Sober 15 years as of September 1978, Margaret has a wonderful South Carolina accent. She has never been short-changed in AA.
Her father died in DTs when she was 10 years old but she did not know how he died until she was a year sober. Her mother told her to hold up her head and smile. They never shared their feelings.
She ran away from home after high school and at 17 married a drinker. With her mother's help they went to college and had three babies and lived in an alcoholic marriage that end quickly. Divorced, she read everything about alcoholism but not to get informed but to get disgusted.
She was a school teacher but not a mother to her three children. She chose to party instead. All her dreams were material.
She married a man who could provide for her and had two more children. Nothing gave her fulfillment - nothing worked but a drink. It was important no one knew that about her.
When her 2nd husband was told she was alcoholic, he divorced her and "left me to die." In treatment she got exposed to AA and hated them at first. She hated everything in life but booze and cigarettes. Her mother died in 1976 and she drank for oblivion around the clock.
Her daughter found her near death and called the ambulance but on opening the back at the hospital she bolted out down the street "bare ass". The courts deemed her an unfit mother and took her children away from her.
Today she can laugh at and tell openly a story she never wanted anyone to know before AA.
(41 min) (14.2 MB) (id#847)