Hello. I’m Shavonne Thompson and I’m an alcoholic in recovery. I’ve been sober since January 28, 2013. This is my story.
I was born in Ventura, California in November of 1985. I grew up with two loving parents in a middle-class and very loving family. I played sports, went to school, fought with my siblings, built sand castles at the beach and fell out of a tree once or twice. All the normal kid things. I’m blessed to have grown up in the family I did. On Sundays we went to church and spent time with my grandparents.
At the age of 13, my older brother, Nick, introduced me alcohol. After my parents had gone to bed, he pulled out a bottle of whiskey from him closest and said “check this out!”. The room-temperature bottle probably had 3 shots in it. I drank the whole thing in one swig. Yup. I was an alcoholic straight out of the gate. I’m a garden-type alcoholic, so says the Big Book of AA. I had no reason to drink, no pain to numb, no past trauma. Well, those 3 shots of whiskey hit my 120 body pretty hard. Within a short while, I was drunk. I got a bit loud, insisted we go outside and then ran around our block three times barefoot which is about a mile. The next day I woke up on my brother’s bedroom floor. My mom saw that I had slept in my big brother’s room and commented, “oh how sweet.” She was completely oblivious. My mom had no experience with drugs and vey limited experience with alcohol. She never liked drinking personally, and hadn’t touched alcohol since college.
That same summer, my brother introduced me to marijuana. We smoked swag out of a metal pipe in the orchard down the street from our house. It was fun. My bother and I were best friends friends. We did almost everything together. He took me to 805 underground raves that we somehow convinced my mom were just dance parties. He took me along with him on his drug deals. I went to high school parties with him.
While in 8th grade, I snuck out of the house one night because my brother was throwing a party across the street. I showed up to the party, poured myself a cup of vodka, no ice, no mixers and drank the whole thing. Shortly after I had to lie down. A guy came in the room and my brother kicked him out. Thank goodness. although I wished I had thrown up that night. I think I had alcohol poisoning for 3 days after that party. During most of 8th grade, alcohol was hard to get ahold of but marijuana was relatively easy. I think I got high almost every day. I even convinced our carpool lady to pick my sister and I up early so I could get to school early to “get ready for class.” It was a lie. I was getting high before school. This started my double life.
On one had, I was smoking pot daily and hanging out with a bunch of loser guys. On the other hand, I was getting straight A’s in school. I skipped 7th and 8th grade math class because I passed the test to go from 6th grade math to Algebra 1. I was playing soccer, I had friends and my life with my family was wonderful. My mom cooked home-made meals every night during the week. We ate together as a family. We lived in a nice neighborhood and there was love in our home. I had no idea that I was an addict/alcoholic and so was my bother.
I got into high school and my academics got a lot harder. Honors Algebra 2 was no joke. I decided to quit smoking pot during the week and focused more on school and playing JV soccer and volleyball. During the week I was all business (aka school & sports) but on the weekends I was partying with my brother, getting high and hooking up with his friends. It was fun.
After my freshman year, my bother went away to college. I remember going down to San Diego to see him for my birthday during my sophomore year. We went to Tijuana, had tacos and beer for lunch, then came back and drank at a party. I ended up spending most of the night barfing in the toilet from drinking too much…
Back in Ventura, with my brother gone, I finally stopped smoking pot senior year after connecting with some trainers at the local gym who convinced me that it wasn’t worth it. At that time, I had changed a lot of my friends, I was focused on going to college and didn’t care too much about what anyone thought at high school. I was playing volleyball at the gym, taking my grandmother to lunch on Saturdays and excited to attend USC after graduation. I even attended a course called Alpha at church.
During my first semester at USC, I joined a sorority. The parties were great and alcohol was so easy to come by. Engineering school was rigorous but most of the parties were on Thursdays so I somehow limited my drinking to Thursdays and the weekends. It was all books during the week. I also joined a martial arts / self-defense club that trained in Jujitsu early in the morning twice a week. My dedication to that training kept me from drinking during the week. I wasn’t training with girls, I was training with almost all guys. Story of my life: me and the boys. I grew up with my brother and all his friends. I’ve been very close to my dad my whole life (I’m his favorite and I act just like him….). Engineering school was also all young men and then spoiler alert: I go straight into construction.
