“…we could predict [even] the doubter…would presently love God and call Him by name.”
– “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions“, Step Twelve, reprinted by permission (AAWS) –

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Sarah’s Story

How this atheist found “the key” to life …

It was about 3 a.m.  I shuddered at the idea of another day of “hell”…slogging through the day. Another miserable day. I was slumped on the floor in front of my living room sofa where I had passed out a couple of hours ago. My hands were shaking and my insides felt like I was riding in an elevator. Awakening in the middle of the night and having the shakes, knowing a drink would still them yet not daring to take one for fear of getting caught with beer in hand at such a strange hour, had become commonplace. Thirty-two, and here I was – one of those people said to be full of talent, promise and potential – drinking myself to death and just wanting “it all” to end. What was I going to do?? How had I come to be trapped in this nightmarish existence?

Even as a child I observed and “analyzed” people. I observed them…watched them, their expressions, their unmistakable comfort or lack thereof, with one another. In hindsight, I can say in all those years of attempting to analyze people’s contentedness and comfort with each other, I’d never been able to find “the key.”  In grade school, the thought was, how do they enjoy each other on the playground?  As an adult, the thought was supplanted with, how is it that everyone energetically glides so confidently through the day while I limp through that same day with an indefinable and paralyzing uncertainty? How did they co-exist — even work well together — in spite of disagreements and deadlines and such? I was a worn out, frustrated, often angry, bundle of nerves by afternoon nearly every day of the work week at my “cushy” office job, and I’d begun to feel like office work was a contact sport. I could scarcely wait to get to the bar or the liquor store to gulp down some “liquid sanity,” which was now a daily occurrence. Then that one or two drinks would become eight, ten or twelve cans of beer or a pint –- even a fifth –- and I would pour myself into my car, weave my way home via the back roads, stagger into the house and pass out on the sofa. How had this dread-the-day-drink-for-relief-from-the-day cycle ever begun? What was wrong with me?

My parents were typical “Greatest Generation” folk…my movie-star-beautiful mom stayed home with us six children, and my dad was an excellent provider.  Physically we wanted for nothing. We lived in nice houses, drove nice cars, went on nice vacations, were members of exclusive country clubs where dad golfed and the rest of us lazed around the Olympic-sized pool.  Yet all that time, I felt empty, numb, blank. I was haunted by nightmares and night terrors. I lacked the desire to do or to learn things, and I was most comfortable alone, in the back yard. Yet even when I was alone I was tormented by what I can best describe as a sense of being buried alive; of life going on around me through eternity and infinity without my being able to participate. Heavy, huh?? !! Those thoughts began when I was about four, and lasted for years. They were intense and frequent and frightening and I spoke to no one about them. Launching into the activity of grade school diminished the “haunting” thoughts, and eventually they ceased…or took another form, as I would later discover.

Life to me seemed to be endless, empty chunks of time which that included shuffling to school, being herded through the day, then walking the two blocks home (alone if possible) so I could “retreat” to either my bedroom or the back yard. I was afraid of academic and social failure from the day I walked into the kindergarten classroom, and any “unknowns” were so unnerving that I often stayed home for days –- sometimes weeks –- at a time.  School staff were concerned for my well-being. “This child is bright and athletic, yet she misses days, even weeks, of school at a time. Is she ill?”

People considered me “shy,” but I was afraid. I was afraid of failure, success, newness, of my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Why this fear, or what I would now call angst, engulfed me, I couldn’t have named or even described, but it was palpable.  I seemed to be performing rather than interacting. Did anybody else think or feel that way??  The thought of being “abnormal” plagued me, and analysis and observation took on the hope that if I could imitate others, sooner or later I would feel like they looked.

Despite the fear and angst that raged within, it seems I possessed intellectual and athletic abilities. I blindly, blankly followed the crowd, and in so doing, garnered musical, athletic and academic honors all through elementary, junior high and high school. I seemed to possess abilities I knew nothing of, as if they were someone else’s.  Teachers encouraged me and peers took notice!  I became the popular, cheerleader type, and I had “friends.” Thus began my efforts to employ these new-found “tools” in hopes of feeling what other people experienced: normalcy!! These, I thought, are what made up the “key” to what everyone else had…

Not so for me, for the angst  lingered.  Though fleeting, that was about to change…

