Being Beth Just Wasn’T Enough! – Beth H.

Wow, there's a lot of people here. My name, and you all have to listen to me, this is awesome. I love a captive audience. My name's Beth Hartley, I'm an alcoholic. Because of the grace of God and the steps and fellowship of AA and sponsorship, I've been sober since June 26, 1988. Most of you heard my husband last night. He probably forgot to mention that I have been sober just a little longer than him. That's why I get the last word, but it's been great. My sponsor has talked. My husband has talked, and I'm kind of glad they didn't invite my mom. That might have not gone so well, but is anybody here at their very first convention ever? Oh, yeah. All right. Thank you very much. This is the place to catch fire for Alcoholics Anonymous. You are surrounded by people who want to be here. I went to my very first AA convention, gosh, years and years ago, and I didn't drink for three days after that. I was so inspired. It was 1984. I wasn't quite ready yet. I was one of those people who knew about AA. My dad got sober when I was seven years old, so I grew up with AA in the house. I knew it was lame because my dad did it, and it was for old people. I mean, I was the kid in the corner at the open meeting with the coloring book, and I knew all of them were old, drank coffee, ate donuts. I'd seen it myself. And, I mean, you know, my dad was 30, for God's sake. So, you know, old people. And so I really didn't want to be here when I got here. And if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous and you don't want to be hier, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. We don't really care. Most of us didn't want to be here anyway. It's like Chuck said, nobody, you know, went to school, graduated from college with one major, got got married once and said, oh, I think I'll go to AA now. We just, you know, if you're new this year, we know that it hasn't been a good year. But the book says our attitude and outlook on life will change and that's what you're going to hear happen to me because one of the things you'll hear if you make a list of what you want when you get here, here, you'll sell yourself short. And I thought that was kind of cliche, but it's proved to be true. I really, when I got here, I wanted my driver's license back. I wanted to stop getting arrested. And I wanted maybe, maybe remarry someday, preferably to a guy with a job. And I never could remember to ask that at last call. I don't know about you. you. I should have kept a list in my pocket, are you married? Is the car paid for? You know. Anyway, I was an only child. My dad got sober when I was seven. As Tina mentioned, I grew up in Oxford, Ohio. Growing up in Ohio was my first resentment. I was born in California and I found out by about first grade that I'd been born in Califonia and was now in in Ohio, and I didn't want to be from Ohio. I remember being in first grade and seeing a map of the United States and the oceans and the peninsulas in Florida and Texas and California, and then there was Ohio. And I remember thinking that you could look at a map and tell that nothing is happening in Ohio. And what I know now is, as you can imagine, I don't get asked to speak a lot in Ohio either. But, you know, what I know now is that I was already restless, irritable, and discontent as a first grader. I was all ready looking for outside things to make me feel better. I was alreadly looking for a material solution to a spiritual problem. And I just thought if I lived somewhere else, if my mom was different, if I had brothers and sisters, if I hair was straight instead of curly, all of those things, if all of this was different then I could be okay. Because I just wasn't. One of my favorite promises in the big book says that we can be alone at perfect peace and ease. And I never could do that. It was too, if I was alone in a room, it was too noisy. I had all these people in my head. None of them liked me. You'd think I could have found one positive voice up there, but no. They would tell me things like nobody really likes you and they just play with you because their mom makes them and they're all talking about you. And, you know, I mean, I'm in first grade with this stuff going on And we would have big families that lived near us, and I would just absorb myself into those families because the chaos kind of quieted everything down. You know, I could drown out all those voices because on my own, I just couldn't. If I was alone, I was thinking, andI was thinking all of that stuff, that you don't like me, that, you know,I just, I read a lot. That was my first escape. I could read for hours, and the house could crumble around me, andi wouldn't notice. And I think that's why school came easily to me when I got to school was just from all the reading. It wasn't any work ethic. If it looked hard, I just didn't do it. And my husband says I'm a type AL personality. Now some of you may not know what that is, but you're probably familiar with type A. And he said one day that, well, you are a type A, that's for sure. But you are lazy enough that you're not annoying. And that's kind of the story of my life. I'm very busy up here, but a lot of it doesn't really translate into action. A lot of people grow up, you know, set the goal, work for the goal achieve the goal and my outlook has always just been give me the goal you know? My daughter was four years old when I got sober. I have two children that were four and six when I Got Sober and she's the one that we would have told you would be here by now She just had a gleam in her eye, and she had raised lying to an art form that I had never witnessed before. Chuck and I used to tell people that, you know, a lot of people save for college, we're saving for treatment. When she was 11 years old, she wanted to join a swim team. A lot of her friends were swimming, and we took her to try out. And the coach said, I think you'll do okay on the team, but I want you to practice down in age group because you can't keep up with your age group yet. Now, this meant that at 11 years old, he wanted her to practice with 9-year-olds. That would not have been okay with me. It was fine with her. I was 7 years sober, and I was having a hard time being the mom of the 11-year old swimming with the 9-years-old. But she was fine avec it. She practiced down in age group. She went to her first swim meet, and these were USS teams where they just run all the heats, and they put up the results, and she was 70th out of 72. two, she went back the next day. I would have been trying to get my parents to relocate. And we told her, well, Sarah, you know, you have a baseline time now. Even though you didn't win, you had a time. And then your next race, even if you don't win that one, if you beat your time, it's a successful race. Now, the whole time I was telling her this, I was thinking, oh, yeah, right. You know, I mean, it is what you have to tell your kids. It's in the parent handbook. And she beat her time, and she was happy. Now, the rest of that story is two years later, she was a state double-A swimmer. You know? She swam all over the Midwest, long course, short course. And I would have missed every bit of that the day that they told me to swim with the 9-year-olds. And I realized that at 11 years old, she had never had a drink, and neither had I. But we reacted to life so completely differently because I would have turned around and left when he told me to practice down the group. And she just, she absorbed that set-the-goal, work-for-the goal, achieve-the–goal thing. We weren't, you know, we started watching her with interest after that happened because we weren't expecting this turn of events, quite frankly. And so we're kind of keeping an eye on her to see what happens next because we're thinking, could this be normal? You know, like we would recognize that. And she just kind of went on like that. She had the same friends when she graduated from high school that she had in first grade. I had to take a geographic cure to public school after sixth grade because I thought if you'd been in school with the same 26 people for six years, you would hate them all too. You know? And she got along with everybody. She got a summer job. She saved money. You know, by her junior year in high school, they opened a Starbucks in our town. And when they came home from school the first day and she said they'd been and we said, oh, that sounds like fun. Who did you go with? And she said, Lindsay, Katie, and Jennifer. And I said, Jennifer? And she looked at me and said, for God's sakes, Mom, that was sixth grade. Could you let it go? No. That was when we told her, you know, there's supposed to be one mature person in the house. Congratulations, we're pretty sure it's you. But she knew by high school, like Chuck said, that she wanted to go into the military. And when she went through high school she still wanted to get into the army. military and she signed with the early enlistment and worked with a recruiter her senior year in high school, and she's in her eighth year with the Army now. And she's married to one guy, and they had a kid after they got married. What are you going to do? She had such a bright future here and she threw it all away. We're still holding out a little hope for our son. It could I kind of could go either way with him. But anyway, I just couldn't function. