Audio Transcript: Raw and Unedited

Good morning everybody, my name is Madison. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks for having me. The warm side felt here and just being in myself in this moment, this weekend, that's the thing I love about apocalypse monoliths is the transparency that people have and the level of honesty. One of the things that attracted me about Alcoholics Anonymous, one of my very first meetings, there was a man in there talking about shooting the ornaments off the Christmas tree with a BB gun. I remember that I was in the right place for my life. The vulnerability and just the welcome, oh my gosh Carolyn has been just so gracious and welcoming and I'm really grateful. Thank you for the committee for having me. I know a lot of experience here. I live in British Columbia.

I've only been there about six months. I moved from Alaska so I know they spent a good deal of money to get me down here. I'm very grateful for that. Welcome, it's your new Alcoholics Anonymous is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Bar none, from my participation in Alcoholics Anonymous, there's been so much good that it's come out of it over 20. I got over when I was 21 so I only drank and did drugs for seven years. During that time I definitely created a story and suffer from a disease of alcoholism. I know that my drinking is just a tip of the iceberg, but underneath it there's the spirituality that we talk about. The only solution for that is for me anyway is to get a drinking fork to participate in this thing that we have a fellowship and step work. One of my favorite reading lectures from the big book is actually not an Alcoholics thinking.

It's in the medical view on Aka, one of those doctors that's describing what Alcoholics Anonymous is like. I'm going to butcher this, but he says something like, in the environment of Alcoholics Anonymous, the alcoholic can overcome what is it his. . . Yeah, sometimes his excessive concentration upon himself. That's what I have, excessive concentration upon myself. It's actually a pathology, it's abnormal, I'm meant to be part of a greater whole, but constantly thinking about myself, that contributes to the spirituality. One of the things that I thought was going to happen that if I got sober at 21, I thought my life was going to be stupid boring and bomb. I really thought it was going to be incredibly lame. I'm just three years old now and I just.

. . my life has been anything but suck. I've had all the things that I've wanted to come true have come true. I feel like I'm a woman that I was always thinking to be. I feel very comfortable in my skin. I've gotten to experience a lot of things I wanted to experience. I came here and I was also attracted to the cash and prizes that Alcoholics Anonymous write people with cars and jobs and relationships. But what I've come to know is that connection with another alcoholic is far more profound than what I thought when I came here, so I would have sold myself short. There's a story in the big book.

When I first read the big book, I thought it was really stupid. It's really difficult to understand the book. It's just John Barley Corn and the Bookings Party and things like that were very difficult to read and likely got read over the sponsor who had an experience with it. They were young like me and they shared their experience with the book. They took great detail to point out that story about that guy who owns a car business, he owns a car dealership. He loses his car dealership because of his drinking and somebody else buys it. Then he gets sober and he's participating in Alcoholics Anonymous. Then he gets a job at the car dealership that he used to come. He comes to work one day. He argues with the boss.

He's pissed off and he's got a resentment. He gets angry with the boss. He's thinking, I need to own this place. I'm the boss of this place. Then he goes out into the countryside and stops at a restaurant. He orders a sandwich and a glass of milk. Then he has another sandwich, another glass of milk. Then he gets the idea that he should go wigsky and his milk. Then of course we know how that ends up. He keeps on drinking after he takes that first drink.

My son's are pointed out that that's the threefold illness that the spiritual malleting will lead to the mental obsession. That will lead to the physical allergy where I cannot stop. I can't fix the physical allergy. I can't fix the mental obsession. But what I can address is that spiritual malleting. What that looks like is it's excessive concentration on itself. It's resentment. It's the lack of ability to forgive. It is one in others to fail. It's that dark part that I share with my son, sir, in that fourth and fifth step.

If I can treat that, I don't have to pick up a drink one day at a time. For me, that's had up to 31 years, so I can do it. I'm going to be starting to do it. The crazy thing is I don't want to drink today. I'm a fiend. I'm a fiend. I was a person at the party who would walk around and look for beers that were half drunk. Even if there was cigarettes and I'm okay with that. It's not a deal. Not a deal.