Long story short: I drank a lot in college but I drank way more after college. During college, I had to study, go to class and pass difficult tests. As a Civil Engineering major, I couldn’t just bs my way through some arty-fartsy essay… either I knew how to solve the engineering problems, or I didn’t. Knowing how to solve the problems came from doing the work. I spent hours and hours each week solving problem sets, memorizing formulas and crunching calculations.
Junior year of college, I moved into my sorority house and had easy access to the fraternity row. I friend from one of the fraternities that I also had some engineering classes with, invited me to go to church with him at a night club in downtown LA. It was wildly different from the conservative, traditional Presbyterian church I had grown up in. I loved it but I didn’t connect with anyone there and I didn’t get involved. When I wasn’t too hung over on a Sunday, I tried to attend their evening service. I almost always went alone, that part sucked, but I enjoyed the service and especially the teaching.
That December, after a long stretch of too much drinking and some other unpleasant experiences, I recognized that I didn’t drink like my peers. I recognized that I had a drinking problem. I quit cold turkey and thought I had quit drinking for good. But alcoholism is cunning, baffling and powerful. About a month later, I started drinking again. No particular reason why. It was more like, why not? I feel fine. I can control this…. I went off to Madrid, Spain and studied abroad for a semester. It was fun. We traveled, we drank, we explored. During that time, I visited Amsterdam and spent a weekend getting high in the head shops. I ate everything in sight and became introverted and paranoid. It wasn’t that great. I haven’t smoked pot since…
During the summer of 2008, I lived in Las Vegas and had a construction / engineering internship on the City Center Project, home to the Cosmopolitan and Aria hotels as well as others. It was a $9 billion project and there were 45 college interns, including me. I showed up to the internship each day, physically at least. I was typically hung over since we drank almost every day. That summer was a lot of fun, some of it is a blur, most of it was an emotional roller-coaster. Although my living expenses were extremely cheap and my hourly wage at the internship was relatively high, I came back to LA broke. I spent all the money I’d earned on partying. My family had gone through some hard times with my mom’s health and my dad wasn’t earning the comfortable income he once had. Although they were willing to help me financially, I decided it was time for me to pay my own way. I was 22 years old… I got a job as a waitress at CPK in downtown LA. As the recession of 2008 hit, I was making less money waitressing. I took another job administering tests to participants in a clinical study for the USC school of medicine. It was hard to make ends meet. Finally, I sought a job at a high-end restaurant and became a food runner. The pay was much better and I quit the other two jobs. In July of 2009, I moved to Hermosa Beach. My alcoholism exploded. Day drinking was socially acceptable in Hermosa and the city was full of people who drank like me. After a weekend bender in Las Vegas with my sister and some other friends, I came home devastated. My sexual escapades left me feeling worthless, and my girl friends didn’t want to be friends anymore. As a woman of action, I decided to quit drinking. I white-knuckled it and stayed out of the bars. I was bored and alone. I went to the gym and I went to work. Life was dry and lonely. Remember how alcoholism is cunning, baffling and powerful? Well, I picked up a drink. No real reason why. Just drank a beer and before I knew it, I was back to blacking out.
I graduated USC with a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering with emphasis in Structural Design, a minor in Spanish Language and a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering with Specialization in Construction Engineering and Management. Shortly after, I began working full time as a field engineer. Now that school was done and my paychecks were not based on passing tests, I was able to drink every day. I’d hit the gym after work, most days, come home, open a beer, have some wine and sort of eat dinner, or not. Weekends consisted of binge drinking, day drinking and eventually going to the bars alone. I blacked out and woke up in strange places with strange men. My double life continued as I attended a women’s bible study on Tuesday nights and a co-ed bible study on Wednesday nights for the most part. I’ve always been highly functioning and able to handle a lot. As my drinking got worse, so did my morals. I lied, cheated and took advantage of everything and everyone. I woke up in my own vomit a couples of times, but that didn’t stop me from chasing after my desire to drink. When I would go to Vegas, I would literally pack a suitcase of alcohol and bring it with me. I would drink an entire bottle of champagne to myself while getting ready to go to the pool, not eat breakfast and then go to the pool and drink all day. With certainty, but not intentionally, I would be blacked out by the afternoon. This behavior carried on through the end of 2012 as my alcoholism progressed and I became it’s slave.
