Overcoming Inebriety

00:02 Hi, I'm Sophia Gilbreath I am 23 years old. Today is November 29th and I am speaking with Izzy Gilbreath who is my sister. And we're recording at home. Don't look at me like that. Anyways, yeah, I tried to probably like start this. Today we'll be talking about aa, which is Alcoholics Anonymous, and kind of how the meetings and stuff would go. So I guess I can ask you what led you to aa?

00:46 Hi, Izzy, fellow alcoholic and grateful member of aa. I would say I was going down a path of addiction and sought to get some help for myself. And I got referred to go to lay. Found some meetings online and stuff. And I went and it was a birthday meeting. So you got your chip and stuff. And so it was really enticing to see like the growth that you can have within the program just within like a month of it.

01:26 How long were you in aa?

01:29 I would say about two years.

01:33 Wow, okay. So can you kind of give me an idea of what it was like at a meeting, what happens?

01:45 Sure. So usually, you know, meetings from where started at about 6:00. So I would go in and get there a little bit early. They'd pass around like laminated papers saying like one would be how it works, the 12 Traditions or the 12 Steps. And so everyone would sit down and there'd be a host of the terminia fellow person who is getting sober, gets to run the meetings after six months of sobriety. And she where he would choose a topic of the day that they felt that was the most influence to them that day. Or you know, get to choose out of the big book or different novels that are presented to you. They'll give the rundown. They sell books and stuff like that and like different laws that they rules that they host during there. And each member who was past the sheet would get to read it. And we just go down for about an hour and then after about 15 minutes of reading through the papers and stuff, we'd start the meeting and they'd go over what topic it is. And then around the room you would like get if you wanted to speak on that topic that you could.

03:11 So how often is it recommended to attend these meetings?

03:18 As much as that you feel like you want to go. There's no limitations. You know, they. You can easily find like a meeting an hour everywhere you go, know, determining the areas, you know, they want to make it to be super available to those. Like no matter what time and stuff it is, you know, for a sponsor in the beginning they'll tell you to go to a meeting, you know, as soon as you can. Like, you know, if you get really busy with life and stuff, not to forget to go to a meeting and stuff like that, because, you know, being able to work through that and get through meeting, you have the life that you have after. And yeah, they recommend, even if you feel good, go to a meeting because that's the best time to go to one.

04:06 So would you say that it's beneficial for someone that's been sober for a long time to still go to these meetings?

04:13 I would say so. Because even, you know, after all that while, once you even get through and live life on life's terms, you still get a little bit, you know, that loneliness that can come in and you. There's always a room. No matter where you're at in what city, there are always going to be people who understand what you're going through. So there's always that, like, comfortability of, like, you're not alone out there.

04:36 I think that's great. You know, I think it's good to have the support of people who know.

04:42 What you're going through. Right.

04:43 Even if not exactly. So I guess that kind of can lead into the sense of community within aa. How do you think it can contribute to your recovery or someone else's recovery?

05:00 I think you know pretty well because it's like a lot of what these meetings are for is for you to better your own self, get you set a path on where you want to go, and they're the people who are going to support you and, like, you want to give you advice and, you know, like, no matter how far they are into their sobriety or the age they are, like, we've all been through the same thing. Like, the same exact thing. And, you know, they'll host events for you to go to, bonfires, different events that you can go to and stuff. To be more enticed into a community, you know, felt like a little family that you can be open and honest with.

05:43 Okay. Yeah. Okay. So trying to think, answered that. Okay, so I guess I'm. I'm curious. You know, obviously, like, doing this interview, it's different. But I know that being anonymous is important in any way. I mean, I know that you get to know the people in there, but is I'm curious why, like, to be.

06:21 Anonymous, you know, two, it's a big, kind of a big stigma. You know, somebody hears that, they instantly want to start gossiping or this and that. And it's just, you know, that's why we have our 12 traditions which specifically go over our anonymous and why we choose to. You know, it's just be able to for somebody to rebuild their image that, you know, alcohol could have had destroyed their life. They don't want to just be known for that, especially if they're on a path of recovery, you know, and you know, this group doesn't ask for any outside money or funding from anything. It's just all like fully self sussified. And so it's just kind of give people another shot at life not to be labeled by that.

