This Shit is Hard! By Pam M.

First of all, being an active alcoholic is really fucking hard! We live a double life, at least I did. I drank for decades, starting as a young teen. At first it was great fun. I drank whenever I could get away with it on the weekends. Secret parties, sneaking around, meeting up with all our friends in parks, gravel pits, and when we were really lucky, someone’s parents would go away and leave an empty house for us to party in. We thought blacking out and throwing up was just part of the deal. It was sometimes really embarrassing, but everyone did it at some point so no big deal.
Then we all graduated from high school and went our separate ways. Soon we didn’t have to find someone to buy alcohol for us, we could buy it ourselves, whenever we wanted to. It wasn’t long before wanting to became a regular thing. But I also had to be a responsible adult. So I got a job. I went to college and then got a much better job. I bought a car. I did all the things responsible adults did. I got married, I had two kids. As the kids got older I did all the things parents were supposed to do. I went to the PTA, all the school functions, the girl scouts, the boy scouts, the swim meets, the basketball games. But my dirty little secret was that I drank heavily after all these respectable activities. I became two people, what I referred to as Pam One and Pam Two. Pam One did all the right things. Pam Two was a blackout drunk. I hated myself. In the mornings after showering to get ready for work I would look at Pam Two in the mirror and say outloud, “I hate you! You said you weren’t going to drink last night, but of course you did it again.” Then there were the feeble attempts at trying to hide my ever-increasing use. The grocery bag in the back of my closet that filled up with all the empty bottles and the sneaking to the recycling center to get rid of the evidence, but the empty bag just went into the closet again. I stayed on this merry-go-round for decades. I became a grandma and still I drank – even when I was caring for my grandchildren, something that now haunts me.
It finally got to the point where my family told me that either I get sober on my own, or they would have me committed. But I was in such heavy denial that I could not admit to being an alcoholic. Alcoholics were bums. They live under the bridge and drink out of paper bags. They didn’t have homes or cars or jobs like I did. Sure, I probably drank too much, but I was NOT an alcoholic! This shit is hard!
But to appease them, I agreed to go to rehab. I was/am agnostic so I didn’t want anything to do with traditional AA. After all, AA was a religious cult and there was just no way I was going to fall into that trap! Well, I soon found out that Medicare does not give a crap about alcoholics and would not pay for treatment. I also found out that decent treatment was very very expensive. My son found a place for me that charged $5,000 for a month. They were careful to say they were not a formal rehabilitation place, but a retreat that provided recovery services. So off I went. There was a lot of God stuff there, but also a lot of good stuff. While I was there, my sister died of early-onset dementia. I was scheduled to leave for a day to go to see her before she died, but a very caring staff member woke me in the middle of the night to tell me it was too late, she was gone. This shit is hard! I decided not to leave because by that time I realized that I absolutely had to get sober. A wonderful young woman, a fellow resident there, told me that there was such a thing as Secular Sobriety and introduced me to my first sponsor, who is an atheist. This same young woman, whom I had stayed in touch with after rehab, later died of alcohol poisoning. This shit is so fucking hard!!!

Unfortunately, I was not able to stay sober after treatment and I relapsed many times. I found Sober She Devils and felt the most hope I ever had in my life, but even after joining I relapsed several times. Finally, on November 28th, 2023 my son had the guts to say to me, “Mom, trying to talk to you is like talking to someone with dementia. You are going to die, or you are going to kill someone else if you don’t get sober.” This shit is hard, but I have not touched a single drop of alcohol since that day.
So, basically, that is my story. There’s a ton of ugly shit I haven’t mentioned, including a rape and domestic violence, but that’s for future shares. Part Two of my presentation today is The Program.
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable. That one was really hard for me. I wasn’t about to admit I was powerless. I was a powerful woman!! I had done lots of difficult things in my life, blah blah blah. OK, the truth is that I was definitely powerless over alcohol and my life was absolutely unmanageable. This shit is hard!
Step Two: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I was supposed to pick a power greater than myself. Nope.
Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Double nope!
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. This one made me want to vomit, but I did it. Oh my god, this shit is hard!
Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. When I did this step for the second time, I had a new sponsor, an extraordinary She Devil. She made this much easier for me than the first time around, but still, this shit is hard!
Steps Six and Seven: We basically skipped over these steps, but went more with the Jeffrey Munn version. Way too much God here.
Step Eight: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Man this shit is hard!
Step Nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. I put this one off for months. I finally made amends to my children within the last month or so. I wrote out what I needed to say to them and I practiced it to myself a couple of times, but I couldn’t do it without crying. I absolutely bawled through it both times when I did it in person. This shit is hard, but it changed all our lives. They cried with me. They forgave me.
Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. This is where I am today.
There are currently a lot of very hard things going on in my life. I recently lost my mother and now my sister, who I am very close to, is going through cancer for the second time and I am petrified of losing her. But you know what? Two years ago I would have drank heavily over all the hard things. But now I’m allowing myself to feel, to grieve, and to be present for all my loved ones. I would just like to tell you that you lovely women are my higher power. The fellowship of like-minded women has been and continues to be life-changing for me. So thank you. This shit is hard, but we can do hard things!!