After a weekend of heavy drinking, I remember feeling sick and hung over at work on Monday morning and promising to myself, I’m not going to drink today after work. When I got home that evening, I took off my boots and opened a beer. I couldn’t stop. Even when I wanted to, I wasn’t able to stop. I never intentionally got blacked out, actually, I tried really hard to NOT black out. I wanted to remember. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to connect with people. I tried to control my drinking. I tried to moderate my drinking. I tried counting my drinks. I tried drinking water in between. I tried all sorts of things to control and manage my drinking. Nothing worked. I realized that other people would get that little warning inside when they drank that said, “Hey, you’re drunk. Stop drinking.” and they would stop. I never get that warning. It never occurs to me to stop drinking once I start. If a little is good, then more must be better, right?
In late December 2012, I started dating a man named Jason. By January I thought I was going to marry him. On January 27, 2013 I went to a charity event with my friend Jen. I bought us tickets to the VIP area because it was all-you-could drink. As was typical for me, I drank heavily. I even remember her asking me why I was drinking so much. I couldn’t answer the question. I was happy, life was good. Drinking just felt god, it made things more exciting. She drove me home and I opened a bottle of wine and called Jason. Soon after, I blacked out.
I woke up on Monday, January 28, 2013 at 5 AM to my alarm. Disoriented, hung over and a mess, I looked at my phone. Jason wanted me to call him. He told me that if I was going to drink, he didn’t want anything to do with me. I hung up the phone and God revealed to me that I had to make a choice. I could either choose to get help or I could choose to keep drinking. If I kept drinking, I would lose everything that was important to me. I would lose my job, I would lose my car, I would lose my friends and Jason would certainly be gone. By the grace of God, I had not yet been in a car accident, never landed in the hospital and hadn’t gone to jail. In that moment, I realized I would experience all those things if something didn’t change. I was on a rapidly descending elevator and I chose to get help before it exploded at the bottom. I got up and went to work.
At lunch that day, I drove off site and called Jason. I told him I’d been drinking a lot and I needed help. I told him I didn’t understand what was going on. Little did I know, that Jason was sober himself. He had 14 years sober through NA. I came home from work, packed up all my alcohol and gave everything to my neighbor. I was done. This time for good.
Jason took me to my first AA meeting. As is customary, I was introduced as a newcomer. We said the serenity prayer at the end of the meeting and I knew I was where I needed to be. The women hugged me, welcome me and gave me their phone numbers. They invited me to a Tuesday Women’s meeting.
I’ve always known how to show up. So I just kept showing up. I put in the work. I went to that Tuesday meeting every week for years. I got a sponsor, we read the Big Book and worked all the steps. I attended other meetings and Big Book studies. The first few weeks of sobriety were tough, but being with Jason helped since he didn’t drink. We cooked, we went to the gym, we went to meetings. My sponsor helped me deal with situations like what to do at work events that have an open bar. I quickly learned to order soda with lime in a rocks glass and always have my non-alcoholic drink in my hand. No one offers me a drink when they see that I have one. No one ask me why I’m not drinking when it looks like I am. These simple tools helped me avoid the awkward conversations early in my sobriety.
As the days turned into weeks, turned into months, I was feeling better, more alive and clear headed. It was great that people weren’t mad at me and I wasn’t full of regrets. As I worked the steps, I built trust with myself. I had spent years not trusting myself.
I was physically sober but my emotional sobriety still had to catch up. My emotions still got the best of me frequently. I had to learn to feel my emotions, process them and make good choices. I had to learn to accept responsibility and also make right the wrong I had done. Working Step 9 was the hardest and also the most rewarding for me. I paid back money I had stolen. I forgave and was forgiven. I was able to let go of past hurts and begin to walk in more freedom.
In January of 2014, I was transferred out to Victorville for work to build a prison. Soon after my relocation, my relationship with Jason ended. He is a wonderful man, but we weren’t meant to be together forever. I am incredibly grateful to him for how he loved me and helped me and forever changed my life. He was a gift from God.
With Jason no longer in my life, I was concerned that I would discover I had only become sober for him and to stay in the relationship. I didn’t want that to be true so I fought against it. I set goals, I made commitments and I showed up. I continued to attend the weekly women’s AA meeting I was already a part of and I dug in. I started sponsoring other women, I volunteered to speak at Speaker meetings, I started volunteering with Hospitals & Institutions. I got into action. I found a little church in the desert and went every Sunday. I joined a Bible study. I went to work, to the gym, to the movies. I maintained friendships through phone calls and things at work were going well. The promises of AA began to come true for me.
