Every Fear I Had at 11 Years Old Was Still Running My Life at 50 — Until AA Showed Me the Bondage of Self – Mary N.
About This Speaker Tape
Mary shares her story at a NABBA Blue Chip meeting, tracing a life shaped by fear, family alcoholism, and a 30-year dry period that almost ended in relapse. Raised in a volatile household by an abusive, alcoholic father and an angry, hyper-religious mother, Mary discovered alcohol around age 11 or 12 when her parents left her home alone for a week. That first drink from her father's liquor cabinet silenced every fear she had, and she chased that relief for years � through high school as a functioning cheerleader, through college blackouts and sorority parties, and into her first marriage to her accounting professor, who proposed by dropping a ring into her drink.\n\nThe drinking escalated through her first marriage as they moved from New York to New Jersey to Atlanta and back.
Social anxiety drove her to drink before every outing, and a year-long period with outside substances brought terrifying blackouts � waking up in New Orleans with no memory of how she got there, finding herself in a station wagon in Las Vegas. She got lost driving to work and started needing lunchtime drinks to stop shaking. When she became pregnant in September 1976, a doctor pointed his finger and told her to stop drinking, and she did � cold, for 30 years.\n\nBut sobriety without recovery left Mary white-knuckling through decades of unaddressed fear, controlling religion, a crumbling marriage to a man hiding affairs, sex addiction, and financial fraud.
A counselor identified her as an adult child of alcoholism and sent her to Al-Anon around 1989, where she learned about the family disease. It was an Al-Anon member who eventually suggested she sit in on AA meetings, and there she heard her own story told back to her. The Big Book passage about the man who stayed dry 25 years and died within four of picking up again shook her to her core � she had been planning to buy a bottle of wine once she got her own apartment.\n\nMary picked up a white chip on January 17, 2004, to a standing ovation at the early morning study group she had attended as an Al-Anon member for three years.
Through AA she found the strength to leave her husband, and through what she describes as Higher Power working in her life � an unexpected inheritance, a job at a law firm that handled her divorce and IRS debt for free � she rebuilt. She met Gary N. at a NABBA Valentine's Day dance, and together they built what she calls a recovery marriage. A serious illness in 2013 that left her bedridden for 18 months with autoimmune diseases tested her faith, but a new sponsor who had been through something similar walked her through it with rigorous step work. Mary closes by calling AA an absolute miracle she never wants to take for granted.
Topics
Timestamps
Full Transcript
Let's have an AA meeting.
My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to your Monday Night Blue Chip Snickers meeting on NABBA Zoom,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her...
My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to your Monday Night Blue Chip Snickers meeting on NABBA Zoom,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her...
Let's have an AA meeting.
My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to your Monday Night Blue Chip Snickers meeting on NABBA Zoom,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view
the way they established their relationship with God.
These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our neighborhood,
who are in the NABBA Zoom room tonight and listening later on aabluechipspeakers.org,
desperately in need, will hear tonight's speaker.
And we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems
that any of us shall be persuaded to say,
yes, I am one of them too.
I must have this thing.
Mary Ann graciously has accepted the invitation.
She is.
She has spoken at meetings I've been involved with more than once.
Always get a lot out of it.
And I'm grateful for you, Mary.
Thanks, Tim.
Hey, everybody.
My name is Mary and I'm an alcoholic.
And I'm glad to be here tonight.
Thank you, Tim, for asking me to do this meeting tonight.
It's always good to do your story because it opens up a lot that you can look at and remember.
You know, maybe some things you don't know.
Maybe some things you need to do some more inventory on.
Maybe some things that, you know, need to be, you know, still things I have to think about and work on.
So, I'm very glad to be here tonight.
My sobriety date, I picked up a white chip at the early morning study group on January 17, 2004.
But I really stopped drinking in 1976, in September of 1976.
And as I go along with my story,
I think you'll see how, you know, I've been drinking a lot.
I think you'll see how I qualify for this program.
I think you'll understand a whole lot in a very short time.
To give you a little background, my mother was 100% Italian.
Her father came over on the boat, came in at Ellis Island.
She comes from a family of 10 children and huge Catholic background.
And a whole lot of alcoholism was going on in that part of the family as well.
And she had aunts and uncles.
And aunts and uncles all over the place.
And they had settled in Pennsylvania, New York.
And my father, he was part American Indian and also German.
And he only had an eighth grade education.
He came from an extremely abusive household.
His father was an alcoholic.
And he beat my father, sometimes on a daily basis.
He beat him so bad at times.
At one time, he shut his kidneys down.
But when my father and mother met,
my grandparents were very nice.
My grandparents were very much against this marriage.
But they married anyway outside of the Catholic Church.
And I was born, I was their fourth child.
I was the fourth of four children.
And when I was born, my father had become very, very ill.
He was in a sanitarium.
He had tuberculosis.
And in those days, tuberculosis was like COVID.
And nobody wanted to be around us.
Nobody, even family members, wouldn't come and help us out.
They wouldn't come to the house.
Here my mother was.
She had never worked before.
And she had four children.
And no one to really help her.
And my siblings were left.
She tried to go out and get jobs.
And my siblings were left to take care of me.
When my father finally came home, I was 18 months old.
And that was such a moment for me.
I can remember the pattern on the furniture.
I can remember the smell.
I can remember everything.
He was this huge, great big piece of fear for me.
And because of his low self-esteem and his alcoholism and his not being able to do a whole lot with his life, he was very upset with me about that.
And the two of us ended up in this war basically for the rest of our lives.
We never got along.
We never really, you know, there was never much between us.
And he didn't care.
My father was not happy where he was.
And he was not happy for the situation he was in.
My mother finally got a job.
It was 18 miles away from our house.
And my father was left to take care of the children.
And, of course, I was just a baby.
And so he was the one that was left to take care of me.
And he was pretty abusive.
No reason to go too far into that.
But he got a job finally when I was three years old building the parochial school, the Catholic school.
And my mother was a heavy-duty, strong Catholic.
So they were all excited.
And when I was three years old, I was put in kindergarten there while he did the work.
And I was taken care of by the nuns.
And I had, when the nuns weren't around, I had all kinds of babysitters.
My father finally got a job in a factory.
He was a blue-collar worker.
And basically I was just taken from place to place.
My mother was working.
The kids, the other siblings.
The other siblings were going to school and that kind of thing.
And I was this kind of frightened little girl.
I was pretty scared most of the time.
And I started to become really sick.
I had allergies.
I had asthma.
