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Sober Talk SA - Lesley · Sober Talk SA

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  Welcome to sober talk. I'm Dennis and I've lived
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  experience of alcohol. If you or anyone you know is
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  struggling with alcohol, please call Alcoholics Anonymous on
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  1300 double 22222 or check out their website on aa.org dot AU.
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  I'll just run through the preamble of Alcoholics
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  Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a
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  fellowship of men and women who share their experience,
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  strengthen hope with each other. They must solve their come
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  problems and help others to recover from alcoholism.
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  The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop
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  drinking. There are no dues of fees for
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  AIR membership. We are self supporting through
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  our own contributions. AIR is not allied with any SEC
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  denomination, politics, organization or institution,
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  does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses or
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  oppose any causes. Our primary purpose is stir some
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  and help other Alcoholics achieve sobriety.
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  Hi everyone. My name's Leslie.
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  I'm an alcoholic and I'm very, very privileged to be able to
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  make this recording for you. I'm one of those people that's
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  never had a normal drink. I've never had 2 drinks and
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  thought my word that's wonderful, I'm feeling so
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  relaxed but that's enough because 2 drinks was never
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  enough for me. I was a weird kid.
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  I never really felt that I fitted in anywhere and and life
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  was just really hard work. I never quite knew how to what
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  to do in any situation, how to respond to anything.
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  I quite envied people who seem to float through life
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  effortlessly and there didn't seem to be any strain or
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  struggle with them. I was always, I seem to be
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  always saying the wrong thing or upsetting the wrong people or I
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  had the best of intentions, but I just couldn't do life and I
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  didn't know what was wrong with me.
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  But at age 15, me and her girlfriend experimented with
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  some Southwark beer, I think it was, and we deliberately set out
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  to get drunk. And we did.
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  And I still remember how good it made me feel.
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  And I was able to get rid of all the fears and the worries and
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  the anxieties that I walked around with on a regular basis.
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  And, and I was able to relax and enjoy myself and, and feel good.
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  And even that night, though we drank to get drunk to pass out
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  and it was a throw up and woke up the next day with the mother
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  of all hangovers and had to wash the sheets and wash the floor
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  and, and things like that. But I remembered how good I'd
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  felt the night before and I thought that was marvellous, I'm
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  going to do that again. And obviously a 15 year old
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  can't get their hands on grog very often, but anytime I had
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  the opportunity, I always drank to get drunk and I was often
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  very messy. And yeah, so I, I embarked on my
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  quest to find out exactly how I could drink as much as I want
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  and not be abusive or on occasions physically violent or
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  just the messy person passed out on the back lawn or the front
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  lawn. And sometimes I knew who owned
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  the front lawn and sometimes I didn't.
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  And, and it was just a disaster. I mean, what do you do when you
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  feel bad when you're sober? Drink gives you a bit of
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  happiness and release, but the consequences of the drink are
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  bad. You, you're between a rock and a
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  hard place. But anyhow, I pursued this magic
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  formula that I was going to find of how to drink and not be
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  messy. So it was things like don't
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  drink beer, it's no good for you and you're running to the loo
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  all the time. You know, wine must be better.
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  Wine's respectable. You can put it in a wine glass
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  and, and it it looks, it looks suave.
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  But you then, then I graduated to Chateau cardboard and
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  drinking it out of Vegemite glasses.
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  And yeah, that that's not, that's not suave drinking or
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  spirits, because you don't need much spirits to get the same
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  effect. So you'll be drinking less and
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  you'll probably look a bit, you know, more suave and but you'll
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  get the same effect. But yeah, spirits acted on me
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  like someone with a hammer, you know, a little tap, a bigger
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  tap, a huge tap, and down she goes.
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  And yeah, I just never, ever found the the mixture that would
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  allow me to drink as much as I want and and stay respectable.
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  But I didn't know what was wrong with me.
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  All I knew was that I was miserable sober and to get a bit
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  of enjoyment in my life, I had to drink.
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  And, and so I didn't know that that was alcoholism.
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  I thought I had lots of problems, lots of psychiatric
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  issues perhaps, or I'd had a terrible childhood or, or I was
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  a very unlucky person or something like that.
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  And if I could just fix up, you know, my, my mental issues, I'd
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  be fine. And you know, when you, you
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  don't know what the problem really is and you are trying to
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  fix it, it does not work because you are fixing the wrong
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  problem. And but I worked hard at it.
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  I went and saw psychologists and they could not help me because
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  you do not tell anyone that you drink.
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  I mean, that is disgraceful. I saw a psychiatrist once and
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  poor man, he did not quite know what to do with me.
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  I went to lots of consciousness, you know, consciousness raising
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  groups, you know, the, the women's awareness, the
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  transactional analysis. I did that.
