Speaker 1: Hello everyone. I'm Stephanie Wilder Taylor, and welcome to Drunkish,
my podcast based loosely on my book Drunkish, where I
told my sobriety story, and you can still buy it.
I welcome you to buy it. It's a pretty good book.
But now I have this podcast, and let's get right
to my guest. She is a performer, a writer, a composer,
and also a good friend of mine, Margo Rose. Listen.
She's had quite a life. It's a fascinating story. She's
been through a lot. Her story is incredibly moving, and
I made it into two parts, but you definitely have
to hear all of part one to fully get the
impact of part two, so listen until the end. She
also has a show that's going up in a theater
in Hollywood next month. That's in February, and I will
post the details in the episode to description. So let's go.
I am so happy to be here with you, Margo friend,
fellow sober traveler. That's right, I've known you for a
really long time.
Speaker 2: Yes you have.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I like to open by saying like how I
was first introduced to you? And I was first introduced
to you in a sober space, and I had a
person helping me with my when I first got sober.
And then I heard you speak at a meeting and
I was like, oh, hold on a minute, I think
I made a mistake with my first one.
Speaker 2: I was like seeded to say, wait, I made a mistake,
but this would do.
Speaker 1: No. I was just like, I was like, I need
somebody like Margot who has edge. You were like rock
and roll and into the pills, which we'll get into.
And I mean, so you were sober five years sober
when I met you, and anyway, I just remember thinking
you were like the coolest no. But back then I
was very what's the word for it, defensive, like angry,
not wanting to do things someone else's way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you were too smart for you, I mean,
and I totally got it. You were just too smart
for all of it, you know, and it just kind
of rubbed you the wrong way a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: I just I just wanted everybody to be so nice
to me and like so grateful that I was racing
them with my sobriety. We should all be celebrating all
of my milestones, including by the day and just congratulating
me on not drinking and not asking anything of me,
not expecting me to do work.
Speaker 2: No, no, just your presence, just your actual Connie who's
an actor, used to say, I don't know if you
remember Connie. Of course, yes, okay she used to say.
She said great shit. But but one of the things
she said was like, everybody is giving me all this,
you know, good feedback for my role. And you know,
she was on wad Way and everything, and she was like,
everybody's doing, but I need a parade. I need a parade.
If I don't have a parade, I feel really, you know,
like I haven't gotten my do And you know she
just shared that then, and I thought, yes, we all,
so many of us, not everybody.
Speaker 1: What I love about recovery, though, is the ability to
see that in myself and then have a laugh and
know that, you know, I'm among my people other people
that are like I've always kind of been that way.
And yes, I needed a lot of praise and still
do I've gotten better, though.
Speaker 2: No, you've gotten Yeah, you're you know, as as we
can all see about other people. I think, you know, yeah,
you know when I hear you speak and I think
about when I first met you, and you know it's
you know, it's it's been totally transformational and you and
I mean the way I see you. But but also
you're the same woman. You know, you have the same smarts,
you have the same edge, you have the same humor.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That was always the thing I loved about you is
you just had, you know, the kind of humor that
I love, this kind of dark, cutting humor. And you
still have that. You still have all that shit. You know,
it's okay if I have a potty mouth, well we're
or I insist love it, you know, so you have
all those important, great, you know, wonderful things. It's just,
you know, what is it. I don't know how to describe.
It's like as we get sober, as we get more willing,
I think, you know, I think a lot of it
is dealing with ego right totally.
Speaker 1: And I am just so grateful that I've known you
the whole entire time, sixteen years. But tell me.
Speaker 2: About you that I have that much sobriety now.
Speaker 1: It's okay. You have good reason, you have very good reason,
which we'll get to. But tell me about you before
any of this, before you got sober. Wild actress live
in that live in that life. I know the story,
but I want our listeners to know it well.