My parents were always mad at me because I cost so much money.
They weren't really happy with me most of the time.
And, you know, they had so many issues of their own.
They didn't have time for one of us to be really sick.
Now, my mother, being this heavy-duty religious woman, she was a very, very strong Catholic.
She dealt with my father basically by being very over-religious and shoving, you know, religious stuff down his throat all the time.
He didn't ever, ever go to church.
He basically, Saturday nights he spent, you know, normally he would leave Saturday afternoon and he would come back Saturday nights and he was out of it.
You know, he was very, very drunk.
He ended up on the bed lots of times.
He'd go out and the car was still running in the morning.
I mean, he just...
That's the way he dealt with his life.
And on Sunday mornings, they'd have this huge fight and they would cut each other out.
My mother would drag us all to church.
And the church was in the backyard from where we lived.
So my mother expected us to go to church not just every Sunday, but we had to go just about every day.
And when you go to the parochial school, you pretty much go to school every day.
So I had a whole lot of religion going on.
My mother was very, very angry most of the time.
She had...
Always one of us kids had to be in the doghouse.
You know, somebody had to be the person that she was mad at at the time.
So usually...
And all the other kids had to be mad at that person, too.
So it kind of pitted us kids against each other.
We never really got along.
And we're kind of distant to this day.
We still have...
We have some connections, but we're not as close as I would like to be.
And my parents threatened us a lot.
If we, you know, if we did anything wrong, they were going to tell us that we...
They'd lock the doors and they wouldn't let us in.
And my father, just like his father, beat him.
He beat my brother.
And it was just, you know, a scary household for me.
I was full of all kinds of anxieties and fears.
And I was terrified of this man.
And I just, you know, it was a tough household.
And when I was about somewhere between 11 and 12 or 13 years old, I can't remember the exact age.
I've tried to go back there and remember it.
But my parents...
My brothers and sisters...
My brothers and sisters were older than I was.
So...
And everybody left home as quick as they possibly could.
I had one sister.
She'd run away from home.
I had another sister who'd gone off to nursing school.
And my brother went off to engineering school.
So they were gone.
And I was...
It was the summertime and my parents wanted to go on a vacation.
And they decided they weren't going to take me with them.
They were going to leave me home alone.
And I had a babysitting job.
So I was left home for an entire week except I was really, really scared.
And when I came home from my babysitting job, it would get dark outside.
And here all these years, I had...
When my father got his job, he would come home at night.
He worked 3.30 to midnight.
This was the best time of the day.
And I was just...
It was midnight.
This was before they went on this vacation.
But he would always come home and he would just drink.
The bottom part of our refrigerator had...
Was full of...
Like a case of beer was in there all the time.
And you could not touch anything.
If anything was messed up and he knew what it was, he would get us all out of bed and
yell at us and, who took my beer?
That kind of stuff.
So he would come home and drink and go to bed.
You know?
And I thought, well, if my dad can do that, maybe I can do that.
So here I was, this kid home all alone.
My father had built this liquor cabinet.
And I sat in there.
He had some red velvet whiskey in there.
And I cannot tell you how much I drank that night, but I slept really well that night.
And not only that, but my fears were gone that night.
It was, like, unbelievable.
And I thought, my gosh, this is a very young kid thinking, wow.
So...
kid thinking wow this stuff is cool I really like this stuff and I kind of had that moment where
this is what a solution you know in my life uh but you know when you're when you're 11 to 13 years
old you can't get alcohol very much but my mother lived in a traditional uh you know Italian family
and they they celebrated everything I mean they celebrated weddings and funerals and Christmas
and birthdays and we had all these family reunions and boy was there a lot of drinking going on
and I could get tips out of the out of the drinks if everybody left their drinks laying around I go
around my drink with that I had a couple of cousins and we'd steal the alcohol you know we'd go off
and we'd steal it from here and there and everywhere and um so I was able to get you know quite a bit
and I started really liking this stuff as I was moving on through high school and stuff the thing
was that um I could function I could I could drink all I wanted you know or whatever at night and
I would when I would start drinking I really didn't know how much I was going to drink as
much as I could get basically and um but I could function very well I could um just like my father
could drink and go to work I could could drink and go to school I could be I was a cheerleader
I was in social clubs I don't think anybody really had clue of what what I was
really doing um so I had kind of this dual life going on and in high school I had a really cool
girlfriend her parents had a lot of money and they had this whole bar in their house and we I
loved going over to her house and I went over to her house all the time every time I could spend
the night there I would and the two of us would get into that liquor cabinet especially because
their parents went out all the time and we would mix every possible drink you could you know
and uh and I loved it every single minute of it when I graduated from high school um my father
didn't want me to go to this one college I wanted to go to and I could go to a business school but
I had to pay for it so I got a New York State higher education loan and um I had to work during
the summer in order to have enough money you know just to get to college on so I um I got a job in
a factory it was about 18 years ago and I was in the business school and I was in the business school
for 18 miles to my home and I rode back and forth in the car with these men I just got this ride and
they would pick me up at the end of my street and then we would drive to work and then they would
pick me up after work and I worked 3 30 to midnight just like my father did and they had booze in the
car and I drank with them you know all day home and then my boyfriend would be waiting for me when
I got home in his car and I just go from their car to his car and we would I would just drink
and I would come home uh
but nobody really noticed my mother was in bed my father was drinking so you know it wasn't it was
cool thing it was just a way of life for me and you know it's just what I did well when I got
finally got to college I pledged a sorority and there was a lot of drinking going on in that
sorority any kind of pledging if anybody ever did anything like that whoa there's a whole lot of
stuff going on and there were fraternity parties and sorority parties and and I of course had to
be involved in all of that stuff and one night I had gotten I was at a party and uh had enough to
drink and um this guy uh who had wanted to date me I didn't want to date him but he uh every time I
dated somebody he would become their new best friend and it really it really made me angry
so I got up after many drinks and I started telling him off in this party I mean just telling
him everything I thought about him every
four-letter word was coming out of my mouth apparently and I woke up suddenly I woke up the
next day in my bed in my uh and the dormitory that was my very first huge blackout I did not know but
my roommates told me all the things I did that night and I didn't know anything about the fact
that you could have a blackout and you could function like that in a blackout so that was
the start of these blackouts
that I would have and my roommates were getting kind of were pretty tired of me um our fraternity
brothers decided to have a slave auction to make money so they offered our baby uh sold the sorority
sister as uh slaves in a for a day we you know that we would be slaves for a day so they auctioned
