Carla R. Spent Nine Months in AA Fighting the Obsession to Drink

hi everybody my name is carla and i'm an alcoholic thank you jerry that that's uh coming from you those are good good words that's a big compliment it's it's certainly what i aim to do um i'm really glad to be here tonight with you guys uh i was thinking and you know atlanta was a very the last trip i took before uh everything shut down and so that was march i think and and uh i got home and haven't gone anywhere since. So it's good to see a lot of you again right now. And Doug's in the other room. He's at the opposite end of the house talking to North Carolina, I think. And so we play musical chairs here, musical Zoom. My sobriety date, September 25th, 1987. That might be the most important thing I tell you tonight that this works. It really does. I needed to know that. I needed to see people taking medallions for 22 years. First cake I saw somebody take was 22 years, I thought I needed to see that. It impressed me that people had three months and six months and all of that kind of stuff but I came from a long line when I was a kid I was locked up a lot and so anything I ever learned in those places I left there when I left and short term wellness was something that I had seen but 22 years 22 years i needed to see that that something was still working that long and and and then some and now we've seen it all of us we've seeing 50 and 60 years of sobriety and and uh i believe uh miss liz b took a cake for 68 years not too long ago and and so it really works and and although it's it's a little bit of a learning curve if you're new you know uh stick close to us because it can be quite uncomfortable in the beginning if you're anything like me. The obsession to drink alcohol wasn't lifted for me right away. It took about nine months and in the middle of my amends, making my first round of amends to my family before that horrible obsession to drinking alcohol was finally lifted for m. And so I'm just living proof you can be an AA for about nine m. and not really feel like it and stay anyway. And then it took. Then that internal. Then these steps took, they took hold inside of me. And now it goes with me wherever I go. AA goes with Me out the door when the meeting's over, it's still with Me. It's in Me. And I need to tell you, I've believed in God since I was a small child. I knew there was some great power that runs in and around and through us. It was never about not believing. But when some challenge would come down in my family and when I was young, I, you know, I just, I took things on myself. I took over the management of my life because it just didn't seem, I wasn't that mad at God, but it just Didn't seem like, you Know, that was his job to take care of some things and then When alcohol came along, alcohol just solved so many problems For me, it seemed, you Know, it became my spirituality and it Became my growing up muscle and it became the thing that made Me feel buffered from you and the thing That made me feel connected to you all at the same time why wouldn't I drink that it seemed to me to be the great solution for all of it and uh trouble was it was a big counterfeit power you know and when I finally got to AA I needed to find a power greater than it because as much as it was trying to throw me away I was still hanging on to its ankle you know uh it uh I'd get 20 good minutes out of a drink and and um and had trouble letting go and it wasn't that I didn't know I was so sick it was just that I didn't know if this was going to be the thing that worked. So it's important to me to let you know that it's been working. I'm still here. I love the effect of Alcoholics Anonymous. I came here because I had to, and now I stay because I love The Result. And I owe, I owe. If I never needed another meeting or another step in my life, I own AlcoholicsAnonymous for mine. And I used to think I was an alcoholic because of my crazy, dark, dramatic, violent, perverted family I would have told you that I almost couldn't wait to do my first uh to do my fourth step with my sponsor because I was sure she was going to go well no wonder you know we were going I was going tell her all that stuff and she's going to say ah yeah you know but she didn't say that and uh but you know the deal was that Tay is starting to take responsibility for my responses my reactions in life my reactions to fear started to take the sting out of all of that and I start began to get free and um and i trust the process today i had an awakening and i continue to awaken and continue to do the things that provide that um so if you're new if you can if i can say anything you know that if you get comfortable with being uncomfortable for you know and i still have to do that when i'm growing or learning something new all these years later i got to be comfortable with Being Uncomfortable and uh and it's okay with me today um lots of things happen simultaneously and I don't have to shut it out or change it or do anything about it that I can't control anyway so I found out that my family gave me an inventory it didn't make me alcoholic I found Out That Alcoholics Anonymous provides a spiritual treatment for a mental and physical illness and I knew nothing about a phenomenon of craving when I got here I all I knew is that I couldn't guarantee if I was going to have two or 22 I never could. And no matter how badly I knew I needed to stay away, I couldn't. No matter how our book says, no matter How Great the Necessity or the Wish, I Couldn't Stop Taking That First One. And then the first one would take the next and over and over and over. And I left home early and it was for me to leave home even though for a long time I know I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. And because I was