Speaker 2: You know, I started. I went to drama school, a
couple of them, and after I graduated from the second one,
I came to New York with three other friends from
from school from North Carolina, and uh, we got a
house on Staten Island, which is the dumbest thing, like,
we're all gonna make it in New York City and
let's live on Staten Island where you know it takes
hours hours to get there. But I did make the
best of it because I became a fairy singer. I
got it, Yes I did. I got a permit and
I opened my guitar and left it open. And I
was at one of the two ends of the Staten
Island Ferry, which back then was really wild because you could, boy,
you could get one token and ride all day, which
they didn't do after a number of years. But so
they were crazy people on there too that just wanted
to get on and I have a place to be.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was a woman that would run down the aisles
lifting her skirts going you know, it was like nuts, great, yes,
what was.
Speaker 1: She a good tipper?
Speaker 2: Well, no, she was not a good tipper because she
was homeless. But she was really entertaining, you know, and
she really shocked people because she would just I don't
think it was completely naked underneath, but it was, you know,
it was you know, I have high waisted panties or something.
You know, that's something that people really couldn't handle. So
I love that and I did that for months. It
was it was how I made my income when I
first got to New York, and then I you know,
I worked at the Federal Reserve Bank being a tour guide,
and then I started waitressing. It you know, all these
like wild things and and how old were.
Speaker 1: You were you like early twenties at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. When I got to New York, I
was twenty two, I think, yeah, twenty two. And and
you know, crazy stuff happened kind of right away. I
mean crazy, hard stuff happened. I lost my dad and
when I hadn't actually I hadn't finished college. I had
taken a semester off and I was barmating. I was
barmating and wearing hot pants, and I had we could
take drinks from the from the guys along the bar,
you know, they could buy us drinks. It was the
Broadway Pub, so like the lifers who had these big
bees hives, and at the end of the night they'd
be like listening. I would have like four or five
vod Katonics lined up along. It was like heaven on
a stick. I'd just go down and say hi to
these awful guys and just like hello, how are you doing,
and you know, buy me a drink woo, And it
was just the greatest thing. I got off at two
am and I went home to my little apartment with
my friend and you know, it was it was fun.
And then I got a call on the payphone that
my dad had a heart attack, and I ran back
to where they were at the time, which was Arlington, Virginia.
We'd moved from Indiana and he was in a coma
and we lost him after three days. And that was awful.
And then I went back to New York. Oh no,
I didn't. I stay with my mom and then I
finished college and then I went back to New York.
And then within I don't know, three or four years. Yeah,
it was both both of them were After my dad,
I had a couple of friends commit suicide.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Best friends. Yeah, jump from jump from buildings, both of them.
I know that's you know, the you know talking about loss.
It just I mean I had had so much loss
by the time I even was in my forties, and
Pat and I decided to have kids, it was like,
you do it? No, I mean if I don't know
how I would have felt if I hadn't had a
hysterectomy and couldn't you know she had to be the
one because I didn't have a uterus. But in retrospect,
I was grateful.
Speaker 1: Well, hold on, not everybody knows that part of your story.
So when did you meet then? So then you are
still in New York, you're acting you have this loss
I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have lost and loss and loss. And then
I started getting work. I started getting commercials, and I
started doing some readings. And then I somebody actually craiged Zaydan,
who's a big huhan now, arranged a got me an
audition for a new show called I'm Getting My Act
Together and Taking It on the Road. Gretchen Choir and
Nancy Ford and I went in and I think I
sang one of my own songs that I'd written and
something else and Gretchen was from Indiana as I was,
and we just got along like gangbusters, and they hired
me to do this show that hadn't been done. And
we were at the Public Theater, Joe Papp's Public Theater
way back when, and we opened. We got mixed reviews,
but we had all this word of mouth, and so
the show became a hit. And I did it in
New York for I think a year, almost six or eight, No,
a year. I did it in your New York for
a year because we were at the Public. And then
we moved to Circle in the Square downtown, which is
now gone. And then I visited somebody in California. It
was like a whimsical thing. And I went out and
I visited a friend in California, and I fell in
love with California. I fell in love with it. I
just thought I fell in love with all the wrong stuff,
do you know. I thought the palm trees were wonderful,
and everybody was like having music jams and sitting in
little houses up on an echo parking. I just, you know,
I completely glamorized it, do you know? It was just
all spark three to me.