I'll dig through the carpet looking for white and green things in the carpet. I'm really into some of those things. It's desperate, right? My relationship without call is very abnormal. I didn't realize that there was so much more to it when I came in. I thought if I'd just stay sober, that's enough. I was like, but 21 when I got here, I looked at the other people that I got sober with and they sure needed the steps and sponsorship. But I did not mean a healthy person. I did not need the level of recovery that you needed. I was just like, my participation in the meetings was clearly enough.

I'm kind of being a hit myself, but I'm originally from the south. I was born in North Carolina and moved to Alabama when I was very young. So all of my memories as a child were growing up in Alabama. This was the 70s and the early 70s. Alabama is a very interesting place. I've heard it discussed as Darwin's waiting room, where everybody's waiting. We naturally selected. I hated being in Alabama. I remember being a kid and I was making up stories with the other children. I'm actually the illegitimate child of John Travolta and I'll leave you in John.

But they had me out of wed box. I'm here. I was adopted by these people. I was constantly lying at the child. I'm very grandiose as well. Just incredibly grandiose. One of my earliest memories as a child was praying to be female. I was assigned to the Alephurth. I would pray that God would turn me into a woman. That seems normal to me except that we went to a very religious church.

My parents were very religious. There was an immediate leadist connection with shame, gender identity, sexuality, and sexual trauma. It was very difficult to discern up with what. That's not why I'm an alcoholic, but that certainly was throwing gasoline on a fire. I pushed that part really deep inside myself. I was like, I'm an abomination. I'm a freak. I'm an abnormal. The challenging part is I'm really athletic. I'm really physical.

I love the outdoors. I live in Northwest British Columbia where we have grizzly bears. We have wolves. We have Wolverine. I love the one in English whacking and climbing mountains. But part of me loves makeup. I'm doing my toenails. I couldn't ever reconcile that difference. I would look at you and I would be like, there's something incredibly wrong with me. This is a pathologist.

There's something broken. Going on throughout my childhood, I discovered, well, actually before I ever drank alcohol, I really got into housing gasoline and such. It's very cheap. It worked very well. I'm a connoisseur of different freight. I'm a pro- Yeah. I'm an e-arner, I'm actually taking care of kids who destroyed the brains of that. I took care of us. He died from hunting gasoline one time. His lungs filled up with fluid.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I didn't die. All those years. Early on, I was like, I'm not going to survive past the age of 25. I just take 25. I'm going to die from this disease. I might as well just have a good time. There is no way I am stopping this. I remember having my first bottle. It was like an intimate relationship. The first time I had my own bag of marijuana and my own pipe, I was a professional at scrape and immediately.

It's really good at it. I'm really focused on it and focused on the act of drinking and what got me to that sweet spot. My early experiences with alcohol, I was vomiting a lot, but I was willing to put up with that for that amazing feeling that I got. I didn't feel shameful from my gender identity. I didn't feel shameful from my sexuality. I just felt comfortable. Growing up in the south, when you have this, you're on the outside, you look like this masculine boy, but on the inside, you feel like a woman. I felt like such a freak. I remember getting drunk and it would just go away. That first time I got drunk, it was a very hot, sunny day in Georgia.

Georgia gets really oppressively hot in the summer. It's like very sticky and warm. My friend was like, oh, we're going to help my dad build a deck. I'm like, okay, let's go help build a deck. The next thing I know I'm laying on the ground and getting to spend, you know, where they're kind of like spending and resetting. I remember kids, like, putting hands on the tip and going, boy, you're right. That boy is. No, I heard that a lot of the kids. I had an incredible anger problem. I was punching walls, punched a lot of walls, breaking things.

It was a huge temper. The nice thing about alcohol was it made me feel like just here, present, like this sweet hen has done for me. Like I feel calm right now. And that's how alcohol and drugs affect me. It made me feel calm. And my alcoholism pretty quickly progressed. It was difficult to get alcohol. I was a 14, 15-year-old kid growing up in suburban Atlanta. I've grown for much easier to get. I have a lot of experience with crack cocaine.

