Al-Anon Can Give You Detachment and Still Miss the Alcoholic in You — Mary N.

Hello. Welcome to NAVA's Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers' Meeting. Let's have an AA meeting. My name is Carl and I am an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers' Meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal story is described in their own language, from their own point of view, the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad terms. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabloochipspeaker.org desperately in need will hear our speaker and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too. I must have this thing. Thank you. Tonight's speaker is someone I have been knowing for probably about, if I'm not mistaken, at least about 19 years. And the thing that's so amazing is that I had came in and saw this person that was here when I got here and I saw what the program was doing for them. And even with all of my stumbling around, I saw this person maintained for quite a few years. I've seen them go through a lot of different levels of not only just adversity but emotions. I mean, anything you can name a human being and go through that might cause her to take a drink if she didn't take it. And it was so amazing and I could see that wonderful smile on her face. She's like, I do now. Without any further delay, let me give you Mary. Hey everybody, my name is Mary and I'm an alcoholic. It's so good to see everybody here tonight. Thank you guys for asking me. It's always an honor to do your story. I don't really like to get up and talk, so you better believe I'm nervous. But I'm going to do the best I can. My sobriety date is January 17, 2004. That's when I picked up a white chip at the 7.30 early morning study group at NAVA. And that was a very important day for me. And I have to tell you that my story is a little bit strange and that I actually survived. I actually stopped drinking in 1976, which is almost 42 years ago in September. But I think that after you hear about my story, you'll understand why I picked up the white chip and that I definitely belong in this program. I'm going to start with a little bit of background and I promise you I'm not going to stay three years old forever. I just want to start with where I came from and how I started with this, with my wonderful trips into alcoholism. My mother was 100% Italian. Her parents came over on the boat from Italy in the late 1800s. She was born in the early 1900s to a big, huge Italian family, Catholic background. There was a lot of alcoholism present. My father, on the other side, was part American Indian and part German. He was brought up in a very abusive household. His father was an alcoholic. And he beat him often. He beat him one time so bad it shut his kidneys down. And my father only had an eighth grade education. When he met my mother, my grandparents didn't want them to get married. They didn't run away, but they couldn't get married in the church. It was just kind of a not happy thing. I was their fourth child. I was the baby. And I was born when my father was in a sanitarium. And I was born when my father was in a sanitarium. And I was born when my father was in a sanitarium. He had contracted tuberculosis. And in those days, tuberculosis was like leprosy. My mother had four children. The first time she had ever been alone. My father had always worked. She had to go out and get a job. And so my other three siblings, I had a sister that was 13 years older than I was, and a brother 10 years, and a sister 5 years older. They had to take care of me as a baby. So I wasn't very well taken care of. But, I mean, they did the very best they could. And when I was 18 months old, my father came home from the sanitarium. And I remember this like right now I can remember that moment at 18 months old. I know that sounds kind of strange. But I won't stay at 18 months for very long. Anyway, I can remember the pattern on the furniture. I can remember the door that he came through. I can remember what the man smelled like. He was just this big piece of fear for me. I was so frightened of him. And, of course, he was an alcoholic coming out of a sanitarium. He had a very low self-esteem. And it started a war between us that stayed with us for the rest of our lives, the rest of his life on this earth. We never got along. He did not really care for me very much. He didn't care for the situation that he was in. He couldn't work. My mother had to work. She finally found a full-time job in a factory. Which was very hard for her. She had come, you know, her family had been a very well-to-do family. But she, you know, she went out and got a heavy-duty job. And my father, the other three children went to school. And so who was left to be, you know, the only one left to take care of me was my father. And it was abusive. It was a tough relationship. And I won't go into that. But I was not kept well by him. I was, I had skin problems. Because I was not taken care of well. It's hard to talk about it. My father finally got a job when I was three years old building the Catholic school. And my mother, being a devout Christian that she was, devout Catholic that she was, she put me, they put me into the Catholic school at three years old. So I was, I actually sat in kindergarten at three years old. And they had me taken care of by nuns and whoever they could find to take care of me. Like, I was either with the nuns or I was with the nuns. Or I was with whoever they could find. And I was a frightened