Speaker 1: I love California. Look I just got my California tattoo.
You did not, Yes, I sure did. I have glamorized
it too.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: But I've lived here almost all my life, so you
don't have to you don't have to apologize for glamorizing
California or well, you know.
Speaker 2: I so yeah, So I decided to like up and
leave because the show was supposed to come out here
and then it didn't because there was like a gas
strike or something. This is a long time ago, and
and I just was like, I'm going anyway. You know
that this you know, I have a vagabond, and you know,
i'd started, I'd started drinking, but I I it wasn't
a big problem way back then. And really, when I
was still New York, I had cocaine for the first time.
That was fun. I liked it a lot because I'm
I'm a you know type person in the first place,
and that that was excellent. I really loved it. But
I didn't get on it, and then I didn't get going,
you know, And I and I really wasn't a big
deal in New York.
Speaker 1: Everyone was doing it.
Speaker 2: Everyone was doing it, you know, and I didn't do
it all that much. But I've been working. I've been
doing commercials. I've been done in this hit show. So
I got a drive away car, which I don't know
if they still have. You somebody wants a car in
California and it's it's actually on the East Coast. So
you say, oh, I'll drive it.
Speaker 1: I think, so do you get that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So I put my dog, Henry, who had
found on the streets of New York, put him in
the car with me, and loaded up my car and drove. Oh.
I made all these stops that I wasn't supposed to make,
you know, we're supposed to go straight there. I went
to see my sister, and out of outside of Boston,
I went to see Tommy, my friend Tommy was doing
in Ohio. I went to see you know, I mean
I would see my brother in Colorado, right, and then
the fellow I was seeing at the time, because I
was still on that side of the street. Oh, I know,
I know. You wouldn't know this till I was thirty.
Actually it was boys boys, boys, yes, ma'am. Oh, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Did not know this about you, okay. Fascinating.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not one of those like I knew when
I was no, I'm not the female Davis Sarras at all.
Oh I did not. I I mean I it came
into my head, and there were times that I thought
about it towards the tour, you know, right before I
came to California. But if I thought about it or
I thought it was something that was happening, I was like, no, no, no,
because this was eighties. You know, this is a long
time ago in terms of the culture, right. So I
came to California just because I thought the palm trees
were cute and looked like, you know, bathroom cups unfolded.
I just loved it. And I came here, and of course,
I you know, I got a commercial agent right away,
but I couldn't get a regular agent because you have
to have tape on yourself. It was it's just a
big huha. So I started waitressing. First year I was
out here, the show didn't come out. So I waitressed.
I worked at the Improv and I got you know,
all these places, and and I really started drinking more.
I had my dog Henry with me. Talk about a
bad dog owner. I would let him out the back
door on Fountain in Hollywood, Okay, like between Librea and Highland.
And we lived on Point Setta, which was right by fountain,
and I would let him out the back door, like okay, Henry,
go pee, because I was busy doing cocaine in that year.
That's when I started in that and I had a cocktail,
which was a white wine and coke, and it was
just aces. When it got bad was when I didn't
want to be with anybody else. I did it, and
I bottomed out on the drug. Before I realized that
it was an overall over arching problem. I thought it
was just the coke because I did bottom out, I boosted.
My roommate was dealing, can you imagine? And I had
already I had already started working. The show had come out.
I had just filmed forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: And oh yeah, yeah, I recently watched it just to
see you in it. You play one of the girlfriends.