Atlanta has this very good crack. I don't know if they still do, but they did in the late days. That's how you get to sit. But it really progressed. It really started going from fun and sympathetic pretty quickly. I had a boyfriend in that time and he and I drank identically. And that was really nice for me to have somebody who would drink alcohol, likely, with me. Because it didn't make me stand out. And he and I would constantly get drunk and get into fist fights. And it was insane.

Like one time I was in and out of a blackout when we were fist fighting. And I just left his house. And I don't remember leaving. I just came to driving a car. I remember looking at the seatometer and I was going 45 miles per hour. And I looked down and I had put my jeans on and then I put my panties over my jeans. And I was like, oh my God, I could get pulled over in the office or would see my panties on the outside of my jeans. Not that I'm driving a vehicle completely in a blackout. What am I going to look like? How am I going to look?

And it just got really pathetic. I started feeling like I was going to die all the time. I was just interested for selling LSD at school. I failed in ninth grade at three different times. I got kicked out of high school. I have a general education diploma. I ended up thinking that the problem was Atlanta. If I can just get out of Atlanta, things will get better. I love the outdoors. I've always loved the West.

And when I was 19 years old, me and a couple of friends, we bought a couple of 21 seat bicycles. And we started pedaling from Virginia and we rode our bikes across the country. I've used that trip as like, okay, that's the solution to alcoholism. I can just get away, get some fresh air, get physically fit. That's the solution for alcoholism. Right? And so I got to Montana, ended up running out of money in Montana and ended up staying there. And what I found is that alcoholism followed me to Montana. I didn't have access to the drugs. And I just fell into the synthetic relationship with alcohol.

Where I would go to the bar. I only drank legally by the way for six months. And I would go to the bar and I would have a set number four was always my favorite number. I'll stop at four. Because I think that was kind of my, oh, I'm feeling really good. But then I overshoot four, right? And my experience in Montana got really, I thought I was going to be like, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, but really I was just drinking all the time. And then I was like, okay, the problem is Montana since it was the summer of Montana. So me and actually a couple friends of our first bike trip decided we were going to bicycle to Alaska. And in the summer of 1994, we started biking from Montana to Alaska.

And before we left, I say the thousand dollars to get me to Alaska. It was my plan to get a job and I lost one and got there. So we're going to ride through BC in Alberta. It's a beautiful country, Yukon. And right before we left, you know what, one thing that would make this trip really solid is to buy a bunch of drugs. So I bought a bunch of drugs right before I left. Just to have any events of an emergency on the lake. So I sent all this money. I have like $500 flying into Canada. Well, that's not going to last long, right?

So we're biking along and it's really fun in the beginning, but then it really starts to get difficult. It started raining all the time and I had been drinking a bunch and not taking great care of my body. The people that I was biking with, they didn't have an alcohol problem like I did. So we were biking like 50 miles a day and I started to really lag behind. I always wanted to sleep in. I was hung over. I would go to the. . . Once we got to a campground, I would go and find alcohol and drink alcohol.

And eventually they just didn't want anything to do with me and they continued on. So I'm on my own. On the Alaska highway. I don't know if you've been on the Alaska highway, but it's not exactly an urban area. There's nothing around. And I was eating ramen noodles and instant mashed potatoes and drinking beer all the time. I've always been a fairly thin person, but I was in the Mayshade at that summer. In Mayshade, I was so skinny. I was so unhealthy. I heard it described because I know the person that's began that smell that you get when your body is not processing alcohol.

I was like, oh, you shower. It's still stuck to you. It's like a permanent perfume that you cannot get off. It's disgusting. It's especially wearing like sandex and synthetic clothing. Ew, it's nasty. I ran out of money on the Alaska highway and I started collecting cans. Somebody else was a canned collector here and I was really the first time I ever heard that name. But I also collected cans for money on the roadside and filled with plastic trash bags. Right in my bike with big plastic trash bags on either side filled with Canadian cans.