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I heard that we were self-centered and I didn't get that. I thought self- centered meant selfish and vain and neither of those just asked me, you know? I didnít know self-centered meant that I thought everybody was talking about me when I wasnít there. I didnís know self‑centered meant if I canít win, I donít want to play. I didn't know self-centered meant if I'm not good at it by the third try, I'm Not Doing It Because I'll Look Bad. You know, I never connected the dots that people who were good at things might have practiced them. You know? I never put together that my friends who were great at it or were good a playing piano were the same ones who couldn't come out to play because they had piano lessons. I just thought how nice for you that you can play the piano. I just never, you know, because if it was work, I didnít do it. And I had two rules that I lived by. One was never, ever, ever Ever, ever Admit that you have made a mistake Don't let them know you're wrong I had a one night stand drag out For a five year marriage based on that one I wasn't crying uncle And apparently neither was he And the other one was That it wasn't alright not to know Whatever it is Whatever the it of the moment is I always thought I had to already know how to do it because if I don't know how to do something, I might look bad. I didn't ask questions in school because then the whole class would know that you don't know. I felt bad for you if you asked a question in school. And I just didn't get that whole self-centered thing. I'm a little slow sometimes. But I couldn't make a move without being hyper aware of everybody around me and what they were. If I'm talking to Tina, are they watching us over here? And do we look like we're having fun? And I was like a spectator in my own life. Like there was always this little camera in my head kind of surveying around. Just, you know how we, when you're talking to somebody and you ask them how they are, but I don't really want to know, I just want to tell you how I am. So while you're walking, I'm thinking what I'm going to say when you finally shut up. My sponsors as alcoholics don't have conversations a lot. It's just two people talking. And, you know, but all of this is going on and I can't make a move. And when I got sober and read in the big book where it said the world and its people dominated us, I didn't get that either. I thought of physical domination when I read that. And I ran around with very large people that wore black leather and rode motorcycles and carried weapons. And while I never was a fighter myself, totally out of a fear of being humiliated in public, Like, I always looked like I would fight, so people left me alone. And so I saw that world and as people dominated us, and I just thought, well, that doesn't apply to me. And what I've come to understand is what dominated me, the whole time I was telling myself that I don't care what you think, what dominated мне was what you thought. You know, my self-esteem had nothing to do with what I thought of me. It had everything to do avec what I though you thought of mee. And what dominated mee was who do I have to be so I can fit in? Who do I need to be? so you'll give me what I want? Who do I have to be to catch him, to get that job, to get out of this job, to get the job done? To get that stuff. It was always about what do I Have to Do to Arrange Your Perception of Me So That I Can Be Comfortable. Because if you don't think I'm okay, I'm not okay. And I had no idea that I was living like that. I just didn't have a clue. So as you can tell, I was one of those kids who probably needed a drink too long before I took one, but I filled it all up with activity So I was good at school, so I had the honor society thing going and yearbook staff and student council and cheerleading and this and that because I had to be busy. I hadと be busy to stay ahead of the noise in my head. And I never felt like just being Beth was enough. I never feel like I justified the space that I took up. I always had to do big, big stuff just to justify filling this much space. And if I wasn't Beth the cheerleader or Beth Jim and Sally's daughter or Beth the whatever, I felt like if I just said my name's Beth, I thought you were just waiting for the rest. You know, like there would be a deafening silence after I said my name's Bath. So I had to be busy, busy, busy. And when I finally took a drink at 15 years old, I didn't fall down, I did not throw up because a lot of my friends were and they were looking bad. So I put just a glow on and took my best friend out the next day so I would have somebody to drink with. And it was, you know, it was on. And our friendship did not make it another year because we drank different from the beginning. From that point on, if I had been able to get it every day, I would have been a daily drinker and I loved to drink. I love to drink my day just went better with a drink. My view on morning drinking was why wouldn't you? Plus in high school, it's just practical because you could sober up before your parents get home from work. That just made sense to me. There's a lot of planning and drinking. I don't know if you've thought this this through, but like I was a big wild Irish rose drinker for years and good stuff. I don't think that qualifies under that drinking natural wines in the book, but you know, but the bottom line is those are square bottles and they don't roll out from under the car seat. You know, you need to know this stuff. But it was on and I, from the very beginning, I had a huge capacity for alcohol so I drank with the big boys because I could. You know, I I didn't have to drink with the girls, so I didn t because in high school, girls were embarrassing. They giggled and they fell down and they threw up and they wore pink in public, you know? And they just, everybody liked the same boy and that would get ugly. And later on in life it's getting kind of dicey because you're running into problems like, oh, that was your husband. Oh, sorry. So I drank with the guys because I could. And when I got to to Alcoholics Anonymous and they said, hang with the women. I was horrified. You know, I mean, I just thought I didn't even drink with women and you want me to hang out with them sober? I just, you know, and of course now I tell all the new girls that come in, hang with them. Hang with the woman, honey, you know, but because our attitude and outlook changes when we get here. But I was often running with the drinking. I graduated high school probably because I didnít drink for the first year. And then I went off to college because I grew up in a college town, and that's what you did. And I went up to college, and I flunked out of college because I guess it goes better if you go to class. I wasn't doing a lot of drinking in college becauseI didn't do my homework, and I put myself geographically in the center of a 21 state. And I still kind of wonder if I would have made it if I could have drank in school more, but we'll never know. And so I flunk out of school. I go back to Oxford, Ohio where my parents are and I know everyone is watching so I get a job in a bank because I've disgraced my parents by flunking out of school. And I tried banking but they worked Monday mornings and