Story CarolynG 20260918

Story CarolynG 20260918

Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of recovery, because Carolyn G’s story pulls no punches. Speaking at the Bouldin Group, she talks openly about growing up in a chaotic home with alcoholism, addiction and abuse, and how that early “other-ness” set the stage for her own drinking and drug use.

You’ll hear how high achievement and workaholism helped Carolyn keep up appearances – good grades, sports, a strong career – even while her substance use escalated from teenage partying to cocaine, then oxys and Suboxone. Her brother’s overdose becomes a brutal turning point, not into recovery at first, but into a deeper excuse for using. Carolyn walks through her move to San Francisco, then to Austin, and how COVID loosened every bit of structure around her drinking.

The most harrowing part of her story comes with pregnancy, secret drinking, medical complications, CPS involvement, and her baby’s month in the NICU. She describes the shame and denial, but also the moment her husband’s ultimatum finally pushes her into rehab. Her account of early sobriety is honest and a bit funny at times, especially around her resistance to the “God thing” and how karma and the universe become her workable higher power.

She talks about doing the steps, writing pages of resentments, and the “aha” of seeing her own part in them, plus how gratitude, therapy, good food, sleep and movement all support her recovery. Carolyn also shares the strain of being sober while her husband kept drinking, the relief when he later went to treatment, and the shock of a long-sober therapist relapsing.

Through it all, she keeps coming back to meetings, service, and the reminder that "alcohol is the great equalizer". If you’re juggling family, trauma, work, and addiction, does Carolyn’s mix of brutal honesty and hard-won hope sound like exactly what you need to hear today?