so young, I started ending up in some of the Southern California hotspots like Indio Jail and Riverside Juvenile Hall and L.A. Central, and we did that whole deal for a while, locked up most of my adolescent life. When I was 14, I found myself in a place in San Francisco called North Beach. It was a big party town. A couple of guys approached us, offered us money for sex, and we said yes and did the next indicated thing, and boom, a whole new career path opened up for us, and I started living a day at a time in a way I've not had to live in a very, very long time. And, you know, I'm not against sex. I'm Not Even Against Sex for Money, if that's your thing. You know, it seems to work for some people. Some people put themselves through college and all of that kind of thing. But it was just so far removed from where I started out and where I intended to be. And our book talks about that too. Many of us having moral and philosophical convictions galore. And I wanted to be that, and I'm stuck with this. And I Wanted to Be with the Peace and Love People. I love the hippies. I love that kids of the 60s, you know, who talked about peace and love because everything around me was so violent and so chaotic. And I wanted to be in the peace and love place, and I kept ending up in violent situations. And Dr. Silkworth talks about this in the chapter, The Doctor's Opinion, that after a time we can't differentiate the true from the false. After a while, our alcoholic lives seemed the only normal one, and it certainly seemed that way for me. I didn't know it at the time, but I had already begun to trade away every God-given talent or gift or potential that I had for the effect that alcohol produced. And if you had asked me, I would have told you I was doing it willingly. And a year after that, I was admitted to a mental hospital and I was supposed to be there for two weeks and I ended up being there for a year. I just sort of made myself at home and moved in. And I looked a lot like the other patients, you know, and this was not a treatment center. It was a mental hospital. So, So, you know, there were people in there who had real manic depression, real schizophrenia, the real thing. And those things stand above, beyond and besides alcoholism. They're not the same thing. But when I had no booze and I had No Steps or Fellowship or God Am I Understanding, No Sufficient Substitute, I looked a lot like them. And so they were giving me daily nutritional supplements of Thorazine, Melaril, Valium, Delmaine sleepers. I suppose they were concerned I wouldn't sleep. And I became intimately familiar with five-point restraints. And that's what I look like at 15. And that is the way they tried to, that is what I looked like. And I went from the girls unit to the co-ed unit to their unit where they put the patients. They just don't know what to do with anymore. And during that year, once in a while, I would get thirsty enough to where I would climb over the fence or under the gate or whatever it was I had to do to go out and get a drink. And when I would gets tired, I'd come back in the front door of that place because that is where I lived. I lived in the nut house. And by the time I got to that last unit, I was no longer bathing or getting dressed because you don't have to do that to date in the nuthouse. And I had casts on both of my arms up to my shoulders cause I'd been cutting cause that was just a different way of dealing with emotional release. And somewhere along the line, I had begun to surrender to the thought that maybe I am just one of those little nuthouselifers who gets to get out every now and then, but I'm always, always gonna end up back inside. Why? Because as soon as I hit the street, I am right back doing the very thing that got me locked up in the first place. and I can't stop. I can's stop on my own and I went over the wall of that place and every other place except for Juvenile Hall when I was locked up. I ended up in a girl's home by way of rehab and Juvenil Hall and foster homes and all of that kind of thing and ended up in this girl's house and I met my roommate and we took off. All of our friends said, man, the people we were looking for had moved to Oregon. San Francisco has gone to seed and now off to Oregon and I don't know about you but I never went anywhere new thinking let's go screw this up too I always thought let's you know we're going to get a fresh start a clean slate we're gonna do it right this time you know and we made it up to Oregon and my friends rented a house and they let me come with them and you know what we were going to start over and uh we planted a garden in the front yard and that's where I learned that when they talked about hoeing they meant with a tool you know it was just a whole different way of looking at things and and I thought I thought we were gonna get back to the land you know now I'm from Los Angeles so I don't know what land I thought I was getting back too, but you know, you just changed my life. And two things happened while I was up there that I certainly couldn't see while it was happening. And our book talks about that too. Many of us showing signs of alcoholism long before we're ready, willing or able to do anything about it because it's still working just that much. And what was happening was we'd go a few days without booze. I had no job and I had No Money and I was a terrible thief. And so I'm trying to lay low. And when I had no booze and I had No Steps or Fellowship for God, am I understanding? I didn't even know about that second stuff yet. I become restless, irritable, and discontent. My relationship with alcohol already so developed that when you take it away for any amount of time, I got nothing, no sufficient substitute. And when i could drink the way i needed