that wasn't going well at all. And I had always wanted out of Ohio. Like I said, when I knew it was warm other places, I started campaigning trying to get my parents to move. They would never move. And a friend of mine said, we should go to Florida. And I said, We should. I mean, that was all it took. He knew somebody down there, and we took off. I was finally running. I had wanted to run away from home since I was 12, and I just couldn't ever get the momentum up. So now I'm on the run. Honest to God, I'm looking out the rearview mirror going through Kentucky thinking that the sheriff is going to come pull us over and make me go home because I'm making a run for it. And I get down there and I get it. We go to Bonita Springs, Florida in 1978, and there was two traffic lights, a dog track, maybe three bars. And I got a job at a convenience store because it was so transient down there that if you went to work three days in a row, you were management material. So two weeks later, I called my mom and said, I'm in Florida. Don't worry. I'm assistant manager at this store. and she said something she said to me a lot which was how do you do something this dumb and land on your feet it just made her she had this odd idea there should be consequences for your actions I never really never really lined up with that one but you know the other thing she asked me was why didn't you tell us you were leaving which I thought was really stupid since I was running away from home and uh and there was just this pause and she says Beth you're 19 you could have just moved. And I was like, oh my God, I had no idea. You know, I just, it took me till 19 to get up the nerve to run. And so by the end of eight months in Bonita Springs, I was looking at having to break rule number one, which was admitting I'd made a mistake because I, it was becoming clear I couldn't support myself down there. There was, you know, very few places. It was a very small all town and word traveled quickly. And with only three bars, my dating pool dried up pretty quickly. I did most of my dating at last call, as I'm sure many of you did. And, you know, I mean, you knew how that goes. If they're still there on Sunday, it's a relationship. And I'm running out of options quickly. It was looking like I was going to have to move back to Ohio. And a guy moved to town from California. And I had a friend who said once they really should have put a sign at the state line of Florida, Arizona, and California that says this state doesn't work either. And a lot of us could just go, you know, if you see a car pull up, somebody get out and look at the sign and just go damn it and turn around and go that's us, you now. But they didn't have a sign and he came to town from California and we hooked up on this little five-year dance of death that we started and we had two kids in that marriage and that's the only good that came out of that union, let me tell you. But when our son was six months old, we went to the Keys for Fourth of July weekend and we liked it. We said, hey, let's move to the keys. So we came home on Tuesday, moved on Friday with $400 and a six-month-old baby. Hey! You know, call mom a week later. Oh yeah, we moved to the Key's, but don't worry, I'm assistant manager at this restaurant. And you know, you could just kind of hear her pounding her head on the phone. because it made her crazy that I never, I would have consequences sometimes but never what they should have been. I always felt like that guy looking back like the guy in the cartoons that's tottering down the sidewalk and the safes and the pianos are kind of falling behind them, you know and every now and then I would get clipped a little bit but mostly I just escaped unscathed. I totaled a car at 16 years old by smashing it into a bridge drunk and there was no DUI, there was not license suspension. I just got a bill from Butler County, Ohio for the bridge repair. And that, you know, and I don't want to say how long ago that was, but the entire repair was $127 with union workers. So it was a long time ago. So anyway, we, you now we're in the Keys and I have a job. We're in upper keys and I'm at this oceanfront resort. And I go from the restaurant into the hotel as the night auditor and found out that my pay was going to double and this place had seven bars and three restaurants and they gave me the keys to all seven bars. That was the best job I ever had. My job at night was to, I didn't even clock in until 11 at night and then I had to go ring out the tiki bar and we would have a drink and I'd have to ring out The Quarter Deck and we Would Have a Drink and then they had to ring up The Horizon which is the sixth floor and we'd just lock the elevator and sit up there and have a few drinks and maybe a few other outside issues so we could stay up the rest of the night and work. And, you know, all the security guards there were bikers. It just was a wonderful, wonderful place. And I was, you Know, when Bill Wilson said I had arrived, I knew what he meant, you know? It just Was a great place. And as luck and progressive alcoholism would have it, I clocked in one day or I went to happy hour at 5 and I was still there at 11 when I was supposed to clock in and unfit to work, and they fired me. And I kind of intuitively knew by then I wasn't going to find another job quite like that anywhere because, I mean, where we were, the old quiet money went down the road to another resort, but we had all the Miami, you know, the fast boats and the drug money, and it just, you know, it was just crazy there, and I kind of knew that nobody else was going to pay me to drink all night. And so I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 1983, and I had been with my dad on occasion if I I was home for a visit. He would take me with him just to meet his friends. And, you know, they'd go around and introduce themselves, and I would say, My name's Beth. I'm with him. But in 1983, I went to the Tuesday night Key Largo group of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's the first time I ever said, My Name's Beth, I'm an alcoholic. Because when you have a sober parent, you don't say the A word and your name in the same breath because bad things happen, big books fall out of the sky, and people hand you meeting schedules. You know, it just doesn't pay to wonder aloud if you might be alcoholic. And so I said I was an alcoholic and it was a discussion meeting and I don't remember the topic but it was, you know, the circle of chairs and they're all relating to each other and this was the early 80s when the New Heart Show was on and I'm thinking of his little group that all related and I just thought, oh my God, one day at a time of this, you now, forever. ever, and the meeting was over. They invited me to Perkins, and I just remember thinking, okay, it's 930 at night. I'm 24 years old. I have a Harley parked down the street, and I have just been invited to Perkin's. My life is over. So I remember being new and saying, what do you do for fun? And they went, oh, we go bowling, and we have dances, and we go out for coffee, and I just thought, well, okay, but what do you do for fun, you know? And a year later, I'm telling people, we have dances, we go bowling, you know. Attitude and outlook on life will change. And so I went to this AA meeting, and I went back to where I worked and told them I knew I had a problem that I was attending AA, and crash, went another piano behind me. They had put the weekend girl up to full-time, and she didn't want to work full- time, and everybody hated her. So, you know, one AA meeting and I got my job back. AA works, it really does. I went to the Friday night Key Largo group and told them I got my job back, and that was the end of my AA career in the Keys. But I got a box from my dad within a week, and there was a big book at 12 and 12, each day a new beginning, one day at a time, 24 hours a day, a tape of his talk, a few bookmarks. I don't know how long he had been putting it in the box, but one meeting and it was in the mail. Some of you may have boxes going now yourselves for your kids, but, you know. And I didn't drink for a while, but there were a lot of outside issues floating around down there and it wasn't a big stretch to not drink sometimes. And, you Know, we had started a little part-time business too because it's