little girl. And I started to become sick. I started to get allergies and asthma. And I just cost my parents a lot of money. They were not happy with me most of the time because I was a sick little kid. My mother dealt with my father's alcoholism by being a very over-religious person. She would get up on Sunday mornings and she would cuss him out. And they would have these four-letter words between them. And they would fight. And my mother would drag us off to church on Sunday and parochial school and all this other kind of stuff. So our household wasn't the happiest of households. And she also dealt with it with a lot of anger. And she would put one person in the doghouse always, somebody in that house she was always mad at. And you had to agree with her. So it wasn't the happiest household in the world. There wasn't a whole lot of room for us kids to make mistakes. And this had started from the time when I was born. I mean, this was just the household. I came into. I had no idea what alcoholism was about. It was just the way it was. When I was 11 years old, my parents decided to go on a vacation. My other siblings were gone. And I had a babysitting job. And they chose to leave me alone for a week at 11 years old. Now, in today's world, they would have been arrested for that. But I was able to be home alone for that week. But I was that frightened little child. So I would come home from this babysitting job. And it would get dark outside. And I would get scared. And I remembered that my father drank. And he drank himself to sleep almost every single night. That's what he did. He came home from work. And he drank. And the bottom level of our refrigerator was loaded with beer. And you never touched that bottom level ever. And I decided, gee, if my father could sleep with alcohol, maybe I could sleep with him. Now, I don't know how much alcohol I drank that night. I got into his little cabinet full of liquor. And I don't know how much I drank. But I was able to sleep that night. And the other thing that happened was all those fears went away. And it was like, wow. Wow. What a way to live. And I had that kind of wow experience with this stuff. And I drank that way for that entire week at 11 years old. Now, when you're 11 years old and you discover that alcohol is bad. You discover that alcohol is really a cool thing. You can't really go out and get alcohol. You can't find alcohol. So what did I do? My mother had this traditional Italian family. So there was always some kind of a celebration going on that involved wine and whatever kind of drinks you could have. We had huge family celebrations all the time. There was weddings. There were funerals. There were graduations. There were birthday parties. It was Christmas. It was Monday. You know, whatever. And there were constant parties going on. And so as a little child, I learned I could get alcohol. I could drink out of their drinks. I could, you know, steal some over here and over there. And I learned that I could do this. And I could get myself to sleep at night. It was wonderful. I had a couple cousins that went along with me. And we just had a really good time. And then as I was getting in high school, I had a girlfriend whose father kept this wonderful liquor. It was huge. It was like a corridor long, you know. And it was like he had everything in there. And I loved to spend the night at her house because the two of us would get into that alcohol and we would just have ourselves a blast. We talk about that even. I've run into her today. And we talked about the fun we had as kids drinking her father's alcohol. And little did I know that I was going to end up here in this podium tonight talking about that again. But the one thing I could do was I could have this dual life. I could drink at night as a kid and then in the daytime I could be normal, which is exactly what my father did. He was a functioning alcoholic. He could have a job. And he could come home at night after that job and he would drink himself to sleep. And basically that's what I did as much and as often as I possibly could. I was a cheerleader. And I was in social clubs in school. I was always a part of church. My mother forced us to be at church all the time. And when I was a kid, I was a cheerleader. And when I graduated from high school, my father would not send me to college. But I found out that I could go to a business college for two years. So I got a New York State higher education loan and I worked myself. I worked that summer. The only way I could get a job, a full-time job, was kind of like what my mother did, was to work in a factory. So I got a factory job. And I got this ride with all these men that drove to that factory. Back and forth. They would drop me off. And they had booze in the car. And they didn't mind sharing it with me on the way home. And my boyfriend would meet me afterwards. And we would drink. And I would come home really out of it. And my parents didn't know the difference because my father was always drunk. I got away with this. I really did. When I got to the business college, there was a sorority there. And in order to pledge that sorority, there was lots of drinking going on. And I started having my first blackout. And in college. And in college, we would go to these fraternity parties. And apparently, I would remember being at these fraternity parties. And then I would wake up in my bed. And my roommates would tell me what I had done. And I thought it was kind of funny. At that point, it was kind of funny then. And our