Pinsons, beer cans, five cents, and a hot can. So really a good deal if you're looking for a business. I ended up finally getting to Alaska at the long time and there's a story in there. But I want to be cognizant of my time and really kind of focus on recovery. I ended up in Skaguelay, Alaska, which is a small tourist town on the Panhandle of Alaska. And I got a job washing dishes under the table. I can take this. I was living in a tent in a campground outside of Skaguelay and I was working from 6 a. m. until 2 p.

m. Living in my tent, not showering, but maybe once a week, if that. And I would go to this job, I would wash dishes, and I would tell myself I'm not going to drink tonight. And all throughout that summer my alcohol was really progressed. I really relate to the first chapters of the big book. 100% right. The Jay Walker, the Duke of New Zealand, the person who thinks that they're long periods of sobriety. All of the time I'm going to drink with other people are related to it all. Like it's normal people would read that book and go home. This is dumbest thing ever.

But like, I'm not going to call it I relate to the way that we drink. And I'm not going to drink today. I'm not going to drink today. By five o'clock I'm drinking. Okay, I'll start over tomorrow. I'll do this again tomorrow. One night we were out. I was drinking with some people. And we were partying and this guy was talking about cleaning up his brother. And this voice inside my head said look at the people that you're hanging out with.

Like this guy was being sheared on for beating the whole pot of his brother. And this voice said, this is who are you hanging out with? And I separate from that group and I went out on the beach. And my dad grandmother spoke to me. And it was a white eye experience. She said you owe me something. And there's a backstory on that. She taught me drinking. I wrote her this note. I'll never drink again.

I love you so much. Please don't tell mom and dad. Like how many times did I do that? I don't ever drink again. And but she spoke to me. She's been dead for a couple of years. And I found out that there was just being hammered drunk and high but I heard my grandmother's voice clearly said you owe me sobriety. And so I had a firm resolve to not drink. I sat drinking. The long and the short of it is I ended up back at my parents house in Atlanta.

I had my first got sober in August of 1994. And I ended up with my parents. I got a job working there. I started to get really physically fed. I was like this is my solution alcohol with them. I'll go to the gym frequently. I got a boyfriend. I started earning some money. It's great. So we should do alcohol with them right.

Like it's really going to work. I had three months of sobriety and I started planning a drunk. I started planning. I was like I think I'm good. I think I'm good. I'm feeling really good. I went to a bar in downtown Atlanta with a plan to drink four beers. I've already told you about the four beer experiment. I went into that bar with a plan to drink four and you know four turned into God. I don't know how many.

And then the next thing you know I'm having sex with a stranger in a bathroom stall and I'm smoking crack. And then I go home in a blackout and that was my last drink that was November 26th of 1994. And I had the incomprehensible humiliation after that. Thank you. And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I ended up going back to Montana. I'm kind of a mover as if you can tell. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in Montana. I got sober in a town of 900 people. It was mostly cowboys and a couple of women.

And I had not transitioned at that time. I was out at the AGO and I was welcomed into this group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm so grateful that the traditions were in place and that I was not made to deal with different. I was made to deal with part of. And it was open, broad, roomy, all-inclusive. And even these Montana rancher guys that knew nothing about being queer were like, well, we're glad you're here. I'm so grateful for that because I would have died otherwise. I would absolutely die of alcoholism. Like I said, I judged them. I was 21.

Most of them were very old. I judged them, but I related to them. I had always struggled with God as a queer person, being raised in the South. I knew I was going to hell for being queer. I knew I was going to hell for being trans. I knew that God wanted nothing to do with me. And I knew I even had the same connection to God that you guys had as sick, straight people. I knew I didn't have it. I wasn't as good. And one of the early meetings that I went to, this old redneck cowboy guy, his name's Harry, Dirty Carried.

He had a backhoe business, or a dump truck business, and so it was called Dirty Carried Exfolating. Like he was like, Alcoholics Anonymous will work for you if you believe in Jesus Christ. Alcoholics Anonymous will work for you if you don't believe in Jesus Christ. And even if you believe that you are Jesus Christ, that's all. I can't show it. I gave him, like, okay, I can stay here. I can stay here. And somebody said, they can choose, wait, what did they say? They said, they can choose what you like and leave the rest. And I was like, okay, I don't like to afford from the money step.

