A Pursuit of Tranquility: When the Illusion of Control Collapsed. – Taryn
About This Speaker Tape
Taryn shares her raw story of active alcoholism, from a tumultuous childhood with alcoholic parents in New York to becoming a barmaid and navigating the chaos of her drinking. She recounts pivotal moments, including a devastating incident where her young son was left alone and her physical decline, culminating in seizures. Her true turning point arrived when her husband's blunt observation of her hypocrisy, smoking a joint while espousing AA principles, broke through her denial.
Now a long-time member, Taryn emphasizes the profound impact of sponsorship, forgiveness, and the diligent application of the 12 Steps in building a life of meaning and integrity.
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Timestamps
Full Transcript
It does not wish to engage in any controversy.
Neither endorses nor opposes any cause.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
I've asked Jim to read the promises.
Read it from there if you like.
Do...
Neither endorses nor opposes any cause.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
I've asked Jim to read the promises.
Read it from there if you like.
Do...
It does not wish to engage in any controversy.
Neither endorses nor opposes any cause.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
I've asked Jim to read the promises.
Read it from there if you like.
Do you want me to start with the promise?
Yeah, start with the promise.
I can stand...
Back him up.
I can stand longer than that.
I promise you.
I am Jim. I am an alcoholic.
I am Jim.
The promises, pages 83 and 84 of the Big Book.
If we are painstaking about the stage of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of youthfulness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations that cease to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we cannot do ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises?
They take time.
They are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
They will always materialize if we work together.
Thank you, Jim.
Thank you, Rich.
Okay.
Anybody here for the very first meeting?
Not all, it's none of us.
Okay.
Any visits here like to be identified?
Okay.
This is an open speaker's meeting.
I have announcements here.
A first-year anniversary breakfast for the New Hope group on Tuesday, August 6th, 8 to 9.
8 to 9 a.m. in the morning.
And the New Hope Presbyterian Church.
Be more information on this thing over here.
We're also going to have a traditions meeting on Friday.
It's the last Friday of each month.
And we also have a speaker's meeting on the last Wednesday of each month here.
Paul, do you have something to say?
Yeah, we're celebrating Rich's birthday next month.
And the speaker will be that white-haired lady down there.
All right.
And as you notice, this is Todd's first year anniversary.
He worked real hard during this whole year.
And he's come a great way.
And he asked Taryn from New York to speak.
And Taryn's been around a while.
And she's a pretty good lady to listen to, anyway.
Thank you.
And now I'm going to introduce Taryn.
Thank you.
Hello, Taryn.
I'm a kid.
I'm a drunk.
Good.
I got lucky.
I got sober.
My name is Taryn.
I'm an alcoholic and addict.
And I'm part of the New York Times.
I'm a real privilege to speak to you.
I was thinking, of course, with my craziness, that you've asked me, what am I going to say?
How am I going to say it?
I need to be impressed.
Oh, all this craziness.
Then I thought of a friend of mine.
His name is Lester.
His name was Lester.
Lester passed away.
He passed away not directly from alcoholism, although he was drunk, he was an A.A.
He passed away from alcoholism.
He passed away from not being able to take directions from doctors, really.
I mean, there was a lot of different ailments he had, and he finally just did not make it.
But Lester, when he was two years sober, asked me to see.
And in New York, it usually, that's not, you don't see that too much.
You see the person who had the anniversary date with him.
That's just sort of the way it is.
And I didn't know.
And then I realized Lester and I had tried to know.
So what I did was a double dialogue, a double qualification.
His alcoholism and mine combined.
It was horrendous.
But what I realized was that God had given me the gift to feel like I was sober a few years.
He saw me sober a few years.
And I thought of him in relation to speaking here today.
And how I, I remember when Todd came to the person.
What was that?
The Sunday morning meeting.
And he had just come back from the program.
And I had just been down there not too long, a few months.
But I was there every Sunday.
And that was when I first saw Todd.
And then we sort of connected through this last year quite well.
I really value his perception of this program and also his connection with God.
And most of all, he really, from what I hear, he really has a good understanding of what happens to him the first time around.
And he doesn't want to go back that route again.
And that's what I had to do.
When I, I drank for 28 years.
I picked up a drink deliberately at 16.
And it fell out of my hand at 44.
And there was a lot of pain and a lot of, a lot of craziness.
A lot of denial.
And a lot of what I thought were good times.
You know, I'm born and raised in New York.
I'm an only child.
My father was an alcoholic.
I was to realize in my sobriety that my mother also was an alcoholic.
But his alcoholism sort of went over her.
You hardly realize she was.
But I see it today as I think about that.
And I grew up with this kind of attitude that said, my mom's saying, don't go for too much in the world because it's not going to be there.
People aren't going to be there for you.
Things won't work out.
And you really live in a dream world.
Me.
And my father's patented was go for everything and don't worry about it because someone is going to pour you.
So with these two kind of core purposes in mind, I, I embarked on this, on the universe.
And I did good in school.
I was a good student.
I was basically, I would say, a fairly good kid.
You know, parents are good.
So, parents like to have officials play with me, but I was very, very poor.
And the pain of my father, particularly because he was a periodic in my real young years,
when I was like, in the time I was like five.
I mean, I remember even before that, but really clearly from about five to my teenage years,
I was sixteen and a half when he passed away.
So I really only had about eleven and a half years with my father.
And out of that time, he would go on binges for a year or two at a clip.
He was a bartender by trade, so he worked in a bar.
But he was always that. It was surprising.
Coming from where I came from, I realize today that what was very strong in my story is the work ethic.
My father, even with his insanity, worked all day.
And my mom had been a beautician before I was born.
And so she had worked, now this had to be in the late twenties, early thirties.
And this woman is working as a beautician.
So she had a profession.
So in there, my father came from Sweden and my mom came from Finland.
So there we are in the middle.
My father assimilated quite well.
He was a very bright man.
My mom was bright, but she was angry.
She was very angry.
And I got a lot of that anger.
And it was all centered around my father and his disease.
So the work ethic, to me, and I had a couple of aunts that lived in Brooklyn,
and they were also into this work ethic with my uncle.
So I grew up, even with all this craziness, still believing that what you did as a kid is you went to school,
you graduated, you picked out something, and you did it.
Because you were lucky as a girl, you got married.
And they didn't necessarily have to, one came before the other.
They just sort of happened.
I'm going to go into all of that immediately, very quickly.
Because they did.
When I was about fourteen, my father began to get ill.
And in those days, they didn't have the technology they have today.
And by the time everything was diagnosed, he was diagnosed with cancer.
With pancreas.
Not like that.
With thyroid.
And we lived, like I said, in New York.
So there was no money.
And my mom, my mom had a lot of pride.
And she wouldn't go on what was called then, what today is called assistance in New York.
Then it was called home work.
She wouldn't do that.
And so we ended up going to Miami, Connecticut.
And to take a kid from 110th Street, Manhattan Avenue, that played stickball, to this little,
believe me, this town is big next to the town where Courtney is.
I was devastated and angry and hurt.
I felt like I was always giving up something, you know, around my father's drinking.
Although I adore him.
He could do nothing wrong, and everything is Mom's fault.