Speaker 2: The guy play one of the girlfriends. And by that
time I was in the closet, but I was. I
had started seeing gals and and I remember they said,
you know, I hope you don't mind for forty eight
these two girls, they're they're rough, and they they broke
up from these other guys, but you know, they there's
a suggestion like they could be lesbians. I'm like, well,
let me think, you know. So it was sort of
weird and a little scary because I was totally in
the closet. But anyway, I was on that set and
by the time I got on the set of forty
eight Hours, I had just stopped like a week before.
Now I'm putting it in time here because I realized
that I by the time I did forty eight Hours,
I had stopped a week before that. I had stopped
doing cocaine because I had bottomed out by stealing my
roommates stash and doing like many grams in one day
and almost killed myself, and you know, saw God and
at the end of that said to myself, Okay, I
get it. I can keep doing this and die or ama.
It was that moment. It was a god shot, but
not a godshot about everything. It was just like, coke
is the problem. Alcohol's fine. So that was nineteen eighty
I think or eighty one, and I went for another
almost ten years before I got sober. Sober, you know,
before I really got sober.
Speaker 1: So did the alcohol keep getting bad? Because it's just
so funny, I will you and I have talked about
stuff a lot of times. But you know, I quit
cocaine too. When I was like nineteen. I started doing
it and then and only did it for less than
a year, like six months, and I was like, oh this,
this is going to be real bad for me. I
was just doing taking all kinds of risks, like going
off with guys I didn't know to like construction sites,
because they said they would give me cocaine. It's amazing
that nothing terrible happened to me. But one night I
had a bad, bad scene with it, and I was like,
you know what, I can't. I can't do this.
Speaker 2: That was your moment.
Speaker 1: That was my moment. And I've never done it since.
But I have definitely kept drinking, yeah, for another twenty years.
See there you go.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people do that, Like I
have a problem with this hard drug, right, I mean
to stop doing this hard drug and everything else is cool.
I'm you know, asis Yeah, And I did drink. I
did drink more after I stopped coke, you know. And
the main thing about how much I drank was I
drank every day for the next you know, almost ten years.
I drank every day, and I thought about it. I
had it in my head, When do I get to
drink today? When am I you know, I was, I
was in relationships. I was you know, I had a
lot of people around. It wasn't like I was all
on my own in a little room and I could
just do whatever and nobody knew about it. I was
with people, so I had to plan We're going out
to dinner tonight. Okay, we'll have white wine.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I was with somebody that drank, but she wasn't alcoholic,
but she drank a lot. You know, people drink a lot,
you know, it's just you know, when we were at
her place in Canada on a summer, you know, when
we'd gone on vacation, and we got this great bottle
of Scotch and it was nighttimeing and we drank a
little bit and then she kind of fell asleep and
I proceeded to not even realize I was doing it,
but over the course of the rest of that night,
just completely drank the whole bottle. And the first time
I really I know, I had thought it years ago.
I thought I'd had somebody say, you know, maybe you
should look at this and I was like, yeah, I'm
a drunk, and you know, I put my Hennessy in
my back pocket and my coke and my watch pocket
and I went and sang, and you know, I thought
I was the coolest thing alive, right, But I that
was I remember that night when I when I woke
up and I thought, why did I do that? You
know what what? Because I couldn't remember wanting to that much.
I couldn't remember that it was a I had some
big need or obsession to do it. It was just
like I did it. I just did it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Years later you find all sorts of things like that
in the big book, stories about I didn't mean to
do this and I just put the scotch in my milk,
and you know, and how does it happen? And that's
why we have to watch out and so that I
didn't get sober. But the woman I was with at
the time, I really practiced a lot of betrayal. You know.
I was hitty and I did it a couple of
times to different people. And I did it with that
woman that I was with for like five years, and
she found out that I'd been lying and seeing somebody else,
which actually turned out to be pat that I then
stayed with for twenty six years. But so she found
out about it, and she called me when we got
back from where we'd been and she railed me. I mean,
she just reamed me out. She just it was the worst.