I'm connecting the ass. Why would I do that? Searching through a small inventory of even worse, leaving a man's. I sold a bunch of money from Taco Bell. I don't know about it, but I was like, that's scary to go back to Taco Bell and let him know you sold a bunch of money from him. Why would I do that? The long and short of it is, I thought that my recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous was about me getting back how life I had lost. I thought it was about me getting mine. And that's how I showed up in AA for almost five years. And I got so sick.

I had a job as a ranger. I worked as a backcountry ranger in Denali National Park, Hawaii, Oklahoma's National Park. And I put myself worth in that job. Like, if I am not a ranger, what am I? I am nothing without this job. It was my higher power. And it was more important to me than my recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got very sick in AA. I wasn't drinking, but I was very sick. Most of my resentments from my first four steps were what the period of when I was sober.

Because when I'm drinking, I'm fine with you. I'm okay with me. Everything's good, right? But when I don't have a solution, I get really twisted and tired. I knew I was going to drink. I almost drank. I remember one time being at a party and somebody opened up a refrigerator door and I just zoomed in on a beer that was sitting there. And I really romanced that beer in my mind. I was like, I'm going to drink again. Like, this is the same thing that happened before.

I'm going to drink again if I don't get help. There had been some, I was living in that small town in Montana. There had been some people that were coming to the town from Bozeman, Montana, just north of there. And they were on fire. They obviously were ex-steps. They were just, had the glow, right? Like, I've been in solution glow. They're in the moment. They're comfortable in their own skin. And they came to my little home group.

And this one guy cornered me. His name was T. He was like, you need to work the steps. And he said, I just want to just stop. But I kept going, well, I'm really gay. I need special steps. I need a specialised sponsor. And then he says, they're like, okay. And then they sent this really queer person down. And I was like, oh my God, that person's too queer.

But the bottom line is I just don't want to do the work, right? And so I actually ended up asking that straight guy a sponsor. And he took me through the book and he made it come alive. I thought it was just, you know, the big book was something that sat on the back of the toilet when you wanted inspiration. I didn't realize that it was a text on how to work the steps. And so we read the book, just like I said, here yesterday, the dictionary, like, I would, you know, I was asked to look up words. I didn't know. Or even if I thought I knew him, I had to look him up. That was the other thing he taught me to set aside prayer. Please help me set aside everything I think I know.

Because that is one of the most dangerous things for me, especially in the long term sobriety. That can be really tricky with long term sobriety. Just because I have time doesn't mean I'm guaranteed to die sober. I really want to, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to. Or that I'm not going to take my own mind. Like, I got a daily reprieve contingent on what am I doing today? Anyway, he took me through the steps. For the first time I had a surrender of my ego, I had no idea how big my ego was until we got into that four step. And really looking at that four step is like a resume of how I've been playing God. Like, this is what it looked like when I play God.

This is what it looks like. This is the aftermath that I create. It's like my resume. How good are you if you're in the director? Well, I'm pretty bad. I was so sad. And it was the first time that I actually started to give other people grace. And that's one of the things I still struggle with today is giving forgiveness. Like, I want forgiveness, but I don't want to give it, frankly. And not a still one of the big challenges that has showed up on multiple four steps, multiple 10 steps inventory.

I think the most powerful part of my first experience with the steps was the immense. Because I had a lot of amends that I was afraid that I was going to go to jail for. The one I'd stole, I worked at Taco Bell and I would make up the Ronius totals. And this was before they had the screen that actually showed you how much your order was. So I was pretty much giving people free food out of Taco Bell and pocketing the money. For years I did this. That was the level of my career at that point was to drive through a jock of Taco Bell. Which, by the way, I'm going to be sure if there is a hell and you go to hell, it's working in Taco Bell drive through. So please have grace for those people and behind in them when you're going through that drive. That's a difficult job.

Anyway, I went back to Taco Bell and I paid that money back. And despite being afraid that I was going to go to jail, I paid that money back. I didn't go to jail. It ended up being a strong, really powerful spiritual experience. I made an amends to a person that I could not, I absolutely hated them. And when I went to them, just before that, before I went to them to make an amends, the hate left my body. It was like a physical release. Like I'd never experienced anything like this. But I would say that probably the most powerful amends and still ongoing amends were to my mom and dad. I was pretty young so most of my, I learned that my alcoholism was directed on my mom's dad.