One October evening, at just shy of 15, I went for a ride in a car with a friend who had a friends who had their driver’s licenses. Hanging out with older teenagers, cruising around in a car, those were considered status symbols. We cruised our neighborhood for a while, and there I was, now sorry I was stuck in a car trying to be somebody with two complete strangers and my “friend.” Then somebody produced a bottle of something I recognized as liquor. Oh, no!! Now what?? I was terrified of alcohol.  When I was about seven years old my mom allowed me a sip of  something I thought tasted like floor wax stripper (vodka, I suspect) that had caused me to “swear off booze” forever.  She told me that stuff kills people and to not mess with it when I got older. I was terrified, and the taste was dreadful. She was right. Now, in that car, trying to be cool, I internally trembled at taking that drink. Be cool or die from that stuff you swore off of seven years prior????  That teenage need to fit in trumped all else. I took the drink. Anticipating a dreadful taste, I managed to throw the stuff past my taste buds and down my throat without choking. All I initially felt were the frightening and awkward sensations of dizziness and a thick tongue. Then it happened…immediately following came a feeling so foreign to me that I could scarcely describe it: I was instantly okay!! I was calm, comfortable (even in the unfamiliar situation in which I found myself!); never better. I had begun to feel what I have heard people describe as feeling “ten feet tall and bulletproof,” and I knew this was a sensation I must experience again . . .

I pursued that elusive, instantly-okay, never-better, ten-feet-tall-and-bulletproof feeling every chance I got for the next eighteen years. My mom must have had it all wrong.  The comfort alcohol brought, albeit temporary, was the key.  Now I felt like everybody else looked. Alcohol did for me what I could never do for myself…for the first time, the angst was gone, the emptiness in my psyche was filled…the hole in my gut, mended.

Along with “ten feet tall and bulletproof” came a problem. For some reason, I could not control how much I drank. I would reach for that two-drink buzz, and I would find myself drunk.  With the drunkenness came finding myself in frightening and volatile situations: drinking so much that I would vomit and nearly pass out; being stranded overnight in the homes of complete strangers; getting lost in the middle of nowhere with the gas gauge nearly on empty. I tried a variety of “adjustments” such as beer instead of hard stuff, weekends only, waiting until evening, hanging out with more moderate drinkers, etc., etc., but none of them worked. My need for relief was paramount to steering clear of those dreadful situations in which I often found myself, and I continued drinking.  As far as “dealing with” those issues — I learned to not mix beer and hard stuff, and my body soon became able to tolerate large quantities of booze. I tried to avoid the people involved in the humiliating incidents and “tune out” all related thoughts as best I could when sober, and of course I forgot about them when drunk.

I became preoccupied with how much booze was available, how much others drank in relation to my consumption, and how, where and when I could get that next drink. I went through a phase where I would convince my mom to give me money for clothes and toiletries, then shoplift the stuff and use the money to buy alcohol. The shoplifting lasted until I got arrested and “perp-walked” through the local mall. That incident caused me to have to enlarge my circle of so-called friends to include people old enough to buy the booze. I could “drink you under the table and drive you home”! I out-drank almost everybody -– I would say about two to one — and that was with great self-restraint so I didn’t “look” so out of control. How I looked was always very important to me, and the appearance of being out of control was unthinkable.

Despite my alarming drinking habits, I graduated high school magna cum laude. I found others who did the same and as best as I was able, befriended them. Then a new and alarming set of characteristics, not just the drinking, showed up. I always seemed to be just “along for the ride.”  I had absolutely no idea what was next in life.  I was still on stage with no script…I wasn’t even sure I was in the right theater. Now it was time to grow up, and I was lost. My acquaintances and so-called “friends” were going to college or knew what they were doing job- or career-wise; I had no idea what I was doing even the next day. I was simply ambling, seemingly blindfolded, through life. And the drinking. . .

The next few years were spent in a blur of jobs – mostly “blue collar” — and drinking illegally (18 in a 21 state). The only goal I had for myself at this time was to survive to the legal drinking age so I wouldn’t risk getting arrested nearly every night! Yet back of the emptiness there lay an indefinable longing for “something” –-  everything always seemed unsettled and incomplete. Always. Why am I here?

At the urging of family members and the desire to some day “have a career,” at age 20, I entered a Christian liberal arts college to study Elementary Education. I lasted about nine weeks. I had yet to meet any drinkers on campus, and I had no interest in meeting anyone via their floor-by-floor bible studies in the dorm. Weekly “convocation” was a nightmare…I couldn’t get out of the “sanctuary” soon enough. Who is this “God” everybody talks about that never seems to be anywhere but in story books, Sunday school lessons and sermons? In a panic for emotional relief from the new and oh-so awkward surroundings, I once slipped out of the dorm at about 11 p.m. and began walking down the middle of a state highway in icy rain. I was headed for a friend’s house where I was sure I could get a drink. A passerby picked me up about two miles into my ten-mile trek. She dropped me off, my “booze supplier” was in bed and I never got a drink. He just got up out of bed and drove me back to the dorm. I left college later that morning and began to consider suicide. My parents had grown concerned by this time.