07:20 I think it's awesome. I think that, you know, especially around things like you said that there's such a stigma around it that I think it makes sense for there to have.

07:32 That because I think it makes people feel comfortable.

07:36 So I know we talked, we haven't talked about it, but I know outside of this we've Talked about the 12 steps, but can you tell me like in your words, like what you think those or what those 12 steps are? I mean.

07:49 Yeah, you know, the first one being that you admitted that you, your life is unmanageable and that you have a drinking problem. When you come to terms to being able to accept that, you know, and that's the first step I would say is like accepting, you know, what you're doing. You know, the second one would be you seek out the truth of a higher power that could, you know, promise you to a better mindset. And you know, the third would be to surrender, you know, starting to understand more and more what you've done in your life and to right those wrongs. So just do a moral inventory of yourself and you know, doing the works with your sponsoring you, going really into depth of like who you are as a person. Fifth step, being able to be open about that. You do some soul searching with a fellow person that you trust and you let out about everything, all the wrongs and what you did in your life while drinking and throughout your six would be searching and after doing the fifth step, realizing the character defects that you had and that you carried on through your life of sobriety from the life of drinking. Seven is being able to.

09:24 Sorry, take your time. I know it's a lot.

09:31 Yeah, you know, for this one, it's a lot more that's starting to go into a lot of spiritual work that you're doing with it.

09:38 Okay.

09:39 And so by this, you know, you're entirely ready to have God remove all the defects of character and to have him remove your shortcomings. So being able to Be immediately raw with yourself and a infinite power. Then once you do that, you make a list of those you have harmed and want to make amends with them. And you sat down like all the people you know and get a list of it, and then you know the next being able to make amends to those. But you also, when making these amends, you want to make sure whenever possible, do it without doing injury to you or others. You don't want to make something if they don't know something. It's kind of like you're just going to end up making it way worse. You know, you want to focus on, like, what they know and know that you knew what you did was wrong and that you want to make amends for it. Not just apology and look for forgiveness. It's willing to grasp what it is and accept it for what it was. You know, and then 10, which I think is very. You know, you carry these steps every day, and every time you get to a new step, you want to always focus on the step before that. You know, you want to keep in with all these, the constant. Because it's not the 10th, like this one. The 10th step really speak with me and helped me grow, which would be continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Like, every time something wrong came up, I need to immediately be like, okay, well, you know, I'm sorry that this happened. I don't know why I had blown up. Or, you know, you want to constantly be on top of it and don't let things sit and have the pity party or anything. Then 11 and 12 is really about the spiritual aspect of it. And, you know, for it's sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying for his knowledge of his will, for us in power to carry that out. And 12 would be having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. And we from this moment on continued to go help fellow alcoholics on their path.

11:56 Okay, so. Yeah, I'll just pause it real quick. Yeah, I get it. Okay. Where were we talking?

12:05 We were talking about the step.

12:07 Okay. No, I know that I'm like the. Where we don't. I got. I got distracted. The dogs.

12:16 Wait, What?

12:17 What step 12. We're on the 12th slope right now.

12:19 Yeah, we just been talking about it.

12:20 Okay. I thought so. I was just, you know. Yeah, I'm like. I forgot to pause it again. So anyways, just. It's fine. Just go. I was just meaning like.

12:30 But yeah, and you know, something to mention earlier, you know, in the room with, like, how the 12 step is usually on the wall, they'll have a sign that says, they call it, like, the alcoholics pledge. Will be we. I can't remember the name of it. I'll have to find out. Rules.

12:55 That's fine. All right, so I know it wasn't something I've asked yet, but I was curious about the grateful journal that you had to do for a while. Aggressive. Just in general. Now, is that something specific to AA or was that something specific?

13:14 The gratitude journal.

13:15 Oh, the gratitude grateful.