My mom is a sweet little southern lady who just is kind of she can be. She probably qualified for Alana, but it's not my job to get her into Alana. And then my dad was this amazing man with integrity who was very intelligent and very funny. And there was a period where they just didn't know what to do. My mom said we prayed for you every night. We thought you were going to die. They locked their door because they were physically afraid of me. There was one time my mom flushed drugs down the toilet. And I grabbed her by the blouse and I slammed her up against the wall and I said if you don't stay out of my FM line, I'll kill you. And they scared her bad.

She locked her doors. I almost called that house on fire. I sold their money. I sold so much money from them over the years. And luckily I had a big sponsorship for the amends. I was given a direction on who to make the amends to. And because there were people I wanted to make amends to that I had no business making amends to. There were things I wanted to say at the amends that I had no business saying. So it was really good to have that objective person to help me with that. Like I didn't make an amends without touching base repeat.

And he gave me a script. This is what I did. I was wrong to do it. Is there anything else I've done? What can I do to make it right? And I was supposed to pay attention. When I said what can I do to make it right? I made an answer. But when I did that for my dad, my dad said I want you to show up consistently in our home. Stop treating your mother disrespectfully.

I want you to show up on a regular basis. And help us where we've got struggles. They had a lot of health issues. My dad passed away a few years ago. And I was able to show up for them through multiple medical problems. My dad died of dementia. He had all kind of heart-troubled. I'm an emergency nurse. I was able to show up for them for years. So the first part of me amends is just the acknowledgement.

But there's a demonstration that comes after that. And if I don't stay in the middle of alcoholics, I don't get to experience the beauty of that demonstration that occurs over time. I love my dad and he loved me. This man knew nothing about being queer or trans. And he loved me unconditionally. Before he died, he said, you're my beautiful daughter. I only had transitioned a few years before. And he was so loving and kind towards me. And I was able to see the loving daughter that I never was before, consistently. He died in 2023.

My mom was really struggling. I naturally was able to pay for his funeral. And I got to see he gave a funeral. And I know that and it's so much to my mom. I'm still making amends to my dad even though he's gone, right? I'm still making living amends to my mother. I'm still demonstrating what alcoholics and honors can do through us. She's one of my best friend. I used to stand my mother. Could not stand her.

They did her. And now she's one of my favorite people on the planet. My dad told me a few years ago, nobody makes your mother laugh the way that you do. And it used to be like, I made my mother cry all the time, you know, and to show up consistently over time as a beautiful thing of alcoholics and honors that I hope you don't get to miss. Do not miss that. I never wanted to sponsor. In my resentment list, there were groups of people that I hated. I just generally hate groups of people. Not necessarily from the big girls. Rednecks, tough guys, and warm-ups.

Rednecks, tough guys, warm-ups. That connection that you have with another alcoholics and you see the lights come on in their eyes. And when they start showing up in their life, and then they start sponsoring somebody, and they start showing up with integrity in their life, and they start helping others, like, that just fills your heart. Like, it's just rich. And you don't want to miss that. Um, I've had the opportunity to sponsor a lot of people throughout the years, and not a lot of them have stayed. I do have a kind of a handful core of people that have stayed. Um, mostly now I sponsor queer and trans people. I do have a couple of straight folks. I mean, I don't have problems with you doing straight.

Just don't predict my face. I love the richness that is there. I ended up, so I told you I got picked out of school. I went back to school when I was seven years sober. I'm going to back up and just tell you that when I was working as a backcountry ranger, I got my ANT certificate working on an ambulance just because I wanted to look good on a resume. I didn't want to be an ANT. I just wanted to look good on the resume. And so I got that ANT certification. I started working on an ambulance. And I started to love it.

I started to absolutely love it. And, um, I remember one time you were transporting a guy who had had a profound stroke, unless I was deaf as his, he's barely speak. But I was able to ease his fear and make him feel comfortable with actually making him laugh a little bit. We were flying and we were driving and made a helicopter in the ambulance. And I just love the way I made me feel. I got to see so many, um, mirrors into myself when I recall to a jail cell where a guy was banging his head on the cell and he ripped his scalp open and was bleeding. And he was holding on to the bars like this and he looked like Jack Nicholson from the Chinese. Nobody understand me. And it was really scary to me. And I had to wear a flag afterwards.