Two years later I met the man I would marry. He seemed perfect! He was gentle and easy to get along with. He was handsome, athletic, educated, his family was kind and conservative, he did not smoke (I did) or drink excessively (I did) — he was so stable (I was not). Perhaps some of his stability would ‘‘rub off” on me, I hoped. His stability would prove to be what kept some shred of sanity in our household in the years to come. We socialized with his friends (I had none!), most of whom had a reasonable degree of social status -– business owners, teachers, semi-professional and former professional athletes (I called them “the beautiful people”) — and I loved it!! There were several heavy drinkers, so I didn’t stand out too much. If I could hang out with these people, maybe I’d look okay. I actually did look okay, but I still didn’t feel okay. I remained the consummate phony.  I was alone even in a crowd, and I could not figure out everyone else’s “secret”. My outsides seemed to say “winner” but my insides screamed “loser.” The inconsistency, a constant thread in my mind, nearly drove me crazy, and that required a drink.  Then came the inevitable drunk.

The next several years were, once again, a “blur” — this time a blur of white-collar jobs. A year after the college fiasco, I enrolled in a clerical technical school. I thought office work rather than a factory job would help me “feel better” about myself. Briefly it did. I  graduated summa cum laude from secretarial school.  Having done so and looking soooo good on the outside, I was asked to speak at the next year’s class commencement ceremony. I had to turn it down…I knew I would not be able to stay sober while delivering a commencement speech. The schoolmaster was given some excuse.  The early years of my marriage and the perceived status of working in an office kept me from drifting toward the suicidal thoughts I had entertained years before.

Our son was born when my husband and I were in our mid-twenties. I was certain the wonder and nurturing of a child would curb the drinking. Not so, for just two weeks hence found me drunk, having consumed an entire pint of Southern Comfort.  Our beautiful young son was relegated most nights to baby formula because his mother was too full of alcohol to feed him naturally. Amazingly, though with much difficulty, I’d managed during my pregnancy to fend off most of the incessant urges to drink, but apparently those days were over. I was sure I’d get a handle on this drinking thing “if ‘things’ got bad enough, long enough. ”

My first office job was as an executive secretary to my  clerical school’s math instructor.  We were certain I’d do well. I quit within four months. The challenges put before me —  planning trips, managing itineraries, organizing dealer meetings, managing the office supply closet — were out of my league.

My second office job was more my style. This one showcased my abilities. I found lots of drinking buddies. Then came a general manager who played by the book. I was laid off from this job as the indirect result of being unable to tolerate the boss’s intolerance of my tardiness and poor attitude, and I thought he was crazy.  I took pride in the fact that I had been laid off, not fired, after 5 1/2 years of employment.

It was now becoming obvious that I was a “problem drinker.”  My husband and my co-workers already knew.

At age 28, I was so tired of getting drunk –- often seemingly against my own will — that I decided to quit drinking altogether. My “escapades” were beginning to frighten me, and they were straining the marriage. I feared for my health.  I had every confidence that my desire, along with years of experience with the humiliation of out-of-control drinking, would be sufficient for keeping me sober. I had previously been afraid to talk about my drinking, but now I was so sure I had “what it takes” to quit that I actually admitted my problem to a family member and announced to my husband that I was done drinking…

Within five days I was back at the liquor store.  I was drunk.  I renewed my resolve and tried again….drunk again…tried again…drunk again.

I wanted two things in life:  To never drink again, and to feel like other people looked — normal. I began reading self-help books and attending seminars and psychology-based workshops to find some peace of mind, and to be content and sober at the same time. I was excited about gaining more awareness about myself and others, but I dimly sensed most of the techniques would not work or I would be too afraid to try them once I learned them. Between my analytical mind and these seminars, I had determined anger was a big problem for me, and if I could find out how to keep from being so angry I could stay sober. I got drunk as soon as I left the anger management workshop at the working women’s seminar!

