Recovery Journey - Park 3 of 3

By Terri Rimmer

I managed to stay sober almost seven years, my original sobriety date being Oct. 20, 1988, thanks in part I think because I moved in with my sober sister who made sure I went to meetings. 

I got a job, a sponsor, and connected with women in the program, a lot of whom included my sister's friends. It was a long time before the physical and mental craving for drinking went away.

But the first five years of my sobriety were miserable because although I worked some steps, I was still acting out in one of my addictions that I had struggled with while in treatment and I wasn't willing to give it up. This other addiction cost me just as much if not more as my drinking did. I still wouldn't let go of my rage or forgive my parents and I actually loved my anger and being in control. I still struggled with God and I was all about image. I did a lot of sponsor hopping and I thought that since I was popular at my home group that was all that mattered. I put so much stock into what so many recovery gurus thought that I made them my God and then when they failed me or were fallible I became rageful and lashed out at them and I would curse recovery. During and after sobriety I bounced lots of checks and owed lots of financial amends to landlords, family, and friends. I was in tons of debt. My 20s were a whirlwind of wrecking my life in sobriety with only working some of the steps in what one of my sponsors would call "stark raving sober."

Every sponsor that I had I learned something from, even the ones who turned out to be not so spiritual.

I remember what one friend of mine, Claudia in the program who had several years once told me about trying to help newcomers: "Some people don't want to get sober. Some people just want a bucket of chicken and a pack of Marlboros." Claudia also told me, when I used to ask why this or that happened in my childhood: "It doesn't matter why the jack ass is in the ditch, just get him out."

The women I tried to sponsor who were in treatment just wanted money from me or cigarettes. I did sponsor one woman for awhile but she never wanted to listen to me. Probably because we were close friends. And I really wasn't a great example at the time.    

One sponsor I had set me up on a blind date with a guy she knew in the program who had five years' sober who I wound up marrying after three years of dating. Michael was very religious and only saw the good in me but I couldn't handle his unconditional love so I treated him like crap. When we got ready to get married everyone in recovery, including my sponsor told us not to, but we were going to prove them wrong. There were all kinds of signs from God leading up to our wedding, the day of, and the day before our wedding but I chose to ignore them all. In the end, all we did was prove everyone right. We did have good times, spiritual times, incredible moments that I don't regret but it was also rocky and I was so full of rage. I was physically abusive to him a few times and verbally. He would clean up the house sometimes, then I would go into a rage and tear it up. Then beg him to forgive me. And he always would. I made amends to him a long time ago and asked God to forgive me but I am still working on forgiving myself.    

During my life I had over 75 jobs. After that you just quit counting. I was also a job hopper. I was either quitting or getting fired. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes not. I sabotaged so many things in my life, sometimes because I didn't think I deserved them, sometimes because I wanted my own way.    

Despite all my best efforts to destroy myself God kept showing Himself to me in so many ways. In doing the steps I remembered that I was hungover when I totaled my VW in 1987 and hit a Gran Torino full of people yet they were unharmed and I just had a concussion. In 1991, sober, I was driving back to work in the pouring rain and hit a telephone pole head on. It just rolled off the roof of my car, broke like chalk, and landed on the side of the road where I'd pulled over. All the emergency personnel came and I was told that all those poles had recently been replaced - except for the one I hit. It was rotted through and through. What were the odds?

Perhaps, one of the more glaring examples of what happened when I didn't work the steps even though I was successful again at another newspaper job was when I won a Florida Press Association Award at 25 with three years sober the first time and still got fired. I was baffled. But they fired me because I was making too many mistakes and had a bad attitude because I was caught up in my other addiction that I had been indulging in - even though I was sober.

Without income I had to move into a halfway house with three years sobriety but it was there that I worked closer with my sponsor and started meditating, going to more meetings, and got a connection with God. 

I have witnessed a lot of people relapsing and attended lots of funerals of people who relapsed and didn't make it as well as people who committed suicide sober. Many friends I knew who killed themselves had lots of sobriety, believe it or not.

I also attended memorial services of friends who were sober for years and who brought many spiritual gifts to our meetings and left behind many friends and helped many people.

In Jan. 1995 Michael, my husband,  got a transfer out of state as a commercial roofer and my world was upended. We were living in Florida at the time where we had lived for several years and I had no choice; I had to go with him. We would be living out of motels going from town to town for this arrangement and he made it sound so romantic. All our friends in recovery said don't do it but we didn't listen. My female friends in recovery said to be sure to go to meetings and stay in touch and I said I would. I wasn't worried about drinking because I had almost seven years and Michael had several years. We were tough.