I used to do that in the mirror. I would get drunk, take drugs, put some eyeliner on, start crying, pull at my eyes as a mirror. And nobody understands me. That I felt centered in this, right? Like, and I could just see myself in this man. And it was just, it was such a good experience. And then I was in the paramedics school, but I had a paramedic talk to me into one in nursing school. So it's that in there, so I moved from West Yellowstone, Montana to Boseman, Montana and started school at Montana State University. And I was so overwhelmed, right? Like, I got kicked out.

I failed the ninth grade. You guys dream time. It's like three times a ninth grade. That doesn't go to out for you. But I was a totally different person when I went back to school. I was a total nerd. I was obsessed with the biology, the chemistry, the anatomy and physiology I loved. It was absolutely fascinating to me. And I thrived in college. And the reason that I thrived is I put alcoholics in on this first.

My sponsor was, I would be freaking out about a bio chemistry test and be like, did you take any guys from me? Did you get your service position? Like, he was constantly pushing me into the options about public synonymous. And when I put AA first, the degree came out just fine. I graduated with high honors. My parents were there. My graduation. My dad was like, now you have made an instinct. He never said that to me. He said, he never said, I want you to go back to school and get a degree.

I was the only kid that didn't have a degree. I'm the youngest and I didn't have a degree. And he wanted me to go back. And I then so mentioned it much to him that I graduated with a bachelor's. Because he is a very academic man. I got my first job in rural Alaska. I worked off the road system. The last time was huge. I needed like two times the size of Texas. Anybody from Texas here?

I love to just throw that in. Sorry. Sorry. Anyway, my first job was working as a nurse in a small, it wasn't a village, but it was a town of about 10,000 people. Mostly a very customer people and a looped people. And they had meetings there. And when I first got there, I'm pretty sure there were drug deals going on in the meetings. Like, it was pretty sketch. Like, people, I'm pretty sure people worked on drugs. There was no discussion on the steps.

And I would call my sponsor and complain about the meetings. And he would be like, well, Madison, you need to grow where you're planted. Quit going to the meetings for what you can get and go for what you can bring. Quit going to the meetings for what you can get. So for what you can bring. And so finally, I had a shift in my perception around that meeting. And I started to go. I sponsored a ton of native men through the first up to the fourth step. I never got any of them past it. But it really, like, I didn't drink.

And my experience and knowledge of that first part of the day book really was enriched. And I ended up moving from there to Anchorage, Alaska. I've lived in Anchorage last 17 years. And I got a job at the Level 2 trauma center there. And I got told it was my dream. I ended up being a supervisor and an educator in that role. And really got to help people in a way that was just. . . I never thought I would be.

I never thought I would be in that role. Just because I have time doesn't mean I don't struggle with extreme sub-centeredness. I've been in periods in my sobriety where I have compared my insights to your outside looking at people who have long-term sobriety. Like, I'm at 30 years I should look like this. Or, you know, anything like that. I got to a period in my. . . I think I was. .

. Yeah, I think I was about 25 years sober. And I got really suicidal. I was really thinking about taking my own life. I had not transitioned. I was really struggling with my gender identity. I knew I was trans. I just didn't have the courage. Like, one of my things about seeing alcohol is I don't want you to dislike me. And I can't think of a more undesirable group of people right now than trans people.

So, like, oh, I'm going to be trans. And, like, I. . . I just got okay with it. Like, I had to get okay with it. I wasn't going to stay there. I wasn't going to stay on planet Earth. And I started to transition. I really started to feel comfortable in my own skin.

And I'm not being so worried about what other people were thinking about me. And that's been a struggle my entire sobriety. But this was just before that. And I was really thinking about suicide. I do a lot of backpacking. I do a lot of flying backpacking trips for a get blown in and drop top. I like to look for antlers. I like to look for shed antlers. And some antlers fall off. Urban antlers fall off.