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  Yeah, lots of things. And I bought self help books by
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  the dozen. I had several $1000 I worked out
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  later on worth of self help books and not one of them had
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  helped me really. And I tried hard, I did all the
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  suggested things but nothing was working.
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  But you know, life got very messy indeed.
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  I became one of the loneliest people on the planet.
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  I don't think anyone is as lonely as the alcoholic because
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  you can never be yourself. Who wants to sit down at the at
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  the morning tea break at work and say, God, I got plastered
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  last night again and I threw up here, there and everywhere.
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  And I had a row with the next door neighbor and I turned up
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  the the music so loud that the police had to come.
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  And now I feel terrible and I can't, yeah, you can't say that
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  if you want to be employed. So you have to say, oh, I didn't
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  do very much last night, you know, or over the weekend.
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  You have to lie. You have to, you have to appear
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  to be something that you're not and you have to cover up what
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  you are. I had to get up really early in
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  the morning before work because I had to try and fix the shakes
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  because your hands shake and I'd eat throaties or other cough
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  lozenges to try and disguise the smell on my breath.
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  And you, you pull yourself together, you have a shower, you
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  put the eye drops in because your eyes are bloodshot.
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  And, and you just try and pull it together to go to work and
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  become what you need to be to earn the money to come home via
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  the the bottle shop and drink and get yourself plastered that
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  night. And and it's you're like a rat
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  on a wheel. There's no getting off.
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  And it's just awful. And you don't know what to do.
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  But yeah, so I spent several years in that predicament and I
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  didn't know what to do with myself or where to go or I'd
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  exhausted all avenues and I was living by myself by that stage.
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  You can't have boyfriends or husbands or anything like that
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  when you drink like that. They they move on very quickly.
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  Anyhow, I was lucky to lucky enough to ring AAI.
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  Don't really know why, because I didn't think my problem was
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  alcohol or and I didn't know there was such a thing as
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  alcoholism. All I knew was that I liked to
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  drink and I couldn't drink safely and I was disgusting
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  every time I got drunk. And yeah, but like I say, I was
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  lucky enough to go to my first AA meeting and the people there
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  recognised what I was immediately.
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  Perhaps it was the shaking hand that couldn't hold a full cup of
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  coffee. Had to have half a cup of coffee
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  or the shaking hand that they had to put my seat belt on for
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  me in the car. I wasn't driving.
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  They were kind enough to drive me there.
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  Yeah. I just couldn't coordinate the
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  seat belt. And the fact that I looked at
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  the floor, I couldn't look anyone in the eye because I was
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  so ashamed of what I was. And.
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  And that didn't bother them. They, they recognise me for the
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  alcoholic that I was and they knew I could get better.
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  I didn't believe them. I listened to the speakers that
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  night and there was a lot of speakers in the room who had a
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  lot of sobriety up. They had 20 years and five years
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  and and that was lovely for them.
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  You know, I wished them well but I didn't believe.
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  I knew that I could not stay 20 years off the grog or five
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  years. But there, there was a young man
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  got up to speak and he was nearer my age and he said that
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  he had 12 days sober. And I thought, my God, I don't
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  think I could go 12 days. I haven't been 12 days sober in
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  a lot of years. But maybe I could go 2 or maybe
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  I could go 3. And that young man, I don't
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  know, I haven't seen him since. But he gave me hope that night
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  and I owe him a great debt. And the people in the meeting
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  said keep coming back and and I did.
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  It was wonderful. I had I hadn't been invited back
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  anywhere for quite some time and suddenly I had somewhere to go.
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  The people were nice to me. They didn't mind that I look
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  like something that the cat dragged in and I looked at the
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  floor all the time. They said keep coming back.
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  And they said, how are you? And if you gave them the stock
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  standard answer that people give of, oh, I'm OK, thank you,
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  they'd say you're 5 days sober, how can you be OK?
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  Tell me what's really happening on.
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  They were interested in me. It was wonderful.
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  And gradually, gradually, you know, you start to recover from
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  your alcoholism. Not that anyone ever makes a
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  full recovery, you know, but we it's progress, not perfection.
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  Just the fact that you're you're not drinking means that you're
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  not creating chaos in your own life.
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  The chaos isn't mounting and and financially it helps too if you
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  don't call it the BWS every night.
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  Although I had several bottle shops I went to because you
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  couldn't go to the same one every night because I'd think
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  you drank too much. So you have to have a round of
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  bottle shops that you visit. And, you know, not one of them
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  sent me a a card saying where are you?
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  We miss you. Our profits are down.
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  They, I don't know how they're surviving without me.
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  Yeah. So the chaos starts to get.