fraternity brothers decided to auction off the girls as slaves one day. And they put us up on a stage. And they auctioned us off. And lo and behold, my accounting professor bought me for a day. And I thought, oh, Lord. He lived with five guys in a house. And they had a swimming pool. So I thought I was going to have to go and clean this house. And lo and behold, we went. And he said, would you like to have a drink? And I said, yeah. And we drank that whole afternoon. It was wonderful. I mean, it was like, wow, my kind of guy. And he wanted to date me. But students could not date professors. So he would have a friend of his pick me up, drop me off at a bar. We'd have a little date at the bar. And then they'd bring me back home. It was very, very exciting. This man ended up being my first husband. And if you ask him what he wanted to do, he wanted to drink, raise hell, and have a good time. And that's basically what we did. He left school, as far as I know. He left school, as far as teaching. And he wanted to be, he wanted to grow in business. He wanted to be an executive. So we, in this marriage, we went out all the time. I mean, constantly. He wanted to go out all the time. And he wanted to entertain people. And we had dinner out and all this stuff. And I was starting to develop fears. I was just starting to develop fears about being in restaurants, eating with all these people. Having to do this all the time. I was starting to get scared. And in the middle of it, we were traveling. We moved from New York State to New Jersey. And then we moved to Atlanta. Then we moved to New York. And then we moved to Atlanta again. And I was just getting worse and worse and worse. And just, the fears were just mounting up terribly. And I was getting to the point where I had to drink to do anything. It was just really getting very, very hard on me to manage that. To manage my life at all without it. Now, mind you, I had full-time jobs. I was doing really, really well. I worked for, I worked in positions like administrative assistant, you know, that kind of stuff. I have no idea how I did that. I don't know how I did that when I look back at it. Anyway, I got really tired of all this. And I figured that probably it was because it must have been a bad marriage. Just, you know, it's just, he wasn't, he couldn't sit down and have a conversation with me. He wasn't, quote, deep enough or whatever. So I left him. And I decided I was going to start having my fun in Atlanta. And I, you know, started hanging out. I met a bunch of girls and I lived at Cross Creek Apartments. I don't know if anybody knows where that is. And we did a whole lot of drinking and had a whole lot of fun. In the middle of that, I met another guy who wanted to introduce me to some outside substances. And I know that we stick with alcohol in here. It is part of my story. For one year, I started doing outside substances along with the drinking with him. And I would, I can remember the blackouts were getting a whole lot worse. I remember going to the Coach and Six, which was down on Peachtree. And I remember waking up in New Orleans. And I was like, oh, my God, what's happened to me? And I got back home. I was okay. And I can remember blackouts. Like being in Las Vegas and being in and out of a station wagon. I know that there were dogs in the station wagon. I know I was with people that I don't know. And it's all I can remember. But I would, you know, I could drink and I could get home. I never had a DUI. I don't know how it happened. Thank God. I don't think I killed anybody. But I just figured that this was getting really bad. One day I got lost on the way to work. I mean, it was just, it was getting so bad with me. And I was so scared at work that I was starting to come home at lunch and drink so I could go back to work and finish out my day. And I was, again, I was still developing these fears. I just, nothing was comfortable for me. One day, and I decided, I stopped the relationship with this guy because I just thought that things were getting out of hand. Too many, I was getting scared of the outside substances. I didn't know where it was going to lead me. I didn't want to end up in cities and other places. It just wasn't good for me. So I decided, this isn't good. Now, the alcohol, that was still very important. But the outside substances, I stopped. I met, I had to take a, in those days we had these postage meters, these huge postage meters. And I had to take this postage meter to the post office to be filled. In those days you had to have them filled. You can see how old I am. And I can remember, I was standing in line goofing off. With this man. And he said, that looks pretty heavy. Can I carry it to your car? And I said, sure. And so he carried the post office machine, postage machine to my car. And he said, can I take you to lunch tomorrow? I said, yeah, that sounds good. So he picks me up. He's got a Corvette. I mean, whoo. And I find out he's an ex-pro ball player. And he's got this basket. Now, I had developed this fear of going out to eat. I really didn't want to go to restaurants. I had enough of that in my life. I decided in my alcoholic mind I wasn't going to go out to restaurants anymore. I had no idea what that was about. Unless, of course, I was fully drunk. And then it didn't matter. But he had in that basket, he had wine. He had cheese. He had little finger sandwiches. He was the perfect man. So I thought. So anyway, we dated for a few, we dated actually for three years. I should have known better after three