And so she got Miami.
But anyway, we moved to Connecticut, and I was up there for a year.
And it was at that time that they decided, I guess the family got together and said,
let's try to marry her off.
Okay.
Well, they did.
Fine.
I wasn't going for it.
She was a very nice fellow, but that's about all she was.
A very nice fellow.
I was not getting married, nor was I getting engaged, nor was I staying in Canterbury,
Connecticut.
So June is my birthday.
I was 16.
And I got married.
And then in established, not established, but then I started seeingしたlike a guy
like that.
A guy like that you could just wake him up, hang someone up and try to stop or scoff at
him.
And then my father came back.
They both wanted somebody to draw.
My parents had come back to New York, thinking my father couldn't work, but that didn't
pan out.
Anyway, so they were back here, and they were back there in New York.
And I came back in a rage.
I also got to stay and be real honest about this Voy of텍 thing.
Everything I wanted.
Lola had everything.
So pause.
My father said, give it to them.
Just give it to them.
I mean, I guess the poor guy has so much guilt about his drinking, and all I want in the
drinking in all life. She said, anything Karen wanted, Karen got. And he made good money in those years. So, I, for a kid, in the neighborhood that I grew up in, I always walked around with a couple of dollars in my pocket. I mean, men were making $15 and $20, for God's sake, a week, and I'm walking around with a dollar and two dollars a week.
So, that sort of set up my head, and then I hit a drink, and it's like they all came together. Everything came together. My attitude was, if you didn't give it to me, I'll go over there and I'll get it, and if you don't want to give it to me, fine, I'll go over there, I'll get it.
I got some, when I was 16, my first job, I worked at H.L. Green's on Broadway.
In the Friday Dime, I worked on the Notion account. But you can see, with all this craziness going on, I went to work. But I wouldn't go back to school.
Never could have school. I would not go back. And I announced to my mother she couldn't do anything because I was going to run away from home.
And that sort of shook her a little bit. So, she backed off, and my father was getting sicker, and she couldn't, she didn't have much time to really.
Watched my craziness. And to make a long story short, I just ran away from home. I cured everybody's problems.
I left. I didn't go far. I went to 97, she went down to 56. You can get lost around the block in New York.
So, I just moved down 40 blocks, and no one knew me. And I was just a young kid, rich. My hair was blonde, real white then, and tried to look like I was 19 at least.
And...
I fell in with a crowd of people, and you know, I picked up those, that drinking, and then that made me prettier, and smarter, and bolder, less caring, and I just went for it.
You know, cold as a barrel, a lot. So, I mean, I was out there. And then when I was 18, I became a barmaid. I followed my father.
By then, Papa was like a second father. By the time I was 18, I was a full-blown, I was already experienced.
I didn't know what they were. But they weren't like they were in the end.
At that time, it was just like, maybe I'd be with somebody, and then suddenly they'd say to me,
Yeah, you remember when so-and-so, and I'd say, when was that? Oh, about two hours ago. No, I didn't. I'd move, like, full-time.
And then I began to make up stories that I remember.
But alcoholism...
Alcoholism was there. I met my son's father by that point, and then we sort of had a little bit of a relationship going.
But he, I think, was the first one. If I really be honest about it, I think he was the first one to really recognize the severity of my alcoholism,
and what I had already created in my life,
and what I was going through.
I was going to create.
Well, that was easy for him, because he was drunk also.
He was a compulsive gambler.
That's why I let him go on race tracks all over the country.
Leaps up and down the East and Seaboard.
So I was in Florida longer so I ever knew that I was going to end up here.
And we came to control my drinking to a point.
And then I would just...
When I needed to have been down, I did.
I wasn't doing daily drinking, but I could at that time, at any time, if someone would say that I was going to go have a drink,
I could have a couple of drinks.
But then we set out to, you know, we could have more.
But that's how he consulted me.
And, you know, time went on, and I worked as a barmaid.
And he and I traveled and got into various different enterprises.
And made a lot of money and created a lot of havoc.
And my mom, at that point, was living, was laid in all the farming.
He had an apartment in New York, but Frank and I would leave the city.
And then my son...
Then I moved to Queens.
And my son was born in 59.
And I really could...
I tried very hard.
I tried very hard to put some brakes on my drinking, because now I was home.
And suddenly, I think that's when I realized I couldn't quite put these brakes on the way I did before.
I was looking for reasons now to have parties, to have visits.
I began to think about it, not too much, you know.
It's what I thought, and forget it, and justify it.
But now my actions in the house...
They had always been crazy assholes.
You know, arguments, and fighting, and a lot of anger.
And then I lost my mom.
I should say six months after my son was born.
So that...
That fueled a lot of that rage in mine.
So now by the time I'm 25, my father's dead, my mom is dead.
I'm not talking to the rest of my family, because they didn't...
The son didn't come to my mother's wake, which I was furious about.
And I think that's the...
I think that's the life.
You know, I'll look at that.
But, um...
I...
I...
I just felt like I was involved.
Now it was just Frankie, my baby, and I.
I kept my eyes open.
Oh, actually, I wasn't even initially married to him.
But he told everybody.
Anyway, he became to get real violent with me.
And I began to experience a lot of physical abuse through him.
And...
My son was two and a half years old.
And it was an Easter weekend.
And Frankie...
I was leaving Frankie.
He knew it.
And I had said I was leaving.
And he began to get very frightened over the fact that I was leaving.
So the only way he could control me now, because he had long gone and he couldn't even
stop drinking anymore, was to get physical.
And this particular Easter weekend, he got real violent.
And...
I was in bad shape.
And I...
I picked up Frankie after it was all over us.
And we left that house.
And I went to a friend of mine's house.
And I had to stay inside for about two minutes.
But she had to get a doctor.
I...
He had really been a number one.
Anyway...
That was when Karen and Frankie, my son, hit the world, so to speak.
It was like almost a second.
It was like I left my...
My house.
Now I'm leaving him.
And now it's Frankie and I.
And...
And drinking.
I had no problem getting a job.
The problem is, it surfaced that I couldn't keep it.
And the reason I couldn't keep it was that I was acting crazy.
I was fighting.
Fighting with everybody.
And then I...
Then I moved down to the Chelsea area on 30th Street and 8th Avenue.
And I got a job.
And I was to stay in that area from 1964.
I moved out finally in 1986.
But I was sober six years when I moved out.
So I drank for fourteen...
Or sixteen of those years.
And that's where that old cocoon of mine felt, you know.
I...
I knew everybody in the neighborhood.
There was old bar owners and barmaids, bartenders.
And the new Madison Square Garden went up.
We worked at the...
I mean, the...
The...
The people, the community that I ended up with.
And everybody, you know.
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I was in just, yeah, 72. I had my first seizure. I was at end-stage alcoholism, and I was still saying that alcohol...
And there was a lot of conversations with different people in my life about my drinking.
And I'm saying, well, everybody drinks. I mean, all of you drink, don't you?
Not, but look what happens to you. And I couldn't, couldn't, wouldn't, denied it, whatever you want to call it.
My disease told me that I was going to end, I was going to stop it one day.
My kid lived for the first 18 years of his life with a woman who was drunk every day for at least the last 12 years.