us up they put us on this stage and they auctioned us off and for some reason my accounting professor
said well I thought I was going to have he lived in a bachelor house with five guys and I thought I
was going to have to clean this house I thought I was going to have to they had a swimming pool I
had no idea what they were going to make me clean and I he picked me up and guess what he wanted to
drink so we we went over to the house and we drank all afternoon we had the most fantastic time we
laughed we carried on we you know we got in the pool we just we had a wonderful time now they he
um he couldn't date a student the teachers couldn't date students so he would send uh he had
these five roommates and he would send one of them at a time to pick me up at my dormitory and take
me somewhere where so I could meet him for a date so it usually was a bar or something like that so
my friends couldn't believe I had all these good-looking guys coming and picking me up and I
thought this was the coolest thing ever and we just went to the bar and we just drank and we just I
just came home
uh we had this bar it was called Duffy's Tavern and I would save all of my money I wouldn't even
eat sometimes so that I had enough money every Thursday night so we could go to Duffy's and when
I got to Duffy's I would drink and uh I probably went into quite a few blackouts there I remember
getting up on stage singing with a band uh falling through a chair you know that kind of stuff it was
it was kind of bad well this professor who had been
been dating me he came in one night to Duffy's and he dropped an engagement ring
in my drink and he said look at this and wasn't it fitting I mean here we are both of us he was
drinking I was drinking this alcoholic's first husband my drink my ring was in a drink of course
it was um so anyway he was also Italian my father liked him so this was going to be a good marriage
was uh he wanted to drink great tell him have a good time and that was if you asked him what he
wanted out of life that's all it was and that's what we did we drank we drank and we did all
kinds of absolutely crazy things um he decided he wanted to leave the college not be a professor
anymore and grow in business so in those days um when you grew in business you did a lot of
entertaining you took people out all the time and that's what he wanted to do and and he not only that
he wanted us to go out all the time too well some of my fears had started to come back I was drinking
but when I wasn't drinking I was very terrified it got to the point where no matter where we went uh
I would be very very nervous I started getting a lot of social uh issues social anxiety just I was
just terrified I had to drink before we went out I had to have a couple of drinks and then I would
continue to drink and during this marriage
we moved from New York to uh New Jersey to Atlanta back up to Buffalo New York and then we moved back
to Atlanta and uh I was just I was turning into this basket case most of the time just very very
nervous person uh drinking was the only thing that was helping me and I ended up um we were
at this place um in Atlanta and I don't know the name of it it was up on Roswell Road it was a um
uh fish place I think it was and we were entertaining uh this people uh that were coming
uh into Atlanta for our company for the company that he was working for and mind you I always had
jobs through all this I have no idea I have no idea how I carried on which jobs that I had but
I had good jobs most of the time but anyway we were up there and I had had my usual
as much to drink as I can remember and I decided for some reason I went outside and I decided I
was the way the cars were parked and I was out there you know kind of trying to direct the traffic
and um they took me inside and they got him and he was incredibly embarrassed and he uh landed up
taking me home and um I really I decided that the reason that I had all these problems was because
of him it was just a bad marriage you know he just we didn't have an emotional connection we
were always on the go and it was his fault so I left him
and I I divorced him and I uh I met up with some uh girls in Atlanta I I got on one of those sites
where you find your roommate and I got a nice apartment with all these girls and we had a very
good time and during that time we were living over at Cross Creek apartments and we just you know we
did a lot of drinking and a lot of crazy stuff and I met this guy uh who decided he was going to
outside substances and um I know our program is about alcoholism but believe me the alcohol stayed
right along with it uh for one year for one year I did a whole lot of outside substances which
caused the blackouts to get a whole lot worse um I can remember drinking at the coach and six uh
down on Peachtree and waking up in New Orleans now I don't know how I got there and it was when I woke up it was kind of scary
scary for me to have that kind of a blackout. I don't know what happened. I also remember being
in Las Vegas somewhere in a station wagon. There were animals that were in the station wagon,
people, and that's all I can remember, going in and out of blackouts. I got pretty scared. I
started getting, I still had a job, believe it or not, and I started getting lost on the way to work.
I mean, I would be driving off to work, and I would just be, you know, I didn't know where I was
sometimes for a while, and I was getting so nervous at work because I had to, you know,
you didn't want to drink. You got up in the morning. You went to work, and I would start
to feel this so shaky all over that I would come home at lunch and have to have a drink
and to try to get through work. Well, I decided that that relationship wasn't for me because I
didn't want to do the outside substances anymore. I'm sure that was the problem. Certainly,
alcohol was not the problem. So, anyway, I broke that relationship off, and I was just really
afraid of everything getting out of hand. Well, one day, I was working for, I was a
administrative assistant for a vice president of a paper company, and in those days, we had
postage meters, and I don't know if you remember the postage meters, but you had to take them to
the post office to get filled. So, anyway, I take this heavy duty,
they were pretty heavy. I took it to the post office, and I was standing in line,
and this guy comes up behind me. He says, that looks pretty heavy. Can I carry it for you back
to your car? I'm going, well, okay, you know, and he invited me to lunch the next day.
Well, I had all this social anxiety, you know, about what am I going to do? I, you know,
I don't really want to go in restaurants. I don't really want to be around people,
and this guy shows up the next day. He's got a Corvette, and he's got a basket,
and there was a picnic basket, and it had wine, and it had sandwiches. I don't know if anybody
knows where Henry's Bakery is, and, but anyway, he had all this stuff for me. I mean, it was
wonderful, and he told me he was an ex-pro ball player, and I thought, this man is perfect. You
know, I just thought, wow, and we dated for three years. We, we measured where we went. He was a,
he was a traveling salesman for his own company, basically,
and he would end up in different cities at the end of the week. Like, sometimes he'd start out
on Monday, and he'd end up in Florida, and I'd usually have a plane ticket delivered to me on
Wednesday to fly, or, or we would go somewhere, and we would measure how far it took to, how long
it took to get there by how much we drank, so if he showed up with, like, I don't know, three or
four six-packs, I knew we were going to Hilton Head, or if he showed up,
you know, with kind of, however much alcohol he had, I knew where the trip was going, and we did
a whole lot of drinking, and I was having these experiences where I would feel like my body,
my head was leaving my body. I, I, it was just, I was having some really weird experiences. We,
we dated for three years. He told me that he didn't want me to work anymore, which
sounded great, and that he wanted to marry me, and he,
he could afford me just staying home, so we married in April of 1976,
but by September of 1976, I became really sick, and I was pregnant, and we had never discussed
children, never. I mean, what do you do? You drink. You have a good time. We just never discussed any
of those things, and not only was I pregnant, but the doctor told me that the pregnancy had a bit
of a problem.