to drink, i was always overshooting the mark. And that was happening again and still at 17. And my friends had asked me to leave and i was asked to leave a lot. You know, just really suffice it to say I was the kind of a drunk who slept by the side of the road and called it camping. You know? I thought I was on a spiritual quest and I was a hobo. And I just couldn't get any traction into life or into the marketplace nowhere. So I just sort of wandered around. And I ended up back in Hollywood for a little bit and on the boulevard. And then I took off with another boyfriend from another rehab because that's where they keep the partners. A lot of you know that. And, you know, again, we love the idea of peace and love and all that stuff, but we just couldn't stop knocking the heck out of each other really long enough to implement the principles fully of peace and love. So we beat each other up and down the California coast and pitched a tent in the mountains in Southern Oregon and lived there till the rains came and then moved across town to a, we found this old dilapidated log cabin that had been beat to death it was an old mining claim and it was full of holes and we patched them up and threw a plastic tarp over the top and called it a skylight and then the baby came and I thought having this little girl was going to change the way I drank you know and alcoholism doesn't care who you love we all know that and by that time I'd had enough therapy growing up to know that you got to break the cycle you know you got to become the parent you never had and you got do it right and all that stuff and I had that all in my head but you know the reality was I was getting my clothes and shoes and the necessities of life out of a box behind a store in town and I thought I was going to be a better parent than the one I had because I was delusional and by that time I was drinking homemade wine and moonshine because they're organic and much better for you and still nothing you know no change and my daughter got in the way of one of our fights when she was about 10 months old and I had to take her up the road where it's got to be better somewhere else and up until then you know I'd been a bit institutionalized and couldn't really make my way into the marketplace. And now the rubber's hitting the road. It's me and this kid, and I got to take care of her. And I had to get some real work. And so my first legitimate work was in the bars. And it never occurred to me not to drink on the job. Why else would you have that job? It just seemed to me to be cosmically efficient. And I drugged that kid over three states and over many jobs. And we ended up back down here in Southern California, renting a room for my aunt in Covina, little town about 30 miles away from my new job in Hollywood. It was a perfectly wonderful job, not a bad place to work. It was great money, great people. I didn't hate it. I kind of loved it really. My daughter was almost four years old by then and you know, I had developed a routine by then. Every afternoon I'd kiss my daughter goodbye and I'd take off for the bar in Hollywood and I'd get thirsty about halfway there and I pull into my favorite watering hole and I And I'd order up a couple of shots of Cuervo and a couple Of Bud Bax and I'd drink them down And then get up off the bar stool And head to Hollywood and go do my shift And then crawl home in the wee hours of the morning And start over And one afternoon I kissed my girl goodbye like I had been Doing for months And I would have told you that she was the most important person In the world to me, I loved that kid And I took off for work that day And I got thirsty about the same place Turned into my favorite watering hole Ordered up those same shots of gold and same Bud Baks And to this day, I don't know what was different on that day from the day before except for 24 hours. Because again, I didn't hate the job I was going to. I didn'T love my daughter any less on that date than I love her today. But I sat on the barstool that day and I drank those drinks. And this time, the knowledge, the pull of knowing that I needed to get up off the bar stool and go to work so I could pay the bills that would take care of my daughter, the most important person in the world to me, was not enough to overcome the phenomenon of craving that happens once I start to drink. Nor was the knowledge that my little girl was home waiting for her mommy. You know, I would have told you she was the most important person in the world to me. It wasn't enough to overcome the phenomenon of craving that happens when I start drinking. Once I start a drink. So I sat on the bar stool that day and I drank those drinks and this time I lost them both and one fell swoop. The kid and the job were gone. I didn't get up and go in any direction. And I sat and I lived off the kindness of strangers there in that little area for about a month. And, you know, there's a beautiful little understatement that Bill writes that I know we all have our own version of no matter where we come from, what our politics or religion or race or background is. We all know what it means when he says gradually things got worse and worse they got. And I ended up marrying my drinking partner from another bar in another dive where I started to work. And now the people and the places and me were all becoming increasingly rustic. And, you know, but I thought maybe if I married this guy, maybe I made my life, put the circumstances together, you know. Make it look good. I could get the kid back and then we'd all be okay. You know, just put it back together. Put the pieces back together and, you know, we all know that that just doesn't matter. But I married him and about the time we should have split up and we moved in together and