Raquel D. AA Female

Raquel (0:01)

My name is Raquel, I'm an alcoholic. And I'm grateful to be here today. I want to welcome the newcomers, encourage you to stay a good place to be. I hope you stay long enough to find that out. And I really, really do mean that. And the reason that I say that is because when I came into the program, there was a lady that used to sit in the back, and every time that she introduced herself, she would say that, that she welcomed the newcomers. And it always made me feel good inside when she said it. So usually, when you like something, you take it from somebody else. You know, that's the way we do it here in Alcoholics Anonymous. Nothing's really an original.

I'm a feeling speaker here, and I'm not really a speaker. So bear with me. Carl asked me to take his place, and I worked with Carl for a couple of years, and he was an Eskimo for me in a lot of ways, and he was also a teacher. And I respect him very much. So he told me he was sick, and I also got flattered that he asked me to fill in for him. And I forgot that I was sick too.

I came into Alcoholics Anonymous before my sobriety date. My sobriety date is November 17, 1992 I came into Alcoholics Anonymous eight months before that. And when I came in, I came in through a side door, which was prison.

I had drank and I had used for a lot of years, actually 35 years. And I wanted to live differently. I wanted a different kind of life. I was sick and tired of living the way I had been living, and I didn't know how to live any differently, you know. When I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I had come 15 years before that on a DUI. And with that DUI, I was just like Robert. I'm a quick study. I go in and I find out what I have to do, and I had this little green card, and they had told me that I had to get it signed six times. I walked into that room and I looked around, and I said, I do not belong here. And it was La Puente Center, and I seen the walls, and they were like a little bit smudged with smoke and everything, even though I'm a smoker. And the people just, I didn't feel like I belonged. And I heard them sharing, and I was closed down. But what I seen was that they signed my card, and then I came another time, and they signed it again, and then I decided I didn't need to be there. I could sign my own card. So if you have a card, you don't have to be here either.

But what happened for me was a seed was planted. And like I said, I never knew that there was a solution. I started drinking at the age of maybe 12 and a half, 13, and I also come from a dysfunctional family.

I never knew what that word meant until I came in here.

I just thought we were all screwed up.

And I always had that fear, that fear that a lot of alcoholics have deep down within. You know, I had that opening, that void that I've heard, shared here so many times. In fact, when I heard about that, I immediately identified with that. I always felt like there was something missing in my life. I always felt like I was off beat, off key. I never fit in. I never felt like I was okay. I remember my disease started before I even started drinking, actually. It was my thinking. You know, also, I was always trying to fix on something else. The first time that I tried to fill that hole was with food. I remember stuffing my face and stuffing my face and stuffing my face, trying to fill that hole, and my stomach would get full, but that void would still be there. And when I took a drink, it was, like I said, when I was around 12 or 13, I really don't know exactly when. And I come out of the Ramona Garden projects, and there everybody drinks, it seems, and everybody's using, and everybody's on welfare, and everybody's fighting. But I hated it. I hated it. And my friends were ditching school, and of course those are the kind of friends that I look for, the ones that I fit in with. And I ended up ditching, and we ended up getting a bottle of Thunderbird.

That was my first drink, Thunderbird, with a little twist of lemon. And it went down real, real smooth. In fact, I still remember the way it went down. It warmed my belly, and all of a sudden, I felt like I was somebody. I felt like I could do anything, and I felt like I was Sophia Loren.