I'll say when he was about three or four was when I started that daily drinking, and it just didn't stop.
It got progressively worse.
Um...
And my actions became just insane.
Well, I often said it when I came in the program after I cleared up.
I think I really came in on the second step.
Really. Total insanity.
And I think what was so insane about it was that I couldn't see it.
I wouldn't see it, you know?
So that was very, uh, that was very scary for me.
I stayed in Chelsea, and then I got another job in 19...
I got my last job, my last boss really, who I ended up going to his funeral, Frank, Frank Shapiro.
He hired me in 1966, or 1967 I think.
And, um, by then I had already, um,
drank my way into leaving my son alone at night.
Uh, because, uh, I didn't have a babysitter.
My son was, uh, seven years old when this incident happened.
Uh, not leaving him alone, the person alone before.
Short period.
I convinced myself that that was appropriate because Frankie could take care of himself.
He knew how to cook.
He knew how to sew.
He knew how to take care of himself.
My disease pawned me into that.
And I allowed that to happen.
I don't know if I allowed it or not.
That's what I did.
That's my story.
It's not pretty, but it's my story.
I need to remember that.
Anyway, this particular time, I went on a suit.
I was working.
And I left my house on a Saturday night.
About five o'clock to go to work because I work nights.
And, um, when I came out of this blackout, because I was in and out of it, I can remember that still.
I had worked.
I went to an after-hours joint.
My thought was I'd now go home.
But that never played out.
I never got home.
Uh, that was early Sunday morning.
Stating about a long time of people there.
We then went to a bar.
Now, bars didn't open till one o'clock.
But we, when we brought our things, selfies, so we could go with somebody with a bar open.
And, uh, when I finally came out of this and got some kind of sanity, it was Monday morning.
Which meant that my son had been alone Saturday night and Sunday.
And this was Monday morning.
But I realized, really, what had happened.
I was appalled at myself.
I was ashamed of myself.
I can't tell you how I felt about the trade lines and stuff.
I pray no one ever has to go there, given their life.
Um, and I was headed for my, my, the bar where I worked.
I thought, I'll call my boss.
Because Benny had a lawyer.
And Benny liked me.
And he adored Frankie.
And I thought, Benny will help me.
Because I somehow thought, I knew I was going to be in trouble.
But I somehow thought, maybe if I can get Benny to help me, maybe I can solve, solve this.
Make a long story short, they, uh, what had happened was, my landlord came to the apartment to get the rent for Monday.
And, of course, he finds Frankie alone.
And Frankie at seven.
At seven, is already telling people lies for me.
And he said, no, my mother just went to the store.
She'll be back when she comes back.
And thank God, this landlord just didn't buy that story.
So he turned around and called, uh, the authorities.
And they came.
And we were living in Jersey then.
I used to commute from New York to Jersey.
And, uh, we were in Jersey City.
We took him to Jersey City Medical Center.
And, uh, it was there, finally, Frankie broke down and gave him my,
my business card.
The box.
Because up to that point, he wouldn't tell it to anybody.
He was afraid they were going to come and get me.
That's what my alcoholism did to me.
Not only what I did.
That's where my kid was at.
At seven.
Seven and a half.
And they called, they did call my boss.
And it was through that process that, uh, God does work in odd ways.
Because suddenly, my ex-old man, Frank, pops up.
He comes to see his kid who he hadn't seen in about six months.
And he walks into that box.
And my boss is in there and tells him the whole story.
Then they both go to Jersey City.
And they get Frankie.
And, uh, Frankie goes to Long Island with his, with his father and his aunt there.
And stays there.
I hide from everybody.
And no surface for about a week.
I was just in another bar in the, in the basement.
Um, I ended up getting this other job.
I couldn't go back to work for any other job.
I was too ashamed.
He wanted me to hide, but I couldn't.
And I lied to everyone and said I wasn't going to drink that much.
I think I drank more.
I think I drank more.
And, uh, my son was in Long Island.
I couldn't call my new wife.
I was too ashamed.
That was in October.
I finally got in touch with them right before Christmas.
And they were very gracious to me.
They were a lot more kinder to me, I think, than I would have been today.
And, uh, I had the circumstances in my face.
I was just saying, we don't want to, we don't want to separate you from Frankie.
We want to get some help.
And blah, blah, please come.
And blah, blah.
So, um, where my disease now took another piece of me was it convinced me.
I passed it.
I've done it again.
I can't do it.
They think that I'm...
So I said, well, I can't come for the holidays, but I'll come here for the holidays.
And the reason I couldn't come for the holidays is I couldn't, number one, when you see the shape I was in.
Number two, I just couldn't go that long without a drink.
By now, I'm walking around in a pot with my pot on.
How do you convince someone you're not drinking and you've got a pot, you know, pot?
So I spoke to my son.
And finally in January, I did get out there.
I did get out there.
And in that April, Frank came back with me.
And from that point...
So that was April.
I'm pretty sure it was 68.
To February of 78.
That's about ten years then.
Yeah, that's about right.
Ten years.
I never drew a social friend.
I drank.
Like I say, I worked.
In and out of crazy relationships.
Then I met my husband.
My husband's husband.
He was another alcoholic.
But Joe had a plane.
Joe had the money.
And Joe had the booze.
And that's where Carol went.
And I stayed.
And that's when that indoor drinking...
I couldn't go out in the bars anymore because she didn't know where I'd been.
I really...
I didn't even trust me anymore.
You know.
So then I drank inside.
And then more insanity happened.
And all through this...
Now my kid, I had him, thank God.
I put him with a dear friend of mine named Jesse.
Who took care of Frankie four times.
From the time he was about twelve.
No, about eleven.
So the time he was sixteen.
And then he moved in with her oldest son who had a job and an apartment.
And Frankie...
All this time Frankie's going to school.
No kidding.
He took to school like I took to school.
And he just went to school.
And he graduated.
And he graduated.
And he graduated.
And he has since stopped graduating.
But he hid out in school.
And then finally, I guess, I just couldn't take anymore.
A very dear friend of mine, her name is Stacy.
Stacy McSherry.
She...
She was thirty years old.
And I was, what?
Forty-five.
In the back of my husband's room.
Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years old.
We were .
We were about two, three...
Four years old.
Three.
We were about two, three, four...
We had drank together.
We had worked together.
She was farming also.
The same guy that owned all these cars on 34th Street.
And, um...
Stacy and I just drank.
And we drank.
And we drank.
She was able to still work.
I couldn't anymore.
And then, one day.
Stacy got very ill.
And we tried to rush her to the hospital.
And she wouldn't go.
And there's a lot more around our relationship with Stacy.
And she wouldn't go.
She wouldn't go.
She wouldn't go.
She was a little...
Stacy was like a kid sister to me. I sometimes think that maybe I sort of related to her more like a daughter, you know.
I was very protective of her. And she was also protective of me. I think that's what happens when we do the same thing in AA,
we become really protective of each other, you know. But Stacy began to get ill, and she got real ill this time,
and another October, the 9th, we had to rush her to the hospital because she passed away the next day.
She was 30 years old. She died terrific. No question about it. That tore me up.
But I think on some level it woke me up. I mean, it woke me up when it woke me up,
but I think it was her death.