we became the neighborhood entertainment. We just used to settle our arguments with a shotgun. Whoever got to the gun first won. That's how we rolled. and I went to my first AA meeting with black eyes and broken ribs and I was walking around like that a lot. I got my daughter back when she was eight and a half and I didn't get sober till she was almost 10 and here's where I really began to suspect that I might be down for the count, you know, where it might be the alcohol, where it Might just be, I mean, I don't know, still didn't know what I was going to do about it though and so I got the kid back and when I got her back, I had one job during the week, one job in that whole, during that whole time And that was five days a week to get up in the afternoon and go pick her up from school. That's all I had to do, just get in the car and go Picker up from School. And so I'd get, I'd look at the clock about a quarter to two and say, okay, I got to be there in a little over an hour. And so, I get inthe car and I'd head over toward the school, then I'd stop at the bar to have one drink, just to haveone drink. And I'd pull up and I pulled up to the bar and order up that one drink and start to drink and look atthe clock and sayI got about 45 minutes, I'm going to go pick up Amber. and I drink that drink and I think well maybe I'll have two maybe I can have two maybe I have time for two drinks maybe three maybe three drinks and then I'll go pick up Amber and then somebody lines up the bar with shot glasses free drinks I can't turn down a free drink so I'll Have four at the most five six and then i'm late and thenI finally peel myself off the bar stool and I head over to school and I go into the front office where they keep the kids whose parents can't get there on time most important person in the world to me. And I walk in and I'm mad at the staff because I didn't get there in time. And as I walk into the office, I trip over my own feet and I go rolling across the floor. And As I go roll in across the floor, I catch a glimpse of my daughter's face and the look in her eye, the look of mortification on her face. And that sense of powerlessness way down in my gut, knowing full well that things weren't going to change. They're not going to do anything going to change at all. What am I going to do about that? Get up and dust myself off as fast as I can. You know, I've been tied down to beds in the mental hospital and a lot of shady stuff has gone down on the street and in the house and stuff that was pretty, pretty rancid. But I'm not sure that I've ever experienced pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization quite the way I did the day that I saw that look in my daughter's eye as she saw her mother go rolling across the floor in the office of her school. And I didn't get sober that day. It took another year. One more year, one more Saturday afternoon, the cops are in the driveway one more time, the neighbors are watching us one more times, the kids standing there scared to death one more Time. Nobody knows what to do. Nobody planned that everybody got up that morning thinking let's all be cool and everybody will be okay. And so the cops left, they took the gun, the husband left for the last time that's me and the kid in the booze and I couldn't stop drinking. Now, here's where a hard drinker might take a look at their life and say, you know, I'm really tired of this. A hard drinkers could say, yeah, I think maybe I need a little help and they'd even have to go get a little detox if they so needed and then they'd come home, they'd go back to work, they'd have a story to tell if somebody asked them but they move on with their life. That's what they do. They just move on. I've heard them do it. I've read people say things like, yep, couldn't control it so I just kept going so I had to quit and they're fine and they just move on that's a hard drinker and our book talks about that but me as an alcoholic what i did was i just pulled the booze closer to the couch so i didn't have to keep getting up to get another drink because i drank through my circumstances i drank through homelessness i drank true drug addiction i drank through uh the loss of my daughter and i was getting ready to do it again and here's where i want to say before i forget because i always get right a lot of times i can get off track but i want to say here now that that after after nine months of sobriety uh and now over 32 years of sobrietty there hasn't been one circumstance that has arisen in my life where i thought that one drink was going to make any of this any better and that's the miracle that's freedom that's real freedom i hope i never take that for granted or take it lightly or get complacent my first sponsor told me if I wanted to affect the conscious contact with a power greater than myself I could start by counting the coincidences that happen in my life you know coincidence with a capital C those situations that seem to fall together for the good of everybody without me having my hands on them coincidence and I needed a simple place to start because when I got here I had so many disjointed ideas about this power we call God, or I call God for short. And I needed something very basic. And so the coincidence thing worked real well for me. And the first one I could count was that I had moved in next door to a woman who had five years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. And she had seen and heard that whole deal go down that Saturday. And she came over a couple days later, and she brought me a big book and a 12 and 12. and she sat on my couch and she told me her story. You know, she was just a woman properly armed with the facts about herself and she talked about her and her drinking and in her story I heard me and