Vic's Sister's Big Lesson from 22 Years of AA
Sober Awkward
Victoria Vanstone
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 9 August 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's retrospective episode we pay our thanks and respect to Vic's sister.
Louise Vanstone is one of the unsung heroes of the Sober Awkward Podcast. Not only did she play a part in inspiring Vic to follow in her footsteps but she also has more sober years than Vic, Hame and Lucy put together.
AA changed her life and she continues to attend their meetings after over 22 years of sobriety.
The lesson that she shares here is one that Lucy wishes she had heard 15 years ago.
You can listen to the full episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/sober-awkward/id1565657975?i=1000522101311
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My sister Louise, shout out to Louise. She's 20 years sober. She got sober through A.A. She was a very |
| 0:12.1 | similar drinker to me, a binge drinker. And she went to A.A. 20 years ago, she's now, I think it's like 22 years. |
| 0:19.9 | I actually phoned her this week to ask her |
| 0:21.8 | opinion on moderation. And she told me about a chapter of the AA big book, which is called |
| 0:27.8 | The Doctor's Opinion. And this is, I'm going to read you what she said. So this is my sister |
| 0:33.4 | Louise. Once you take that first drink, you set up a craving that is impossible to resist. |
| 0:38.6 | They talk about it being an allergy and that it really makes sense to me. |
| 0:42.9 | The penny dropped and this realization that if an alcoholic was a person who once take a drink |
| 0:49.8 | sets up a craving and can't stop, then that's me. |
| 0:53.3 | That's what goes on in my body every time I take a |
| 0:56.0 | drink. It doesn't mean I'm lying in the gutter, drinking a bottle of vodka. It's just when I take |
| 1:01.7 | that first drink, there's a physical change that I become powerless over alcohol. It's that simple. |
| 1:08.1 | It also helped me to have some compassion for myself to realize that I am one of |
| 1:13.4 | those people who has an adverse reaction to alcohol. You either do or you don't. You can either |
| 1:20.4 | drink in moderation or you can't. And that's it. So that comes from doctor's opinion. So what Louise |
| 1:26.7 | says is that it made her realize |
| 1:28.5 | that it definitely is the first drink that does the damage. If you don't pick up that first drink, |
| 1:33.1 | you can't get drunk. It's that simple. It also made her realize that the word alcoholic, as it is |
| 1:38.8 | understood before, with all its judgments and stereotypical imagery and associations, was merely, in fact fact a description of a person who has an allergic reaction to that first drink, rendering them powerless over alcohol. After hearing this explanation, my sister realized that she perhaps sat on that alcohol spectrum and she stood up in her first AA class and said, |
| 2:03.4 | I'm Louise and I'm an alcoholic. And that was 22 years ago. Go Louise. Go Louise. Yeah. A little shout |
| 2:09.0 | out for Louie. Amazing. Amazing. So that really, that makes me wonder if the definition of a, |
| 2:15.5 | the definition of an alcoholic is actually someone that can't moderate. |
... |
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