13:16 Yeah. Oh, but it's still the same thing. But, yeah, the gratitude journals. Everything that I would write out every night is from the moment I woke up to the end. Think about everything throughout my day that I was grateful for. It is something that only my sponsor really wanted to embed and work on. But I think it really, like, can change your life when you're thinking, like, even if it's the most hardest day, there's gonna be something in that day that you're gonna be grateful for, you know? So I think it was very, very good method, and I would, like, recommend it to fellow ones.

13:50 So I guess since I brought it up about sponsors, can you kind of give me an idea of, like, what. What. What is that? What's a sponsor within a. Since, like, you know.

14:03 You know, it's somebody that's gonna help you through if you need a call or somebody need to come help, and you just need to get through if you're struggling with, like, you know, not trying not to drink. You know, they're being able to help you on that path and then get you on to working on the 12 steps and being able to work through that recovery and just be somebody that's always gonna never judge you and always gonna try and better you, you know, so it was just like a constant, kind of like a, you know, sobriety coach almost. You know, like, they're just trying to better you and get you into the best mental shape and spiritual. Spiritual shape that they can get you in and lead you in.

14:42 Do you think you would want to.

14:43 Be a sponsor if I got the opportunity? Yeah. You know, I think that I would want to. I would want to put more time into being committed and stuff, but I could, you know, see myself doing that.

14:57 That's awesome. So let me see.

15:03 So I guess out of the 12.

15:05 Steps, if you feel that there is one, do you feel that out of those, there's one that's maybe, like, it's weird to say, but more important or you, you yourself felt was like the big one. Does that make sense?

15:20 They all are important, their own aspects and stuff. And I think one that, you know, I got reminded by my sponsor to fully do is, you know, take more inventory of yourself, you know, every day. Make sure, write it out if you need to. A big thing they tell you I was write it out, journal it, you know, because then you take that with, along with step 10. You got to know the inventory of what you're doing. Like if you know that you tend to be more irritated, then you got to take into fact like how your irritation was today and then being able to make the move to apologize for that. You know, it's constantly making amends with yourself and others every day. You know, I think each of them have their own aspects, but I would say like those ones, the first is very important, you know, the fourth is, you know, all it's like if you want to take the spiritual aspects and the action aspects and all of the steps and stuff, they're very important, but they all tie in each other. Even if I say one's more important, they're all going to line up to that one.

16:27 Okay, well, something I was thinking about, you know, when we were kind of going over the steps. Now I know that AA just from what I've read and just in general, what we've talked about before is AA is very much more Christian based.

16:47 Right, right.

16:48 You know, from the founders and everything. And so I'm curious like from a point of view of how is that for people who are maybe like atheists or not Christian, like.

17:03 Right.

17:04 I'm curious now. Like I said, we've talked about this, but for this, you know. Anyways, I'm curious to know what you, your standpoint on. Yeah, your stand on it. Oh my gosh.

17:18 So that was definitely one of the things that veered me off when I first, you know, I didn't really have an idea of what I thought spiritually or religiously and still not really religious. But this is something that weird me off because it seemed like, yeah, it's a very, you know, a lot of the held in churches, you know, and a lot of the way that they are even in their prayers, you know, specifically a lot of them, each step has a prayer, you know, so it makes it very hard. But you know, it's your own version of your higher power, you know, it's your. If it's your God or you know, if it's just she or he or they, you know, multiple, it's all Whoever you look out to most. It could even be if, say, your grandparents passed, and that's somebody that you look out to. It's just. It's whoever that you see. Even. It could be your own self that your higher power of your own self, your higher self. You know, it could be so many things. It doesn't have to be specifically that. I learned that while working, especially with my sponsor, learning that it could be so many different versions. It doesn't need to be, you know, she's like, my version might just be, you know, God, Jesus, but that's not what everyone else's has to be. That's not what mine is. You know, mine goes more into, like, the Norse. And I still be able to play it in that and not feel like there's no room or if fully based. And so, you know, I tend to keep an open mind and it's very easy to judge and think that, oh, well, it's just that, you know, there's always going to be, you know, a place, you know, it's like ours. We did more, you know, anthems and the strength things we said at the end more than, you know, we did prayers. Other ones might do more prayers. But, you know, if you sit there and I always think, and I think about my higher power, what to say to my higher self or something, I, you know, put in with the prayer and make it work. You know, it's all about learning to adapt and accommodate and discover your own self and what you want in spiritually or religiously, if that's a path you want to go down.