over the last year I'd seen with my own eyes that she wasn't drinking anymore and what impressed me more about that was it didn't seem to bother her that she Wasn't Drinking and that got my attention. I don't know how you do that. You know because all I knew is that when I had no booze and I had No Steps or Fellowship or God of My Understanding or No Sufficient Substitute anyway I felt like you stripped the coating off my wires. I felt oversensitive and underloved, and I didn't know what you meant by that or why you looked at me that way. And my self-centered head would close in on me from there, so much so that even though I knew a few things about booze by that time, I knew I couldn't guarantee if I was going to have two or 22. I knew that. I knewthat the window of relief had gotten really, really small. And I also knew that I no longer had to invite trouble. It just seemed to come to visit unsolicited. and uh and then even knowing all of that i knew that there would be some moment sometime sometime in place where it was going to be so miserable so untenable that i was not going to have any defense not going gonna be able to turn down that first drink and then it would take the next so i didn't know how her 12 little thinly veiled sunday school sentences were going to have any effect on me in the face of what i'd become they just seemed so weak and you know our book says that we've been finally beaten into a state of reasonableness I love that. But I love what Father Tom says. He says, you got to be pretty sick and tired to find us interesting. And I think that's really true. I was getting increasingly interested. And I didn't get sober that day, but it was about a week and a half later. My daughter was somewhere with her father and it was a Friday afternoon and I just didn't go back and buy any more booze. I just sat there. I sat in that little apartment and I didn't move and I shook it out and I got sick like I thought I would and there was no treatment center left for me. People have been trying to help me all my life with stuff like that and it was, I just shook it off and into Monday and into Tuesday and by Tuesday afternoon, I was stark raving sober and I went back to my neighbor instead of the store and then that too was just a moment of grace where I just kind of slid over to her apartment and I did not really think too much about it. I asked her what to do and she told me and I did it. She sent me up to a meeting in Sierra Madre, California here and that became my first home group. I went up there and I sat way back by the open door and the exit sign just in case and I was just a little more willing and a little mehr facing in this time. Something had been happening but now I'm listening and I heard people talking about steps and sponsors and books and all of that kind of thing and I don't believe that meetings alone keep me sober but it's where I learned about all those things. That's where i learned and and heard heard examples talked about about how they work these steps throughout their day on Situations that I didn't think i'd ever be able to to handle They talked about using these principles in their lives and And then I heard somebody say hey joe, how's your lawn? And I thought wow what you know when I was I was a little moved by that You know like it occurred to me like up until then my life had been all about foraging and scraping and holding on and this guy's talking about his lawn and I thought could my life ever be so elegant and simple as to be concerned about a lawn you know like sitting on the porch smelling fresh cut grass could I do that would that be okay and uh and so I listened I sat there in the meeting I was jumpy and jerky and and they said things like sit on your hands and you know I'll tell you it's not the big book, but it's good practical advice. I wanted to jump. I wanted to run, you know, and I stayed close until that thing inside me took and was in me and I was safe and protected. I needed you. I needed the fellowship. I need to be in meetings. I needed to be immersed, immersed in this. The secretary asked me to read something at the end of that meeting and I took it from her and I read and as I read, I came into the room just a little bit more, just like I do every time I say yes to something you asked me to do. You know, we have this term called saying that if somebody tells you to go do something, they're volunteering you to do it and accept it, say thank you, it's a gift, you know, make coffee or now we don't have coffee, you can make your own coffee but you know you can greet and you can learn to host these Zoom meetings and you know greet each person or you can look for their phone numbers, You can chat each person before the meeting starts. You can get there early and you can, you know, find our way in. I had to find my way into the room and I didn't want to. You know, if I could have stolen what you guys had and gone home and done it myself, I would have. But I hadと get into the middle of this and completely immersed and I got a sponsor and I had то drink one more time after 89 days and I only had то stay out for a day. Thank God. Thank God I was lucky enough to get to come back And if you drink, you're always welcome. There's never a question of being welcome. It's a questionof can we get back across the threshold of AA far enough and in enough to where we can stay? And my sponsor picked me up the next night. She helped me throw away the bottles, and she took me up to the big book study that night. And I sat up there, and thank God nobody said, ooh, I smell alcohol in an AA meeting. And I wasn't disruptive or anything, but they just welcomed me. And I sat down, and somebody came up at the break and asked me if I wanted to make coffee on Tuesday with them. And