years. And in April of 1970. We got married. And I thought, this is the perfect man for me. He told me he didn't want me to work anymore. This is wonderful. He said, I won't, you know, you don't have to work anymore. I can afford for you not to work. You can just have this wonderful life. And we can drink our way, you know, and enjoy ourselves. And we had, whenever we went somewhere, it was measured by how many bottles of alcohol it took to get there. Like, okay, it's five bottles of wine to get to Hilton Head, you know, or whatever. And so he would show up with these bottles of whatever. And it would be like, oh, we're going to Hilton Head. You know, it was kind of, it was just a joke between us. But I mean, we drank all the way. We drank all the way back. And then suddenly I got sick. I started to get, not feeling too well. And I went to the doctor. And lo and behold, I was pregnant. And the doctor looked at me. And he said, there's a little bit of a problem with this pregnancy. He says, you're going to have to go home. And he said, you're going to have to go to bed. And he just pointed his finger at me. And he says, and you're going to have to stop drinking if you want to keep this baby. And I thought, how did he know? How in God's name would he know I drank? But I probably reeked of it. You know, I just, I didn't know that. So I decided, okay, I'm going to let this baby be born. And, you know, I don't know whether it was a motherly instinct or whatever. It took over. And I completely stopped drinking. Now, I found myself stone cold sober. I mean, now, all those issues that were, happened to me at 11 years old that I was drinking over started to come to the surface. I was, I found myself an absolute walking basket case. I was terrified of the world. I didn't want to leave the house. I was afraid to walk to the mailbox. I was afraid to go to the grocery store. Whatever. On top of that, this wonderful ex-pro ball game. Ex-pro ball player, corvette driver, and had all the money, decided he was going to be really mad at me because I was pregnant. Now, we had never discussed having babies. You just drink. You just have a good time. You never think about those kind of things. You just, you know. Well, it happened. And he decided that he was going to go back to, he said he was, this is the way he put it. He was going to start working a lot harder to make our, you know, to make this business that he had make more money. He wasn't going to be around a whole lot. Basically, our marriage was going to be kind of at its end. And he, but yet he would support me. He also threatened, he said, if you get a job, and I kind of wanted, you know, I thought, well, maybe I should think about this. He said, if you ever get a job, he said, I'm going to take the baby away from you. And he said, I mean, it was like all of a sudden, big, huge control. But he, he, he said he would support me and I could stay there. And now it was better than the way I was brought up. 100% better than the way I was brought up. And I stayed there with him. And I had this wonderful, beautiful, sweet little girl. And I got to raise her and I got to be part of her life. And she got to have some things that I never could have given her. She got to have a private schooling. She got to, you know, she got to go to a fantastic college. I mean, he did so much to her, for her. Financially, she had so much. Now, the ex-husband didn't stop doing all the wonderful things that he was doing. And he didn't stop, he didn't stop drinking. He didn't stop drugs. He didn't stop a lot of things that I didn't know he was doing. There was a whole lot going on that this naive little kid didn't know about. This marriage ended up being a 30-year nightmare. I stayed with him. I wanted my child to have everything she could have. I was, along the way, I became, she was in this private Christian school. And I met a woman who witnessed to me as far as my relationship with God. And I became a very strong Christian. And I really, I was very grateful for that because it was helping me a lot. But the problem is I had these filters in my head that my husband talks about. The filters in your head. And when I would get information about God, and it was wonderful. It would somehow come out. It would go through that head and it would come out very strangely. I would start to beat myself up. I would start to beat you up. I knew the Bible, you know, I knew a lot of verses. I could, you know, give you chapter and verse on what you were supposed to be doing and what I was supposed to be doing. I was one of those miserable Christians. And, you know, call that Christianity? I don't know. But that's the way I learned about my God. And today I'm so grateful that I understand that because I'm so grateful for those moments. Um. But I got, I call that I got my religion. I got religion. Um. There were a lot, there was a lot still going on in my family of origin at the time. They weren't getting along. Parents were not, you know, doing well. My siblings were fighting. You know, we had been, as my mother always pitted us against one another, had one in the dog house. We still didn't get along. How are we supposed to learn how to get along when, you know, when you're brought up like that? So we weren't getting along all that well. And my father, um, big, big time, uh, movement in my life. My father died in 1988. And at his funeral, uh, as would be crazy alcoholic funerals, my brother brought his girlfriend to the funeral. And his wife came. He forgot to tell his wife he