then not too long. And it was in secret. She,

you know, not to tell my dad. And then it got physical after a while. And she really instilled a lot of fear in me that if I told anyone, it would be worse. You know, it would be worse. And I have no reason to think that she wasn't telling me the truth. So I began to keep secrets. And I began to learn how to wear a mask and not show you what's really going on inside of me. And this is like training for Al Anon. I'm telling you, I was cutting my teeth early. I didn't even know it. I don't think any of us do. Denial is very powerful. And

so I began to learn how to not

I disconnected from my feelings. I shut my feelings down and I was always had to smile on my face because that was acceptable. Well, things rocked on, you know, she had us. I have a step brother. He's two years older than me. And we, you know, there's not a lot to do way out where we live growing up, you know, hunt, fish, work, drink, have sex, you know, I mean, there's just a very limited things to do. But we, you know, on AT VS if you wanted to get that third station, you had to go out and turn the antenna, you know, I mean, really far out. So in my

early teens, we went out in our family car, my stepbrother was driving and and we were out with some other kids that my father didn't really want us to associate with. And that night I lost my virginity to one of the guys that that I liked and my dad didn't want me being around him. And on the way home, my stepbrother raped me. Well, again, I want to show you my distorted perception. I couldn't discern that what he had done was worse than what I had done earlier that evening. So I just again shut it down, pushed it away and pretended like everything was

OK. So how I dealt with that was for the next probably year and a half, living under the same roof of my step brother, I would control and manipulate situations so that I didn't have to be around him alone ever, if that was possible. And I got very good at doing that. You know, I can tell you that I would lay awake if I didn't go to sleep before my parents did at night. I would lay awake petrified with fear till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. And that's really not a way for a child to grow up. It's just not. But that's how I, that was a situation that I was in and I

to cope with it and I did the best, I cope with what I had. And these coping skills, you know, they ran out, they quit working on me at some point. But when I was 15 years old, we lived across the pea patch for my grandparents. And one morning I would blow dry my hair and I heard the phone ring. We had a phone by them and the phone rang and something was wrong. We ran over to my grandparents house and my grandfather had had fallen away from the breakfast table and we didn't know it but he had an aneurysm in his brain and it burst and I remember.

My dad was on the phone with my grandmother and I remember

them being there. And I turned my grandfather, his head towards me. And he was the only one in our family had blue eyes. And I watched the life leave him. And that was a very powerful, powerful experience for me. And immediately I began thinking how I could be there for my grandmother and my father. And I didn't because I was supposed to be there for the family because there was all this unwritten rules about what you're supposed to do. And it, you know, it was probably a week or so after his funeral

and I went back to the place that he and I used to squirrel hunt together. That was his thing that that we did together. And I and I was set in the woods and I could finally cry, you know,

in program I when I got here, the whole God thing scared me to death because I grew up in the Bible belt with Southern Baptist, you know, Hellfire and damnation. And I thought I was going to burn in hell forever because of how I was wired and, and

what I realize is now looking back, sorry, I lost transmission there for a minute. What I realized looking back is that God was always there. I just didn't recognize how God was showing up. When I was like 14 or 15, I get out of school and go get my chores up very quickly because I did not want to stay in the house 'cause she was in the house. So I get on my motorcycle, grab my shotgun, go down to the river and I would squirrel hunt and towards, you know, when it got almost too dark to hunt, I would sit on the edge of the river bank with the Cypress trees.

And the ducks have been coming in. You know how the Mallard ducks, when they do like that, they're coming in and the catfish would come up from the bottom and pop the top of the water and the ripples would go out and the squirrels would be scampering back to get to their nest before it got dark. And the sun would be setting. And it was peaceful. And there was God. God was there, but I didn't know, just wrapping itself around me, just so big to give me what I needed to get through. Well, when I was 12 years old, my father set me down and he said, Carrie, there's three things that you can do that I will disown you for.

Steal love a black or love a woman.