I thought, dang, somebody thinks I'm going to be here on Tuesday. And I was, and I came on the days in between too. I just went to meetings everywhere. I needed to learn this thing. And you guys were talking about what I needed. You were talking About recovering from something that I was dying from. and uh i took the steps with my sponsor and i started making that first round of amends to my family when i was about nine months sober which is incidentally right about the time that my that horrible obsession to drink alcohol was finally lifted from me i know what the stakes are here i know What creates that spiritual cushion that stands between me and the first drink. And the wonderful irony of that is, is that I haven't been for 32 years walking around not drinking, holding my breath and not drinking. You guys gave me something else to do, you know, when it created this spiritual cushion. But I never want to forget that I'm never going to be so spiritually fit that I can take a drink of alcohol in any form at all either, not mouthwash form or food form or cough medicine form. I'll never be safe from that, you Know, but the good news is that every step i take after that first half of the first step protects me from that it takes me to a whole different place where my heart and my mind and everything recover from that and they and and i'm new and i'M facing in and iM looking at something else other things are important to me love and service and joy and when a challenge comes down the pike i i again i'll say this you know i it bears repeating that any challenge that's come down in my sobriety it's it's never seemed like a good idea to have a drink about it and and that's real freedom again i will say it again um so uh you know there's still to this day there's not one member of my family who stand in the doorway and say no please don't go to the meeting you know they never do that uh they don't understand everything but they're glad that i have you and uh um there was a long period of reconstruction ahead for us you know there really was i mean that first round of amends i say that that declaration of what i knew i needed to do but to this day all this all these years later now one of my family members ever has to wonder where i am or if i love them or why doesn't she care or or how why can't i find heard none of them ever do that and then other women other people started asking me to sponsor them and i have to tell you the only fifth step i like better than mine is yours because in your eyes i see forgivability and lovability and hope and growth where i don't always see it in myself and you draw from me things i didn't know i needed to share and you share with me things i didn'T KNOW i needed TO HEAR and uh not just informal inventories but on the on the way to the meeting and over coffee and over the phone and those little me too moments that knit us closer together and show each one of us re-encourage us that we can do this after a couple years i'd had you guys and my daughter didn't have anybody really and she was 11 years old she was pissed off she joined a gang and she would get ripping and running you know she was in a gang and she drinking and using and partying and all this stuff she was eleven and so i had to get her some big help. And there was a long period of reconstruction ahead with us too. And from the time she was 11 till about 23 and, you know, and I was glad to do it with her. I was glad. And you guys taught me how to parent through the guilt, you know, that it would have been so easy just to let her go do whatever she wanted. And you guys taught me how to do different. And she grew up and I had to put her in a treatment center for about six months. And I showed up when they asked me to and I stayed away when they asked me to and you guys taught me that mountains are moved a spoonful at a time and every day I just gave it my best spoonful and she got out and she lived with her dad and then she came back and lived with me and I had to shut up about him and what I thought of him and she didn't need my opinion. She had her own experience and when she was 16, she came home and her boyfriend and her had a funny look on their faces and I told them they were pregnant and they nodded. And so I got to tell her, you know, that I'll be there no matter what she decides and, and that, you Know, no judgment, you knows, whatever you need. And, and so I got to be present at the birth of my first grandson, I was 37 years old. And while most people were having their babies, I Was becoming a grandmother and I loved it. I got to be president his birth and that kid just turned 25 and finished his second year of law school and her youngest just turned 19 and moved out on his path. He's off working and and living his life now and uh and they've never seen me drunk and you know my daughter just turned 42 this year and she put herself through school she got her her uh masters in social social work and and she became a social worker and she's uh she's one of those people who goes in in the aftermath of things like the las vegas shooting and the san bernardino terrorist act and she helps people begin to put the pieces of their lives back together that's who she is and I don't know if she is who she ist because or in spite of me but I know that because of Alcoholics Anonymous I get to be a privileged witness in her life and in the lives of anyone who wants to be in mine and you know a couple of years ago I picked up a pizza and I went back over to her house and and we sat for a while and I just asked her if I'd missed anything you know I just wanted to be sure that we were all clear and she said oh yeah you know that she'd grown up some too and had her own kids and and uh i don't know it's just really good it's good stuff