I couldn't even go. I couldn't go to her funeral because I was too beat up by this guy that I was going to marry
that I didn't know that yet. But I was, and I couldn't show her mother and her brother the shape I was in.
Friends of mine went, and they said, you should have been there. I said, I couldn't go.
Nobody really knew what had happened to me that particular week.
Anyway, that was October.
February 6th.
February 9th, 1978.
I crawled into St. Louis.
It's a dark place.
And a fella's naked by the name of George, whose voice got me in there.
George was a wine owner. George used to hang out on the corner of 30th Street and 8th Avenue.
And he'd see me all this money and say to me, Karen, you gotta do something about your drinking. It's crazy.
And I'd look at George, and he's blacked out, you know.
I'd say, what about you? But I don't have a kitten.
And I'm not like you. You're a knight.
George said something to me that I didn't understand yet.
It took me a long time to get it.
He said, you're a nice person.
I didn't know what he meant, a nice person.
How could I be a nice person? Lord, I don't know.
But anyway, that night, I kept hearing George. I think it was God, but I kept hearing George's voice say that.
And that's where I went.
And from that point, I, I,
I first was introduced to AA at St. Vincent's after I was in the medical part for about 10 days.
But I, I took my last seizure there.
Because by then, I was having seizures all the time.
I, I, I could just walk in that street, walk out.
Most people know me in the neighborhood, so they'd say, oh, there goes Karen again.
Most people were kind and moved me to the side.
I was in the bar, and it happened. They put me on the side.
Same day, had a long stop for an ambulance, just so I wouldn't go.
Um, and my kid was in a college in upstate New York.
Where is the street? Ivy League College, going back there.
Trying to get a life today.
And that's what I was doing.
And they called him from that emergency.
Well, actually, not the emergency room. The next morning, they called me from St. Vincent's.
And they told him the shape I was in.
And when he said, how's my mother?
They said, we don't know yet.
He wanted to come down.
The doctor, , told him, no, wait.
We'll know in a few hours.
We'll call you.
Which they did.
They told him not to come.
That it appeared that I was going to come through this.
And, and, and I did.
And I went to a rehab.
And that was the next time I saw my son with his first girlfriend.
She's definitely in the rehab.
Um, but she told me, don't worry.
My father's in AA.
He's in San Francisco in AA.
So I thought, well, my son didn't fall far from the tree.
He found, he found the daughter of an alcoholic.
All right.
We have something in common.
You know, first time you meet him.
Perhaps to be maybe your daughter-in-law.
You know.
But he never, he didn't get married.
But, uh, anyway, and, and that was my introduction.
And, and like any good alcoholic, you know, after I was sober about 90 days or so.
I stopped listening.
I sort of thought I could do it on my own.
So I got married.
And I married this Joe.
And my son's response to that was, Kate had gotten a couple of tickets for them to go
to California.
Because that's where her mother was.
She said, Frankie wants to meet my mother.
And I think that's a good move.
So they went.
So he never came to my wedding.
Fine.
That's okay.
I understand totally today why he didn't come.
But, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
I'm telling you why he didn't happen today.
Uh, but that's the way life is.
But I didn't have enough yet folks.
And, and then then Joe got very ill.
And he, he, he went with a horrendous diagnosis.
And he ended up with cancer.
And I picked up a drink.
And I drank for nine more months.
And I finally stopped in 1979.
But I still wasn't finished.
I had to do a little pocket notebook for myself.
When do you die?
When do you live?
You know.
When do you give up?
Giving up when you have enough.
was never a good, a healthy thing for me to do, you know, I was struggling. Well, God
gives you what you need to hear. I'm still with Joe, but I'm about ready to pack that
in. He's not hitting me anymore, because I told him, once I told him, once I stopped
drinking, no, hadn't had any of it, still smoking his breath, but hadn't drank. I said,
if you ever lay another hand on me, I'll kill you. And I think I meant it at the time, and
I think he believed me, because I was so tired of him being me. I couldn't take another
person touching me, and no one has, and no one ever will. But anyway, I'm going to come
up on my first year, supposedly, anniversary of AA, and he calls me a hypocrite, Joe, because
I come home one night, and I light up a joint, and I start talking about the AA, and he says,
he says, you're a hypocrite.
I don't know why that word hit me. He called me worse, you know, and it went right over
my head. I couldn't care less what he said. He said, you're a hypocrite. You have these
people on the phone telling them to go to meetings, meetings, and the meetings, and
you're coming home smoking a joint. He said, at least I know who I am. I'm a drunk. And
I don't know, but that made absolutely total sense to me.
I said, he's right. And the thought that he was right, and maybe I was wrong with him,
I'm not going to tell him that.
I stopped.
I stopped that night, and thank you God, I haven't picked up a joint since. But it took
me two years more in AA. It wasn't until my third anniversary that I was able to talk
to him. I said, I haven't done it in two years, so I gave back a year. But you see, again,
I played it my way. And my only excuse, I don't even know that I have an excuse for
it, but my only reasoning for that is that.
That first year, I had to take that shift. My fear was that if I didn't take that shift,
I wouldn't get it. I know today that's a lie, but I didn't know today. You know. And
the rest of what's happened for me has been an absolute miracle. You know, I went back
to school. I went into the field of alcoholism. I went to St. Vincent's Hospital for eight
years, eight and a half years.
I don't know.
Well, I think my son and I have had a good, . . . we've healed okay together.
You know, he and his way and me and mine. And so we've had a good life.
Frankie and I . . . he's married today. He's coming up on his second anniversary.
And he's not an addict or an alcoholic, to my knowledge, I doubt . . .
But . . .
We both had attitudes. You know, I had to learn a lot about who Karen was and was I
a . . . I had to work forWhose Sedum energy was so effective in my life. And my husband's
ability was just extraordinary. My husband while he and I reason they were healthy, and
my dad wasn't, that was the most important thing as possible. And for me, even when
to work through a lot of shame and a lot of guilt. More shame than guilt, I think. But
it really doesn't matter, you know. I had to work. And that's the message that I like
to give people, is that getting sober is a great, to me, I see it as a great privilege
and a great honor. Because you have, God gives you a way to live your life, you know. My
story is my story, Bob. It's what, it's where it took me. But I know today, if I'd have
been born to a rich family that was born and raised here since the Revolution, and I was
a librarian, I'd be a drunkard. Because I am. I'm not a drunkard. I totally buy that
concept. This is not a moral issue.
This is definitely not a moral issue. Indeed, it tells me I don't have it. It tells me that
I can exchange as far as my story. You can be stinky, cunning, and baffling, even in
recovery, you know, and try to get away with this little kind of going in and out. And
half measures don't, you know. So I love AA. It has given me a life, a way of looking
at myself, of not judging others.
And of forgiving me. I can forgive me. Because if I can't forgive me, I can't look at the
next person. If I'm into judgment, I'm into a lot of trouble, you know. So for me, living
the 12 steps and coming to meetings and letting me share my strength, hope, and experience
and sponsorship is very big. Sponsorship is very important. I've been very fortunate in
my years. I've had three great sponsors.