I mean, she was like, blah blah blah blah blah,
you're gonna be a big loser. You just do this,
and you just do that. And in that rant she
also said you're an alcoholic. She told friends later she
didn't really think that or think that she thought that,
but it came out. I heard it. I'd been going
to alan On because my dad was an alcoholic, so
that was that was going to solve everything, right from
going to allan On sporadically, but I thought I was being,
you know, really searching.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's a thing. Do you think that's
a thing where people I'm wondering if you think I
know so many people who started out going to alan
On because we think it somebody else is causing us
this amount of pain. I went to allan On a
few times over my biological father, who I did not
grow up with, but I just attributed a lot of
many issues to him.
Speaker 2: I think we move it right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even though I was doing like worse, right, I
really thought if I could just get a hold of
like why am I emotional? Why I have so much
chaos in my life due to him? If I could
just get over that, I would be doing much better. Yeah. Yeah,
it seems to be a common thing that people.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: We just all a lot of us like to go
down the you know, river of denial, and you know,
just keep battling, you know, and it's that's the problem.
That person is the problem, this thing is the problem,
this place is the problem. It's just that drug that's
the problem. And I'm not intrinsically different, right, you know.
Speaker 1: But I cut you off, so you were that's.
Speaker 2: Okay, it was great. Yeah, it's a it's a great point.
So so I hung up from from Donna and and
after she'd said alcoholic, and I just hung up and
I went, oh oh. And I always think of that
as a god shop, but I think of it as
this little window that opened like this much, do you
know what I mean? There's a crack in the window.
And for whatever reason, and and I don't have a big, good,
solid god conscious thing, you know, it takes. Really, I
don't always feel that at all, but I look at
that time and when that happened, I don't why did
I hear that? Why did I hear really hear her
say that and go, oh, she's right. And I called
my friend who I can say her full name because
she's gone now. She got cancer, but she's a wonderful
actor and wonderful woman, very funny. Her name was Gwen Wells,
and I called Gwennie because she was in program. And
I said, I'm an alcoholic and she said, yes, honey,
I know which all the people that were so around us,
including like a Loma, who I knew before I got
so much sober, We'll always yes, honey, sit down, yes, yes, yes,
I know you. You know my new relationship we're fighting.
She's a lawyer, Yes, honey, just sit down. You know
that's It was that simple for everybody that that knew
me and kind of figured it out. So I went
to a reading that night, and I haven't had a
drink since that was nineteen ninety. I have not had
a drink since, but I've redone my date twice. Okay,
the first time when I I have lupis and remission.
And I had one of those docs that that all
those all those movies are about that, that Michael Keaton's
movie is about dope sick, all that he believed that
oxy conton was absolutely fine. So he had me on
a whole bunch of drugs and one of them was oxycnon.
One of them was pregnozone, which ate a hole in
my shoulder, and one of them was oxy conton. And
he used to say, you're not addicted, You're just habituated.
And I was on several hundred milligrams of OxyContin at
some at one point, so I was just stupid. But
I had not had a drink. So I after that started,
I had a couple of years before I got sick,
but I worked the program. I had a sponsor, you know,
I went, I did the steps, you know, and it
was great. You know, it was great. I did all
sorts of amends. That was, you know, first couple of years,
about three years, and I was with Pat. I was
with my partner that I stayed with and we had kids.
But I slipped away from going to meetings.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I had a second sponsor who also had lupus, and
she died, so it just I was like, who, you know,
I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking. I'm fine, I'm sober. Meantime,
I started to get sick, and I started to get dosed,
you know, prescribed MS content and then god knows what else,
and then finally OxyContin. And the thing that I did
was I took it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The thing I did was, okay, I'll take two hundred
milligrams of OxyContin along with six other drugs because I
had Lopez.
Speaker 1: You know, did you enjoy the feeling?