when i was five years sober i was raped by an intruder in my own apartment he came in in the middle of the night through the kitchen window he had a knife and he tied me up with the telephone court i i was asleep i had a concrete floor so i didn't hear him come in and and uh and so he caught me by surprise and and and he uh tied me up and raped me and he robbed me that night in my room he was there for a few hours and i tried to get away i took a made a run for it after a little while and my own front door kept me locked in it got stuck and and so we got into a little wrestling match and instead of getting more angry he dropped the knife and he went out the same window he came in. And it turned out that I knew this guy, I'd actually watched him get sober 30 days before I did. And I watched him get his life, his wife, his kids and everything back. And then I watched them join the church and leave AA behind. And when he went out, he went on like that. And what I chose to learn from that is that while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right to make use of what they offer. Alcoholics Anonymous is a place where I learned the terms and conditions of my alcoholism. This is where I learned that I'm not one of those people who can go home after a Sunday sermon or Saturday synagogue or whatever it is and go have a glass of wine. I can't do that. I can do everything else, but not that. And I don't even think that we have anything better than spirituality. I think you have to choose between spirituality and religion or anything. It's just that here we take spirituality and we aim it right at alcoholism. one purpose, one primary purpose. That's what we do here. And then in all of those other places, they're talking about spirituality in general. They offer to everybody, every human being has spirit, but not everybody is an alcoholic and I need to remember what the stakes are. So when I'm sitting around at the Sunday picnic with everybody and they're having their glass of wine that they can have because they're not alcoholic, I get to remember What the Stakes are for me. And then and that it's like poison for me, and it's not a problem. And and that's freedom. Anyway, there was a trial that that followed a few months later. And as part of the defense, they had a lot of the guys I'd known years before get up and testify as to who I used to be. And so I had to get a character witness for me and you know, when I was new here, I first got to AA, you could not use the words Carla in good character in the same sentence, you just couldn't and now I'm five years later and I've worked my way up I've been working at this investment firm downtown LA a big fancy place where very accomplished people walk the halls and and I'm walking right along with them undetected and because I'm showing up and I're doing what they asked me to do and I'M pulling up through the ranks and and the so the division had their volunteered to come and testify on my behalf and they told him all about who I used to be and he said well she shows up early and she stays late my experience is that she was where she said she was and and that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself and he didn't have to be coached he just talked told the truth about what he had experienced through me directly and then it was my turn to testify and you know up until then my sponsor and I we've been talking and and I knew that I needed to forgive this guy I know where people who can't handle even seemingly justifiable resentments I know that and but the guy had scared me and at five years of sobriety anger was still my favorite go-to when it came to looking for false power you know it made me feel like I had a momentum and like you couldn't hurt me and yet anger at that point is diminishing to the spirit and I had to release it I had let it go it just it'll kill me and I knew that but boy it was some some things just like seemed to embed themselves and so the seven step prayer became my mantra. And I love that Father Dowling says in the, in the six step essay in the 12 and 12, that anyone with enough willingness and honesty to try this step repeatedly, you know, we can, we can say he's well on his way or something to that effect. And, and I love that he says repeatedly, which means I'm going to have to revisit this sometimes. And then I can, you know recognize surrender and then move on. So I'm looking for this a seven step prayers, my mantra now i'm sitting in the witness stand and i look out and i see him sitting at the defense table and that's a place where i've sat before and i know i could sit again if i were to take a drink and i recognize that and um that prayer at the top of page 67 came to mind that little paragraph where it says though we didn't like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us they like ourselves are spiritually sick god saved me from being angry can I put myself in his place and have I ever been so sick and out of control that I've caused that kind of harm to somebody or couldn't I one day again be so out of control that i could get that sick and cause that kind of harm certainly i think about my daughter and my parents and my family and and people i've met along the way that i thought were just hard barely even people just transitory things to use? Or am I right now so delusional that somewhere in my life, I'm hurting somebody and I don't even see it because I'm so busy with my own agenda. And what happened for me in that moment was we became two alcoholics sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom and the compassion and the forgiveness came. And I really, really got a chance to digest the fact that forgiveness doesn't come from a spiritual hilltop. It can't possibly, it can't possibly come when