I have no earthly idea why he said this. I do now, but I didn't then and it made no sense. But I when I got ready to go to college, I bright child and right before my senior year of high school, they, they picked the 200 smartest kids in the state of Mississippi and they sent them to this charter thing that they were doing called Governor school. We went for three weeks and we studied whatever interested us. They have several things to pick from and we wrote a paper that we presented to the governor and I got chose to go do this and it was at Mississippi University for Women

and I wound up wound up going to school there. My father had told me that if I wanted to go to school, then I needed to get a scholarship because he couldn't afford to pay for me to go to school.

We had land. We were land poor. We had status, but we didn't have a lot of money, you know.

So again, here's my distorted perception. When it's time to go to college, I wanted a softball scholarship because I was a great softball player. I was like the golden child, right? Straight A's in school was great softball player. I could knock the head off a match with a rifle from 50 yards. You know, I mean, I could just do anything great because I I was seeking acceptance and and validation from the things that I did because I had this huge hole in me. Well, I couldn't they didn't give very good softball scholarships, which it was a very big disappointment to me and

wound up resorting because I had such a high AC ACT score, I was able to apply for what they called a Centennial scholarship and I had to resort for a full year fully renewable academic scholarship to pay for everything. And I thought that was not as good as a softball scholarship would have been. You know, I'm telling you as Alan on they're not wired right. I mean, we really have a disorder perception. So I wound up going to Mississippi University for Women and they and

it's all women's school, but it went Coed right the year that I got there

and right, I was in school for like 2 months and found myself in a relationship with a woman. Now I didn't know. I didn't know what was different about me because I'm out there in the middle of nowhere, you know what I mean? It's like really like deliverance. I mean, you know,

but I knew whatever it was, it was wrong, you know, because I learned about that in college. And so, I mean, this is part of my story. I have to tell it. So I got in a relationship with a woman. And here's generally where I say I could save us a lot of time and tell you that I was basically in the same relationship for 10 years, but the faces just kept getting different.

You know, there was like no time in between. And they were very similar. And I didn't learn much between 1:00 and another. I did what my family does, which is go from one to another. And it's interesting, you know, I think denial is a very powerful thing. And I think I was probably on my 4th or 5th inventory before I realized that my first partner may have had an issue with drugs and alcohol. You know, I, I got here because I began dating as sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And in my mind, that's where it started, you know, and it just never occurred to me that like, you know, having broken up with my first partner and heard coming in in the middle of the night, we were

rooms were suited. We each had our own room and it was joined by a bathroom. And I would hear the door open and I would hear the door closed and I would, I heard this big thud one night and she fought, fell on her face because she just passed out. She didn't make it to a room, but she just fell right on her face in a room. And I remember going in there thinking, wow, I probably should get back with her because if we stay broken up and she keeps doing this, it's going to be really bad for her, you know, and that's not something that normal people do. They probably go whoa. I need to get away from her, you know?

Not me, man. I will fix you, OK? I will. Just give me a chance. I promise

got into my second relationship and right before my senior year college, my stepmother, my dad had moved to Dallas, TX by this point because we had bad years of drought and flood. And he had started he and her together and started running driving truck for a living.

And I called him one day and I said, how's it going? And he goes, OK. And I knew that meant somebody was probably dying because that's how my family is. I wound up going out to Dallas and I went to the excuse me, doctor with my stepmother and she had a tumor in her kidney. And as it turns out, she she was eating up with it throughout. They wouldn't even open her up to do, you know, to look. And so my dad was in between jobs and and he didn't have insurance at that moment. And so he took her home to my grandmother's to be nursed to death.

