At 59, she left her old life behind. Thank goodness she kept coming back
I went to my first AA meeting in 1975 at the age of 29. I went because my boyfriend thought I needed to go. I had had an episode of what I later came to know was the DTs. I was screaming and hallucinating, and once it was over, it terrified him more than it did me. I mean, it was over … what was the big deal?
The only thing I remember about that AA meeting was a man saying that he didn’t quit drinking until he was 50. I thought, OK, I’ve got 20 more years. It ended up being 30 more. They mentioned God at the meeting too, and I certainly didn’t want to hear anything about that. I was an atheist back then, in rebellion against a religion that told me people went to hell for things I didn’t think (still don’t think) were wrong.
It wasn’t that I didn’t try to sober up. In 1976 my boyfriend and I married. (I was two days out of my first rehab—what were we thinking?) My new husband had landed a job several states away, and we loaded up a truck and moved the day after our wedding. I was drunk within days. But there, again under pressure but ready to listen a little, I got sober in AA and stayed that way for two and a half years, even through a second interstate move. I don’t recall that I ever got past Step Three, though, and it wasn’t enough to keep me sober through a third move to yet another state. Bitterly unhappy and resentful about that one, I left a place where I had been happy because my husband’s employers transferred him. I didn’t go to a single meeting in the hated new city. Very soon I was drunk again.
I was days out of rehab number two when we made yet another move—and history repeated itself: rehab, move, drink. By this time it was 1980, and I had 25 years to go. From there on it was mostly chaos, though I did manage to land and hold on to good jobs for the next 10 years. I drank, I didn’t drink, I drank, I didn’t drink. I even stayed dry for two years, at which point my marriage ended. Would it have survived if I had been in AA and practicing the principles in all my affairs? Probably not, but two years of white-knuckling it sure didn’t help. Six months after we separated, I drank. We had never had any children, and as menopause approached I grieved over that—but now I think it was by the grace of God.
I still had the last good job with good insurance, though there was a lengthy medical stay in a psychiatric ward. I chose to ignore the “dual diagnosis” terminology: I wasn’t alcoholic, I was just depressed. By 1990 I didn’t have the good job any more, had gotten a DUI, and was broke. I moved back to my native state.
The chaos just kept getting worse. I was in AA; I was out of AA. But I didn’t want to be sponsored and didn’t want to work the Steps. In those last 15 years I came close to death twice, the first time from liver failure. I did things I was ashamed of. My belongings melted away. I was drunk when I got word of my mother’s death and in extreme withdrawal at her funeral. Once I woke and found blood clotted in my hair and all over my pillow. I must have fallen in a blackout and hit my head.
It all ended in the early hours one morning when I knew that I was dying. Call it the soul or the spirit or whatever you want. It was a spark of light, and it was going out. Somehow I made a phone call to a lady with 24 years of sobriety. She had told me two days before that she was afraid I was going to die. She had seen something I hadn’t. She took me to a womens’ recovery house. I had to leave behind the little I had left, and never saw it again. It was 2005, the year I turned 59.
Some crucial things happened in that meeting house. I remember standing in the main room thinking, It’s not just about not drinking. It’s about change. A 180-degree change. With all my possessions and pride gone, I concluded: Now it’s down to me and God. Finally I was willing. I called the AA volunteer who came once a week to guide the women through the Big Book and the “Twelve and Twelve.” She had 21 years sober. She’s still my sponsor to this day.
She took me through the Step.Finally, I worked Steps Four and Five and went on. I went to a meeting every day, even when circumstances were difficult. I took every service opportunity that came my way. I learned to stop making excuses and to recognize when I was wallowing in self-pity. I called my sponsor religiously and hung out with women who had long-term sobriety and paid attention to how they worked the program. I began to recognize that at 59 years of age I had the maturity of a 2-year-old. Selfishness and self-will had distorted my thinking all my life.
Over time I began to change in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible. I found that even after six decades of doing the same things over and over, I could learn to think and act in new and better ways. Slowly, life got better. Slowly, I began to experience intervals of serenity. They were few and far between at first, but they’re coming more often and lasting longer these days.
Because of my own history, I never give up on anyone. I believe that you’re never too old (or too young or too anything) to open a closed heart and mind to the luminous gift of sobriety, that it’s a possibility as long as we are alive to embrace it. People who know me have heard me say often, “The only thing I did right all those years was to keep comin’ back.”