19:31 So I guess is it kind of like maybe finding an anchor?

19:35 Yeah, exactly. It's just kind of something that you want that needs to grip onto, you know, because. Not you. Yeah, it's very. You could be anything. So it's kind of very complicated to explain sometimes because it's like it really, you know, it's just something to keep you steady. You know, like, if you're out on a walk, it's hard to. You leave your phone or something. Can't do it. But, you know, if you just sit there and you can kind of talk to yourself or you say your prayers, you know, they have the main thing, like, you know, they'll say at the beginning of the meeting is the serenity prayer. So it'd be like, you know, grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change and the courage to change the things that can and the wisdom to know the difference. You know, they started off with God, but I always put it with something that. Who I'm feeling at that time. I want to say these prayers too. So it's really all. Yeah. It's all about adapt. Adapt. Adaptating.

20:33 Okay, so what. What advice do you think you would give somebody who is struggling with alcohol addiction? Like, would you recommend AA to them?

20:49 I would if they, you know, I would recommend if you are feeling very alone and you feel like this is all you got and that, you know, there's nothing that's gonna help you or just nobody's gonna understand or if just has such, you know, especially being, you know, at my age, it has a huge stigma being an alcoholic and being able to find your place when it's just so normalized nowadays.

21:17 Mm.

21:18 But there's always. You're not alone and that they're all. There's always a meeting. Wherever you go, there's always somebody that you can reach out to, you know, because when you go to one, you can get there early and talk to people or even after. Like, a lot of people stay, like, an hour or two after a meeting just to chat, you know, to chat and talk. And so it's like, you know, it's a good place if you don't want to be alone. And you, you know, you're not ever made to force the talk. You can always just sit there. You never have to say a word. No one's ever going to push that. You know, it's really good during the holidays because even on New Year's, they'll have meetings up until like, 2:00am like, right at noon. So nobody ever has to be alone for the holidays. The whole, you know, potlucks all this different stuff and events to. To keep the community good. And people know that, like, they're alone. So it's really. That's the best thing that I would recommend and suggest.

22:24 Especially since it's free.

22:25 Yeah, exactly. It's free. You know, I'm getting all of this. I've never. The only money I've ever spent on it is, you know, when we pass it around, we donate. But that, you know, money that we are. Is being able to help sustain the building that we are having these meetings. And, like, that's the only time I've never, you know, had to drop 50 bucks or anything. Even the books are affordable. The books I have are. It's like a hand that I've had people lend me and let me keep, you know, so there's always things to. That works out. So it's like, you know, I would, you know, all over again. Do aa, then go to rehab, you know. Cause I gotta do it on my time, but got to have like answers right there, but still be involved in my life, you know, or not. So yeah, I would say, rather I would always choose aa.

23:15 That's great. So what do you think, like, what kind of message do you think you would like to convey to individuals who might be hesitant about seeking help? Like, what do you think, kind of advice you'd give them?

23:31 It's, it's, you know, it's the hardest because it's coming to terms about the actions of your own self and that's why you're so distraught and why you may be drinking so hard is just coming to the reality in terms of life on life. And so it's just, it's just getting through that step, you know, just being able to take one step forward and know that like there is a potential of being at having a peace of mind, you know, and there will always be somebody that you can reach out to. There's multiple people you can get numbers for who is going to be there. Like it was a blessing for somebody who was by themselves and didn't nobody and didn't have anybody to be able to have a meeting like that and to not be alone and chat and laugh and cry or do this, you know, with people. Like, I couldn't really communicate at all or anything before I went to meetings and going out of like this big group therapy and just being open, like really benefited me and had me grow and be such a better communicator with the people that I care about in and out of the meetings and to develop the family that I did with them. So it's just being able to. You deserve to have serenity and you nothing that you have done, it makes you need to be alone for it. So always seek it out. You know, there's zoom meetings or this or that, like online if you don't want to go in person, if not avail, you know, it's always gonna be free events no matter where you go.