And that the one thing that I was going to have to do was go home and go to dad,
and then he pointed his finger at me, and he said, and you guys stop drinking, and I thought,
how did he know? How would he possibly know that I was drinking? I probably reaped of it,
but I didn't know that I reaped of it. So, I had this motherly instinct, I don't know,
but I stopped drinking. I stopped, and that was in September of 1976, and I, I was all of a sudden,
stone cold sober. Now, I, the, the husband, he is my ex-husband now,
he got very, very angry with me because I was pregnant. He, he told me that he was going to
be very, very busy building his business. He wasn't going to have time to raise a child,
and that I was gonna have to do this. He would, you know, I could definitely,
you know, get an allowance and stay in this house. I wasn't going to get my child, I wasn't going to
get a house, I was going to get a home. He told me that, and, and I, and, and he, and I, and I
It was much, much better than anything I'd ever experienced in my life growing up or anything.
And he was just going to be gone all the time.
And I was going to have to raise this little girl.
And I had a beautiful baby girl.
And she is wonderful.
Isla knows who she is.
But she was, as I said, she was wonderful.
But all those issues.
Here I was sober.
My husband had basically kind of walked away from our relationship.
And all those issues from 11 years old, you know, started coming to the surface.
And I became so full of anxiety and fear that I could hardly walk to the mailbox.
I could hardly leave our house.
And I had an awful lot of problems with that.
I didn't know what I was going to do.
I had put my daughter in private school, a little, you know, a private school where she started.
And this woman in this private school, it was a Christian private school, this woman told me about a relationship with God that I could have.
And it was wonderful.
I became a Christian.
And I became a strong Christian.
And the problem was when I got this religion, and it was a wonderful thing.
I mean, it helped me a lot.
But when it went through my head, as Gary often says sometimes, that I have these filters in my head.
And when it came through my head, it came out of me really weird.
I would beat myself up.
I would beat other people up.
I knew the Bible backwards and forwards.
I, you know, I could beat you up with scripture.
I could tell you what to do.
I was the most miserable Christian.
Anybody would want to be around.
Nobody, I feel bad for the people that were around me at that time.
And I just, you know, it was just something, it was the way it happened for me.
And with my family, a whole lot was still going on.
My father died in 1988 and had his funeral.
My brother brought his girlfriend to the funeral.
And his wife showed up.
She was a Christian.
So I prayed.
I prayed with her and helped get her to a, get her to a plane so she could go back to where she came from.
Because she didn't, you know, have to deal with this.
But in the meantime, our family got into a family feud.
And half was on one side, half was on the other.
And in the middle of it, I got disowned by my mother.
All of that drove me into counseling.
And the counselor told me that I was an adult child of alcoholism.
And he told me that I'm not.
And he told me that I'm not.
And he told me that I needed Al-Anon.
So that's when I came into Al-Anon, around 1989 is when I came into Al-Anon.
Now, Al-Anon really, really helped me.
I have to say so much about the Al-Anon program.
It's a wonderful program.
I learned about the family disease of alcoholism.
Boy, I really needed to learn that.
And how I've been passed down.
I had no idea.
I mean, I had no better teaching than to pick alcoholic.
Or for husbands.
And to drink myself.
I mean, it was just going to happen.
I learned how to face the reality in my own home.
What was going on.
And I hadn't been facing it very well.
I was mean.
I was throwing religion around, just like my mother did.
I was angry all the time, just like my mother was.
I wasn't the best of persons to be around.
But I learned to detach from the sickness in my home, in my family.
And I learned I could recover.
When others in my family had decided not to.
That was a big deal.
I wanted everybody to recover.
I wanted everybody to get help.
And most of them still haven't.
But you know what?
I got to get help.
I learned acceptance.
I had to accept where I was.
I didn't have to like it.
But I learned how to accept it.
And I learned that my family really didn't hate me.
They really, you know, my father didn't hate me.
My mother, you know, wasn't all that.
You know, she was angry.
She was angry.
She was angry.
Of course she was.
But she was just sick.
They were just sick people trying to, you know, trying to get through their life.
And I told them about Elena.
And I told them about all these wonderful things they could do.
But, of course, that only made them more angry at me.
In 1997, my mother was dying.
My ex-husband would only let me go either for the funeral or I could go to see her before she died.
Well, my family became extremely angry with me because I went to see her
before she died.
I didn't make the funeral.
So I wasn't told that where she, when she died, she died two days after I left, but I wasn't
told she died.
I wasn't told where she was buried or anything like that.
Not only that, but I came back home and I found out that this ex-husband who had no
ex-husband, you know, he was still in all of his addictions.
He was still doing everything.
I found out he had a sex addiction.
He was having many, many affairs.
He had a permanent hotel room not far from our house.
He had kept it away from me very, very well.
He was just that good at it.
He signed my name to a lot of financial documents.
He forged my name to IRS stuff.
He had me in debt that I didn't even know I had.
And he had liens on me that I didn't know about.
At the same time, my daughter left for California and I was a walking back decays one more time.
Someone in Al-Anon suggested, why don't you go to AA meetings?
Maybe you can gain some understanding about this whole thing if you sit in AA meetings.
Well, I went into the AA meetings and I had this cutesy, quote, little Al-Anon program.
I had no idea what you guys were going to teach me.
I got here and I heard what you guys were saying.
And all I could say was, oh, my God, that's me.
AA was telling my story.
My story was that I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was dragging my sponsees in from Al-Anon.
They didn't want to go to AA meetings.
I go, come on, did you hear that?
And they would go, no, Mary, we don't really want to go to the AA meetings.
Well, I couldn't stop going.
And in AA, I got the strength I needed to leave this man.
Not only that, but if you could see how God works in somebody's life, I didn't have a penny.
I mean, I was very poor.
Suddenly, this uncle died that I didn't even know died and left me an inheritance.
Then I got this job in a law firm, of all places.
Now, I had no idea I was going to need this law firm that much.
I had to get out of IRS debt.
I had to get through a divorce.
I had to do so many things.
I mean, all, I didn't have to pay a penny for that.
It was unbelievable how God was working.
The problem was, was I was, I had, I always had the idea that I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was going to get an apartment.
And what I was going to do was I was going to buy a bottle of wine.