expensive to live in the Keys and there was a lot importing and exporting going on down there. So we had a little local distributorship, you know. I remember after they arrested us telling the probation officer that it really was just a part-time job. You know how they look at us when we tell them what we're really thinking? And she just said, well, part-etime job, Beth, here we call that sale of a controlled substance. And that was the first trouble I got in I thought I might not get out of. But even that, you know, things went awry on their end. And I walked away with a couple years of probation. And now I want out of my marriage. I'd wanted out of marriage about since I got into my marriage, but I can't leave because if I leave, I'm saying I'm wrong and I'm say I made a mistake. So I had to wait until he said get out because then it would be his fault. And I started drinking again, and he finally couldn't stand it. And he said, get out, and only had to say it once because that's what I was waiting for. And I called my mom, and I said he finally threw me out. And I wanted to relocate in Florida, but she was having none of that. I would get a plane ticket to Ohio or nothing. You know, I don't know why she didn't want to just send me money in Florida when I'm down there on probation with two babies. But she was very narrow-minded like that. And so in 1984, I found myself back in Ohio. And I thought, okay, fine, I'll try AA again. You know? I really thought if I just stopped drinking with bikers that my life would calm down a little bit. But I tried my mom's neighborhood bar. Now, her, the neighborhood she lived in, it's like the whole place stepped out of an L.L. Bean catalog. I mean, it was just, you might have figured out already I wasn't the most suburban of girls. But, you know, I try, okay, I'm going to drink in her neighborhood where it's quiet and dignified. And, you Know, I went in, got a drink, sat over in a corner playing a video game, and the only guy in the whole space in a Harley shirt sent me a drink. And I just thought, how did they know? So, you know, about 15 years later I realized I was probably the only person in there wearing a leather jacket and boots. But, you Know, it probably didn't take them long to figure it out. And I tried AA. In 1984 in Cincinnati they were on fire. Ickypah had been in Cincinnati in 1983 and they were On Fire up there. They had a Monday night young people's group that was 200 strong. They had Friday night live meeting that was 150 150, and it was active, enthusiastic, structured, sponsored, Alcoholics Anonymous. But I have a problem in big groups of people. When I walk into a room full of people, it separates into two groups, all of you and me. You guys all knew each other. You're all talking about the book, and I never know what to say after my name's Beth, you know, because when I meet somebody and I say, hi, my name is Beth, And he might say, hi, my name's Bo. And I know it's my turn to talk. But, you know, I don't know what to say. And he's just staring at me, waiting for me to talk, and everybody in my head launches about what I, you know, say something. You're just staring out at him. What are you going to say now? Doesn't matter. You look dumber now if you talk than if you don't. And, you know, they're arguing. I'm paralyzed. We have to go. So, you know, I was in and out of AA a little, but within a year my children had been removed from my custody. I was charged with child endangerment in 1985 because I left them alone to drink. They were in bed, they were one and three, and I had nothing to drink in the house. And I wouldn't have told you I had to drink, I would have told you I just wanted a drink, and I was going to run down there and get one or two and come right back. And I don't know how many hours later the police called me at the bar because my 3-year-old son woke up, and he came downstairs, and He couldn't find me, and he walked out onto the front porch, and it was a step down out the front door, so he couldn't reach the handle. And he cried, and somebody heard him, and they called the police. And my mom got the 2 a.m. call that no parent wants to get that said, Come get your grandchildren. Your daughter's been arrested. arrested, and she came and got my kids, and I went to jail. And I was looking at six months, so it was suggested to me that maybe treatment would keep me out of jail for six months. I thought that sounded like a good plan. So off to treatment I went, and I already had my own big book. I already had a tape of my dad's talk, you know? And I'm a test taker, you know what I mean? Are there any test takers in here? You know who you are. And, I mean, if you're a test taker you can ace treatment, you You know what I mean? It's like we can say all the right stuff. I can memorize all the Right Stuff. It's not real helpful out there in the real world where you're actually supposed to be doing all the Rite Stuff, but I rocked in treatment, and I was always graduated most likely to stay sober forever. But I ended up in this all-women treatment center. I don't know how that happened. You know, I was the one that they would come get to talk to women women who didn't want to leave their children alone for six weeks to go to treatment. And I could, I'm a test taker, I could tell them all the right things about better six weeks now than forever later because if we're not sober, we can't be parents at all. But I had a real problem developing while I was in there and the big book talks about it in this way. It says we have a double life, the one we want the world to see and the one that we know is true. And what was becoming true to me, what was becoming obvious to me was that I really didn't want my children back. I was glad they were at my mother's house. You know, it was hard being a single parent. I couldn't seem to get up to get them to daycare on time and I could, you know, It just was, it was just hard and at my mothers house those kids got age appropriate food at dinner time every night and they got a bath every night. And she read them a story every night before before they went to bed, and they slept in clean sheets. And they went into school in clean clothes to daycare on time. And I couldn't do any of that, and I hated her for doing it. I made her life miserable at every turn. You know, I had always laid everything wrong with my life at my mother's feet. And I would do things... Well, here's the kind of daughter I am with untreated alcoholism. Every now and then the kids would come to visit me for a weekend, and on Sunday I would start to talk to them about getting an apartment soon so we could live together again, knowing that they would go home all excited and tell Grandma that Mommy's going to get an apartment and knowing that it wasn't true and that she would have to be the bad guy and talk them down and she would Have to Be the One That Quieted the Tears because that's what I do with untreated alcoholism. That's the kind of daughter I am while I'm telling her, butt out and leave me alone. I'm just hurting me, you know? Get out of my business. I'm not hurting you because I was emotionally bankrupt and anybody in my way got mowed down or they were invisible what my children heard from me on a regular basis was I love you go away and they became more and more invisible around me because I just was thinking all the time about what did I do last night or what am I gonna do tonight how am I going to get the money to do it and you know I went through treatment and I was while I was in treatment. My dad died and I'm the only child of divorced parents. I got the insurance money and that let me drink the way I wanted to drink for another two and a half years. And the kids came back to me briefly, but within two weeks they were back at my mom's again. And I went through treatment one or two more times to stay out of jail on various stuff. And by the end of 1987, I was just tired. You know, my checkbook was tired. I was tired I was living in a friend's attic. I said for years that I had moved into an attic apartment, and about 17 years sober, I realized that it wasn't an apartment, it was an attic, with two rooms with nothing in them until I got there. And I just, you know, I remember it's real gray in the Midwest in the winter, and I remember I would just pass out on the couch. I couldn't