Well, I lived about 2 1/2 hours away. So for like from the fall to the spring, every two weekends I would go up to my grandmother's to, I mean, this is a big deal. My grandmother's taking care of her and she's dying and my dad has to work and to be with her. And I watched this woman who was really bigger than life literally be eaten up by cancer. And that what was interesting was when she got sick and I went to the hospital with her or to the doctor with her, It was as though she reverted to a child and she wanted me by her side constantly. Well, I don't have any tools for dealing with

the resentment that just seething on this cauldron of resentment for this woman that has just abused me so badly. And and she wants me to be right by her side all the time. And I didn't know how to, I know how to deal with it, you know, So I just show up. I've always been taught to suit up and show up even in the dysfunction that I grew up in Southern people do the right thing, you know, except when they don't. And and so spring semester, my senior year, my mother's mother, the paranoid schizophrenic, I wasn't really close to her,

but she died and within like 3 days my stepmother died and I was getting ready to go to medical school very bright. And I'm certain I would become a doctor and been the best brain surgeon in the world because that's the kind of al Anon I am. You know, I said when those two people died, something inside me just was like, you can't take the MCAT, you can't do it. That was God. But I didn't have a connection with it then, so I didn't know that. And so my partner that I was with at the time, she had a sister that lived in Southern California and she was going to go stay with her sister and pursue an acting career.

And I thought, Hey, why don't I just go to LA? You know, why not? I got nothing better to do. That would be my first geographical. And I didn't know what that what word was or what I was doing. My family thought I was crazy because I've never been W to Dallas, TX and it's big out in Southern California. You know, I'm driving to my little brown Pinto all packed up all over. You know, I think every lesbian in the world had a little brown Pinto, right? But we're driving across the United States and

in Mississippi there's one Interstate that goes from the north of the South to to the Gulf,

two lanes each side. When you come into San Bernardino, it's like 10 lanes on your side. You know, I mean, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm scared to death. Well, I figured I could always go home, you know. So I'm sitting in my friends sister's house in El Monte, CA, which is not really a place you want to be. And I was like, what have I done? Well,

got a job and I went, I mean, within like a month I found somebody else that I was attracted to and came home and told my partner, I don't want to be with you anymore. I want to go see somebody else because I have morals. You see, I won't be unfaithful, but I'll come home and essentially kick you out, you know, So I got in another relationship and then another one.

OK, when I'm growing up in Mississippi and college down there, we had to drive 2 1/2 hours to a gay bar in, in Alabama. And you know, in Southern California they have bars on every corner. They have a, a newspaper, they have like a gay town. I mean, it's okay out there. And I was like, Oh my God, a kid in the candy store. And you know what they have in bars? Alcoholics are in bars. I don't know if you know this, but they are. And I, I mean, I was like, I have a gift. I don't know if any other Allen on here has it. I'm like a heat seeking missile. If you put me in a room with 500 alcohol at one alcoholic,

if there's 500 people, there is one alcoholic, I will find you in 3.2 seconds. It's a gift that I have. I don't, you know, I'm finally OK with it. For years I thought it was a curse. But so I, I was in a relationship just like my 4th one since, since I was in relationships and, and she drank a lot, which really didn't bother me because that was kind of predictable, but she did cocaine and that made things very unpredictable. And so I got pretty tired of that behavior because she had a, a young baby that I would wind up being, you know, keeping. And they don't come home and they say they're

come home and they go out on binges like this. So so I told her one day in big dramatic fashion. It's so funny, you know, as an Al Anon, I'm the kind of person not anymore. But when I got here, like I didn't want any attention on me because attention had always been negative and bad things that happen when I got attention. And I so I wanted to be with the lampshade Alcoholics and just stand like kind of behind the curtains pulling the strings, you know. Well, like they're the dramatic ones. No, we are too. Let's get honest about it. You know, we're dramatic just in our own way.

So I flung the shower curtain open while she's, you know, I told her I didn't want her to do anymore cocaine. And then I found some a week later cuz duh. Guess what? You know, like telling her stop was going to do anything. I didn't know the first thing about addiction or alcoholism or, or any of that. And so I left.