You find skulls, feathers, all kinds of cool stuff. My house is like a menagerie of witchcraft and the silver. And I landed on this lake. This pilot left me. I was by myself. And I stayed there for about a week by myself. And I had a gun with me. I was for bear protection. There's a lot of large bears in this area. And I was taking constantly about taking my own life and ending it and just how I don't fit into society.

I'm abnormal. I'm an abomination. And I was just like, God, please take my life. I remember we were flying and they heard a plane and being like, God, if you could just crash the airplane, you know, I don't want to go on living. I didn't think about the pilot on the plane. But, you know, and then I've been there a couple of days. I was tight-aimed looking for some antlers in this kind of marshy area. And I was looking down and I noticed this movement in front of me. And I could see a grizzly bear with a huge grizzly bear seeing bigger ones, but they're very powerful and they're very fast. And it was maybe from here to the corner of the room.

And I weighed my arms and I yelled at it so I'd know that human lot of times I'd just run away from you. They'll know that physically more powerful. And this thing, this is, I yelled at it. It started to run at me both feet. And I remember thinking as I was getting closer, I could see the muscles, like, they kind of run like this. And you can see the muscles, like, and it's deltoids, just kind of like flexing and contracting. And I was like, oh my God, this thing's gonna rip my head off. And I remember thinking, okay God, I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

I don't want to die. I don't want to die. And then the bear came at me like this, maybe to about where Julie Prince-Ponce, by the way, went around. And then the bear veered away and went in this direction. And it was a white light, so Julie Prince-Ponce. I heard several times that suicide is a last attempt to control God. It's a last attempt for control. And I had struggled with this multiple times and I've had several white light experiences. I've just got a few minutes left, but I'm gonna tell you about another one and then I'll wrap up. I had just a couple years of this side of transition.

I've been on hormones. I just felt like there's nothing worse than going to puberty twice. There's enough ones. That goes for the second time, this is weird. And I was struggling. I was really struggling. I was sober. I was sponsoring a bunch of people. I was active in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm back to the suicidal ideation. I was hiking.

Again, I had a gun right here. I had a 10 millimeter right here that I cared for bears. And I was thinking about shooting myself in the head. And I was on a trail. It was a rainy Tuesday. It was very misty. New Zealand is just an amount of just east of any period. And normally on a rainy Tuesday in the fall, you don't see a lot of other hikers. And I was coming down this trail. It's not very popular.

And I was thinking about just going off into the woods and shooting myself. And how pathetic you feel when you're thinking about killing yourself and thinking how other people are going to be affected. How am I going to affect my mother? How does this affect my father? How does this affect my family? And just the darkness that is in that thought. And I'm coming down the trail and I'm coming down and another trans woman comes up. And we were just saying, like this other trans woman, she was like, she was buffed. She had a moline. She had two right things.

She had her eyes done. She was so comfortable in her skin. And she was smiling at me. I'd never seen this woman before. I'm pretty familiar with the queer community in the Anchorage. Never seen this woman before. And it was just like she was a godsend. Like she was comfortable in her skin. That was just like this message that you can do, guys. And I'm really grateful for those white-light experiences that I've had in Oklahoma.

But my recovery today is the educational variety. I get a spiritual experience on a daily basis. I don't know. I've come to realize here recently that my perception of God was very Santa Claus. Like for years in Oklahoma, I felt very convicted about what God was. And who God was. I know everything about God. We're connected. We're like this. And a little bit after COVID, I just kind of, that perception of God, I realized was false for me.

And it didn't fit my reality or my experience. And I realized this is the God that I was raised with. And it just doesn't make, it's just not my higher power. And so I've had to shift away from this idea of like, God is Santa Claus God. If I'm good, if I take the new comer to a meeting, God is cynical as me. I was doing that for years in AA. I never knew I was doing it. It was totally subtle. And so for me now, I feel like I'm still agnostic, but I'm staying in the middle of all its anonymous. Because I just have to have a willingness to believe that there's something that can restore me to sanity and know that I'm a cracker manager.

I'm a manager of my life. And so I participate in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I get the daily reprieve. I don't have to fully understand what God was. But I get the daily reprieve. So I think I've got four seconds left.