Speaker 2: Oh god, yes, it was high all the time. It
was high all the time, and even a few it
led a few years into when we had the kids,
and you know, I can't and you know it's like,
you know, I don't think I drove a lot with
them high, you know, because I wasn't hike all the time.
It was just like when I first took my drugs
in the morning, or when I you know, if I
took a pill and thought, because he told me one
time I could cut it in half, they'd be okay.
If I half chewed it, that was okay. You know
I really was. I'm taking this as as does as prescribed,
you know, so I'm sober. That was that was where
my head took me. And I wasn't ask Nancy in
the meeting. She'll tell you that when I first came in,
I used to nod off and I wasn't aware, you know,
I didn't know. And I but but before that, I
had stopped going to meetings. And my mom died in
two thousand and four. She'd been sick, she and her
cancer came back. She was living close by me by
that time, and I I kind I kind of had
a bit of a bit of a breakdown. But I
ran into a friend in a parking lot when I
was just a wreck, and Kathy and she knew, she
knew I had been sober, and I was. I was
just you know, feeling very sorry for myself, crying, crying, crying,
and she said, well, have you been to a meeting lately,
Like not for a few years. That's not the problem,
you know. So she was my my eskimo in terms
of coming back in. So I started going to meetings again,
nodding out here and there, and I got Liz for
a sponsor, and you know, just in terms of talking
and going through the whole thing and like talking about
what I was taking in what was going on, it
was like and then changing doctors was like, oh, okay,
I'm this the brain's not clear. It took me a
year to tight trade off of the oxycont and pedni zone,
which was killing me. So I dated my new sobriety
because I really wanted to in two thousand and four,
and I had to tie trade down after that, but
because I was working program and tie trading down, and
I had to do it carefully with this new doctor
because you know, it would have not been good on
both of those drugs to tie trade. And by the
time and I remember a pharmacist who used to say, oh,
I don't think you're going to do that. He didn't
believe that, and it was horrible. I was flaring from
my disease and from five mimile and withdrawing at the
same time. So it was a rough year. But I
got everything. I got the pregni zone and the oxycont
out and you know the other the other stuff that
i'd been on. Oh god, I've been on xanax for
a while and you know a lot of it.
Speaker 1: It'll be too hard on ourselves. Because I got sober
on February twenty second oh nine, but I was taking
xanax and I had to. I immediately started trying to
titrate off. But I knew that if I just stopped
taking it cold turkey, it was going to be horrendous.
And I wasn't trying to punish myself by getting sober.
I was trying to know something, not for myself. So
I mean, you don't want to make yourself insane. I
went to my doctor and I said, I need to
get off of this. I want to do it safely.
I wasn't taking for me. I wasn't taking a huge dose,
and I was also taking it as directed, but there
was something about how much I looked forward to taking it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved the feeling. It changed my life. I was like,
oh my god, this is how people feel who are normal,
like they just live life. They're not like tense of
I til all the time, right, So I thought, I
really need this. But I did understand that I wasn't
even though I was taking it as directed. I understood
that I was pretty dependent on it and looking forward
to it as a release at the end of the day.
So I tight trade it off, but I'll tell you.
When I got to the last bit of it, I
was like finger in the like I was trying to get.
I was because I broke it in half. Then I
broke it in I was the same way, by the way,
with a non addictive drug, which is Zoloft. Years out
into my sobriety, I decided to try to. I decided
I really needed to see if my anxiety was related
to drinking or if it was or if I was
just a person because I hadn't. I traded off of
zoloft and it was horrendous and that's why I was
really like. I split it in half. Then I split
it in a quarter. Then I got a lower dose
and split that in half. And then by the time
I finished, it was like scraping up crumbs.
Speaker 2: Like, but you also stopped sugar, didn't you.
