We have made these pages available to members of the recovery community who wish to share their experience, strength, and hope with others.

Sue Ann's Story

I used to think that March 26, 1975, was the day that I died. Sitting in a stranger's car, looking at the coroner and trying to read his lips, I knew she was gone.

Today, at 32 years old instead of 9, I know that day wasn't my burial.

My father had placed me in the car to avoid my hearing all of the nasty details of suicide, to protect me. The fact that everyone missed was that I found the body. I looked into my mother's lifeless hazel eyes and tried to wake her. The damage inflicted on us that day by one selfish act devastated an entire family. Dolly had finally escaped the pain of grief, of a broken marriage, of loss, of looming divorce. She wielded a weapon against herself that would put her to a peaceful sleep, never to awake again.

Today, at 32 years old instead of 9, I know that day wasn't my burial. It was the birth of the alcoholic I became. Make no mistake about it. Look into the eyes of your friendly neighborhood drunk and stare at a survivor of nuclear emotional damage. Then, when he is finally sober, you will be most privileged to see a wholesale miracle in progress.

Whether the damage was self-inflicted or not, ardent work in a 12-step program produces a twinkling miracle constantly changing and growing to finally become a servant of God. We are the foot soldiers in God's army, drenched in the blood and gore of tears and self-destruction.

Reaching Bottom

"Hi, my name is Sue Ann, and I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict." I sputtered those words out after coming home from hell on earth. I was 19 years old then, and I had just returned home from my attempt at suicide.

I threatened my father and he asked me to leave the home he was trying so hard to re-build.

I quit college and hitchhiked across country trying to recreate A Walk Across America without being an author or even an adult. I was a kid raised in an upper middle class neighborhood surrounded by corn fields in the heart of Pennsylvania. When I finally reached bottom, I was living in the basement of a crack house in South Detroit as the resident entertainment. I came home to my family in clothes that weren't fit for the Salvation Army's scrap heap.

Only home for a few days, and defiant in my utter rebellion, I threatened my father and he asked me to leave the home he was trying so hard to re-build. After years of both of us raging, he finally had enough. I was faced with the imminent return to the street.

Fortunately, for this drunk, there were rehabs in the 1980's by the thousands. We jokingly referred to them as "three hots and a cot." I asked my step-mother to take me there. God love that woman. She told me something that still rings in my ears today.

To Be Whole Again

She turned to me, the woman whom I could no longer look in the eye, and said, "Sue Ann, I want to see all of you return. What I see right now is only half of you. I want you to be whole again." I remember thinking that was the nicest thing anybody had ever said to me. Half of me had died in that garage in 1975.

Rehab taught me that a 12-step program is not a place for wimps.

I was in the rehab for 30 days, in a half-way house for about 6 months, and in another rehab for 2 more months. I had found a hotel where all I had to do was go to classes every day on how to belch up your worst nightmares and beat up chairs with telephone books.

"Hot seat" therapy was very popular back then, and I became used to being defensive and alert while being pummeled with my own fears. I was taught to kick in the survival instinct that had kept me alive on the streets. Rehab taught me that a 12-step program is not a place for wimps.

Life continued on and I remained dry. I wouldn't call my early days sober ones because I had missed the very essence of a 12-step program... the 12 steps! I was busy spitting back quotations and smoking cigarette after cigarette. Of course, falling in lust at the coffee pot kept me dreaming the majority of my waking hours and meetings in church basements became a new version of a singles' club.

Coming Full Circle?

I met and married my husband although both of us were insane. Having a child together has a funny way of creating immediate marital bliss. I worked the steps (or they worked me); I sponsored other people to find a God of their understanding; I learned about the traditions and service work by jumping in head first.

"Katie, Mommy will never, ever do to you what was done to her. I will find a way."

For the next 11 years my husband and I clung to each other like two people lost at sea. Little bit by little bit we forgot where we came from. As the material possessions and financial recovery set in, we stopped going to meetings except for once a year to congratulate our egos on a job well done. We now had a mortgage, 2 kids and a mangy dog. We were finally "normal."

In February of this year, 1998, I finally realized I had come full circle. I stood in my garage one fine day and looked at my dark purple Buick. I wondered what it would be like to go to a permanent sleep. Then, with all the courage I could muster, I said, "No." No, I can't do that to my kids. No, I could not negate the work God and I had done so ardently, together. The nights of sobbing and the days of struggling eventually helped me to see that I wanted life more than ever before. It was up to me to survive -- for me, with me, in me and through me.

I am currently on the roller coaster that is known as divorce. I am keeping a promise I made to a 2 year old little girl in a Japanese water garden in Fort Worth, Texas. I told her, "Katie, Mommy will never, ever do to you what was done to her. I will find a way."

By the grace of a loving, tender God who brought me from the streets of hell, I will.

Sue Ann

Personal Stories
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