I'm sitting there on a spiritual Hilltop praying for you to come up and live up to my standards. It doesn't happen like that. It happens when I see you as me compassion, but I say I'm just as full of faults just as flawed as you are. And the forgiveness came that day and the healing took a while longer than nightmares and all of that kind of thing but they eventually go away and uh with work with work and time and and uh treatment and but i've been able to talk to a lot of people about this about this story and you know that stuff happened to me out on the street and and and i never did anything about it i never um i never thought anybody would care i never thought everybody would believe me or why or i barely cared. You know, so when this happened in sobriety, I knew it was for me to hold him accountable for me, to testify and for me To forgive. And that was possible to happen simultaneously. He was sentenced to 20 years and he did 12 and then he did three. And, and then, uh, and as far as I know, he's not been able to stay out of prison or sober, but I know that it works. I've had the privilege of carrying the message of Alcoholics Anonymous into everywhere I've ever been locked up and then men's prisons and women's prisons and county jails, and it works where we work it. You know, whoever is willing to pick up these tools, they get a spiritual awakening. You know? And thank God our founders didn't write the book and say, hey, if you do what we did, then someday you'll be able to call somebody and they'll have a sister who once had a brother who had a spiritual awakening. You can listen to all about that. They said, no, if we do what you do, if you get what we got, everybody gets one if we're willing to take up the tools and use them. And I'm so glad for that because I'm a terrible spectator. I could have sat here and I would have been bored with just watching you have it. I needed one, and I was willing to do the work, and that I know. The detective who worked the case came to me after it was over, and he said, I don't know who you were back then. I'm not even sure I want to know, but whatever it is you're doing now, keep doing it because it seems to be working. And that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself. and I didn't know it at the time but but uh the court I didn'T know until after the trial was over but the uh the judge was a recovered alcoholic in AA and the court reporter was the Al-Anon mother of a woman in my home group and so the 12-step ferries had thoroughly dusted the room before we got there and uh you know people from my home Group came my sponsor came to that trial my father was there at that trial, my sponsees um and not one person in my Home Group ever said anything like well what were you wearing or what did you do to have that happen nobody they just all got behind me and uh and I stayed sober and you know not one time during that time did I think that a drink was going to make any of that any better and that was freedom and uh you know a lot's happened I've had you know I'm 32 years sober and and I've met big jobs little jobs no jobs, I have reinvented myself over and over voluntarily, you know, I, and sometimes mistakenly. And but there's something, there's nothing really freeing about I love the term right size, I love being willing to make a mistake. And I love, you Know, I don't love it at the time that, you know, that's for sure. But, but I love being able to do it. But I love been able to skin my emotional knees and get up and go, okay, well, that didn't work. What's next? And live a real life fully awake, fully awake and responsible and responsive rather than reactive. And I'll just wrap up with this. You know, every morning I get up in and my feet at the floor and I say thank you And then I go and I sit for 20 to 30 minutes, and I meditate. And then, I have an online group now that I meditate with. It's kind of a conference call. Somebody reads something, and we all sit real quiet on the phone for 20 to 30 Minutes. But there's something about the group consciousness that is really terrific. And then i read, and i'm still hungry for spirit. And i feed it with real spirit, not a counterfeit. and I grow and I wake up and I get to be and experience this thing I call God for short for real. This God that has always been here I don't believe that God shows up I wakeup I wakeups to what always has been to what is and that's a trip I want more of this. My sponsor reminds me to ask God to grant me the heart of a grateful servant and I like that. Her sponsor gave her that prayer and with that attitude, I go out into the world and it starts in my own house, my own family. Doug says hi by the way and he sends love and then work my way out into the world and I don't believe that we were meant to come in here and huddle up and just sit in AA. Our book says a more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations and affairs. So if I'm only doing it in AA, I'm only half doing it. It's to take everywhere and, uh, and to become a real working part of the world. Um, and so I do the best I can. I like to say that my, that the gap between my efforts and perfection are filled with a whole lot of grace. And, uh and really that's the truth. Um I never thought I'd want to be that my aspirations would be to be right-sized but uh but I kind of like it. I know today when I'm off the beam you know and uh and I and I can allow myself to be guided back that's not that's not conceit or complacency that's that's knowing that this thing works and uh as long as I stay willing to uh to recognize and surrender and relinquish self to this power um it works I'm really delighted to be here with you it's good to see your faces and thanks again Jerry for having me. Take good care. Thanks.