I really, all the stuff I'd heard, all this AA stuff, all this Al-Anon stuff, well, guess
what?
I didn't think I was an alcoholic.
And I was going to get a bottle of wine.
And in AA, this is what I heard.
We were reading this one day in the meeting.
And I nearly thought, I thought, oh my gosh, I went out to my car and I just sat and cried.
This is a man of 30.
He was going.
He was going to take off.
He was going to go to his first time at the bar.
He was taking out his water bottle.
He was going to bring his water bottle back.
He was going to get cold.
He was going to take out his plug.
And he opened his water bottle and he had a little beer, just a little bit.
He was drinking a lot.
He was taking a shower.
He was doing a great deal of spray drinking.
He was very nervous in the morning after these bouts and quieted himself with more
liquor.
He was ambitious to succeed in business but saw that he would, he would get nowhere if
he drank at all.
Once he started he had no control whatever.
He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired he
would not touch another drop.
An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for 25 years.
and retired at the age of 55.
I remained bone dry for 30 years.
I had brought up my daughter.
It's time for me to have alcohol again.
And it goes, after a successful and happy business career at 55,
then he fell victim to a belief, which practically every alcoholic has,
that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.
Al came as carpet and slippers and a bottle,
and in two months he was in the hospital, puzzled and humiliated.
He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital.
Meantime, then gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether, found he could not.
Every means of solving his problem, which money could buy, was at his disposal.
Every attempt failed.
Though a robust man in retirement, he went to pieces and was dead within four years.
That scared me to death.
My sponsor insisted I do a very serious fourth step.
She was in both programs.
I did this fourth step, and I remembered all the staff around I had,
and I said, we were in her car, and I said, oh my God, I think I'm an alcoholic.
And I picked up a, I had been attending the early morning study group as an Al-Anon for like three years,
and at that time, I was in the hospital.
At the early morning study group that next morning, I picked up a white chip,
and they gave me a standing ovation.
And I learned so many things in AA.
There's just, there's not enough hours to tell you what I learned and continue to learn,
just like you guys are doing, and I know.
I had no idea what the bondage itself was.
I didn't know.
I didn't learn that at Al-Anon.
Al-Anon was wonderful, but I didn't learn about the bondage itself.
I was driven by a hundred forms of fear.
You bet I was.
I still have the fears, but they're a lot better now.
I mean, they're, you know, they're just in different locations, but I still have them.
I have to work on them.
I was here by a series of my own choices.
I chose that husband.
I chose what I was doing.
I chose to drink, and if I chose to drink again, where was I going to end up?
And I learned how much.
It's just how much alcoholic thinking I was carrying.
I mean, I was doing crazy stuff, and I was going to buy myself alcohol.
After all this work I had done, I was going to buy a bottle.
I work today, the AA program, very seriously, and I wake up.
I have to remember that I wake up every single morning with the programming of that 11-year-old little girl,
and I have to remember that there are tools I have to use.
And on a daily basis, to continue to keep myself in a place where I'm not going to want to have to drink.
And, you know, the fears, like I said, they're not necessarily gone,
but they're definitely better than they used to be.
And then the good things started happening in AA.
My sponsor insisted I do a lot of service work, and I did a lot.
And then one night, they were having a Valentine's Day dance at NABBA,
and I began.
I did not want to go.
I was going through this divorce.
I, you know, I was miserable.
I didn't want to go watch other people having dancing and having fun.
You know, I wasn't dating anybody.
I figured at my age, when I left my ex-husband when I was in my 50s,
there wasn't going to be any more men in my life.
I just figured that was pretty much over.
Well, I got to this dance.
What happened was I went to the meeting that night.
My sponsor.
Who said, you're going to the dance.
And she, she said, you're coming with me.
And she got in front of me and she said, you follow me down these stairs.
Well, her husband was in the program.
He went behind me.
They, the two of them go down the stairs.
They pay and get my, my hand stamped and they leave me there at the dance.
And sweet Debbie Olmsted, Debbie O, she was running the meeting, I'm sorry, the dance.
And I asked her if I could help out.
And she said, no, I have everything under control.
And I was like, okay, what am I going to do now?
Well, another guy that was president of NABBA, Bob M, came and got me and said, why don't you come sit at my table?
So I went and sat with him thinking, oh, maybe we'll dance.
Well, he got up and he danced with everybody in that room but me.
And I'm thinking, oh, this is single life.
This is really going to be fun, you know.
So I walked across the room because another friend of mine was sitting over there.
And I ran into Gary N., who's in this meeting.
And we have been married now for 14 years.
And the thing was, was that Gary, Gary introduced me to a whole new program.
He was, I don't know if anybody remembers Bill Roop, but Bill Roop had many, many years in the program where he was an icon.
And Bill Roop spoke all over the place.
And Gary was his driver.
And they.
took me with them. I cannot tell you how many places I've been, places that I was scared to
get out of the car because we went to some places down in Haightville and places like that where
Bill was going to be talking. I got to sit up front, always in the front row because we were
with Bill. I got to meet so many wonderful people. We went to conferences. We went to roundups. We
flew all the way out of California to the Pacific group. I mean, so much wonderful stuff to add to
my program. And if any of you are just, I was just going to stay in the early morning study group
and just see where it was kind of comfy and cozy. And, you know, nobody had to make any changes. I
didn't want any more changes. And I needed to grow in the program. And I didn't realize
how much growth is available out there. And there's so much.
And Gary and I, you know, we're very fortunate that our marriage isn't perfect, but we have what
we call a recovery marriage. And when one of us is in trouble, when one of us is upset or we get
into a problem, we let each other go. We let each other go and get to our sponsors. And it doesn't
matter how many meetings you want to go to, just leave and go. You know, and we understand that.
I'm so grateful that we have that.
And
and
one last thing, skidding towards the end.
In 2013,
I became very sick. I woke up one morning with a very high fever.
And Gary, basically, I couldn't stand up. Gary carried me to the doctor.
And I, he gave me all this medicine. And I couldn't,
for some reason, what I had wouldn't go away. So I kept going back and getting more medicine. And I had
six
rounds of
antibiotics and some of them were 14 days rounds and I couldn't get over
these problems. So they ended up sending me to a pulmonologist and he had to give me more antibiotics.
And what I didn't know was that they were tearing up my body and I became very, very ill. I ended up
having a heart procedure. I ended up very thick in bed for 18 months with two autoimmune diseases and
I was mad at God. I was so angry.