Then I landed what I thought was the “job of jobs” — a middle-management position where I answered to few, worked with few and had no one to directly supervise. I was to receive my “dream salary, the amount I considered the I-have-arrived-salary, including the paid-vacation-and-paid-sick-day-non-hourly-status-symbol perks, and I was sure this would be my much-needed emotional pick-me-up.

I was drunk within three weeks.

As was the norm, I began drinking frequently with these co-workers. At least I fit in that way. For a couple of years my supervisors were impressed with my work and my rapport with clients.  Our clients loved me!  I received job offers from several of them…what an honor. Honor?  Do they know what a joke I am? What a phony I am? Do I even know??

Thirty years of age…I worked and drank most of the time. Though difficult, I faithfully attended my son’s school functions and little league ball games. Attending sober gave way to attending with a few drinks in me. Eventually I went to a few functions drunk. My husband traveled frequently during spring and summer, and over the years I had alternately gone and not gone with him in attempts to drink more or drink less or hide out –-  whichever seemed necessary to find some peace of mind. My marriage was unraveling. I was drinking to live now, not living to drink. My once-sharp mind had dulled to the point that I could not even recall how to make photocopies. One evening during a huge new-product promotion – everyone was under pressure and working 50, 60, even 80 hours per week – I went blank and could not make copies.  My former pal and drinking buddy came up to me at the copy machine and said, “You ______ idiot!” “She’s right”, I thought. Until recently I would have tried to  get her fired for her comment, but now I had no “fight” left in me. Virtually paralyzed by my increasing mental fog, I silently agreed.

My back began to ache because of what I later learned were over-burdened kidneys, and I was unable to eat much. I needed the limited space for alcohol within in my near-anorexic body. Each day was a decision as to whether to eat or drink -– when and how much -– in order to drink enough to chase away the mess in my mind without collapsing. If I could just take myself out without getting “caught” and “rescued.” But even in that state of desperation I was afraid I would look ugly if disfigured from running my car into a tree or look crazy if a pill overdose were thwarted and I ended up across the desk from a psychiatrist. He might think I was crazy.

The unthinkable was now the inevitable. I was unable to control my drinking, and my life’s actions were dictated by my need for alcohol. I could no longer hide the obvious decline of my body and mind under a superficially “successful” life. I had given up even the thought of trying to stay sober despite knowing I would likely die within a few years from an alcohol-related trauma or illness.

All I had sought to do that I thought would make me feel okay and “a part of…” had failed. Over the years I’d had limited and unconvincing exposures to religion (including an intense dream/vision that prompted me to try to read and understand a Bible -– I gave up after a few days –- it was like a foreign language to me) that gave way to cynicism and atheism. I had tried success and vicarious success; I had tried education, psychology, workshops, seminars; I had tried to be an imitator of others’ actions. I had guilt and remorse for things I had and had not done. I had an emptiness inside of me that was inescapable and unbearable. I wanted to end my life. I seemed to have come into this world lonely and without a clue and it appeared I was going to leave in the same condition.

Here I was –- 3 a.m. –- on the living room floor. I could not go on, and I knew it. Life as I knew it was over. I threw myself into the corner of our sectional sofa and cried, “Help me…” through the sobs of pain and grief that were now racking my shaking body. I cannot remember if I slept well or fitfully after that, but I awoke and called the office. I let them know I was not coming in…I may never be back. This statement of course caused great concern and my co-worker asked me if I was alright. No, I was not alright. When was I planning on returning? Maybe never. I was definitely not okay and may never be okay; I was going to get some kind of help. This exchange precipitated a series of calls, one of which was from my supervisor (one of my drinking buddies). Same questions; same answers. For once I was consistent in my feelings and in my answers and in what I knew to be true about myself. I did not know what to do.  I phoned the family member to whom I had admitted my drinking problem years before, and she suggested a substance abuse treatment center. I called.  With mention of the “s” word (suicide), an interview appointment was made for that very day.  In a twist of irony, I noticed one of my former co-workers was the receptionist. She was not surprised to see me. I once shouted four-letter words down to her from my elegant second-floor office because I thought she did not know how to properly screen phone calls.  She often “smelled” me when I somehow gracefully strode, dead drunk at midday, up and down the steps and past her desk.  I blamed the “essence of vodka” odor on visiting clients and marine dealers.  At my assessment I was deemed a “dual-diagnosis patient” (alcoholic and crazy), and it was determined that I needed “intensive in-patient treatment.”

