Niki S. AA Female

**Nikki** (0:00)
Hi. Hi. I'm Nikki. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Nikki. You look a lot smaller down there.
Okay.
We call this what? WGDW? WGDW. WGDW. It's like a cool thing around here. Oh, you want a WGDW? I love this. I love this so much. My sobriety date is December 12, 2016 My home group is the Fourth Dimension Group. Is this fine? Okay. My home group is the Fourth Dimension Group of New Port Richey, Florida. I've never been to Georgia. Everyone has been very nice, very welcoming, as I would expect in the South.
I feel so out of place. I feel like no one's going to relate to me. I've been full of fear today.
So, welcome to AA, you know.
Not unique. It does not matter.
You know, and I had a lot of people that prayed for me. I'm afraid of flying, and we flew. And I had a lot of people praying for me. And, you know, and it's like I'm not flying into the fire. Like, I'm flying to deliver God's message, you know. And like that thought kept comforting me on the plane. But this is so not even about me at all, you know. And I want to say first before I forget, there were a few people in here for the countdown that were new or in sobriety, like, in their first six months. And those were the people I saw busy this weekend. And they were cleaning up and helping and cooking and putting stuff up and putting stuff away and handing out stuff. And that's a beautiful deal in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's how I stay sober. That's how we stay sober. You know, I just need to be doing stuff then, you know, and I get to stay. So that was one of my first tools in Alcoholics Anonymous, was to stay busy, be of service. And it's cool to see that. So it's been a great weekend, really great speakers. I'm really humbled and honored to be here. When Elizabeth told me that last year's speaker was Chris Reimer, I was like, I don't think I can do this.
I was like, what do you mean? I'm not qualified.
But God doesn't call them qualified. He qualifies the called, you know. And that's been my experience every time.
So I'm just going to pretend that none of you are here, and that I'm just going to tell my story, try to do this with some level of grace.
So I was born into a family of alcoholics. Not all of them are sober, but if they're not, they probably should be. Most of them are in Alcoholics Anonymous or similar. And so the 12 steps were discussed a lot in my youth and growing up. And it wasn't language I was unfamiliar with. My parents met in AA. Me and my brother are both members of Alcoholics Anonymous as well. And I had to like read page 417 when I was in trouble. And it was 447 then. And, you know, so it's like, and my parents stopped coming to Alcoholics Anonymous after about 10 years of sobriety. And if you notice during the countdown, 10 to 20 is small. People leave. And it's not necessarily because they drank, you know? And somehow, someway, they end up back here. You know, 25 years over, and then all of a sudden, they're back, you know? And I pray that for my family, and I see that, and it gives me hope and inspiration. And, but they left. They left when they were like 10 and eight years sober, something like that. And so what's left over, and Mike alluded to this last night, is, or maybe it was his wife, but without a program and without alcohol, I'm worse, you know? And if you define that, that's my family. You know, so like I had a lot of anger in my household. There was a lot of resentment and fighting, and it looked like everybody was drunk, you know, but nobody was, and at least in my immediate family. And a lot of things happened in that house that shouldn't happen to children, you know? And there were a lot of things that marked my life in a way that could perpetually keep me in a state of victimhood forever, you know? And I'm working on that.
But anyway, I had my first drink when I was about 13 And the first time that I got drunk, got really drunk, and felt the effect produced by alcohol, was when I was about 13 It was a morning before high school, so it was like 6 a.m. And my friend had bought a bottle of Everclear to school. I did not know what it was.