As a result of me leaving that relationship, I then there's some sick alarms in the room are going to get this. I then went about trying to find out all the lies that she certainly told me while we were together and and I I saw an ex of hers who was with this woman who was two years sober and Alcoholics Anonymous and that girl that was sober. They told me she didn't drink anymore and I thought she was rather

a biotch. OK, let's you know the word. I mean, I just thought she was sullen and Moody and just. And now it makes perfect sense to me now that the next time I, I came in that woman's present, I fell head over heels in love with her. We went on a date and now I've hooked my wagon to hers and we're together. And that happened like in three again, you know, 3.2 seconds and that. So they told me that she didn't drink. And I, I'm smart. I know that my problem is from people drinking and using drugs. So now you've told me someone I like doesn't use drugs and, and so I think or doesn't drink. Pardon me that my problem is solved.

You know something else we learn here, drinking is but a symptom of alcoholism. OK, just a symptom is there can still be a lot of insanity. So I went to a lot of late night a a meetings with her because she went to late night a a meetings down at in Silver Lake at the Alano club over there and I had never been around anything related to program at all. A a triple AI don't know I'm in California. I'm completely overwhelmed with everything. You know, I mean, like, I, I, I remember my, within the first month of moving there, I was, I was going crossing La Brea to,

to go get out to a freeway. And I'm, people made fun of me because I spoken colloquialisms and they couldn't understand what I was saying. I was such a Hick. It hurt my feelings so bad. You know, I mean, like, they were not nice. I mean, Southern people are, you know, we're nice and they weren't nice. And so I was sitting in the morning at 7:00 AM at this crosswalk waiting in traffic, and a girl walks across the crosswalk and she's got on a black leather jacket and combat boots and piercings in every orifice in her face and a purple Mohawk. And I was like, Oh my God, what have I done? I don't even know

that's a human being right there. It's an alien, you know. Oh, thank you, God. God had to take me clear across the country to get me far enough away from them, you know, from the dysfunction that I could get some recovery.

So I'm going to a meetings with my partner and I think that these steps are great for her because I don't have a problem. I'm just, I'm, I'm, I do have a problem and you're hearing about it, but you're going to hear more about it. But the, I have like the good guy syndrome. I, I want to write up on my white stallion and take care of everything. And here's hairstick. I'm going to give you just a little bit of a glimpse of it in case you don't, you won't know. We were dating about 3 weeks and I opened the glove box in her car and they were like 101 parking tickets because she lived in Pasadena and didn't have the decals for the right

street. I went to my credit union, took out a loan, paid those was $1000 because I will make it better if you just give me a chance, I will make it better for you. You know, I was looking for love and I didn't know how to find love. I didn't know the right ways to do it and I didn't even know that's what I was doing. I just thought I had the means and why not? You know, I pitched my wagon to yours and and now we're going this way. Well, I really appreciated the stories that I heard in a A

here. I love sitting in me. You can smoke in meetings back then, you know, and a a meetings are awesome. I mean, there was a lot of and, and the Dean was sharing this morning about how how Alcoholics laugh about people that everybody else is like, you know, it's the truth, isn't it? I mean, it's just rowdy

and you didn't have to, you didn't have to have alcohol for that fund, you know, So I thought I found a new niche, you know, and so we've been together a little while and, and what happened was both of us showed up after a minute and we were both wounded children inside and we didn't know how to communicate and we didn't know how to be in relationship. She had an issue with rage. I mean, she she'd been sober like two years and, and I had an issue saying no. And very quickly that morphed into, you know, her hitting me and me not hitting back because I didn't hit back when I was growing up.

I think God gives me opportunities. Sometimes situations come up in my life as an adult to kind of heal things from way back when, you know, and I learned early on that if I just rolled, rolled up in a ball and didn't, didn't like fight back, it would be over faster. And of course there'd be the remorse afterwards and all this stuff. And it was very passionate. And, you know, it was like high highs and low lows. I mean, it was so I was addicted to her. She could walk through the door and I'm not kidding you. My palms would start sweating. You know, I mean, it was like a visceral