And here I got my husband and all, and I couldn't get out of bed.
I was so angry.
And I was just looking at the ceiling, cussing him out.
And, you know, when the student's ready, the teacher appears.
And out of this program, a beautiful woman came out of this program who is my sponsor today,
who had been through something similar.
And she walked me through that.
We worked on the steps.
We did serious inventory work.
I read page 60 through 63 every single day.
And I'm not through with this.
I still have, you know, some of these things don't necessarily leave you.
But I can handle it a lot better than I used to.
I'm not crying over it.
I'm not depressed.
I've learned how to live my life with what I've got, you know, and it's been really good.
So I just wanted to say it, and I just want to remind everybody in this room
and how I feel.
That I have walked into a miracle.
AA is just an absolute miracle.
This is not common, what we go through.
What we come into these rooms and we learn is not common.
And taking it for granted is something I never, ever want to do.
And I just, you know, there are people out there that are hurting.
That I don't know why they're not in here.
I don't know why somehow I'm still sober.
I don't know.
But I'm still here.
I'm very, very, very grateful.
And, you know, I get to see, every day, I get to see marriages restored.
I get to see health restored.
I get to see families restored.
And I'm so grateful for it all.
And I'm grateful for you guys tonight.
And thanks, Tim, for letting me tell my story.
I'm done.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you, Mary.
Thank you for sharing the miracle with us.
I'm going to unmute some folks to chime in.
Allie, you're unmuted.
I think you're unmuted.
Thank you.
Let me be the first.
That was awesome, Mary.
Thank you so very much.
Love you.
I'll bet you.
I don't remember.
But I'll bet I was at that Valentine's dance.
Probably were.
I've been at most of them.
But what a wonderful telling of your experience, strength, and hope.
Thank you so very much.
Thanks, Isla.
Love you.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
That's so typical.
And give my love to that beautiful daughter of yours when you see her again.
And kisses for all the Dolls.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mary.
I've seen you around in several meetings and it was really nice to hear your story.
So, thank you so much for sharing that with us and I hope you're doing well.
It's really good to see you.
Thanks, along, too.
It's good to see you, too.
Thank you, Mary.
So nice to hear your story.
I appreciate that very much.
It's good to see everyone.
Yes, Mary, thank you both.
I would like to also mention that in a meeting,
Tim mentioned that next week is the rebuttal meeting.
And I didn't know if you were aware that that was said,
but it's made me giggle.
I've been looking forward to this all week.
Thank you so much for your bravery and your candor.
Thanks.
My name is Gary.
I'm an alcoholic.
I was leading a meeting at, actually, a Zoom meeting at noon in Loganville.
And would you believe, after the meeting was over,
some female that I'd never saw before knew Debbie Olmstead at NABBA
and knew this story and knew that we were put together by Debbie.
The word does get around.
That was a hoot.
You guys definitely, y'all both are a miracle.
Hopefully, we'll get Debbie on the docket in the next few weeks.
That would be great.
Hey, Mary.
You know, I've probably known you almost the entire time you've been sober,
and yet that's the first time I've heard your story.
I could just about tell Gary's story, but that's the first time I heard your story.
That's awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael.
Thank you.
Love you, too.
Thank you, Mary, for your story.
I'm Katie.
I'm an alcoholic.
We don't know each other, but I feel like I know you a lot better now,
and your journey and your courage telling your story tonight has really affected me
and really helped me.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Katie.
And, Mary, it's always great to hear.
We've got another AA story that includes Al-Anon.
We've got more than a handful on the website.
I have had to turn to Al-Anon, and actually I've seen you and Gary meet at Al-Anon meetings.
You two were the first two people that I really felt safer in Al-Anon.
When I first came in, there's some rules about, you know,
alcoholics and their sharing.
They can shut you down, you know, if you're whining and crying.
That's for sure.
I tell you what, it's done me a lot of good.
It's a wonderful program.
It really is.
Well worth your time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
So thank you.
Now, many of you may ignore me.
All you know that I am somebody who is an relative and has done something for me through
my own calf.
And you know, a lot of people have told me a lot about myrics.
I'm sticked in it for a few weeks now.
It's but.
Can't be working till I work it on out
But please, please, won't you stand enough light on me
Till I'm free from the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
As I try to make some sense
Of this world I'm up against
Well, I know my best defense is your love
When the struggle gets its day
And the lessons fall apart
Keep me calling out your name with love
But oh Lord, don't make it easy
Keep me working till I work
Work it on out
But please, please, won't you stand enough light on me
Till I'm free from the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
Keep me working till I work it on out
Keep me working till I work it on out
Keep me working till I work it on out
Keep me working till I work it on out
Well, I whisper in the dark
From the bottom of my heart
And I'm searching for one star to shine
Well, I whisper in the dark
I'll shout from mountain high
And I'll reach into the sky
Till you open up my eyes so blind
But oh Lord, don't make it easy
Keep me working till I work it on out
But please, please
Won't you shout enough loud on me
Till I'm free from the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to your Monday Night Blue Chip Snickers meeting on NABBA Zoom,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story.
Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view
the way they established their relationship with God.
These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our neighborhood,
who are in the NABBA Zoom room tonight and listening later on aabluechipspeakers.org,
desperately in need, will hear tonight's speaker.
And we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems
that any of us shall be persuaded to say,
yes, I am one of them too.
I must have this thing.
Mary Ann graciously has accepted the invitation.
She is.
She has spoken at meetings I've been involved with more than once.
Always get a lot out of it.
And I'm grateful for you, Mary.
Thanks, Tim.
Hey, everybody.
My name is Mary and I'm an alcoholic.
And I'm glad to be here tonight.
Thank you, Tim, for asking me to do this meeting tonight.
It's always good to do your story because it opens up a lot that you can look at and remember.
You know, maybe some things you don't know.
Maybe some things you need to do some more inventory on.
Maybe some things that, you know, need to be, you know, still things I have to think about and work on.
So, I'm very glad to be here tonight.
My sobriety date, I picked up a white chip at the early morning study group on January 17, 2004.
But I really stopped drinking in 1976, in September of 1976.
And as I go along with my story,
I think you'll see how, you know, I've been drinking a lot.
I think you'll see how I qualify for this program.
I think you'll understand a whole lot in a very short time.
To give you a little background, my mother was 100% Italian.
Her father came over on the boat, came in at Ellis Island.
She comes from a family of 10 children and huge Catholic background.
And a whole lot of alcoholism was going on in that part of the family as well.
