Table of Contents

May Articles

• Kia Ora
• How to Give a Lead
• What Have I Got to Lose?

Bonus Articles
from the Digital Archive

• Double-take in Dublin
• Williame's Story

About Grapevine

Kia Ora

A Mäori discovers the gift of desperation and AA

Kia Ora. My name is Val, and I am an alcoholic. My home group is the Te Hokinga Mai Group, which means “the return home” in Mäori. I was born in a town called Rotorua in the country of New Zealand. I am the third oldest in a large Mäori family, or whanau, of six brothers and five sisters. We didn’t have a lot of luxuries growing up. Fishing, hunting, and gathering food off the land was our way of life.

As children, we used to go with Mum and Dad to the local pub. In those days, Mäori women were not allowed in pubs and Mäori men had only just been accepted in them. We would play outside, and Mum and the aunts and other women would wait until the men brought out flagons of beer and then they would sit in a car in the parking lot and drink. In those days, there was a six o’clock closing, at which point the men would start rolling out of the pub with a few flagons and decide to go to one of the homes for a party. I used to hide under the tables and watch. It would start out with the lovely singing of the old Mäori songs and progress to old songs from the war days, like the Andrews Sisters. But as the night went on, the good time changed and somewhere along the way a fight would break out and the ugly abusive language would start.

The legal age for drinking back then was twenty-one, but I started drinking at sixteen. I went into the pubs or lounges and watched for the police who would patrol the local drinking places. When they came in one door, all the underage drinkers would disappear out the back door or into the toilet.

It didn’t matter how much I drank, it didn’t matter what I drank, it didn’t matter where I drank; when I drank, I got drunk and ended up in some very degrading, disgusting places. When I had that first drink, I couldn’t guarantee where I would end up. I lost track of time and common sense. Once I came out of a blackout behind the wheel of my car, driving on the footpath, while my twelve-year-old daughter was trying to steer. She was crying. It still haunts me. I started hearing voices in my head, I saw things that no one else could see. I started talking to myself and, more frightening, I started answering myself.

I was a binge drinker, a weekend drunk. I drank horrifically on Friday night and would be so sick and hung over the next morning that I’d vow never to drink again. But then when Friday night came around again and my body started to recover, I would tell myself that: 1) I wasn’t going to drink that night, or 2) I would go out and have just one drink, or 3) I would drink only until 10 o’clock and then go home. But sitting there not drinking in a lounge bar with everyone around me getting drunk, I’d tell myself, I’ll just have one drink. One drink won’t hurt me. So I had that one drink, and when I finished it, my head would say to me, See, you don’t have a problem. One drink didn’t hurt you. And I would have another and another and another, and the last thing I’d remember would be dancing on the tabletop until I fell off in a blackout. The next day people would love telling me, “Guess what you did last night?” Worse still were my own “Oh Gods”: Oh God, what did I do last night? Oh God, where am I? Oh God, who is that next to me?

I knew about AA because one of my husbands drank more than I did. I didn’t look at my own drinking, just his. The stress was quite bad, so my doctor was giving me acupuncture to help relieve it. One day I told him, “My husband drinks a bit.” He said, “How much does he drink?” I said, “About six bottles a night.” He said, “He doesn’t drink a bit, he drinks a lot, and I think you need Al-Anon.”

So off I went to Al-Anon. The Al-Anon members met at the same time as the AA members, and afterward we all had coffee together. I loved mixing with those drunks — but, of course, I wasn’t one of them. I was an Al-Anon member and Al-Anon was going to show me how to control my husband’s drinking. I soon left the marriage, however, and my drinking got worse. I went crazy because life did not improve when I got rid of my husband. I kept going to Al-Anon and then I got into a relationship. I was convinced this was it, the big love of my life. Then my favorite grandaunt died, and in the same week, my lover dumped me. I was devastated and I hit the drink as I had never done before. I drank alone behind closed doors for six months.

What I hope was my last drink came on the long weekend of Labor Day. We were unveiling my grandaunt’s headstone, and afterward we all started to drink. I didn’t want to drink, I was sick of me, I was miserable and sick of life, but my sister said, “I know what will fix you up.” She got me a bottle of Bailey’s and a forty-ounce bottle of gin. I sat in a corner and drank myself into oblivion. My children took me home and put me to bed. The next morning I woke up out of the blackout, lying on my back fully clothed and staring at the ceiling, thankful I was in my own bedroom and alone. I just said, “Oh God, help me.” I have not had a drink since.

