new raspberry; �HATES technological I am sick to death of erectile dysfunction, pass the tampons please |
AA Speaker 1 My name is Juli and I�m an alcoholic Hi. My name is Juli and I�m an alcoholic. Through the benevolence of a higher power, some kick ass employee benefits and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous; I have been sober since June 21 of 1997. I always have to pause to think about that since it wasn�t my first sobriety date, but that�s the middle of my story so I�ll back up to the beginning. But first I�d like to thank our chairperson for inviting me to share my story and all of you for coming to listen to it. Are there any newcomers here tonight? Welcome and keep coming back. I am living proof that this program works when you work it. Happy birthday to those of you celebrating sobriety checkpoints, you give me hope and inspiration. I�m not much of a public speaker so this is a hard thing for me to do. I�m a writer who is very uncomfortable getting up in front of people and speaking. I don�t ad-lib well for any extended period of time. I have a tendency to do the deer in the headlights thing and go off on tangents so I�ve made a lot of notes and I may even keep my eyes glued to them so that I don�t have to see the looks of horror on your faces as I tell my tale. I was born in Hollywood, CA to a couple of refugees from the Dakotas. My parents had no business becoming parents but since when has that ever stopped anyone? From what I can gather of the family history, I have a long line of alcoholic ancestors and I�ve simply carried on a family tradition. For my parents, everything was cause for drinking when I was growing up. If you were happy, you had a drink to celebrate. If you were sad, you had a drink to forget your sorrows. If you were angry, you had a drink so you could beat the livin� tar out of whatever it was that made you angry. Alcohol was so much a part of their lives that I can remember my father building a bar out by the pool so that they wouldn�t have to walk all the way into the house to get a drink. And to finish it off, my father took these little decorative brads and inscribed my mother�s name in letters three foot high. There were always parties that involved a lot of drinking. As I got older, I noticed the parties didn�t always end happily. There were arguments between my parents, between my parents and their friends, between friends and whatever inanimate object they happened to stumble into. There was usually broken stuff. Sometimes there were even broken people and trips to the hospital. As I got even older, some of my dad�s drunken friends would hit on me and that is just too gross for me to even think about today. My parents drinking careers included neglect, and the emotional and physical abuse of their children. You would think that my early experiences with alcohol would have turned me away from it. I have heard so many people recount that they swore they would never be like their alcoholic parents and I am no exception. I built a lot of resentments in childhood. To my parents who�d constantly separate and then get together again. To my dad who�d get drunk and use any one of us for a punching bag if we so much as looked at him wrong. My mom and I have the same nose because we had the same plastic surgeon. We laugh about it now, but it wasn�t funny at the time. I resented my mom for being too drunk to see that �Uncle Tommy��the babysitter she�d leave us with while she went out to the bars�was a pedophile. I resented my little brother for being born when I was six and completely monopolizing the parents I�d previously had all to myself. It wasn�t until he was about 14 that we became friends, and while I didn�t know it at the time, that was too late. I built up a nice little set of reasons to drink when I was a kid. Part 1 of 6
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secrets pondering: Why the right wingers who want to keep the government out of their business insist on putting the government in my bedroom laughing about: It gets lost in translation crying about: bad habits: smoking totally ballistic about: amen sister: someone else�s take on childlessness regular reads: cactustree must see tv: |