even go to bed. You know, I had to pass out with the TV on because it's too noisy with the TV off. And I would wake up, and it would be gray outside, and it Would be 5.30, and I would think, Is it a.m. or p.m.? Because I didn't have enough money to drink all day. I was hoping for p. m. And I Would think, Well, I'll just go back to sleep, and when I wake up it will be light or it will be dark. And I Would toss and turn for what seemed like hours, and it Would be 545, and it Would Be gray. And, you know, I Was 28 years old living like that and finally started thinking thinking, something just isn't right here. You know, I'm watching Nutcracker on Ice with my kids at Christmastime in this place where I've been since August and I haven't even unpacked. There's just a path from the couch to the TV to the bed. No sign of Christmas anywhere but watching NutCracker on ice with the kids and a bottle of wine saying, isn't it beautiful? It's Christmas. And just thinking, you know, something's just not right here And finally one night I just thought, I can't live like this anymore more. And I cried and I said the first honest prayer that I'd said in a long time. And I remembered this big book that my dad had sent me all those years before. And I rummaged through a box and I found it and I opened up to page one, Bill's story, which is where I always started, you know, even in treatment, I just start on, I thought if they went, you know, those Roman numerals are for overachievers. I just, I thought if they really wanted you to read that stuff, it would be page one. And so, you know, when you're in treatment and they tell you this is the text for living, The directions are in here, and then you open up to page one. What I would get is, war fever ran high in a New England town, and I would think, oh yeah, this is helpful, you know. These directions are coming right through. And I never really read past Bill's story. It was like, you Know, he's old, he dead, who cares? But that night I read Bill's Story, and I related to how he felt, and I relayed it to what he thought. And I slept with that big book like a teddy bear, And when I woke up, I felt just kind of relieved like it had lifted. And I know looking back that God removed the obsession to drink. And it wasn't the first time. I can find three or four times in my life where God removed the obsession of drinking. But Bill talks about that in his story too, about for a brief moment he had needed and wanted God and God had been there. But then he was blotted out by worldly clamors, you know, that that still small voice got drowned out by all the other voices in my head. And what I did that day is what I usually did after something like that, nothing. I didn't go to a meeting. I didnít pray anymore. I didní't read another chapter. Eventually everybody in my head said, ìOh, you may as well drink. You know youíre going to.î Because I can surrender when the heatís on. We donít like to surrender, but we can do it with style when necessary. But staying surrendered is kind of the tricky part. You know, Harry Teepo, a talk he gave is reprinted in the back of A.A. Comes of Age. And one of the things he says in it, well, he says two things that talk to me. One is never underestimate the power of the ego to regenerate itself. You know? Because even when I would quit drinking by two or three weeks later, you know, the first thing I get back is my opinion. opinion. And the other thing he says is that surrender is not an event, it's a discipline. And that's the piece that I was lacking. I treated surrender like an event. And if it's a discipline, and then I go to the big book, and the big books says we're undisciplined people, duh. You know, Bill just had some of the understatement in there every now and then cracks me up. There's a line in there somewhere that says, you know, if you explain to your friends while you're not drinking, few of them will ask you to drink. And I thought, you think? Let me see. Yeah, well, if I have a glass of wine with you ladies two hours from now, I'll be hitting on your husband and rifling your medicine cabinet. But hey, let's have a drink, you know. But it surrenders to discipline. And then the book says that we're undisciplined people, but we let God discipline us by the plan outlined in the the book or by the program. And so, you know, what I've learned since I came and stayed is that the way I stay surrender is by living in the steps, by living on the program, by practicing this as a daily way of life. And, uh, so I did end up drinking again at the end of 87 and I didn't drink on and off early in 1988, but again, I was living with somebody with a bad back and he had prescriptions and, you Know, I am a child of the seventies. We had a lot of stuff floating floating around. My favorite was yours. I don't remember very often saying, what's it going to do to me before I took it? But when I got here, I didn't struggle with where do I belong A-wise, you know, because what I realized was even, I mean, I did a little bit of everything. A lot of us did. You know, if you had it, I would do it. But gradually, Eventually, even the drugs began to interfere with my drinking. And the bottom line is that anything that interferes with my drinking has to go. And that was my integrity, my children, and the drug use. It all, you know, I just, you know, this class of stuff just meant I would black out at 6 o'clock instead of midnight. So I didn't like those. And even, you know, smoking some dope, if I'd had two beers first and then smoked something, I couldn't move for two hours and you can't drink if you can't move, so I'm done with that. I do get a little wistful about the diet pills every now and then because it's the only time in my life that I could drink for days, I was thin, and my house was clean. But by the time I was 25, I hated me after or two days of those, so I had to quit doing those too. And so, you know, I knew I was an alcoholic when I got here. And I didn't drink in early 88, and then by the end of June, I just had this brilliant thought that I'd been back in Ohio four years and I bet everybody in Florida was going, God, I wish Beth would come back. And things weren't going well in Ohio, soI ran away for the second time. I ran away from home at age 29, and I didn' t tell anybody where I was going. and I had a credit card of my mom's that I was allowed to carry for emergencies, and that day getting back to Florida was an emergency. And I was down in Florida for a week, and, of course, nobody was really excited to see me. There was no homecoming parade. I was disappointed. And on June 26, 1988, I was standing in the Fort Myers, Florida airport, and the credit card was as tired as I was. It wouldn't take a plane ticket home. I didn't even have a dollar. I didn' t have enough for one drink. If I had, somebody else might be here now. but I couldn't bear the thought of being asked to leave the airport bar because it would have been obvious I was waiting for somebody to buy me a drink. And I thought about maybe snatching a purse from a little old lady. You know, there's a lot of retired people in Fort Myers, but I was so hungover and I knew I would pick on the little old lady that still did aerobics twice a week. She'd run me down and take her purse back and I would look oh so bad. bad. And so I called my mom, and I told her where I was and what I had done, and she said call me later and hung up. That was a bad sign. And then she called her Al-Anon friends. And when I called her back a couple hours later, she said, I booked you a plane ticket, but I want you to understand that I really am not flying you home. I'm flying the children's mother home, and it's only because we're afraid we'll never see you again if I don't. And she picked me up at the airport, and I hadn't had a drink all day. I didn't have a drink on the plane. I didn'T know it was going to be my sobriety date. I would have tried harder. And when she picked Me up, She drove Me straight to the county detox in Cincinnati, And I was not amused. I was ready to go home and go to sleep. But she said what I know now, one of the hardest things she ever said, Which was, Go in or don't, but you can't come home with Me. I've done everything for you that I can do. You're going to have to do it yourself. herself and she left me there. Now this