Learning Curve

While traveling across the country as a go-go dancer with the Fendermen band, I married the tenor sax player. When the band broke up years later we ended up living in New Jersey with my parents. My husband was a heavy drinker and hit his bottom in 1968 in my parent’s house. He made the call to A.A. and immediately became very active in the program. 

I went to A.A. meetings to support him, and later Al-Anon and Alateen meetings for myself. (Those are other stories!) So during the 1970’s, I was getting an education and began putting all the pieces of my life together. 

I began looking at myself and facing myself and all the things I had been doing for a long time. It took me eight years to get my act together, of feeling like I could forgive myself, and work the Twelve Steps completely.

A.A., Al-Anon, and Alateen helped me understand addiction. Having an addiction is like a gorilla in a cage trying to get out or get whatever they can get. And we get in the cage with them. We dance with the gorilla. We put a cage around ourselves and make our world very small.

Looking back to the 1970’s, I can see that it was the beginning of me becoming the Real Bonnie.