Episode 202: Colette

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Colette’s date of sobriety is December 23, 2006, and on the date of this posting, she is celebrating fourteen years sober. In this episode, she shares her journey as a person in recovery from anorexia, depression, and alcoholism. Her’s is an inspiring story and she does a great job describing her early struggles as well […]

https://podcast.aabeyondbelief.org/p...e-202-colette/

Colette’s date of sobriety is December 23, 2006, and on the date of this posting, she is celebrating fourteen years sober. In this episode, she shares her journey as a person in recovery from anorexia, depression, and alcoholism. Her’s is an inspiring story and she does a great job describing her early struggles as well as the joy she has found in being sober. 

Topics and key points

• Childhood: Colette talks about her divorced parents and the influence they had on her alcoholism. 
• Anorexia: Colette describes how hard she worked to recover from anorexia and the benefit of receiving countless hours of therapy.   
• Bottom: Collette recalls an embarrassing and humiliating encounter with a neighbor after a night of blackout drinking. 
• First impression with AA: Colette talks about her favorable first impression of AA in California. 
• Early sobriety: A discussion of the proper use of will, and the need to white-knuckle it early in her sobriety. 
• Atheism/Agnosticism: Colette talks about what it means to her to be a seeker. 
• Friends: The importance of sober friends. 
• Online Meetings: The difficulty with online meetings.
• Living a sober life: Collete wears her sobriety comfortably. She is solidly in AA, but she lives her life in the real world. 

Memorable quotes 

I started getting straight A’s in college and writing a lot of poetry and became anorexic. I had to leave England where I was going to school and I put myself into a treatment program for anorexia and depression. I went there twice and they told me that I should go to AA, but I didn’t think I had an alcohol problem. That was my parent’s problem. It was the furthest thing from my mind. —Colette

My neighbor came over and she said, “How are you feeling?” I said, “fine.” She said, “Do you remember anything? Do you have any idea how drunk you were? You were hammered. Do you have any idea what you did?” I had no idea what I did. She said, “You spilled red wine all over my floor, you spilled candle wax all over my carpet, you called my best friend a hooker, you hit on my brother in front of your husband. You owe me an apology, and you need to come over and clean it all up.”  I did and the next day, I looked up in the Yellow Pages, and I called Alcoholics Anonymous. –Colette

I was willing to go to any lengths. I met a group of five women and we all had children the same age. We would go to meetings together and after the meetings go to a park and our kids were playing, and they had twenty years of sobriety at the time and they guided me. —Colette 

I have my own life now. I like to keep one foot in the program, but I also do stuff. I have friends. -Colette 

Resources

Read Colette’s poem, Parrish, An Unincorporated Community. 

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