That week, I went mad not knowing what was wrong but knowing something was wrong. I went to the AA meetings, not identifying, just crazy. On the following Friday night, there were no AA or Al-Anon meetings, so I invited my Al-Anon friends home for coffee, and three of them brought their husbands who were alcoholics in recovery. During the evening, the alkies shared their stories, and we were all laughing at some of the antics when I heard myself say, “But I do that!” I had identified and didn’t know it. I closed down pretty fast and just wanted them all to go home, but when they did leave, I wrote in my diary: “I have to look at this drinking thing.” The next morning I woke up and I was in hell, in total desperation, and that was my turning point, seventeen years ago.

Stopping drinking was not a big thing, but staying stopped was very painful. I had to tell myself every day — sometimes every hour, sometimes every minute — I’m not going to drink. I sometimes counted the seconds to reach a minute. I went to meetings, and I listened to people share their experiences and I saw something in them that I wanted desperately. They were sharing their deepest, darkest secrets and they were laughing. They were at peace with themselves. I wanted to be at peace with me. Once a woman looked directly at me and said, “If you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, then do what we do.” I waited to hear the miracle answer of what to do, and she just said, “Don’t drink and go to meetings.” I must have looked blank because she said, “You can do that, can’t you?” and I thought to myself, The so-and-so, I’ll show her. So I went to meetings and I didn’t drink. I got a sponsor and a home group, and when it got really bad, I would bleat to my sponsor that the thought of never drinking again was too much. My sponsor just said to me, “Do it a day at a time.” I looked at her and thought, That must be a trick, it’s too simple. She said to me in a very patient way, “Just wake up each day and tell yourself that just for today you are not going to have a drink.” And she said, “You can do that, can’t you?” And I thought, I’ll show her, and I’m still showing her seventeen years later (she passed away a year ago, still sober).

If you are an alcoholic of my type, then I wish you total desperation, because it was not until I became desperate and was willing to go to any lengths to stay sober that I actually could. I had to reach the point where I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and could value myself and know that I deserved better than being at the beck and call of alcohol.

I looked at the First Step and realized that I was powerless over alcohol because of that first drink, and I knew my life was unmanageable. As there was a very good chance that I was wrong and these Steps were right, I decided to really work them, but I was scared to go on to Step Two. My sponsor said, “Take Step One with you,” so I got a piece of wood and wrote “Step 1” on it and took it with me everywhere! One evening I was feeling crazy, walking along the beach and screaming for God to show himself to me when the sun began to set. As the sun went down behind the sea, it threw up fingers of bright orange. Then the fingers of orange turned into deep orange, then purple, and it was the most exquisite sight I had ever seen. I asked myself, Who is doing that? I thought, Well, whatever is doing that is greater than anything I know.

Moving on to Step Three was very hard for me because I had always controlled myself and everything around me. Letting go and letting God was not easy. But one day I read a sign that said: “Fundamental facts of human enlightenment: One: There is a God, and Two: You’re not him.” That helped.

Today I have a God of my understanding, and I believe in my God. I’m not religious and I don’t go to church, but I have no doubt there is an awesome power out there. And I believe in miracles because I am one. How could a drunk like me be telling you that she hasn’t had a drink in over seventeen years? To me, that’s a miracle.

Today I have the choice whether to drink or not. No one can hold me down and pour the alcohol into me, so that puts a stop to blaming someone or something else. I learned to take responsibility for my own actions. I am surrounded with some very excellent people who, like me, choose not to drink. Today I live very simply, and I know I am very loved, not just by family, but by my many friends everywhere who accord me the greatest of all gifts: they care enough about me to challenge me, to tell me no sometimes. They also cry with me and laugh with me — they care as no one ever did before. I accept their love and offer love in return. I got involved in service, and as World Service Delegate from New Zealand, I have made friends from around the world as well as around New Zealand. I have done service during all my seventeen years of sobriety at one level or another. I love it. But my favorite service still is opening the doors of an AA meeting and hanging up the banners.

I have ten grandchildren who have never seen me drink and number eleven is due any day now. I am involved in life and I am grateful and humble that the God of my understanding took a drunk like me to Alcoholics Anonymous where I could become a caring, useful mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. I have opportunities now that once were only dreams.

Val K.
Rotorua, New Zealand