And she had aunts and uncles.
And aunts and uncles all over the place.
And they had settled in Pennsylvania, New York.
And my father, he was part American Indian and also German.
And he only had an eighth grade education.
He came from an extremely abusive household.
His father was an alcoholic.
And he beat my father, sometimes on a daily basis.
He beat him so bad at times.
At one time, he shut his kidneys down.
But when my father and mother met,
my grandparents were very nice.
My grandparents were very much against this marriage.
But they married anyway outside of the Catholic Church.
And I was born, I was their fourth child.
I was the fourth of four children.
And when I was born, my father had become very, very ill.
He was in a sanitarium.
He had tuberculosis.
And in those days, tuberculosis was like COVID.
And nobody wanted to be around us.
Nobody, even family members, wouldn't come and help us out.
They wouldn't come to the house.
Here my mother was.
She had never worked before.
And she had four children.
And no one to really help her.
And my siblings were left.
She tried to go out and get jobs.
And my siblings were left to take care of me.
When my father finally came home, I was 18 months old.
And that was such a moment for me.
I can remember the pattern on the furniture.
I can remember the smell.
I can remember everything.
He was this huge, great big piece of fear for me.
And because of his low self-esteem and his alcoholism and his not being able to do a whole lot with his life, he was very upset with me about that.
And the two of us ended up in this war basically for the rest of our lives.
We never got along.
We never really, you know, there was never much between us.
And he didn't care.
My father was not happy where he was.
And he was not happy for the situation he was in.
My mother finally got a job.
It was 18 miles away from our house.
And my father was left to take care of the children.
And, of course, I was just a baby.
And so he was the one that was left to take care of me.
And he was pretty abusive.
No reason to go too far into that.
But he got a job finally when I was three years old building the parochial school, the Catholic school.
And my mother was a heavy-duty, strong Catholic.
So they were all excited.
And when I was three years old, I was put in kindergarten there while he did the work.
And I was taken care of by the nuns.
And I had, when the nuns weren't around, I had all kinds of babysitters.
My father finally got a job in a factory.
He was a blue-collar worker.
And basically I was just taken from place to place.
My mother was working.
The kids, the other siblings.
The other siblings were going to school and that kind of thing.
And I was this kind of frightened little girl.
I was pretty scared most of the time.
And I started to become really sick.
I had allergies.
I had asthma.
My parents were always mad at me because I cost so much money.
They weren't really happy with me most of the time.
And, you know, they had so many issues of their own.
They didn't have time for one of us to be really sick.
Now, my mother, being this heavy-duty religious woman, she was a very, very strong Catholic.
She dealt with my father basically by being very over-religious and shoving, you know, religious stuff down his throat all the time.
He didn't ever, ever go to church.
He basically, Saturday nights he spent, you know, normally he would leave Saturday afternoon and he would come back Saturday nights and he was out of it.
You know, he was very, very drunk.
He ended up on the bed lots of times.
He'd go out and the car was still running in the morning.
I mean, he just...
That's the way he dealt with his life.
And on Sunday mornings, they'd have this huge fight and they would cut each other out.
My mother would drag us all to church.
And the church was in the backyard from where we lived.
So my mother expected us to go to church not just every Sunday, but we had to go just about every day.
And when you go to the parochial school, you pretty much go to school every day.
So I had a whole lot of religion going on.
My mother was very, very angry most of the time.
She had...
Always one of us kids had to be in the doghouse.
You know, somebody had to be the person that she was mad at at the time.
So usually...
And all the other kids had to be mad at that person, too.
So it kind of pitted us kids against each other.
We never really got along.
And we're kind of distant to this day.
We still have...
We have some connections, but we're not as close as I would like to be.
And my parents threatened us a lot.
If we, you know, if we did anything wrong, they were going to tell us that we...
They'd lock the doors and they wouldn't let us in.
And my father, just like his father, beat him.
He beat my brother.
And it was just, you know, a scary household for me.
I was full of all kinds of anxieties and fears.
And I was terrified of this man.
And I just, you know, it was a tough household.
And when I was about somewhere between 11 and 12 or 13 years old, I can't remember the exact age.
I've tried to go back there and remember it.
But my parents...
My brothers and sisters...
My brothers and sisters were older than I was.
So...
And everybody left home as quick as they possibly could.
I had one sister.
She'd run away from home.
I had another sister who'd gone off to nursing school.
And my brother went off to engineering school.
So they were gone.
And I was...
It was the summertime and my parents wanted to go on a vacation.
And they decided they weren't going to take me with them.
They were going to leave me home alone.
And I had a babysitting job.
So I was left home for an entire week except I was really, really scared.
And when I came home from my babysitting job, it would get dark outside.
And here all these years, I had...
When my father got his job, he would come home at night.
He worked 3.30 to midnight.
This was the best time of the day.
And I was just...
It was midnight.
This was before they went on this vacation.
But he would always come home and he would just drink.
The bottom part of our refrigerator had...
Was full of...
Like a case of beer was in there all the time.
And you could not touch anything.
If anything was messed up and he knew what it was, he would get us all out of bed and
yell at us and, who took my beer?
That kind of stuff.
So he would come home and drink and go to bed.
You know?
And I thought, well, if my dad can do that, maybe I can do that.
So here I was, this kid home all alone.
My father had built this liquor cabinet.
And I sat in there.
He had some red velvet whiskey in there.
And I cannot tell you how much I drank that night, but I slept really well that night.
And not only that, but my fears were gone that night.
It was, like, unbelievable.
And I thought, my gosh, this is a very young kid thinking, wow.