And I'm grateful for that. You know, people that have... And all the people that I've
met. And the people that I've sponsored. You know, I don't think that... You know, sponsorship
is sponsorship. We need to connect with people. And that's the gift that God has given me.
Whether it's my ability, the gift that He has given me, but people come into my life
and I can go into people's lives and be comfortable and have a life. So the Karen that did all
I'm experiencing this 20 years, 25 years ago with Dr. Karen that stands up here.
Yet if I pick up a drink, I'll get there quicker than a hundred or worse.
So I don't need to do that. Thank you for letting me share.
Neither endorses nor opposes any cause.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
I've asked Jim to read the promises.
Read it from there if you like.
Do you want me to start with the promise?
Yeah, start with the promise.
I can stand...
Back him up.
I can stand longer than that.
I promise you.
I am Jim. I am an alcoholic.
I am Jim.
The promises, pages 83 and 84 of the Big Book.
If we are painstaking about the stage of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of youthfulness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations that cease to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we cannot do ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises?
They take time.
They are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
They will always materialize if we work together.
Thank you, Jim.
Thank you, Rich.
Okay.
Anybody here for the very first meeting?
Not all, it's none of us.
Okay.
Any visits here like to be identified?
Okay.
This is an open speaker's meeting.
I have announcements here.
A first-year anniversary breakfast for the New Hope group on Tuesday, August 6th, 8 to 9.
8 to 9 a.m. in the morning.
And the New Hope Presbyterian Church.
Be more information on this thing over here.
We're also going to have a traditions meeting on Friday.
It's the last Friday of each month.
And we also have a speaker's meeting on the last Wednesday of each month here.
Paul, do you have something to say?
Yeah, we're celebrating Rich's birthday next month.
And the speaker will be that white-haired lady down there.
All right.
And as you notice, this is Todd's first year anniversary.
He worked real hard during this whole year.
And he's come a great way.
And he asked Taryn from New York to speak.
And Taryn's been around a while.
And she's a pretty good lady to listen to, anyway.
Thank you.
And now I'm going to introduce Taryn.
Thank you.
Hello, Taryn.
I'm a kid.
I'm a drunk.
Good.
I got lucky.
I got sober.
My name is Taryn.
I'm an alcoholic and addict.
And I'm part of the New York Times.
I'm a real privilege to speak to you.
I was thinking, of course, with my craziness, that you've asked me, what am I going to say?
How am I going to say it?
I need to be impressed.
Oh, all this craziness.
Then I thought of a friend of mine.
His name is Lester.
His name was Lester.
Lester passed away.
He passed away not directly from alcoholism, although he was drunk, he was an A.A.
He passed away from alcoholism.
He passed away from not being able to take directions from doctors, really.
I mean, there was a lot of different ailments he had, and he finally just did not make it.
But Lester, when he was two years sober, asked me to see.
And in New York, it usually, that's not, you don't see that too much.
You see the person who had the anniversary date with him.
That's just sort of the way it is.
And I didn't know.
And then I realized Lester and I had tried to know.
So what I did was a double dialogue, a double qualification.
His alcoholism and mine combined.
It was horrendous.
But what I realized was that God had given me the gift to feel like I was sober a few years.
He saw me sober a few years.
And I thought of him in relation to speaking here today.
And how I, I remember when Todd came to the person.
What was that?
The Sunday morning meeting.
And he had just come back from the program.
And I had just been down there not too long, a few months.
But I was there every Sunday.
And that was when I first saw Todd.
And then we sort of connected through this last year quite well.
I really value his perception of this program and also his connection with God.
And most of all, he really, from what I hear, he really has a good understanding of what happens to him the first time around.
And he doesn't want to go back that route again.
And that's what I had to do.
When I, I drank for 28 years.
I picked up a drink deliberately at 16.
And it fell out of my hand at 44.
And there was a lot of pain and a lot of, a lot of craziness.
A lot of denial.
And a lot of what I thought were good times.
You know, I'm born and raised in New York.
I'm an only child.
My father was an alcoholic.
I was to realize in my sobriety that my mother also was an alcoholic.
But his alcoholism sort of went over her.
You hardly realize she was.
But I see it today as I think about that.
And I grew up with this kind of attitude that said, my mom's saying, don't go for too much in the world because it's not going to be there.
People aren't going to be there for you.
Things won't work out.
And you really live in a dream world.
Me.
And my father's patented was go for everything and don't worry about it because someone is going to pour you.
So with these two kind of core purposes in mind, I, I embarked on this, on the universe.
And I did good in school.
I was a good student.
I was basically, I would say, a fairly good kid.
You know, parents are good.
So, parents like to have officials play with me, but I was very, very poor.
And the pain of my father, particularly because he was a periodic in my real young years,
when I was like, in the time I was like five.
I mean, I remember even before that, but really clearly from about five to my teenage years,
I was sixteen and a half when he passed away.
So I really only had about eleven and a half years with my father.
And out of that time, he would go on binges for a year or two at a clip.
He was a bartender by trade, so he worked in a bar.
But he was always that. It was surprising.
Coming from where I came from, I realize today that what was very strong in my story is the work ethic.
My father, even with his insanity, worked all day.
And my mom had been a beautician before I was born.
And so she had worked, now this had to be in the late twenties, early thirties.
And this woman is working as a beautician.
So she had a profession.
So in there, my father came from Sweden and my mom came from Finland.
So there we are in the middle.
My father assimilated quite well.
He was a very bright man.
My mom was bright, but she was angry.
She was very angry.
And I got a lot of that anger.
And it was all centered around my father and his disease.
So the work ethic, to me, and I had a couple of aunts that lived in Brooklyn,
and they were also into this work ethic with my uncle.
So I grew up, even with all this craziness, still believing that what you did as a kid is you went to school,
you graduated, you picked out something, and you did it.
Because you were lucky as a girl, you got married.
And they didn't necessarily have to, one came before the other.
They just sort of happened.
I'm going to go into all of that immediately, very quickly.
Because they did.
When I was about fourteen, my father began to get ill.
And in those days, they didn't have the technology they have today.
And by the time everything was diagnosed, he was diagnosed with cancer.
With pancreas.
Not like that.
With thyroid.
And we lived, like I said, in New York.
So there was no money.
And my mom, my mom had a lot of pride.
And she wouldn't go on what was called then, what today is called assistance in New York.
Then it was called home work.
She wouldn't do that.
And so we ended up going to Miami, Connecticut.
And to take a kid from 110th Street, Manhattan Avenue, that played stickball, to this little,
believe me, this town is big next to the town where Courtney is.
I was devastated and angry and hurt.
I felt like I was always giving up something, you know, around my father's drinking.
Although I adore him.
He could do nothing wrong, and everything is Mom's fault.
And so she got Miami.
But anyway, we moved to Connecticut, and I was up there for a year.
And it was at that time that they decided, I guess the family got together and said,
let's try to marry her off.
Okay.
Well, they did.
Fine.
I wasn't going for it.
She was a very nice fellow, but that's about all she was.
A very nice fellow.
I was not getting married, nor was I getting engaged, nor was I staying in Canterbury,
Connecticut.
So June is my birthday.
I was 16.
And I got married.
And then in established, not established, but then I started seeingしたlike a guy
like that.
