Happy Joyous and Free episode #5 with Amy

SPEAKER_1 (0:13)

Good day, everybody, and welcome to Happy Joyous and Free. In the spirit of attraction, we present this week's speaker and hope you find something in this message for your own recovery. More information about us will be available after today's talk.

Amy (0:27)

I'm Amy, and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Don, for asking me. It has been 22 years since I've been asked back. That's how good it...

SPEAKER_1 (0:35)

I personally was.

Amy (0:39)

So you're in for a real treat, because I have been wondering, though, like, why haven't I been asked back there?

But I think that the first meeting, Janet and Guy were here, and David is one that asked me, and his wife Christine, who was my bestest friend, who has now passed, and I don't know who else, but I didn't want to do it then, and I don't want to do it tonight either. I don't know how much has changed. I always think, why don't you ask my husband, Mark? He loves to talk.

But you know what? I heard a woman say that she was asked, you know, I know you don't plan to drink, but what's your plan to stay sober? And I love that. You know, it's like, I do need to have a little bit of a plan. How am I going to stay sober? And part of it is saying yes when asked to do things I don't want to do, and going to meetings and just, you know, the normal stuff that I was taught day one, you know, that little list of things I was given. And I don't know, it's just been a journey. My sobriety date is February 14th of 92 I've been sober 34 years, and we always say I thought I'd be better than this by now, and I did.

But you know what, it's okay to be not okay. And that's what this program has given me, that it really is okay to not be okay. Because I had obviously in my head an idea of what normal would be or success, and I'm not any of those things, you know, and it's okay. One day at a time, and to the gentleman that is new here for the very first meeting ever, come back. You know, I was 27 years old when I got here, and I thought I was way too young. You know, my mother, and I hope I don't cry tonight, I've become a crier, which is unusual, because Nellie would always say I had no emotions, and I didn't, I was cold as hell. But my mother got here the year before I did. She got sober in January of 91, and a lot of you women were the reason for her sobriety, her continued sobriety. So I'm so grateful to all of you.

I don't know what I was going to say about that, other than, yeah, it's been a journey and what a life. I mean, I could probably end it right there.

Yeah, you know, I started drinking. I lived out in Cincinnati in Wyoming, probably 14 years old. I probably started smoking cigarettes at the age of five. I know I would take my mother's palm oils up into the bathroom and light matches, and I had singed eyebrows all the time.

But I just, I don't know, I was just, I was an alcoholic from the get go. I really, really was. I have two older sisters, a younger brother. My sisters had horses. My brother raced motocross, and all I wanted to do was smoke cigarettes in the bathroom and, you know, drink. So I was destined for this life.

And I was just like my mother, you know. So anyway, I grew up out there in Cincinnati.

You know, honestly, the whole time I drank when I got sober at 27, no huge, like, outward consequences that anyone would say like, oh, you know, DUIs or jail or institutions or anything like that, even though all those things should have happened, they didn't. But inwardly, I was just really a very, very sick person.

You know, when we left Cincinnati, we went to Miami. I was 16 years old. It was April 1st, 1980 It was in the middle of my spring break of my sophomore year. My dad got transferred to Miami. It was 1980 And, you know, you all know what Miami was like in 1980 It was crazy. And I went from this little school in Wyoming, Ohio, to this huge high school in Miami, Miami Palmetto Senior High. And I immediately met girls that drank and skipped school. I had never skipped school in my life. They taught me how to skip school. It wasn't that hard. And, yeah, I ended up dropping out. We all got jobs at the movie theater. I found the girls fake ID, and we all shared it, and we would go out drinking. And I just didn't want to go to school. I just really didn't see the points. You know, I had no dreams. I was never that person of wanting a career, or, I don't know, I just thought I'd party my whole life. And so I dropped out of high school. So there's another consequence of my drinking, which again, I would say I didn't have any consequences, but that is a consequence. You know, just kind of floating through life, you know? Living in my parents' house, driving their cars, they're paying the insurance.