place, for those familiar with Cincinnati, was in Over the Rhine. It was a horrible neighborhood then. It's a horrible neighborhood there. Now it made national news on a regular basis for violence and just bad things happen there. And when she pulled away that night, she didn't know really if she would ever see me again. And I'm her only child. But I'm not hurting you, but out of my life. You know, I just, I can't, the stuff that we put our families through and the name of being left alone just horrifies me now. But I, you know, self-centered is for real. I didn't have a clue. All I knew was how it all affected me. And I was in detox the next morning and I was kind of mulling over my options such that they were. I had my, I was pretty sure I might not be welcome in that attic anymore and my car was impounded and I had pending charges which, you Know, was kindof coming back to me. That was part of why I suddenly thought Florida was a good idea And I wasn't sure what the charges were, but I thought they probably had something to do with the car. And so, you know, none of that stuff was really new. I had been through that before. But what was different on that day was that I didn't have one idea about what to do about any of it. I just didn't Have a plan. I was out of plans, you Know? And if you are new, I hope you are out of Plans. because when we have a plan, at least when I have a plan, I don't listen to you and I don' t need your help because I have a plan. And that day I had no friendly direction left. There was nobody to borrow money from. There was nowhere left to work. There's nobody left to date. I just was out of plans and I was 29 and a half years old and I realized that I never really planned to live to 30. You know, I didn't really have any post-30 plans because I thought I would be dead. I'd mixed drugs and alcohol. I drove drunk. I rode motorcycles drunk. I ran around with very large people that carried weapons and drank, never a good combination. I bartended places where people shot at each other and here I am in this detox bed 29 and a half years old and distressingly healthy. There was nothing wrong with me except alcoholism and I just had this sudden terrifying thought that I wasn't going to die. It was like this voice came down and said said, people like you don't die, Beth. And I knew right then that I was going to live another 30, 40, 50 years whether I drank or not. And that scared me to death. You know, Chuck talked last night. He came in from the complete opposite end. He knew he was a dead man if he took one more drink. And, that day, he didn't want to die. If they had told me, if they could have guaranteed me, Beth, if you leave here and get a beer, you'll be dead in six months, I would have left and gotten the beer. I never tried to kill myself because I knew I would live and probably be maimed and look bad, you know? I just knew I was going to live and I couldn't bear that. And I knew there were levels of bad that I couldn't even imagine. I had had to do a lot of what women do to drink, but there was a a lot I hadn't had to do, and I still had all my extremities, and I Still had, you know, my teeth and my eyes. And I just thought looking 40 years down the road was not looking pretty. And I Just had this passing thought that, well, you Know, whatever those people in AA are doing seems to be working for them, and clearly what you're doing is not working for you. Maybe you should try it their way. And I had no idea that was the corner that I needed to turn. You know, I got out of detox on Friday, a 4th of July weekend. Not a good time to get out of detox. I had arrangements to go into a hotel for women. That should have been a sign of surrender there. But I couldn't get in there until Tuesday. I couldn'T get my car till Tuesday. I couldn' do anything till Tuesday because it was a holiday weekend. And I knew if I went where I lived, I would drink. I had proved that over and over. And I scraped up a little bit of money, and I got a cheap hotel room that was right on the bus line on Redding Road in Cincinnati. So I just had to walk out the door, get on the Bus, ride it. If I'd have had to transfer buses, somebody else probably would have been standing here. But I just Had to ride one bus down the road and then walk a block to the AA Clubhouse. And I almost didn't go the day I got out of detox because, hey, I've been going to meetings all week, you know. Oh, and, you Know, they had treatment there too, which I was all for. I wanted to go to treatment, and they really insulted me there. They said, you know, Beth, you knows everything that we're going to tell you. There is nothing new we can teach you in treatment. Why don't you go do it and save the bed for somebody that doesn't have the information? Yeah, I couldn't argue with that, you now. And it's probably the first time I did something for somebody else. And, you know, if I'd had 30 days to rest up in treatment, I would have had a plan by the time I got out, trust me. But I just thought, you're right. You know, I know what you're going to tell me. So I got back to work. I got outside and I was going to skip the meeting because I've been going all week. But this voice in my head said, you skip meetings before and you drink. So I just got on the bus and I went down to 405 Oak Street, which is one of the clubhouses in Cincinnati. Maddie. And the woman giving the talk that night, I had met when I passed through and she was now four years sober. And she told a room full of people that alcoholism, not alcohol, but alcoholism had taken her to the space where she didn't want to work and she didn'T want to take care of her daughter. She just wanted to drink. And I couldn't believe that she said that out loud to a room full of People because that was my biggest secret. That's the one that you just don't tell people that you don't want your kids. I mean, talk about looking bad. You know, if you asked me, I would always say, oh of course I want to get sober and I want to get my kids back. But the truth is I was scared to death. My biggest fear when I got sober was that I would not be able to love my children ever you know, that maybe alcoholism had completely killed that off in me. And I went to a meeting and she told a whole room full of people that she didn't want to take care of her daughter and I got her number after the meeting. And the next day I wentto call her and it took half an hour because, you know I mean, she's probably busy. Everybody's meeting. She didn't really want you to call. She's just being nice. She's going to say Beth who? And I finally called her and just said, this is Beth. I got your number last night, and I have no idea what to say to you. I'm just practicing using the phone. And she just laughed and said that's what I had to do too. And that's when I tell new people now, when we give you our numbers, we do want you call. call. And we don't care, we're not going to have deep philosophical discussions at three days sober, don't sweat it. I don't have many now at 22 years, you know, so if you tell me you are practicing using the phone, I will know what you mean because the element I had always been missing was taking the action, taking the option, taking action. And I started to go to meetings and I started calling this woman and I found this big book meeting that was at noon, so I thought well well, this will be great, you know, because for one thing, all my trips through treatment, I knew that you should read your book every day, right? Well, this won't count. I won't have to read at home. That's good. And they go, they read the whole chapter at a meeting. So that chewed up half of the hour so maybe I wouldn't get called on, also a plus, you know. And my day is free at 1 o'clock. It's just a win-win all the way around. But God has a great sense of humor. And my date was free at 4 o' clock but by 4.30 I'd remember I had no life and I was was back at six o'clock for the 8 30 meeting a lot and uh because I knew if I went home alone I was in bad company I had figured that much out and I answered phones from my mom at her office because I was basically unemployable other than that and so I could go work for her from 9 to 11 and then go to a noon meeting and come back at you know 2 and work till 4 and that was that was just all I had and when they were reading the book I started to hear it you know because even Even if I tried to read at home, my brain was sawdust when I was new. And if I was reading at home I would realize that I'd been staring at the same paragraph for 20 minutes or else I'd be 30 pages in and have no idea what I read, you know. And I would try, I'd think, okay, I'm just going to read this paragraph and I would read it and read it and I'd close the book and it was just gone, you now. Just nothing was sticking. And when you guys read it, I could hear it. And even reading in a meeting, I would have, you know, they might be reading and I'd be following along. