Today we have Sue. She is 54 years old from Stewartville, MN and she took her last drink of alcohol on May 9th, 2023.
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[02:36] Thoughts from Paul:
Paul shares that while visiting his parents in Colorado, he lost his wallet at a park. Thankfully, a high school friend's mom ended up being the one that found it. When he picked it up from her, she told him that her son is recently sober and gave Paul his phone number to reconnect.
Paul had recently tried to rejoin the fantasy football league he had previously been a part of and was denied re-entry. This brought up huge feelings of rejection reminiscent of his childhood. While on a retreat with his sober friend in Mexico, Paul found himself dwelling on the negative emotions when he caught himself looking at a beer a fellow diner was having. The thought that "one or two beers would make you feel better" came over him, but then he looked at his newly sober friend and reflected on the great talks of sobriety that they had shared, and the thoughts went away.
Reeling from this, Paul went outside, shook his head a few times and then was filled with a warm embrace by the universe knowing that his lost wallet put him in Mexico with his sober friend and everything ended up alright.
[07:36] Paul introduces Sue:
Sue is 54 years old and has two adult children and one granddaughter. She works as a housekeeper for a hospital at the Mayo Clinic and for fun she loves nature, animals, hikes, jet skiing, kayaking and birdwatching.
Sue's parents were both daily drinkers. Sue would sip her dads beer because she thought it was cool, but her first real drinking experience was when she stole some sloe gin from her parent's pantry at age 13 or 14.
In her teenage years she began to party a lot on the weekends. Sue was a shy girl, and drinking helped her open up and gave her the attention she craved. Her grades in school began to suffer because she was skipping a lot and Sue ended up unable to graduate.
Sue never thought her drinking was a problem even after getting in trouble for underage drinking. Her boyfriend was abusive, but due to her craving for love and attention, Sue kept going back to him. After a long breakup, he returned wanting to reunite, claiming he had changed. Soon Sue became pregnant, got married, quit drinking and focused on having a family.
Sue enjoyed being a mother. Her husband worked a lot, so she did a lot of the parenting on her own while working a full-time job. As the kids got older and were home less, Sue began to drink more. She tried to hide her drinking, but her kids began to notice. Sue and her husband were fighting a lot and eventually had a messy divorce in which her husband got custody, which was very hard on Sue.
Sue got remarried in 2015 and while she cut back a little, her husband started calling her out on how often she was drinking. This led to her hiding her drinking again and several hospitalizations over the next few years.
In 2017, after a hospitalization, Sue was able to get sober with the help of AA. She says complacency led to relapses. Her children had cut her off and there were multiple inpatient and outpatient attempts but nothing stuck until May 9th, 2023.
Sue says the difference this time is that she fully surrendered and is doing this for herself and not others. She checked herself Hazelden and dug into the work of loving herself again. She still stays active with that community and her AA group. Sue says her
spirituality comes from nature and her belief in prayer and hope. She has been able to reconnect with her children over the past year and has plans to become a peer recovery specialist.
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