A guy like that you could just wake him up, hang someone up and try to stop or scoff at
him.
And then my father came back.
They both wanted somebody to draw.
My parents had come back to New York, thinking my father couldn't work, but that didn't
pan out.
Anyway, so they were back here, and they were back there in New York.
And I came back in a rage.
I also got to stay and be real honest about this Voy of텍 thing.
Everything I wanted.
Lola had everything.
So pause.
My father said, give it to them.
Just give it to them.
I mean, I guess the poor guy has so much guilt about his drinking, and all I want in the
drinking in all life. She said, anything Karen wanted, Karen got. And he made good money in those years. So, I, for a kid, in the neighborhood that I grew up in, I always walked around with a couple of dollars in my pocket. I mean, men were making $15 and $20, for God's sake, a week, and I'm walking around with a dollar and two dollars a week.
So, that sort of set up my head, and then I hit a drink, and it's like they all came together. Everything came together. My attitude was, if you didn't give it to me, I'll go over there and I'll get it, and if you don't want to give it to me, fine, I'll go over there, I'll get it.
I got some, when I was 16, my first job, I worked at H.L. Green's on Broadway.
In the Friday Dime, I worked on the Notion account. But you can see, with all this craziness going on, I went to work. But I wouldn't go back to school.
Never could have school. I would not go back. And I announced to my mother she couldn't do anything because I was going to run away from home.
And that sort of shook her a little bit. So, she backed off, and my father was getting sicker, and she couldn't, she didn't have much time to really.
Watched my craziness. And to make a long story short, I just ran away from home. I cured everybody's problems.
I left. I didn't go far. I went to 97, she went down to 56. You can get lost around the block in New York.
So, I just moved down 40 blocks, and no one knew me. And I was just a young kid, rich. My hair was blonde, real white then, and tried to look like I was 19 at least.
And...
I fell in with a crowd of people, and you know, I picked up those, that drinking, and then that made me prettier, and smarter, and bolder, less caring, and I just went for it.
You know, cold as a barrel, a lot. So, I mean, I was out there. And then when I was 18, I became a barmaid. I followed my father.
By then, Papa was like a second father. By the time I was 18, I was a full-blown, I was already experienced.
I didn't know what they were. But they weren't like they were in the end.
At that time, it was just like, maybe I'd be with somebody, and then suddenly they'd say to me,
Yeah, you remember when so-and-so, and I'd say, when was that? Oh, about two hours ago. No, I didn't. I'd move, like, full-time.
And then I began to make up stories that I remember.
But alcoholism...
Alcoholism was there. I met my son's father by that point, and then we sort of had a little bit of a relationship going.
But he, I think, was the first one. If I really be honest about it, I think he was the first one to really recognize the severity of my alcoholism,
and what I had already created in my life,
and what I was going through.
I was going to create.
Well, that was easy for him, because he was drunk also.
He was a compulsive gambler.
That's why I let him go on race tracks all over the country.
Leaps up and down the East and Seaboard.
So I was in Florida longer so I ever knew that I was going to end up here.
And we came to control my drinking to a point.
And then I would just...
When I needed to have been down, I did.
I wasn't doing daily drinking, but I could at that time, at any time, if someone would say that I was going to go have a drink,
I could have a couple of drinks.
But then we set out to, you know, we could have more.
But that's how he consulted me.
And, you know, time went on, and I worked as a barmaid.
And he and I traveled and got into various different enterprises.
And made a lot of money and created a lot of havoc.
And my mom, at that point, was living, was laid in all the farming.
He had an apartment in New York, but Frank and I would leave the city.
And then my son...
Then I moved to Queens.
And my son was born in 59.
And I really could...
I tried very hard.
I tried very hard to put some brakes on my drinking, because now I was home.
And suddenly, I think that's when I realized I couldn't quite put these brakes on the way I did before.
I was looking for reasons now to have parties, to have visits.
I began to think about it, not too much, you know.
It's what I thought, and forget it, and justify it.
But now my actions in the house...
They had always been crazy assholes.
You know, arguments, and fighting, and a lot of anger.
And then I lost my mom.
I should say six months after my son was born.
So that...
That fueled a lot of that rage in mine.
So now by the time I'm 25, my father's dead, my mom is dead.
I'm not talking to the rest of my family, because they didn't...
The son didn't come to my mother's wake, which I was furious about.
And I think that's the...
I think that's the life.
You know, I'll look at that.
But, um...
I...
I...
I just felt like I was involved.
Now it was just Frankie, my baby, and I.
I kept my eyes open.
Oh, actually, I wasn't even initially married to him.
But he told everybody.
Anyway, he became to get real violent with me.
And I began to experience a lot of physical abuse through him.
And...
My son was two and a half years old.
And it was an Easter weekend.
And Frankie...
I was leaving Frankie.
He knew it.
And I had said I was leaving.
And he began to get very frightened over the fact that I was leaving.
So the only way he could control me now, because he had long gone and he couldn't even
stop drinking anymore, was to get physical.
And this particular Easter weekend, he got real violent.
And...
I was in bad shape.
And I...
I picked up Frankie after it was all over us.
And we left that house.
And I went to a friend of mine's house.
And I had to stay inside for about two minutes.
But she had to get a doctor.
I...
He had really been a number one.
Anyway...
That was when Karen and Frankie, my son, hit the world, so to speak.
It was like almost a second.
It was like I left my...
My house.
Now I'm leaving him.
And now it's Frankie and I.
And...
And drinking.
I had no problem getting a job.
The problem is, it surfaced that I couldn't keep it.
And the reason I couldn't keep it was that I was acting crazy.
I was fighting.
Fighting with everybody.
And then I...
Then I moved down to the Chelsea area on 30th Street and 8th Avenue.
And I got a job.
And I was to stay in that area from 1964.
I moved out finally in 1986.
But I was sober six years when I moved out.
So I drank for fourteen...
Or sixteen of those years.
And that's where that old cocoon of mine felt, you know.
I...
I knew everybody in the neighborhood.
There was old bar owners and barmaids, bartenders.
And the new Madison Square Garden went up.
We worked at the...
I mean, the...
The...
The people, the community that I ended up with.
And everybody, you know.
And...
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I was in just, yeah, 72. I had my first seizure. I was at end-stage alcoholism, and I was still saying that alcohol...
And there was a lot of conversations with different people in my life about my drinking.
And I'm saying, well, everybody drinks. I mean, all of you drink, don't you?
Not, but look what happens to you. And I couldn't, couldn't, wouldn't, denied it, whatever you want to call it.
My disease told me that I was going to end, I was going to stop it one day.
My kid lived for the first 18 years of his life with a woman who was drunk every day for at least the last 12 years.
I'll say when he was about three or four was when I started that daily drinking, and it just didn't stop.
It got progressively worse.
Um...
And my actions became just insane.
Well, I often said it when I came in the program after I cleared up.
I think I really came in on the second step.
Really. Total insanity.
And I think what was so insane about it was that I couldn't see it.
I wouldn't see it, you know?
So that was very, uh, that was very scary for me.
I stayed in Chelsea, and then I got another job in 19...
I got my last job, my last boss really, who I ended up going to his funeral, Frank, Frank Shapiro.