Speaker 1: I mean off and on through the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's I Every once in a while,
I think, you know, I'm I don't eat gluten and
I don't eat red meat, and I'm a daby, but
I'm sober. But man, do I love you know? I
like my sweet things. It's not like candy bars, but
there's so many things that I consume that have sugar
in them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm saying like, and there's more to your story,
But I'm saying like, we can't get caught up like
I refuse listen. I don't drink, I don't do drugs,
but I'm not like I wasn't going to change myself
like I wanted a society date. I knew I was
getting off of I was taking it. Well you know,
it's like, okay, there's nothing wrong with that. I would
never like try to go back and figure out when
the last bit of zet. You know, I wasn't taking
pannex anymore to get high. I was taking it to
uh by trade down, feel bad, not yet might not
have a horrible withdrawal.
Speaker 2: Well, and I exactly that's I I pegged my new
date at the moment that I got conscious. And I
think that's that's a different if you have to tie
trade off something the time that you get conscious about
it and say, okay, I want to I want to
be sober, I want to have this thing. Yeah, And
no matter how long it takes you to tie trade
you've got that consciousness.
Speaker 1: Now, we wouldn't do that with alcohol. We wouldn't be
like Okay, from the time you start thinking I'm really
gonna start, from the time you start really moderating, that's when.
Speaker 2: You can know, yeah, it doesn't work that way. I mean,
for me it worked. It was one of those miraculous
things that I thought about alcohol every day. I planned
when to take it, when I thought about not, I
mean you went to drink it. And when I thought
about not having any alcohol. He was like, no, I
couldn't do that. But after that moment when I crawled
through that little metaphoric window and went to my first
meeting with a bunch of toothless old guys, you know,
saying welcome home, you know, and I was like, you know,
when I went to that first meeting, I really didn't
want to drink. And I know that's not everybody's experience.
I was really fortunate that way. I you know, I
didn't have that consciousness about the drugs that I was given,
you know. But but you know, finally I found my
way back from from there with Kathy in the parking
lot and you know, coming into meetings and finally kind
of getting honest about how much I was taking and
and ty trading down. I think it's a consciousness stuff.
You know, it's a and the willingness. Somebody was just
talking about willingness yesterday. Right, it's it's when you stop
being stubborn as hell, you know, because we're just so smart.
We're so much smarter than everybody, right, and we think
we have the keys and and then you figure out
that you don't and there's a better way to do it.
So but I did just great.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you in those first five years, your
first five years, but I have to believe that you
still had edge and you were still a little fuck
off and a little a little yes, it's a little
reverend is a nice way to say it. Yes, I
consider myself irreverent.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you know I could and would if
he wore socks. Danielle and I used to say that,
you know, you know, and what was it. I think
Ron and I had, you know, like something about Neil anyway.
I mean, you know, we just we would make jokes
and you know, have a song and things like that.
But it didn't mean not being serious about sobriety. You know.
It's a bit of a you know, I mean sometimes
it's it's a bit you know, it's a bit of
I'm cooler than this or you know. I mean, there's
an ego involved in the edge for sure, and I
try I try to be aware of that, you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean.
Speaker 1: I try to be aware of your ego as well,
not mine, because I don't have that problem.
Speaker 2: Yours is yours is aces right.
Speaker 1: Okay, So time goes by, things are good, but not
great in your relationship as much.
Speaker 2: No, no, it was. It was a from from two
thousand and four when I marked my new sobriety after
my mom died. The good news about that about that
long period of time, you know, the next the next
twenty years really almost is that right? Yeah? No, no, no,
the next ten fifteen years was that I really went
into the middle of the program of being sober, and
I worked at it. I'm sure I didn't work at
it as hard as other people did. You know, I
still let other things take precedent, and you know, I
look back and I think, well, maybe that's why I
couldn't stay sober the last time. But you know, who knows.