I stopped going to meetings, stopped calling my sponsor or people in the program. Got a job, started isolating.

Five months later when we were visiting my mom and step dad and Michael was working from their town, I discovered he had been drinking for a few months when he came home late one night drunk. I was livid!

I had never seen him drunk. When he walked in he was a totally different person and I hated it.

A month later his company had a small 4th of July cookout and without even thinking I reached into the cooler and grabbed an alcoholic drink. 

It was that quick, that powerful, without one thought, one hesitation.

Nothing preceded it. I didn't think "I have almost seven years sober," nothing.   

Cunning, baffling, powerful.

And, just like that all those years of sobriety were gone.

Michael just looked at me like it was nothing.    

We were now drinking together. We were now in relapse mode together.  

I didn't drink any more after that but I didn't go to meetings either so I thought I had it under control.

But then when I wrote a bunch of checks on the account without Michael's permission in the fall and he confronted me and I begged him to forgive me I wound up going to a meeting that November and picked up a desire chip even though I hadn't been drinking.

That Thanksgiving we went to see my mom and step dad and my sister Cindy and some other relatives were there. Michael and I were secretly drinking and hiding it from everyone. The night before Thanksgiving we were all sitting around playing a board game and I lost my temper and lashed out at my sister's girlfriend. Everyone got upset except Michael. I didn't care.

Michael and I left and went to the liquor store. It was late and everything was closed on the way back so we just sat in my mom's driveway and drank and cursed at the family. I didn't drink much at all, and this is important.

I wound up going into the house, taking a shower and getting sick in the shower. I couldn't even keep a little down. Even though I didn't drink much, I couldn't keep it down. And I realized, it is true what they said in AA. The disease progresses without us. Even when we're not drinking, it's like we never stopped. I got violently ill and I barely drank anything. My body couldn't keep it down. I was bewildered. 

The next day, Thanksgiving my family wasn't speaking to me. I had ruined their Thanksgiving. I know my mom, step dad, my sister Cindy, and everyone heard me get sick in the shower. It was a small house. Dinner was eaten in silence.     

Then in December a horrible ice storm hit for two weeks and Michael and I were snowed in in a motel so he couldn't work. We were trapped inside and were fighting like cats and dogs constantly. All we could do when we were finally able to get out a little was go out to eat.

It was Dec. 8, 1995 and we went to a restaurant and had some drinks. On the way back the roads were bad and Michael was swerving and I was yelling at him to slow down. We started yelling at each other.

Nothing happened. We made it home safe.

There wasn't a big event.

But I looked in the mirror and I'll never forget the way I looked. It was horrific.

It was haunting.

And that was my last drink.

Since that time I moved to Texas in 1996, I've been a Guardian Ad Litem (child advocate), got divorced, worked the steps, and continue to on various addictions, participated in research studies, told my story at recovery groups, made amends to my family, received a Volunteers of America award, written for web sites, had numerous articles published online and in publications, had a daughter, got baptized, joined Southside Church of Christ, held the same job for seven years at one point, have done volunteer work a few times,  carried the message to the VOA with the church, and rescued animals.

I do know that God works miracles in my birth daughter McKenna's life, too. She had to depend on a feeding tube three times a day until the Christmas that she was 16. Then, she just started eating miraculously. Prior to that, when I got pregnant I had made the hard decision to place her for adoption because I couldn't take care of her, so I moved into The Gladney Center. All of the other birth moms got 5-10 adoptive parents to choose from, but I only got one because of my mental illness. I was devastated.

But it turned out to be a godsend because McKenna's adoptive parents were nurses. McKenna wound up being born with a health condition. Who better to take care of her? 

I got baptized at Southside Church of Christ June 23, 2019. I had been baptized twice before at other churches but didn't feel anything. 

I pray on my knees several times a day now and recently I got a sponsor in a recovery group for overeating and have been working the steps on my food addiction. 

I have done several inventories in the past on work, sex, money, jobs, but never addressed food until now.

I would like to thank everyone at Southside for welcoming me and for all the help they have given me; for making me feel at home.

And I thank Christ that I know Him now.              

Lastly, I'll never forget what my late friend Gene, who had several years sober, used to say in a meeting:

"There once was a man who was just going to have one more drink. Just one more. So he walked across the street to the bar. But on the way to the bar he got hit by a car and died. But he was just going to have one more drink. Just one more."