He hired me in 1966, or 1967 I think.
And, um, by then I had already, um,
drank my way into leaving my son alone at night.
Uh, because, uh, I didn't have a babysitter.
My son was, uh, seven years old when this incident happened.
Uh, not leaving him alone, the person alone before.
Short period.
I convinced myself that that was appropriate because Frankie could take care of himself.
He knew how to cook.
He knew how to sew.
He knew how to take care of himself.
My disease pawned me into that.
And I allowed that to happen.
I don't know if I allowed it or not.
That's what I did.
That's my story.
It's not pretty, but it's my story.
I need to remember that.
Anyway, this particular time, I went on a suit.
I was working.
And I left my house on a Saturday night.
About five o'clock to go to work because I work nights.
And, um, when I came out of this blackout, because I was in and out of it, I can remember that still.
I had worked.
I went to an after-hours joint.
My thought was I'd now go home.
But that never played out.
I never got home.
Uh, that was early Sunday morning.
Stating about a long time of people there.
We then went to a bar.
Now, bars didn't open till one o'clock.
But we, when we brought our things, selfies, so we could go with somebody with a bar open.
And, uh, when I finally came out of this and got some kind of sanity, it was Monday morning.
Which meant that my son had been alone Saturday night and Sunday.
And this was Monday morning.
But I realized, really, what had happened.
I was appalled at myself.
I was ashamed of myself.
I can't tell you how I felt about the trade lines and stuff.
I pray no one ever has to go there, given their life.
Um, and I was headed for my, my, the bar where I worked.
I thought, I'll call my boss.
Because Benny had a lawyer.
And Benny liked me.
And he adored Frankie.
And I thought, Benny will help me.
Because I somehow thought, I knew I was going to be in trouble.
But I somehow thought, maybe if I can get Benny to help me, maybe I can solve, solve this.
Make a long story short, they, uh, what had happened was, my landlord came to the apartment to get the rent for Monday.
And, of course, he finds Frankie alone.
And Frankie at seven.
At seven, is already telling people lies for me.
And he said, no, my mother just went to the store.
She'll be back when she comes back.
And thank God, this landlord just didn't buy that story.
So he turned around and called, uh, the authorities.
And they came.
And we were living in Jersey then.
I used to commute from New York to Jersey.
And, uh, we were in Jersey City.
We took him to Jersey City Medical Center.
And, uh, it was there, finally, Frankie broke down and gave him my,
my business card.
The box.
Because up to that point, he wouldn't tell it to anybody.
He was afraid they were going to come and get me.
That's what my alcoholism did to me.
Not only what I did.
That's where my kid was at.
At seven.
Seven and a half.
And they called, they did call my boss.
And it was through that process that, uh, God does work in odd ways.
Because suddenly, my ex-old man, Frank, pops up.
He comes to see his kid who he hadn't seen in about six months.
And he walks into that box.
And my boss is in there and tells him the whole story.
Then they both go to Jersey City.
And they get Frankie.
And, uh, Frankie goes to Long Island with his, with his father and his aunt there.
And stays there.
I hide from everybody.
And no surface for about a week.
I was just in another bar in the, in the basement.
Um, I ended up getting this other job.
I couldn't go back to work for any other job.
I was too ashamed.
He wanted me to hide, but I couldn't.
And I lied to everyone and said I wasn't going to drink that much.
I think I drank more.
I think I drank more.
And, uh, my son was in Long Island.
I couldn't call my new wife.
I was too ashamed.
That was in October.
I finally got in touch with them right before Christmas.
And they were very gracious to me.
They were a lot more kinder to me, I think, than I would have been today.
And, uh, I had the circumstances in my face.
I was just saying, we don't want to, we don't want to separate you from Frankie.
We want to get some help.
And blah, blah, please come.
And blah, blah.
So, um, where my disease now took another piece of me was it convinced me.
I passed it.
I've done it again.
I can't do it.
They think that I'm...
So I said, well, I can't come for the holidays, but I'll come here for the holidays.
And the reason I couldn't come for the holidays is I couldn't, number one, when you see the shape I was in.
Number two, I just couldn't go that long without a drink.
By now, I'm walking around in a pot with my pot on.
How do you convince someone you're not drinking and you've got a pot, you know, pot?
So I spoke to my son.
And finally in January, I did get out there.
I did get out there.
And in that April, Frank came back with me.
And from that point...
So that was April.
I'm pretty sure it was 68.
To February of 78.
That's about ten years then.
Yeah, that's about right.
Ten years.
I never drew a social friend.
I drank.
Like I say, I worked.
In and out of crazy relationships.
Then I met my husband.
My husband's husband.
He was another alcoholic.
But Joe had a plane.
Joe had the money.
And Joe had the booze.
And that's where Carol went.
And I stayed.
And that's when that indoor drinking...
I couldn't go out in the bars anymore because she didn't know where I'd been.
I really...
I didn't even trust me anymore.
You know.
So then I drank inside.
And then more insanity happened.
And all through this...
Now my kid, I had him, thank God.
I put him with a dear friend of mine named Jesse.
Who took care of Frankie four times.
From the time he was about twelve.
No, about eleven.
So the time he was sixteen.
And then he moved in with her oldest son who had a job and an apartment.
And Frankie...
All this time Frankie's going to school.
No kidding.
He took to school like I took to school.
And he just went to school.
And he graduated.
And he graduated.
And he graduated.
And he has since stopped graduating.
But he hid out in school.
And then finally, I guess, I just couldn't take anymore.
A very dear friend of mine, her name is Stacy.
Stacy McSherry.
She...
She was thirty years old.
And I was, what?
Forty-five.
In the back of my husband's room.
Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years old.
We were .
We were about two, three...
Four years old.
Three.
We were about two, three, four...
We had drank together.
We had worked together.
She was farming also.
The same guy that owned all these cars on 34th Street.
And, um...
Stacy and I just drank.
And we drank.
And we drank.
She was able to still work.
I couldn't anymore.
And then, one day.
Stacy got very ill.
And we tried to rush her to the hospital.
And she wouldn't go.
And there's a lot more around our relationship with Stacy.
And she wouldn't go.
She wouldn't go.
She wouldn't go.
She was a little...
Stacy was like a kid sister to me. I sometimes think that maybe I sort of related to her more like a daughter, you know.
I was very protective of her. And she was also protective of me. I think that's what happens when we do the same thing in AA,
we become really protective of each other, you know. But Stacy began to get ill, and she got real ill this time,
and another October, the 9th, we had to rush her to the hospital because she passed away the next day.
She was 30 years old. She died terrific. No question about it. That tore me up.
But I think on some level it woke me up. I mean, it woke me up when it woke me up,
but I think it was her death.
I couldn't even go. I couldn't go to her funeral because I was too beat up by this guy that I was going to marry
that I didn't know that yet. But I was, and I couldn't show her mother and her brother the shape I was in.
Friends of mine went, and they said, you should have been there. I said, I couldn't go.
Nobody really knew what had happened to me that particular week.
Anyway, that was October.
February 6th.
February 9th, 1978.
I crawled into St. Louis.
It's a dark place.
And a fella's naked by the name of George, whose voice got me in there.