had a girlfriend. He forgot to tell any of us that he had a girlfriend. So that caused a family feud. And half went this way and half went that way. Ne'er to talk, you know, for a long time. And I, my mother became so angry. She, uh, she disowned me, uh, because I was very good friends with my brothers, uh, now to be ex-wife. We were very good friends. And I consoled her. I mean, my God, she showed up and she flew from California to Florida to see this happen. So it was very, very difficult. This drove me to Al-Anon. And I came in to the program. Through Al-Anon. Now, the way I got here was I got into some counseling. My ex-husband didn't want me to have any counseling. So I would take money out of my allowance or whatever. I didn't have a big allowance, but I would try to find money and I would go to counseling. And the counselor suggested that because I was an adult child of alcoholism that I needed to go to Al-Anon. So I went to Al-Anon instead of AA. Um, and Al-Anon was very helpful to me. And I learned a lot in Al-Anon. I learned about the family disease of alcoholism. I learned that it was, you know, this was a generational thing. It had been passed down. I had no idea that's what I was involved in. I knew there was alcoholism, but I didn't know. And I also didn't know any better but to pick another alcoholic for a husband. What was I to know? Husband number two. Husband number one was one. Husband number two. I learned how to face the reality in my own home. I wasn't facing it very well. I was mean. I was over religious. I was acting just like my mother. I was angry all the time. I was a mess. You didn't really want to be around me a whole lot. I learned to detach from the sickness in my home and in my family. In other words, I could allow them to be where they were at. I allowed them to be where they were at. I detached and I started to get well. I didn't have to join in anymore. I didn't have to argue with them anymore. I didn't have to, you know, get into the conversation. I remember my sponsor telling me, bite your tongue. Stay out of the arguments. And I mean, I bit my cheek so bad one time. I stayed out of it, though, and I learned. I learned I could recover when the other people in my family were not. I learned acceptance. I learned I had to accept where I was. It wasn't that I agreed with it, but I accepted it. I learned that my family didn't hate me. I learned that they were just sick. And I had made a choice to get better, even though I told them all about God. They didn't want anything to do with them. I told them all about, you know, recovery and all that. They didn't want anything to do with that either. But I got to choose to do it. My mother died around 1997. She passed away. Now, I was still with the sick husband. And he gave me one chance. I could either go visit her when she was alive or I could go visit her after she died. So I chose to go up to see her when she was still alive so I could say goodbye to her. Now, my family didn't like that, you know, that I wasn't going to be there for the funeral. But that's all I could do. So they decided not to tell me when she died. So I didn't know when my mother passed. And I didn't know where they buried her. I didn't know anything about it. They just didn't want to talk to me. They were so angry because I had to do it that way. At around about the same time, I started finding out about my husband's many, many affairs. One of his addictions was a sex addiction. Now, he had kept that pretty well away from me for a lot of years. And I remember saying to my sponsor, how did I miss that? And she said, because he was that good at it. He was that good at keeping that from you. He had a hotel not far from our home. He had, I mean, a lot of stuff was going on. He had, there were financial issues going on. He had signed my name to a lot of financial documents. He had real prince of a man. He had forged my name to IRS stuff and had me in debt that I didn't even know I had. I had liens on me that I didn't even know I had. And I found all of that out. All of that out around 1999. About the same time that my daughter was leaving, finally she had gone through college and she was leaving for California. She had been my wife. She was going to move to California. And here I was. I was going to be here with this man. And I started to become terrified of that. Somebody suggested, somebody suggested that I come to some AA meetings. Why don't you go to some AA meetings? Maybe it will help you see. Maybe it will help you understand what's going on. So I came into AA as this little Al-Anon, you know, no problems, you know, cutesy little program. I got here and I heard you guys. And I was, I'm like, oh my God, that's me. This is me. I'm reading stuff about myself. And I would go out to the car and I would just put my head down and I would cry. Because AA was telling my story. And I thought, oh my God, what am I going to do? I'm not an alcoholic. I stopped drinking all these years ago. How could I possibly be an alcoholic? I stayed here for three years. I brought all of my spasis from Al-Anon. I would drag them in and I would say, oh, can you hear this? Oh, my God. And they would say, no, Mary, we're not, you know, we really don't want to come to AA. And I'm like, but you've got to hear this. Well, I read this. The other thing is I realized that I had to leave this. I had to leave this husband of 30 years. And my higher power, whom I choose to call God, he gave me so much at that time. An uncle died that I didn't know I had and left