Several days later I checked myself in to the very clean, modern, well-staffed facility for the recommended in-patient treatment. After medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations, several staff members commented about my mental keenness and bodily health despite an 18-year “drinking career.” A few of the staff saw past that keenness to the anger and confusion.  True to character, I was uncomfortable and felt like the outsider looking in. I was terrified of my roommate.  My desperation, however, to find out how to live without needing to drink, compelled me to remain for the duration of the recommended treatment. My stay was also a welcomed and much-needed respite from the pressure of my job.

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were a part of my treatment plan. I was given a copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous basic text (the “Big Book”) to read, and attended in-house or community AA meetings every day. I was terrified to speak up most of the time and wanted desperately to say something “profound” but that is about all I remember of those meetings. As I began reading the Big Book, I grew uneasy upon realizing what the book’s authors were referring to as the key concept required for recovery from alcoholism…

God as you understand God. Faith in and dependence on God as you understand God. How does one do that when one does not believe in A/THE SUPREME BEING?? I had heard people talk about (a) God all my life. My mother was profoundly interested in the Old Testament of the Christian Canon and read bible stories to me when I was a child. We went to church as a family off and on over the years. I went to Vacation Bible School when I was ten and recall being enthusiastic while I was there. I vaguely recall having been baptized. I had no idea what I was doing or what “baptism” meant, but I did it . Apparently I had made a commitment to HIM AND HIS SON. But there was absolutely no connection in my mind between those “events” and the reality of my life. There was not now, nor had there ever been, as far as I was concerned, anything that could prove “HIS” existence. My attitude hardened as I grew older, and I used to shout at and argue frequently with my mother about the non-existence of a Supreme Being. How could I end up in this mess if “HE” were real? I was pretty sure I could prove HE was not real based on my life’s experience. . .

I remember being relieved to be at that treatment facility until about Day 10; then  came the panic of the realization of an undone life , one destroyed by uncontrollable drinking.  True to character, the panic began superficially, about all the undone office work and all the mistakes I likely have made those last few weeks when I could not function. My head was spinning. Then came crushing guilt….I was awakening to guilt for the damage I had done to my family, the people I had hurt and left in the “wake” of my run-away lifestyle, the messes I had left at work for other people to clean up. And this God thing.  I was in big trouble and I knew it.

I know I am going to drink myself to death and there is nothing I can do about it. The only solution left for me is to become willing to believe in a Higher Power (God as I understand God) that I have all my life disregarded, denied and eventually denounced. What am I going to do?

As I lay in bed in the middle of Night 10 at the treatment facility, I said, “God, if you’re real please show yourself to me ‘cause I’m in a lot of trouble, and if you’re not real I’m in a whole lot of trouble.  I’m dead.” I suddenly experienced a warm sensation I cannot describe, but I sensed this was the presence of The One whose existence I had previously refused to acknowledge. I slept peacefully for the first time in months, if not years.

I was on an ecstatic “cloud” for a few days (oh, how I wanted to hang on to that feeling of “everything’s gonna be okay”!!) and then, little by little, I began to feel the same way I always had. I was uncomfortable around people and felt like I was living one big charade, and all the stuff I was learning here in the treatment center did not seem to make any difference. It seemed too much like what I had tried in years past. But I did feel some hope with the AA information.

I left the treatment center dutifully determined to attend the recommended 90 AA meetings in 90 days and find a sponsor who could show me how to do what was in that “Big Book.” I was excited, although insecure and nervous, to attend the AA meetings and find a sponsor. I began to hear “just don’t drink one day at a time” and thinking, “man, I can’t possibly do that.” That don’t-drink-one-day-at-a-time concept brought back the dreaded, suffocating feeling of being buried alive that I’d had as a child; the sense of being completely immobilized while life goes on around me; and the sense of perpetual slogging numbly and purposelessly through each dull day. It just sounded so hopeless. And impossible for me.

The more meetings I attended the more my fear of drinking increased. There was a liquor store I used to have to pass by to get to one of my usual meetings, and each time I drove past that store the thought of getting drunk again crossed my mind only slightly. After about 80 of my prescribed 90 meetings in 90 days and 80 one-day(s)-at-a-time, I felt as if a magnet were drawing me toward that liquor store. That insidious feeling of being utterly unable to keep away from booze – that I had any control whatsoever over when and how much I would consume – was creeping back into my psyche.

I was going to drink again, and there was nothing I could do to change that outcome.

The suggestion was made at the treatment facility that I find a sponsor at one of the local AA meetings I was to attend in this 90-day period, so I began watching and listening intently for someone who could show me what to do.

… more to be added …

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