George was a wine owner. George used to hang out on the corner of 30th Street and 8th Avenue.
And he'd see me all this money and say to me, Karen, you gotta do something about your drinking. It's crazy.
And I'd look at George, and he's blacked out, you know.
I'd say, what about you? But I don't have a kitten.
And I'm not like you. You're a knight.
George said something to me that I didn't understand yet.
It took me a long time to get it.
He said, you're a nice person.
I didn't know what he meant, a nice person.
How could I be a nice person? Lord, I don't know.
But anyway, that night, I kept hearing George. I think it was God, but I kept hearing George's voice say that.
And that's where I went.
And from that point, I, I,
I first was introduced to AA at St. Vincent's after I was in the medical part for about 10 days.
But I, I took my last seizure there.
Because by then, I was having seizures all the time.
I, I, I could just walk in that street, walk out.
Most people know me in the neighborhood, so they'd say, oh, there goes Karen again.
Most people were kind and moved me to the side.
I was in the bar, and it happened. They put me on the side.
Same day, had a long stop for an ambulance, just so I wouldn't go.
Um, and my kid was in a college in upstate New York.
Where is the street? Ivy League College, going back there.
Trying to get a life today.
And that's what I was doing.
And they called him from that emergency.
Well, actually, not the emergency room. The next morning, they called me from St. Vincent's.
And they told him the shape I was in.
And when he said, how's my mother?
They said, we don't know yet.
He wanted to come down.
The doctor, , told him, no, wait.
We'll know in a few hours.
We'll call you.
Which they did.
They told him not to come.
That it appeared that I was going to come through this.
And, and, and I did.
And I went to a rehab.
And that was the next time I saw my son with his first girlfriend.
She's definitely in the rehab.
Um, but she told me, don't worry.
My father's in AA.
He's in San Francisco in AA.
So I thought, well, my son didn't fall far from the tree.
He found, he found the daughter of an alcoholic.
All right.
We have something in common.
You know, first time you meet him.
Perhaps to be maybe your daughter-in-law.
You know.
But he never, he didn't get married.
But, uh, anyway, and, and that was my introduction.
And, and like any good alcoholic, you know, after I was sober about 90 days or so.
I stopped listening.
I sort of thought I could do it on my own.
So I got married.
And I married this Joe.
And my son's response to that was, Kate had gotten a couple of tickets for them to go
to California.
Because that's where her mother was.
She said, Frankie wants to meet my mother.
And I think that's a good move.
So they went.
So he never came to my wedding.
Fine.
That's okay.
I understand totally today why he didn't come.
But, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
I'm telling you why he didn't happen today.
Uh, but that's the way life is.
But I didn't have enough yet folks.
And, and then then Joe got very ill.
And he, he, he went with a horrendous diagnosis.
And he ended up with cancer.
And I picked up a drink.
And I drank for nine more months.
And I finally stopped in 1979.
But I still wasn't finished.
I had to do a little pocket notebook for myself.
When do you die?
When do you live?
You know.
When do you give up?
Giving up when you have enough.
was never a good, a healthy thing for me to do, you know, I was struggling. Well, God
gives you what you need to hear. I'm still with Joe, but I'm about ready to pack that
in. He's not hitting me anymore, because I told him, once I told him, once I stopped
drinking, no, hadn't had any of it, still smoking his breath, but hadn't drank. I said,
if you ever lay another hand on me, I'll kill you. And I think I meant it at the time, and
I think he believed me, because I was so tired of him being me. I couldn't take another
person touching me, and no one has, and no one ever will. But anyway, I'm going to come
up on my first year, supposedly, anniversary of AA, and he calls me a hypocrite, Joe, because
I come home one night, and I light up a joint, and I start talking about the AA, and he says,
he says, you're a hypocrite.
I don't know why that word hit me. He called me worse, you know, and it went right over
my head. I couldn't care less what he said. He said, you're a hypocrite. You have these
people on the phone telling them to go to meetings, meetings, and the meetings, and
you're coming home smoking a joint. He said, at least I know who I am. I'm a drunk. And
I don't know, but that made absolutely total sense to me.
I said, he's right. And the thought that he was right, and maybe I was wrong with him,
I'm not going to tell him that.
I stopped.
I stopped that night, and thank you God, I haven't picked up a joint since. But it took
me two years more in AA. It wasn't until my third anniversary that I was able to talk
to him. I said, I haven't done it in two years, so I gave back a year. But you see, again,
I played it my way. And my only excuse, I don't even know that I have an excuse for
it, but my only reasoning for that is that.
That first year, I had to take that shift. My fear was that if I didn't take that shift,
I wouldn't get it. I know today that's a lie, but I didn't know today. You know. And
the rest of what's happened for me has been an absolute miracle. You know, I went back
to school. I went into the field of alcoholism. I went to St. Vincent's Hospital for eight
years, eight and a half years.
I don't know.
Well, I think my son and I have had a good, . . . we've healed okay together.
You know, he and his way and me and mine. And so we've had a good life.
Frankie and I . . . he's married today. He's coming up on his second anniversary.
And he's not an addict or an alcoholic, to my knowledge, I doubt . . .
But . . .
We both had attitudes. You know, I had to learn a lot about who Karen was and was I
a . . . I had to work forWhose Sedum energy was so effective in my life. And my husband's
ability was just extraordinary. My husband while he and I reason they were healthy, and
my dad wasn't, that was the most important thing as possible. And for me, even when
to work through a lot of shame and a lot of guilt. More shame than guilt, I think. But
it really doesn't matter, you know. I had to work. And that's the message that I like
to give people, is that getting sober is a great, to me, I see it as a great privilege
and a great honor. Because you have, God gives you a way to live your life, you know. My
story is my story, Bob. It's what, it's where it took me. But I know today, if I'd have
been born to a rich family that was born and raised here since the Revolution, and I was
a librarian, I'd be a drunkard. Because I am. I'm not a drunkard. I totally buy that
concept. This is not a moral issue.
This is definitely not a moral issue. Indeed, it tells me I don't have it. It tells me that
I can exchange as far as my story. You can be stinky, cunning, and baffling, even in
recovery, you know, and try to get away with this little kind of going in and out. And
half measures don't, you know. So I love AA. It has given me a life, a way of looking
at myself, of not judging others.
And of forgiving me. I can forgive me. Because if I can't forgive me, I can't look at the
next person. If I'm into judgment, I'm into a lot of trouble, you know. So for me, living
the 12 steps and coming to meetings and letting me share my strength, hope, and experience
and sponsorship is very big. Sponsorship is very important. I've been very fortunate in
my years. I've had three great sponsors.
And I'm grateful for that. You know, people that have... And all the people that I've
met. And the people that I've sponsored. You know, I don't think that... You know, sponsorship
is sponsorship. We need to connect with people. And that's the gift that God has given me.
Whether it's my ability, the gift that He has given me, but people come into my life
and I can go into people's lives and be comfortable and have a life. So the Karen that did all
I'm experiencing this 20 years, 25 years ago with Dr. Karen that stands up here.
Yet if I pick up a drink, I'll get there quicker than a hundred or worse.
So I don't need to do that. Thank you for letting me share.
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