me an inheritance. I had money. I could all of a sudden leave him. Down the pike came a job out of the sky in a law firm. And I needed a law firm big time because I had to get out of the tax mess that I was in. I had enough money to move out and get an apartment, except there was one thing that was going to go on with me. And I was going to buy wine. I had waited 30 years. I had let that daughter, I grew her up. She's out of home. She's moving to California. Why can't I drink? And I was going to buy, I had this apartment. I was going to fill the refrigerator with wine. And I want to read you a little story. If I've got enough time, I do. A man of 30 years. A man of 30 years was doing a great deal of spree drinking. He was very nervous in the morning after these bouts, quieted himself with more liquor. He was ambitious to succeed in business, but saw that he would get nowhere if he drank at all. Once he started, he had no control, whatever. That was me. Once I started the blackouts, I didn't know how much I was going to drink. He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired, he would not touch another drop. That was me. Until my daughter was fine. He remained bone dry for 25 years. I made it 30. And he retired at age 55 after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to a belief, which practically every alcoholic has, that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. Out came his carpet and slippers and a bottle. In two months, he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated. He tried to regulate himself. He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital. Meantime, then gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether. And this goes on. But within four years, he was dead. That scared the you-know-what out of me. I thought, oh, my God. You know, I had blackouts. My sponsor at the time was in both programs. She had me do a serious, serious four-step. And I remember sitting in her car. I remember the night sitting in her car. And I said, oh, my God. I think I'm an alcoholic. I said, I think I need to pick up a white chip. And at the early study group, I picked up a white chip. And they gave me a standing ovation. They knew. They knew, but I didn't. You know, I just didn't realize it. They had heard me share so much in there. And, boy, did I learn a lot. The big thing was the bondage of self. I had no idea. It wasn't something I learned in Al-Anon. Al-Anon's wonderful. I 100% adore that program. But I needed what AA had to get me on my feet and to get me away from even thinking about alcohol. I learned I was here by a series of my own choices. Oh, my God. I chose that husband. I chose what I was doing. And if I choose to drink, oh, God, where am I going to end up? You know, I learned that. I learned how much alcoholic thinking I was carrying. Holy cow. I mean, the stuff I had. Oh, yeah, I don't even want to go into some of the stuff I was doing. I was thinking about buying alcohol. And things started to make sense to me about, you know, the way I am. And I worked that program. I worked the AA program very seriously. And I recognized that I wake up every single morning with that programming that that 11-year-old had. And I have to remember that there's tools that I have to use. And I have to use those every day. I have a lot of fears in my life still. The fears have not necessarily gone. They're a lot better than they used to be. And then the good things started to happen in the program after I was here. In 2006, my sponsor, I had finally gotten through a whole lot of rough stuff with my marriage. I just wanted to be home. And my sponsor told me, she said, you got to get out and start doing things. So she told me that I had to go. To the Valentine's Day dance that was here at NAVA. And I said, why are you making me go to a Valentine's Day? I don't want to do that. And she said, you're going to. She said, you're going to go. And I went to the meeting with her. And her husband was at the meeting. She went in front of me. He went behind me. They got me down there. They stamped my hand. And they left. And a friend of mine came up. And he said, why don't you come to my table and sit with me. And I sat with him. And he danced with everybody. And I thought, oh, this is great. This is single life. I'm just going to really have a good time watching everybody dance with everybody else. I walked through the room. And there was that man right there. Gary Neidhart. And we met each other there. We had seen each other before. But apparently it wasn't the right time. But we ended up, we were very good. He courted me. We started to attend conferences together. He was connected to a man by the name of Bill Rupp, if people don't know who Bill Rupp is. And he was basically Bill Rupp's driver. So Bill Rupp was asked to speak everywhere. And we got to go. I started going to conferences, going to speaker meetings. In 2007, Gary and I got married. I moved into his household. Now, it doesn't mean that because you marry somebody in the program that everything is just all perfect and wonderful. It's good. But it has to be a recovery marriage. We have both stayed very close. We have both stayed very, very close to our programs. And when we do have our spats or whatever, we know that we have to talk to our sponsors. You know, it's not perfect. It's not always perfect. But it is a recovery marriage. And I am so grateful for it. I am so grateful for it. In 2013, just a few years ago, and I'll go really quick. I'm almost done. I woke up one morning and I had a high fever. And I couldn't stand up. And Gary took me to. He carried me, basically, to the doctor. And the doctor immediately put me on antibiotics. They didn't know what I had. And I just, I couldn't get through. I couldn't get over what I had. It was like a two-week stint of antibiotics. It wouldn't go away. Another two weeks, it wouldn't go away. Anyway, I ended up on like six rounds of antibiotics. And then they finally had to send me to a pulmonologist. And I had to go on another round of antibiotics. What we didn't know were those antibiotics were tearing my body apart. And I ended up with two autoimmune diseases. And I also ended up with a heart attack. And I also ended up in the hospital with a heart procedure. And I was laying there, looking at the ceiling, angry at God. Angry. