Drunk After Eleven Years and Then Again

When I had eleven or twelve years sobriety we moved 25 miles out of town.  It was hard to get to a meeting.  I got home from work, fixed dinner and didn't feel like driving all the way back to town. People stopped calling me and I didn't call them.  One night we went to a nearby restaurant and they had karaoke.  I had never seen karaoke in my life!  I was fascinated with it and started following karaoke all around.  Unfortunately karaoke is in the bars.  Before I knew what happened I became, not only a karaoke star, but a drunk once again. 


After breaking up with my partner, filing bankruptcy and the like, I returned to my meetings.  I found a sponsor and she taught me "Service is the Secret".  I jumped in with both feet and walked the walk.  My partner came back home and all was well.  After nearly ten years (once again) of sobriety I learned I had major health issues. I had to quit smoking (my identity).  I could see my Mom wasn't well and I needed to help her more and more (resentment).  I became disabled and could no longer work (identity and resentment). I did all this while going through menopause.  Whew... Too tired for meetings, feeling worthless, and no contact with a sponsor.  (Looking back I am not sure I had a sponsor at that point!) I drank again.


After giving up sobriety once the second time is much easier.  I don't even know for sure when I picked up.  I believe it was when my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Mom died one week after the diagnosis.  During the death vigil I had to mingle with and put up with family.  The funeral was a couple blocks from my home so everyone was in and out of my house.  All these resentments, I had never worked through, were sitting at my kitchen table.  I shattered into a million pieces.


After sitting alone and drinking myself to near death for months.  My doctor told me I needed to go back, once again, to my meetings.  I felt so bad, so humiliated.  Everyone knew me and everyone knew I drank once again.  The sobriety countdowns were torture.  One woman told me I owed every woman in the program an amends because they all looked up to me.  I failed them!  I was a failure!  Those things could have helped me stay out until death.  However, I chose to go to meetings in another area.  I even started a meeting in my small hometown.  


I wasn't long into this second term of sobriety and I found out I was moving, 750 miles away!  When I moved here I thought, hell no one knows me I can drink again! Then it occurred to me, people knowing me doesn't affect my level of drinking, I am a drunk! I found a meeting here I love with good sobriety. I had a man from that meeting come to my home to look at some work I needed done.  He stayed and we talked program forever. He said, "Miss Linn, AA has come to your house. You need a bigger coffee pot!" (I had a one cup pot) You know what, I have never allowed AA in my house and didn't even realize it! I stayed isolated and kept getting drunk. My disease loves it when I am alone so it can kill me.  The very next day I passed out my phone number and invited people over.  I have had more people in and out of my home here then I did in all the years I lived in Michigan!  Oh yes! I have bought bigger coffee pot!