action that I would have in a good way. In the beginning. It was like a good, you know, after a while, it wasn't ultimately what happened over a course of like, it seems like I was with her for like 10 years and it was probably less than two that that's how much drama was in that time, you know, kicked out of moving cars. She put her fist in the wind chill in my truck. She put her fist of the windshield at home. She broke my eardrum. You know, I remember seeing this is the denial. I'm sitting in a doctor's office and he's patching up my eardrum because it was busted. And he said, what happened to you? And I said, I got in a fight. And he said, you know, you can press

charges. Never occurred to me to I'm like, no, it's OK. It wasn't that bad, you know. So we had a third roommate and I wanted to paint this picture for you before I move on. This is what a typical sober night at our house looked like on a Friday night in Burbank, CA. I would come home from work. Our other roommate had a penchant for cutting her wrist and pretending, well, not pretending. She probably was making an effort to kill herself. So I would make sure she wasn't bleeding too much before I went to the backroom. And we had a free for all before we went to the 8:00 a, a meeting at the Burbank Hospital, you know, because we're going to get some recovery.

Well, what I can tell you is that this may be happening in homes. Someone even sitting in this room tonight, you know, there may be violence. And, and what I also can tell you is that you don't have to live that way anymore if you choose not to. I mean, we, we have solutions. We have a way to live a spiritual life that it doesn't involve that. And it's not healthy for you. You know, I was thinking earlier about that because I always try to remember to tell that story because it is true. You know, I mean, we do those kinds of things. Just because we stop drinking and using doesn't mean that the insanity ends in different ways.

I don't think that God saves us from drowning in the river just to choke us on the shore. I don't think works like that, you know, but that's just my opinion. And everything I say here is tonight is simply my opinion. It's not the opinion of Al Anon. So we've been together a little while and it was crazy and, and I've been listening to all this stuff you guys are talking about in the a a meetings and, and again, that's great for you and not me because I don't have a problem. And I went home

and, you know,

going to meetings and not working the steps. It's like sitting in the garage and thinking your car, you're not OK, You're just not. And so I have been listening to these little bits, but I wasn't doing anything with the information, you know, But this whole rigorous honesty thing kept coming up. And, and so I thought, well, maybe I wonder what would happen if I told my dad I was gay.

So I inadvertently, I could not be direct. I told my new stepmother, who was the best friend of my dead stepmother. It's a long story. We won't go there.

I, I told my new stepmother I'm like, wonder what would happen if maybe daddy will find out if maybe I were gay. And then I left, promptly left to go back to Los Angeles. But by the time I landed in LA, my father had left me a voicemail on remember the answer machines used to have. And, and it was like a probably a 5 minute message. And he told me and he said you're dead and buried. As far as I'm concerned.

You don't draw air on the planet. You don't exist to me anymore. He said I've called the entire family together and I've told them this. He said I don't want your name spoken in my presence until you turn your life around and do what you know is right, what he knew was right. I can't have anything to do with you. And I was devastated because remember, I was taught to please him at all cost

and this was happening at the same time. I had this feeling even though I didn't know it was a feeling because I hadn't gotten into program yet. I was suspicious that my partner was having an affair with our mutual best friend because it was some high drama going on with us.

And I was asking and no one was telling me. Within like two days, my father doing that, I got confirmation that that was accurate information. And I remember sitting on the floor in our apartment in Burbank, up against the wall. And I remember thinking, I'm, I'm broken, I'm, I'm bankrupt. I don't have anything more, nothing more. And that is my spiritual bottom. That was my Al Anon bottom because I knew right then that I was just cracked wide open. It wasn't getting any worse than this

and have never contemplated taking my own life, but I knew that if I didn't get some serious help, I could probably do something bad. So that third roommate had been through a treatment Center for codependency. We don't like that word in Al Anon generally. So I say for al anonism. And so she because it's an ISM for sure, man. I mean, we do this crazy crap and we we don't even have to drink to do it. You know, I mean, it is at least they're medicating, you know, they have.