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I ended up in bed for 18 months. And when the student is ready, the teacher appears. A beautiful woman in this program came along beside me. And she helped me walk through that. She helped me take the steps and walk through that. I did four-step work. I read page 60 through 63 in the big book every single day. I got on my knees. I asked God to help me. I have learned that the 12 steps can get you through anything. And I'm standing here today. I'm not 100% over whatever it is I've got. But I'm much better with it than I ever thought I would be. And I'm so grateful. And I just, I don't know if you guys know the miracle that you've walked into. But there are a lot of people out there that aren't in here. And this isn't common. What's out there, what we're doing in here. Marriages are restored. Physical health is restored. Families are restored. I don't know what I'd do without the program of AA. I'm so very grateful for it. And I just want to say again, thank you all for letting me share my story. I'm done. Thank you. Mary, that was outstanding. I want to say thank you, too, for your patience. Because as long as I've been in this program, I've been participating in a lot of different groups, meetings, book studies. But never so much a speaker meeting. So a lot of my format is being given to me at this time. So I hope I haven't swayed off too much what I'm doing. Let me know what more I need to get involved in the program. And that's coming to more speaker meetings. That's one thing. But as it says here, thank you. Mary, thank you so much. You know, the thing that's so profound is that when I first came here, I, too, started out with Bill's story. And listen to yours. I can hear the suggested thought about taking on the idea of knowing that this was a soul and spiritual sickness. And the biggest threat of it all was that reputation and expectation was one of the two things that the word alcoholism attacked. Because I want to see myself as a productive person in society. And I want to also see myself as a healthy person in society. But the word alcoholic itself, to somebody just walking in this door, it almost sounds like a sense of failure. Right. Alcoholism does not wear a good badge in the world. And when you come and you take time out to embrace a sickness, not so much a reputation of threat, but something that could be pulling away from your focus of feeling whole and serene and finding purpose in life, I don't think it's something I should shy away from. I think it's something I should embrace. And that's what I heard in your story. And that's what I know that keeps me here. It says quite a few things, and by the next day, it's a hand out the chip. But I want to make this the last thing I say outside the attack of the personality clash that that word alcoholic gives. It's hard to admit defeat. This sickness can also make you feel as if, though, you... don't have a second chance. It's another sense of saying self-will run wild. And I have taken the... and have even heard that this program is so outstanding because it makes me challenge my inability to grow up. You know, it's like a live or die situation. So I just want to thank you for letting me have that little say and what part it played. And Mary, that early morning study group is when I met Mary. And we had... really came together because I came here on a spiritual plane, too. But AA helped me to be able to put that in the right perspective. And I'm glad to meet you. And I met you both before you got married. And I've been knowing you since you've been married. So I've been around a while. And they're winners. They're absolutely winners. So, again, I say thank you for your story. And now we ask somebody to give out the chips. Why don't you do it? Okay. Okay. My name is Carl. I'm an alcoholic again. And I'm going to see if I can remember this chip system. How many chips have I picked up? Okay. First of all, I'm just going to give you the colors. And then I'll tell you what they represent. And then I'll call up to you if you want to get one. This white chip is for surrender. This silver chip is a 30-day chip. Then we have a red chip that's a 90-day chip. We have a yellow chip, which is six months. We have a green chip, which is nine months. And we have a blue chip that represents a year. Is there anybody that would like to come up and take a chip to start a new way of life? Silver, 30 days. Red, 90 days. How about six months? And just before we stop, I want to offer the white chip once more. Because God gave me a second chance. I'm praying that you will take it and get a second chance. And if you're just too shy to get it, we'll just put it over here. You can get it every month.