Alcohol was not the problem, and Alcoholics Anonymous was not the solution for my sobriety — Pink Cloud Coaching, Sober Revolution

It’s been seventeen years since I’ve had any alcohol and over sixteen years since I’ve been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and worked the Twelve Steps.

That’s a long time. Although I’m closing in, it’s still not as long as I misused alcohol. Yes, misused. Around twelve years old, maybe thirteen, a neighbor guy showed me the way to freedom. Freedom from shame, fear, guilt, regret, alcohol was the perfect remedy to soothe my sullen soul.

My little body had been sexually molested from my earliest memory, and there was no one telling me, “You can be anything you want to be.” No, in my home, I was told that I was worthless and would end up just like my mother, a drunk on welfare. I had my shares of beatings and witnessed my mother being beaten and, on more than one occasion, raped. Little ones shouldn’t see such horrors.

Yes, that night, I found the key to disconnecting from God, who would never love a dirty soul like mine, the emotional pain that was like an infected wound that would never heal, and people because they were good for nothing but causing me harm. Alcohol became my faithful companion.

Through my teen years, I drank most weekends and eventually found cocaine and then crank, it’s now called methamphetamine. It was, by far, my favorite next to alcohol. I would be up for days doing much of nothing. Sitting around a dealer’s house and played cribbage for hours as strangers came and went to score their dime bags. It was a small shack of a house with no heat and very cold. But there I was jaw twitching, pupils dilated, as the pegs on the cribbage board went around and around.

I gave birth to my first son just after my eighteenth birthday and collected welfare just as my stepfather predicted. After my childhood sweetheart and baby’s daddy broke up, I started dating a man from that little shack. It wasn’t long before he violently grabbed me by my hair and ordered me to fix him breakfast. Luckily, we were in my mother’s house, and everybody was home, so when I ordered him out, he left.

It was around this time that I had my first blackout panic attack and ended up in the hospital. I stopped using all stimulants, but the need for alcohol grew. The panic attacks were constant. I would be in and out of the emergency room several times a week. They’d give me meds, which always seemed to make the attacks worse.

Full Story and links here https://medium.com/@TeresaRodden/alcohol-was-not-the-problem-and-alcoholics-anonymous-was-not-the-solution-for-my-sobriety-pink-137c61b4af7c