In summer of 2015, I was relocated back to Los Angeles, this time to work at LAX airport. That fall I was promoted to Assistant Project Manager and life was good. I was attending a weekly women’s meeting in El Segundo, I had a new sponsor and began sponsoring a young woman. I joined a church in Santa Monica and kept pursuing healthy things. I played beach volleyball and frequented the gym.
As time went on, I kept working on myself and developing my character. I sought opportunities to learn, to grow and to be challenged. I learned to work with difficult people, to accept people for who they are and where they are. I worked on mending the relationship with my family members. I became a respectable woman. It felt good. I was in good standing with my fellow man. I felt the love of God and that my life had purpose. My faith grew as I spend more time in prayer. I was baptized in the Spirit and received the gift of tongues.
I came to realize that God had removed my desire to drink. I wasn’t tempted and I didn’t struggle anymore. I didn’t think about drinking nor fantasize about it. I am a grateful alcoholic. I’m grateful that I can share my experience, strength and hope with others. I love seeing people be set free. Make no mistake though, I know that I can never ever drink again. While I don’t think or obsess about drinking, I know that I am not cured and I’m not like other people. I have a progressive disease and there is no cure. I have a daily reprieve based on my fit spiritual condition.
In 2018, I was promoted to Area Superintendent and began running work in the field. Construction is a lot of fun. It’s fast-paced, demanding, dangerous, exciting and challenging. Once again, me and they boys were having a ball. Construction is heavily male-dominated and I loved that. It’s easy for me to connect with them and build mutual respect and trust. Being a woman in construction has unique advantages.
When the pandemic broke out, everything in LA shutdown but through an interesting course of events I connected with Steven and his wife Nicole. They were running a small, underground house church. I couldn’t wait to attend. I was in deep need of community and friendship. Church was 5 or sometimes 6 hours long. We had dinner together, we worshiped, there was teaching and prayer. We laughed together and they hugged me. It was wonderful to be with people and have a place to connect to. I became part of the leadership team and started volunteering. My faith grew, my knowledge of scripture increased and my ability to discern the will of God became sharper. I developed friendships, hosted parties, and went on weekend trips with my new group of friends.
By summer of 2021, Pastor Steven asked me to be a board member of the church and I joyfully accepted. In September, one of our overseeing pastors named Jacob came to visit. Jacob spoke into my life in a profound and intriguing way. He told me that God wanted me to be willing to start a business in tandem with my current job, and that at some point, God would give me a clear sign to quit my career in construction. I was excited but also afraid. I spent the next 4 months thinking about what he said. Then I spent another 4 months mainly thinking and praying about it but not taking too much action. I did a few things but mainly just talked about the idea of starting a recovery facility. I’d thought of starting one in the past, but saw the enormous cost and multiple barriers to entry and the risks and backed out. Then the pieces started to fall into place, almost without me doing much. I looked back at something I had created during a day of prayer in August of 2020. It was covered in words: Blessed to be a blessing, fearless, restorer, igniter, leader care for others, ceiling-breaker, healer, way-maker, love others, rehabilitation, foundation-shaker, bring people from darkness to light. When I casually told me friends that I was thinking about starting a rehab, they offered support and even resources. They connected me to people who have owned rehabs and who currently operate multiple treatment centers. All of these people freely gave me their time, wisdom and experience. Other friends connected me to an attorney who gave me a discount on this services and set up my corporation. Another friend recommended a CPA to me. That CPA told me he would work for free until I start making a profit and that he would keep me in prayer. My required work hours reduced at my job and my pay stayed the same. I would have to blind to miss what God is doing in my life. The doors keep opening and the opportunities keep coming.
I’m committed to launching Throttle & Thrive into reality. I trust that God will provide everything needed, at the right time and that we will see thousands of men receive healing and freedom.
“What’s worse? The fear of failure? or the feeling of regret?” – Tom Spooner
I choose to battle the fear of failure every day. I know that I would regret not doing this and I can’t live with regret. I rebuke the fear daily and push forward into the unknown, into the adventure, into my calling. I chose to be of service.