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed her. I wonder what it's going to cost to get my car to impound. I better call that guy after the meeting. Somebody turned the page and I would come back. But I started to hear it because it was read over and over. You know, we went through the first 164 pages every 13 days and I heard it and I herd it and it started to creep in a little bit I was on my way back to my mom's office two or three weeks sober and I remember I was going into Walgreens to run an errand and I popped up to see what everybody was talking about which you know they're still up there today I just don't visit with them very much but I popped up to See What Everybody Was Talking About and somebody in my head was going that was so cool what Guy said in the meeting and somebody else said yeah I didn't even know that was in the book did you and somebody also saying oh I don't know that wasn't a book and I thought oh my god the the voices in my head are getting sober, you know? They're up there discussing the meeting without me. I'm just going to leave them alone. And the biggest joke on me was that people who go to big book meetings tend to read the book and do what it says. And my laziness had plopped me into the middle of some of the most active people in Cincinnati Alcoholics Anonymous. The intergroup office manager was there, you know, people, it just was this huge group of people in this big book meeting and they went to meetings and they going to conventions and they had me answering phones at intergroup by the time I was 10 days sober and at about three weeks sober somebody said, you've been around before Beth, why don't you write an inventory and I didn't know that I could plead that I wasn't ready, you now, I just thought, well, okay, why don't I? And I followed the directions in the big book, all four columns. I did turn the page. And I read my fifth step to my sponsor all before I was a month sober, and my life took off. It just took off, and for me, I couldn't have gone months or a year or two years. I have never heard anyone say, I'm so glad I waited four years to write that first bit. But I couldn'T have done it. There was too much noise in my head, And, you know, on a good day I'd be almost asleep and everybody kicking, yeah, but you don't even want your kids, Beth. Tell somebody that. So for me I had to unload that inventory. And they just got me. We talked about six and seven, and they got me making amends. And my life took off in a hurry, and I just got sucked into the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous because those big book meetings, they were full of laughter. You know, people in there were enthusiastic and happy about being sober. I have been to some meetings periodically, which the best description I could give is that they are apparently an hour of the problem. And by being in a meeting, I was in an hour at the solution because we were reading the big book every day and we were talking about the solution and these people were applying it in their lives and it built the foundation that I've been standing on ever since. You know, I believe the big books. I believe what it says. And there is a design for living in there that works if you get past page one. and you know I just started showing up and I would bring my kids to meetings with me on the weekends because I didn't know not really that I wanted to involve them in my recovery but I knew I would just scream at them all weekend if we didn't have some distraction and so they would come to meetings like I said they were four and six when I got sober and I didnít know what to do with them but you guys did and you sat down on a chair and talked to them eye to eye so they didnít have to look up at you and you knew their names and you new that Robbie played soccer And you got Sarah to help you go get coffee cups. And you asked them things and you colored with them. And you laughed with them and you played with them and their gaze came up off the floor and they became less and less invisible. And my kids began to like Alcoholics Anonymous and I learned how to talk to my children watching you, you know, and by the time I was a year sober, you know they were spending more time with me but my mom and I talked and we decided that it really wasn't in their best interest to come back and live with me. By the time I was a year sober, they had been with my mother for four years. She lived in a clean, safe neighborhood. It was one of the top school districts in the state. They had been in the same school system from preschool on. Their life was stable. I was the disruption in their life. I'm in a 10th floor efficiency in the Cincinnati Public District. It just didn't make sense in the name of family unity to take them out of everything familiar and put them in a place like that. So we agreed that she would keep my kids and that I would try to catch up to them. And I started to go back to school, and they spent more and more time with me. And we would do things like the big picnics and the eating meetings. And when I was about a year sober, we went to a big picnic. And when we got there, I said, hey, if you guys want to go play, go ahead. And they never did. They usually hung out with me, and that was fine. But that day, half an hour later, I felt a tug on my leg, and it was Robbie. He was seven. And he said, Mom, I just wanted to let you know that if you need us, were over here playing. And what I realized was they knew they could let me out of their sight and I'd be there when they got back. And it took a year, you know, and it was just the grace of God that I saw it. It's like every now and then God picks up the curtain and I get a peek. There's a guy in Greensboro that says grace is that moment when we see everything the way it really is. And I knew right then that they knew that they could go play and I'd be there when they got back. And we kept showing up by Thanksgiving. You know, now I'm like by a year and a half sober. I've got a little car and a little apartment and my little kids are hanging out with me and I go to my little job and I'm looking at my son. I'm starting to get a little worried because he's got all these women in his life. You know, he's living with my mom and his sister and then he sees me and seven, seven and a half year old little guy. He should have a man in his wife, you know, and I really thought for his sake, I should start to look. That's the kind of loving, giving mom I am. But we went up to Oak Street for Thanksgiving because they did a big Thanksgiving meal at 1 o'clock and I went to noon Big Book because that's what I do if there's a Big Book meeting at noon. And when I came up at 1 O'clock, I couldn't find Robbie and somebody said, oh, they're all across the street. And there used to be a schoolyard across from Oak Street. And And there was Robbie and another kid his age and four of the guys from Oak Street who were in their 20s, and they were over there playing football. And I just thought, well, where else should a 7-year-old boy be on Thanksgiving Day except playing football with a bunch of guys? But the grace in that moment for me was realizing that I had done nothing to make it happen except go into that noon big book meeting. And I realized if I did what I needed to do, that their needs would get met too, and I didn't have to micromanage every little thing in their lives So I called off the manhunt briefly. And not long after that, Chuck showed up to talk at Oak Street. And I had never seen him before. And by now I was a year and a half sober, so you know how we are. I thought I knew everybody in AA by then. And this guy shows up to give a talk, and he just gave a great talk. You know, I mean, those