Back to home page Back to other stories   TEBBY   Hi, my name is Tebby and I'm an alcoholic. I'm here to tell my story, how it used to be, what happened, and how it is now. I knew I was addicted to alcohol about the age of seventeen. Between seventeen and thirty, I became dependent on tranquilizers as well as alcohol. It was difficult to get prescriptions for tranquilizers. I didn't have to work as hard to go to the store and buy a bottle of liquor. I was a periodic drinker for a long time because the tranquilizers could be used in between drinking binges. I was very unhappy, and I didn't know why. I had everything, kids, a husband, a car, and a house. I was depressed and anxious. I had this aching knot inside that didn't seem to go away unless I took a drink or a pill.   I made a phone call to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was thirty years old. After I made that phone call, I hoped I might be an alcoholic and not crazy. Two women came to my house to take me to my first AA meeting. I told them that I thought I was an alcoholic. They told me a little bit about themselves and their lives. They told me how their lives were now, living the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I believed them. Secretly, I worried that I was both alcoholic and crazy. I went to my first AA meeting, a woman's meeting, with these two ladies. I was nervous, scared as hell. I didn't know that I wanted to quit drinking. I just knew that I didn't want to feel the way I felt inside. I wanted the awful ache of emptiness to go away. I wanted somebody to tell me what I was doing wrong with my life and how to correct if so that I could be happy. I wasn't too sure I knew what "happy" was because I hadn't felt that way in a long time. I felt at home in the meetings. When I was a little girl, we had AA meetings in our home.   My stepfather was an alcoholic. As a little girl, I remember all these people came to our house. Strangers that they were, they would stop and talk to us children as if we were real people and mattered. They seemed warm, loving, interested, and concerned. So when I went to my first meeting, I reexperienced those feelings. My home had been filled by the AA's with love, trust, and sharing. I remember that I would sneak to the basement, put my ear against the door, and try to hear what was being said at the AA meetings. I would hear a lot of laughter and normally there was not a lot of laughter in our home. Cigarette smoke at the AA meetings reminded me of my youth,too. When the AA's would come out of the basement, they would be followed by billowing clouds of smoke. At AA I felt that I had come home and "fit in."   Most of my life I felt that I was a square peg trying to fit into the round hole of society. As a square peg, I didn't fit very well. Alcohol and tranquilizers would help me create the illusion that I was round. It had shaved the edges off. When I would sober up, I would realize that I was still a square peg. At AA meetings they talked to me about twelve steps that I had to follow in order to change my life. I was full of fear, anger, bitterness, remorse, and self-pity from all the years of trying to fit my square peg into round holes. I didn't understand what they were trying to tell me. I didn't understand the steps. They told me I had to find a power greater than myself. I sure as hell didn't want anything to do with that. I had given God up a long time ago. Eventually, being the obedient, compliant person that I am, and being as miserable and as sick as I felt inside, I decided, what the hell. I might as well give it a try. Well, they were right. It was I that needed changing and not the world. I had to learn to accept that I was indeed a square peg, and that my alcoholism had caused a lot of my unhappiness. Alcohol had made my life very unmanageable. Alcohol had kept me from having a full life. I had to learn that happiness was an inside job and that the external things that life offered were nice, but not necessary.   I started with Step One and I continued on the journey. I grew throughout sobriety. I began to work with others. I was told by others that nothing keeps us from that first drink like working with another alcoholic. At meetings my square edges were accepted. I accepted God. I asked His help to stay sober one day at a time. I began to go outside myself and see the world around me. I became ecstatic over little things like my children, flowers, trees, or clouds. I became interested in other people. I went to meetings and poured coffee. I emptied ash trays, and I helped fill them. I listened to others and my life improved and became manageable.   My sobriety continued for ten years. It was a rich life. However, it was still marked by periods of depression and anxiety. I found other women on the program that were having the same symptoms. My symptoms would come and go seemingly without any connection. I would double my program efforts and take Fourth and Fifth Steps with my sponsor. I would double my meetings and service. Finally, after ten years, I left the program.   I was away from the program for about five years. During that time, I was having problems with my son. He became addicted to drugs, cocaine, pot, PCPs, and crack. He got into a Satanic cult. I became very enmeshed with my son. I began losing my spirituality. I didn't go back to the AA tables. I didn't have a strong support system. I was ground down as much as my son by the disease. I placed him in twelve different treatment programs. I became more and more involved each time my son went into rehab, came out, and relapsed. I wasn't a person anymore. I lived, ate, and breathed for my son. All my efforts to change him were nil. I attended parents groups. They urged participation in the AL-ANON twelve step group. After sitting in a lot of these co-dependency groups, I realized that I was co-dependent. I began seeing that I was losing myself in my son but I couldn't stop. I would drive my son to meetings but I still hadn't gone back to Alcoholics Anonymous. I relapsed. I drank for two years, daily.   My alcoholism progressed. Problems came back that were in my Fourth and Fifth Steps. I had feelings and issues from childhood return. After drinking for two years, and being sick and tired of being sick and tired, my body was worn. My spirit had become dead. I had very little hope for myself. I picked up the telephone and I called two loving program friends with whom I had originally become sober. I called them because I knew that they would be non-judgmental. I feared being judged. I was so ashamed of my relapse. They took me back to AA meetings. They gave me back my life. I was never judged. People reached out their hands, as they had done years ago. They said we're glad you're back. I wanted to believe them but shame kept me from doing so. I went back to meeting after meeting after meeting. I looked for AA people who could teach me new ways. I called another twelve step program that dealt with other issues. I attended these meetings, too. The issues of childhood, that had returned while I was drinking, needed exploring. I needed to understand the source of my shame. I needed to understand things about myself that had not been explained. I wanted to understand the depression and anxiety that earmarked my first sobriety.   Because of Alcoholics Anonymous and the other twelve step program, I better understand myself and have an expanded understanding of my Higher Power. Today, I know that the most precious gift I have to give to God is willingness. I will go to any length to do God's will. In return God was able to give me the gift of self understanding. This is a precious gift. Today's sobriety is totally different and the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are lived on an entirely different level. This was not possible in my earlier sobriety. I am free of depression and anxiety. A good sponsor has helped me to understand and work with my emotional life, my feeling nature. I am not frightened, nor do I run away from feelings and emotions. I didn't have these tools before. My sponsor has done many wonderful things for me.   Today, I work as an addiction counselor. I pass on the teachings of the two twelve step groups I attend, at meetings and to those I counsel. My life has expanded. My sobriety has expanded. I am now totally different in relationship to God, myself, and other human beings. I believe that it has taken two twelve step programs to help me on my journey. I have had the willingness to explore myself and my sobriety to the utmost limits of my capacity.   Thank you for listening to my story. I hope you find in twelve step programs what I have found. I have a new life, new me, and an expansion of my childhood God. Life is much grander than I ever believed possible. I have a life that is full, rich, and rewarding. Thank you.