I Slept on the Big Book Like a Pillow - AA Speaker - Patti L.

Patti slept on the Big Book like a pillow in prison. The AA members who brought it never treated her like scum, and a sponsor later helped her build a sober life one honest action at a time.

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Patti first came to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1959, convinced she was too young, too pretty, and too rich to need what the people in the room had. Her sobriety began on February 8, 1977, after years of drinking, repeated marriages, prison, and a physical collapse that left her needing months of hospital care. She describes a childhood spent feeling unwanted in both her mother's and her father's worlds, and a first drink at North Beach, Maryland, that seemed to give her beauty, confidence, and a place to belong. For the next 22 years, she tried to recapture that feeling, playing whatever role would get her accepted and eventually losing track of the difference between her own lies and the truth. In prison in 1972, visiting AA members gave her a Big Book of her own, which she slept on like a pillow. She remembers their coffee and donuts, but especially the fact that they never treated her like scum. When she finally got sober, members sat beside her hospital bed around the clock, and a tough, loving sponsor took her home and helped her begin again. Patti talks about honest prayer, taking the Twelve Steps before reporting on them, washing dishes at the Waffle House, working a weekly budget, and repaying debts one dollar at a time. That beginning leads to a real college degree, passing her CPA exam, and learning to make amends without demanding a response. Six years of unanswered letters to her father eventually lead to a final visit shortly before his death; later, her son proudly introduces her as his mother. Throughout this funny, frank AA talk, Patti returns to the people who lived the Big Book in front of her and helped her become someone she could like and respect.

Patti L. from Largo, FL s