25:18 Okay, and we're back. Okay, so how do you think AA has. Okay, now we're back. Okay, how do you think that. How has AA emphasized your personal accountability and responsibility in your recovery journey?

25:45 You know, being able, you know, being committed, you know, going to meetings is being committed to bettering yourself.

25:53 Right.

25:54 You know, and getting a sponsor when I did, being held accountable, you know, being like, I think you're just kind of sitting on your, you're just sitting around right now and I think you need to put the work in, you know, being constantly, you know, having someone pushing on you to be better and be better and start to doing that for yourself, you know, after six months, I did run a meeting of my own for about six months, and I got to. It was really nice. You know, I just got to, like, run, be responsible. I'm the one that needed to make the coffee. I need to open the doors, I need to do this, I need to do that. And afterwards, I need to, you know, turn off, make sure, you know, really thinking about my day and what. What should I talk about in the meeting tonight? You know, instead of being, like, held accountable and stay committed to it, if I say something, I gotta be there or thing like that, you know, being of support towards people, you know, I had being a little bit more higher sobriety, whereas that and being able to help others, you know, it's my job to, you know, be there for people, what I need to, and to be honest, you know, because if you're not being honest with everybody else, you're not being honest with yourself. It's just going to lead you down to a bad path you don't want to be on. You know, the whole point of working in the program and getting through these steps is to better yourself so you could feel happier and, you know, learn the steps and the tools to move on and do better and to learn that.

27:33 Mm. So how do you think AA has changed you?

27:45 And, you know, a lot of ways, you know, like, I. Being able to be open with family, being committed, you know, I had somewhere to go, you know, when I was bored or something, I could just go to a meeting and I could just sit there and I could just listen or I could talk about, like, whatever was going on in my life that related to something that somebody said or something that we read in the book. You know, it gave me a place to go, you know, and so it was. It was nice because I could show up early and hang out. I could stay later than I wanted to hang out with people and talk and do this. It gave me a place to go and being honest, you know, people could tell what something's going on. And so you needed to be honest and, you know, learn different skills. You know, sometimes not to be too honest or too nice or, you know, but it has really shaped me into being, like, the person I am and that I'm grateful that I went to AA and being able to be honest and to work with my sponsor and to, you know, adjust to it, because it's Like, I'm happier and content with where in my life. And that's like, after, you know, working the 12 steps and still working them every day, even, you know, making the amends and because, you know, the constant ones, you gotta make every day that you got to work on and search deep inside yourself. So it's. Yeah, it really makes you a better person when you put the work in and you're like, oh, you're not. Not everyone's so bad. You know, you're not the worst of the worst if you still want to work on yourself.

29:36 So, yeah, I think it's great. So I guess how to kind of finish things off. How would you summarize the role of Alcoholics Anonymous in your life? Like, if you had to summarize it, like, not the entirety, but like, what it is to you that makes sense.

30:01 You know, a small family, a community, you know? Yeah. I would say the biggest is the family and the community that I could go to no matter what the hours, and always have somebody out there watching my back. You know, you run into them at the grocery store. There are people that you bring notice to in your life. And now you will see throughout your life, you know, and so being able that, you know, you have a sense of community and, you know, you're gonna always have people looking out for you. You're gonna look out for them. So it's just another home from home.

30:39 Right?

30:39 You know, that's what I have to say.

30:41 So I guess to finish things off, you can tell them how long you've been sober.

30:48 It will be two years in March, so it will be. It says. Exactly. You can also get some. A sober app on your phone call, Sober time, where it tracks your serious.

31:03 That's awesome.

31:04 So it Sundays, I've been 20 months sober.

31:08 That's awesome. Well, thank you.

31:12 Yeah, of course. Thank you so much.

31:14 Thank you. Okay.