I remember one time she and I got in a fight and, and, and

she didn't want me to go back to work. I came home for lunch and I just worked like 2 mile and halfway and she didn't want me to go back and she put her fist through the window. And so I had to take her to the emergency room. Well, another time she didn't want me to go back to work and I went, I got my, I, I got my truck and I went, went home. I mean, went to work and I'm standing it in in my office, my lab there. And, and I heard this heavy breathing. I turned around and she had literally run to my work and she heard she had crazy written all over her face. You know, that's the day that she busted my

drum. And I mean, those kinds of things were happening all the time. It was like such high drama. I lived in complete adrenaline or utter despair for so long because I didn't understand there was a middle. I only knew the high highs and low lows. I got to get into recovery here. So

my bottom happened and they got me in that treatment center. And essentially what happened in 21 days

as they pulled all my emotional intestines out, kind of laid them out on the table for me and said, you know, Carrie, that's abuse and that's rape. And you got to put, you got to put the words to the incidents, Carrie, because

see, what's happened is I couldn't put words to it because if I put words to it, it'd be real. And if it's real, I got to do something about it. And up to that point in my life, I didn't have any. There was nothing I could do about it. So that was, oh, that was so intense. And they told me that everything I all, my belief system was founded upon lies.

And it just blew my mind. I really kind of lost it for a little bit. And when I got when it's time to go, they told me that, you know, that I could do outpatient for a little while, but that I had to find a spiritual way to live. It was a twelve base thing. And then I had to find a spiritual way to live. Oh, I got it back up. I went to my girlfriend's sponsor suggested to her early on that I go to an almond meeting and there was a, a, a meeting of Kittridge over in the valley. And there was a a meeting upstairs in an Al Anon meeting downstairs.

Meetings were an hour and a half back then

and then going to these awesome AAA meetings where we're like laughing, drinking, smoking him, you know, coffee and everything and and telling stories and everybody's laughing about it. So I go into this room, it's an Al Anon meeting and everybody's sitting in their chair and the chair is in a circle and there's Kleenex boxes in the middle and they're crying and talking about their feelings went Oh my God, who would want to be here? I would not want to be here. So at the break, I shout out to the a meeting and told her I didn't want to go. And she said that's why I don't think she wanted me to get any. I don't know if it's conscious, but she probably didn't want me to get well either. So that was my one

meeting prior to treatment and when I got out of treatment, I was a very different human being at that point. And I went back into that meeting with a very different attitude than I had. And I asked someone to sponsor me. They said, I've been listening to the things that, that, that were told in a, a, you know, 90 media is 90 days, get a sponsor, get a service commitment. And so I and they said, find someone that you like and who has something that you want and ask him to sponsor. So I found an Al Anon who had a relationship with a recovering alcoholic and I asked her to sponsor me because that's what I wanted was someone who had a relationship with the

alcoholic. I wanted to find out how to stay with this alcoholic that I was with. And I tried that and it almost killed me trying that. I'm grateful that my sponsor worked with me. You know, thank God. Thank God for the unconditional love and the fact that we don't tell each other what to do here. We don't give advice, you know, I mean, we advise work steps, do things, take actions in the program. But as far as life issues, we don't,

pardon me, we don't give advice because I would call my sponsor and she and I would say we're fighting. She's like, if you're physically safe,

I'll talk to you. If you're not, I'm hanging up and call me when you are. And she never told me to leave. She never told me to leave. And I'm certain she was drinking blood, biting the tip of her tongue off, you know, because I needed to leave. But but she's told me that my life had to be my choice and that if it was time for me to leave, that my higher power would let me know. And I would have to make that decision that no one can make it for me, my God. And I would have to know. So I started doing the steps with my sponsor and I could get that my life was unmanageable, but I didn't really, I didn't fully

to my innermost self that I was powerless over that alcoholic in the beginning. I had to get beat up a little bit more for that to happen. And then I did admit it and I got to the second step and that frightened me so bad because I have all this ideas of someone else's God that I'm bringing with you and that God doesn't love me. And my sponsor told me that my God could be whoever I wanted. And that was my sponsor. She had a sense of peace around. I didn't know what it was because I couldn't identify Serenity if it beat me over the head when I got here. But