You know, I did the best that I could, and
I was in the middle of my sobriety and my
group when we raised the kids in the in the
significant time as we raised them, but we had we
had a lot of turmoil because the dome donor that
we used turned against us and took us to court
and we were in court for years, in and out
of court. And Pat and I'm m I think we're
very different fundamentally, and but but we were. We were good,
you know, for years and years. We were good for
ten years before we even had the kids, you know,
or not not quite ten, yeah, almost ten. And we
were good right after. But when the the court stuff
started and they started being it was threatening, you know,
it was threatening to take them away from us, or
take them away partially, which did happen. They got visitation.
It just sometimes it brings you close to together, sometimes
it pulls you apart. And then we were and we
were sort of like tigers in a cage. And I
you know, there have been many times when I blamed
her and she was the bad you know, but I
played my part, you know, I played my part of
a martyr and a victim, and you know, our relationship
just disintegrated over those years. At the same time, we
both loved those kids. We had twins, boy girl twins,
and we I mean I say this in my show,
We Love Them with a ferocity of middle aged lesbians
making children, because you know, that is what it's I mean,
you know, you know the value of this thing of
having children, of having a family. You know, we were
already in our forties and so the value. And then
we worked for four and a half years. I had
had hysterectomy or partial one, and so pat it was
on patch. She was also three years younger, so we
worked for years and years for her to get pregnant.
So when she finally did and she was almost forty five,
it was it was a miracle. It was fucking miracle.
And then they came out. Will had to be in
the niqu for a while, but then they came out
and they were beautiful and perfect and smart and funny.
I used to think, oh, they're Indigo children, you know,
which you couldn't, you know, these children from other planets.
I mean, they were just magical and it was really
just the way we saw them, even though yes they
are they were wonderful. But we adored them. And that
was the one place we kind of came together, is
adoring the kids and despising the donor for you know,
for tearing us apart. But yeah, we fell apart and
little by little until we really acknowledged it to each
other after we've been in therapy and acknowledged to the kids.
So there were things about my program that you know,
were about being sober that were really challenged during that time.
And I did stay sober. I did, but I probably
could have worked harder. But I stayed sober, and I
stayed in the middle as much as I could. And
I was in the middle because when the worst thing happened,
even though I couldn't see myself, you know, I couldn't
find where I fit in after it happened. When it
first happened, you know, I will never forget what the
women in my home meeting were like, which is in
a way, it was really intimidating and tough. And the
thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Is that here's what I want to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me, I.
Speaker 1: Want to split this. I really feel strong that this
is like before and then and after. I want I.
Speaker 2: Want to stop before, I want to.
Speaker 1: End this episode. And then I'm gonna tomorrow, I'm going
to air part two and we'll do We'll do the
rest of it. We'll do it right now. But I'm
just saying for our audience.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna, well, yeah, come come back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I want you to come back tomorrow and
hear the rest of Margo's story. It's very awful, touching.
You're so strong. So let's uh, let's say goodbye. Margot.
Where can we find you? You're still doing stuff and
your show is coming back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're doing We're doing a one off. We're doing
a special encore performance at the LGBT Center in Hollywood
in February twenty eighth. Okay, so that's the first thing
we're doing.
Speaker 1: So Margot has a show that she wrote and produced
and stars in. It's her show, and well you'll find
out what that's about tomorrow. And so you're doing that,
And can they follow you on Instagram? You need some
Instagram followers?
Speaker 2: I do. I don't have enough stuff.
Speaker 1: What's your Instagram handle?
Speaker 2: It's just Margot J. Rose is a little thing underneath it,
but it's Margot J underscore ROSEKA think.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will put it in the description of the show.
Speaker 2: And FB is just Margot Rose. I think, oh, I
think I've got a Jay in most of those things.
And then we've got we've got an Instagram for the show,
but we can go into that later.
Speaker 1: Okay, come, please don't miss tomorrow. I'll see you guys tomorrow.
I thank you, Margot, you're welcome.
Speaker 3: Stiff, I just don't like this carry.
Speaker 2: Yelling my darky time. You can't be fling like