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  You're not adding to the chaos in your life when you don't
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  drink, but there's certainly a lot of chaos leftover from your
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  drinking days. And that's where the a, A
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  program comes in because you have to deal with that stuff.
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  And it's, it was, you know, people you have to make amends
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  to the people that you've done the wrong thing by.
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  And making amends doesn't mean you just front up and say sorry.
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  It's a case of what can I do to make up for what I've done?
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  If you owe money and I owe a considerable amount of money,
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  you have to pay it off. And I looked at how much I owed
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  and I didn't see how I was ever going to pay that off.
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  But I had a bit of spare cash by this time, not much every week.
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  And I was employed. I still had a job, which was a
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  minor miracle. And they said to me, what you do
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  is every payday you put aside a certain amount of money and you
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  send it to who you owe it to. And you do that every, every
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  payday without fail. No excuses.
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  You, you'd pay that off before you, you do anything else,
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  before you buy anything else. And I followed their advice and
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  you know, eventually it was all paid.
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  Took more than three years, but, but eventually I was debt free
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  and, and the house that I was living in, I was living, it had
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  degenerated into a bit of a tip. You know, there was stuff
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  everywhere and it was dreadful and I really didn't, you'd look
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  at it and you'd think where do you start?
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  You know, it's just terrible. Me and my ex-husband had painted
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  the place without using drop sheets and you can imagine what
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  sort of a mess that made. But yeah, part of the A, A
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  program is they told me that every night you come home from
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  work and you do a, a bit towards making the house better, half an
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  hours worth. It might be that you clean out
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  one drawer or you get out and you do half an hours worth in
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  the garden. But you do that every night
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  without fail. And it it's six weeks, you can
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  see that someone had been trying to make things better.
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  But my word, it's six months. At six months, it was a huge
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  difference. And you know, I was eventually
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  able to get the house to the state where it could be sold and
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  I could move on. And you know, I use that
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  technique of a little bit. But every night without fail in
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  lots of areas, I went back and did some study and got some more
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  qualifications and which was a help in the career.
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  You have to rebuild your career from the, from the rubbish heap
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  you've turned it into. And yeah, but every night
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  without fail, that can change your life.
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  And it was the living skills that they taught me in here that
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  made such a difference in my life.
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  It's not just stopping drinking, although that's the starting
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  point. You can't do anything while
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  you're drinking. But it's, it's the turning the,
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  the life around that makes such a difference.
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  And these days I have a different life.
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  You know, I'm, I'm older now and I look like a little old lady.
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  And I don't think if you looked at me, you'd ever connect the
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  person that used to lie passed out on other people's lawns to
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  the person I am today. When I left my last job, I was a
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  valued member of of work, Someone who was reliable, who
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  did a good job, who always turned up on on time for their
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  shift and could be called upon an emergency to fill in for
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  another person who had gone sick at the last minute or something.
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  I've been able to have overseas holidays from the person who was
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  just a whisker off bankruptcy. That's a wonderful thing.
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  And but these days I have the, a, a program and the a, a people
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  in my life. And and you know, like I say, I
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  was the loneliest person on the planet when I first came in.
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  I didn't have a friend in the world.
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  And, and now everyone in the program is my friend because we
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  help each other, we're interested in each other and we
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  talk straight, talk to each other.
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  There's none of the small talk that that you tend to get in
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  polite situations. We're real with each other.
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  And it's a wonderful organization.
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  It's saved my life and I am so grateful and I am grateful to
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  the higher power too, that I discovered in these rooms.
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  Good heavens, if an alcoholic, you know, I used to think that I
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  ran the world. And if an Alcoholics running the
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  world, no wonder it's in the the bad shape it's in.
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  There had to be a power greater than myself in the world.
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  And a A has enabled me to find have a relationship with a power
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  greater than myself as well. So, yeah, for anyone who's got a
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  problem with alcohol or thinks they might, you know, I can't, I
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  can't fault a A Just give it your best shot for 30 days and
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  see how your life changes. And if at the end of 30 days you
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  think it's not worth it, go back to your old life.
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  What have you lost? So that's probably enough from
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  me. So thank you for the opportunity
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  to speak and I think I'll leave it there.
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  We have local meetings for the full week in the local area.
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  Monday's gala meeting at 8:00. Tuesday is Elizabeth E at 8:00,
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  Wednesday is Elizabeth E at 8:00, Thursday is 2 Wells at
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  8:00 and Friday is Salisbury at 8:00.
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  There's a meeting at Devon Park at 12:00 and on Sunday there's a
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  maintenance Salisbury at 7:00 and many of the meetings in the
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  area. For details of your local
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  meetings, please phone 1300 Double 22222.
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  And once again, if anyone you know is struggling with alcohol
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  issues, please call Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 Double 22222.
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  The website isaasa.org dot AU.