of you who heard him last night, you know. And I tell him, you know, he got done talking. I never forgot his name after that, which is unusual for me. But I really, you Know, I kind of mulled it over and I thought, You know, I want what he has and I'm willing to get any lengths to get it. And so we rushed right into that a year later. later and uh you know it was another we would cross paths periodically but we ran in different circles and about a year later we we noticed each other again and and like he said we started to date and we consulted our sponsors and my sponsor said that dating and sex weren't the same I know who knew that you know and he was getting the instruction on walk her to the car and be sure she's in the car. And you know we did do AA dating that the meet you know coffee before the meeting coffee after the meeting. You're never really sure when you're done if you should kiss goodnight or say the Lord's Prayer. We fell in like, we fell in love. We were married in July of 1992, and we're having a great time together, you know? I mean, we still like each other, and And we're having a great time doing AA together. And he's the only dad my kids have ever known. We started to date when they were six and eight years old. My ex was never in the picture by his own choice. And from all those years ago, June 26, 1988, until July 30th of this year, I never had occasion to revisit the Fort Myers Airport. report. But I got word in July that the, we always refer to him as the practice husband because it's just the nicest thing we could come up with. And but I have, I got word in july that he had died and and he had a brother and sister that lived out on the west coast and they were going to come to Florida for the memorial. And so I told the kids I thought they should have the option of going. And I realized that they didn't know any of that side of the family, because he apparently had been the roadblock the whole time. And so I got to escort my children to Florida at the beginning of August so that they could attend the memorial service for him. And I stayed in the hotel. I didn't go to the service. But you know, just what a testament to sobriety to just even be able to go, to realize that even though they were 26 and 28, they knew nobody down They didn't know where anything was. And because of God and AA and good sponsorship and a good marriage where we talked to each other, we knew it was the right thing to do. And so I found myself back in Fort Myers last month, and I got to do something good, and the kids finally got some closure, and now they've met their aunt and they've meet their uncle and they're all friended up on Facebook. You know how we are. Turns out the uncle has joined this fellowship. That was the first question he asked me was, Are you still sober? and apparently he is now too so that kind of figures but um you know but the kids grew up in AA and we did get custody of children again um you Know Chuck went to school I went to school we we caught up to the neighborhood next to theirs first because they lived in a pricey neighborhood and and we moved to the the suburb right next to their's and one year we bought them bicycles and you know in Ohio if you get a bike for Christmas you might get to ride it in March or April but first warm day we're out. We got ourselves bikes too because they were kind of little and we thought we should probably ride with them so the first warm day we go out to ride our bikes now that we live out in the suburbs and this guy is already out mowing his grass because they do that out there and you know and he waved so we waved. Now where we had been living if there were hands up there were guns but now we're suburban so guys mowing on his grass, he waves and I wave. And about the time I waved, I got a look at where I was. That Zoom camera came back and I got to look at where I was. And I thought, oh my God, I used to own my own Harley Davidson and I'm riding through the suburbs on a lavender Huffy. You couldn't have told me I'd be doing that when I was new, you know? That wasn't on my list. But the magic of that moment was realizing that right there, right then, there was nowhere I wanted to be except on that bike with those kids. And that is light years away from being afraid I wouldn't even know how to love them. I had spent my whole life wishing I was somewhere else, and if I just came earlier or stayed later, I was never comfortable where I was right then. I never wanted to Be Where I Was Right Then. and that's one of the gifts I've gotten here is that most of the time I want to be where I am and that is a huge gift and I wanted to be on that bike with those kids and we found a house in their neighborhood and we moved in over the summer and they started 5th and 7th grade walking out the front door of their parents house like everybody else and the big book talks about great events that come to pass and that was a great event we took candy to our home group it's a boy, it's girl girl and uh we'd only been married a year so people thought maybe we were having a kid and we said we are they're nine and eleven is that awesome or what you know and we had some trouble with our son uh we didn't like think by the time he was a teenager we're going i thought you wanted him back no you said you wanted him because you know there was we had a couple of bad years with with him and uh um but you know it's amazing we we stayed sponsored we stayed in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. We actually talked to our daughter right then and just said, look, you know, you've kind of grown up with the AA God but you're going to need your own to get through this and we don't care if you go to Alateen or Church Youth Group but you are going to have to find your own relationship with God. And she went and talked to one of the senior high kids that went to church where we went to church and she grabbed on to youth group and she got busy too and we all got through it. You know, ten years later our son bought a house three miles from us when he got out of the Army, you know, and our daughter hopefully is going to try to move east with her family, although the Army has to agree with her before she can move. But we're hoping for, we keep saying Fort Bragg, but she's aiming for Fort Jackson and that's way closer than Fort Hood, so we're good with that. But you know our family's been reunited. I've I've learned to be a wife here. I've learn to be mother here. I'm an employee, I'm a citizen, I am sponsored. I have a home group. My home group is the Fox Hall Speaker Meeting in Cary, North Carolina. By the way we might have forgotten to tell you, you might wonder how we ended up in C.A.R.I.E. I got a job offer in that area, the C.Ar.I., Raleigh-Durham area and when I got down there one of the first people I met at AA meeting said oh yeah C.a.R.'s actually stands for for containment area for relocated Yankees. So if you're thinking about moving south, now you know where to go. But we love it there. We've been in North Carolina almost eight years, which just boggles my mind. And a fellowship has grown up about us down there, and we sponsor people there, and we're active there. And we have just stayed in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. is that it's so much easier to stay here than it is to get back, you know. We have buried a lot of people over the years whose last words were something like, I can always go back to AA tomorrow. And, you Know, there's never a guarantee that we're going to make it back here. We have a lot fun. There's a lot laughter here, but underneath is a disease that still wants to kill us. And Don't Drink and Go to Meetings is not the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I had to work those steps. I found a relationship with God as the result of those steps. And that's what the book tells me. It says a spiritual awakening is awareness of the presence of God. And so step 12 tells me I become aware of the presence of god as a result of these steps. And that I need to carry this message, not the message,not my message,but this message.And I needto be very clear about what this message is.And that's that I was alcoholic and and I could not manage my own life, that no human power could have relieved my alcoholism and that God could and would if he was sought. Thank you.