So...
kid thinking wow this stuff is cool I really like this stuff and I kind of had that moment where
this is what a solution you know in my life uh but you know when you're when you're 11 to 13 years
old you can't get alcohol very much but my mother lived in a traditional uh you know Italian family
and they they celebrated everything I mean they celebrated weddings and funerals and Christmas
and birthdays and we had all these family reunions and boy was there a lot of drinking going on
and I could get tips out of the out of the drinks if everybody left their drinks laying around I go
around my drink with that I had a couple of cousins and we'd steal the alcohol you know we'd go off
and we'd steal it from here and there and everywhere and um so I was able to get you know quite a bit
and I started really liking this stuff as I was moving on through high school and stuff the thing
was that um I could function I could I could drink all I wanted you know or whatever at night and
I would when I would start drinking I really didn't know how much I was going to drink as
much as I could get basically and um but I could function very well I could um just like my father
could drink and go to work I could could drink and go to school I could be I was a cheerleader
I was in social clubs I don't think anybody really had clue of what what I was
really doing um so I had kind of this dual life going on and in high school I had a really cool
girlfriend her parents had a lot of money and they had this whole bar in their house and we I
loved going over to her house and I went over to her house all the time every time I could spend
the night there I would and the two of us would get into that liquor cabinet especially because
their parents went out all the time and we would mix every possible drink you could you know
and uh and I loved it every single minute of it when I graduated from high school um my father
didn't want me to go to this one college I wanted to go to and I could go to a business school but
I had to pay for it so I got a New York State higher education loan and um I had to work during
the summer in order to have enough money you know just to get to college on so I um I got a job in
a factory it was about 18 years ago and I was in the business school and I was in the business school
for 18 miles to my home and I rode back and forth in the car with these men I just got this ride and
they would pick me up at the end of my street and then we would drive to work and then they would
pick me up after work and I worked 3 30 to midnight just like my father did and they had booze in the
car and I drank with them you know all day home and then my boyfriend would be waiting for me when
I got home in his car and I just go from their car to his car and we would I would just drink
and I would come home uh
but nobody really noticed my mother was in bed my father was drinking so you know it wasn't it was
cool thing it was just a way of life for me and you know it's just what I did well when I got
finally got to college I pledged a sorority and there was a lot of drinking going on in that
sorority any kind of pledging if anybody ever did anything like that whoa there's a whole lot of
stuff going on and there were fraternity parties and sorority parties and and I of course had to
be involved in all of that stuff and one night I had gotten I was at a party and uh had enough to
drink and um this guy uh who had wanted to date me I didn't want to date him but he uh every time I
dated somebody he would become their new best friend and it really it really made me angry
so I got up after many drinks and I started telling him off in this party I mean just telling
him everything I thought about him every
four-letter word was coming out of my mouth apparently and I woke up suddenly I woke up the
next day in my bed in my uh and the dormitory that was my very first huge blackout I did not know but
my roommates told me all the things I did that night and I didn't know anything about the fact
that you could have a blackout and you could function like that in a blackout so that was
the start of these blackouts
that I would have and my roommates were getting kind of were pretty tired of me um our fraternity
brothers decided to have a slave auction to make money so they offered our baby uh sold the sorority
sister as uh slaves in a for a day we you know that we would be slaves for a day so they auctioned
us up they put us on this stage and they auctioned us off and for some reason my accounting professor
said well I thought I was going to have he lived in a bachelor house with five guys and I thought I
was going to have to clean this house I thought I was going to have to they had a swimming pool I
had no idea what they were going to make me clean and I he picked me up and guess what he wanted to
drink so we we went over to the house and we drank all afternoon we had the most fantastic time we
laughed we carried on we you know we got in the pool we just we had a wonderful time now they he
um he couldn't date a student the teachers couldn't date students so he would send uh he had
these five roommates and he would send one of them at a time to pick me up at my dormitory and take
me somewhere where so I could meet him for a date so it usually was a bar or something like that so
my friends couldn't believe I had all these good-looking guys coming and picking me up and I
thought this was the coolest thing ever and we just went to the bar and we just drank and we just I
just came home
uh we had this bar it was called Duffy's Tavern and I would save all of my money I wouldn't even
eat sometimes so that I had enough money every Thursday night so we could go to Duffy's and when
I got to Duffy's I would drink and uh I probably went into quite a few blackouts there I remember
getting up on stage singing with a band uh falling through a chair you know that kind of stuff it was
it was kind of bad well this professor who had been
been dating me he came in one night to Duffy's and he dropped an engagement ring
in my drink and he said look at this and wasn't it fitting I mean here we are both of us he was
drinking I was drinking this alcoholic's first husband my drink my ring was in a drink of course
it was um so anyway he was also Italian my father liked him so this was going to be a good marriage
was uh he wanted to drink great tell him have a good time and that was if you asked him what he
wanted out of life that's all it was and that's what we did we drank we drank and we did all
kinds of absolutely crazy things um he decided he wanted to leave the college not be a professor
anymore and grow in business so in those days um when you grew in business you did a lot of
entertaining you took people out all the time and that's what he wanted to do and and he not only that
he wanted us to go out all the time too well some of my fears had started to come back I was drinking
but when I wasn't drinking I was very terrified it got to the point where no matter where we went uh
I would be very very nervous I started getting a lot of social uh issues social anxiety just I was
just terrified I had to drink before we went out I had to have a couple of drinks and then I would
continue to drink and during this marriage
we moved from New York to uh New Jersey to Atlanta back up to Buffalo New York and then we moved back
to Atlanta and uh I was just I was turning into this basket case most of the time just very very
nervous person uh drinking was the only thing that was helping me and I ended up um we were
at this place um in Atlanta and I don't know the name of it it was up on Roswell Road it was a um
uh fish place I think it was and we were entertaining uh this people uh that were coming
uh into Atlanta for our company for the company that he was working for and mind you I always had
jobs through all this I have no idea I have no idea how I carried on which jobs that I had but
I had good jobs most of the time but anyway we were up there and I had had my usual
as much to drink as I can remember and I decided for some reason I went outside and I decided I
was the way the cars were parked and I was out there you know kind of trying to direct the traffic
and um they took me inside and they got him and he was incredibly embarrassed and he uh landed up
taking me home and um I really I decided that the reason that I had all these problems was because
of him it was just a bad marriage you know he just we didn't have an emotional connection we
were always on the go and it was his fault so I left him
and I I divorced him and I uh I met up with some uh girls in Atlanta I I got on one of those sites
where you find your roommate and I got a nice apartment with all these girls and we had a very
good time and during that time we were living over at Cross Creek apartments and we just you know we
did a lot of drinking and a lot of crazy stuff and I met this guy uh who decided he was going to
outside substances and um I know our program is about alcoholism but believe me the alcohol stayed
right along with it uh for one year for one year I did a whole lot of outside substances which
caused the blackouts to get a whole lot worse um I can remember drinking at the coach and six uh
down on Peachtree and waking up in New Orleans now I don't know how I got there and it was when I woke up it was kind of scary
scary for me to have that kind of a blackout. I don't know what happened. I also remember being
in Las Vegas somewhere in a station wagon. There were animals that were in the station wagon,
people, and that's all I can remember, going in and out of blackouts. I got pretty scared. I
started getting, I still had a job, believe it or not, and I started getting lost on the way to work.
I mean, I would be driving off to work, and I would just be, you know, I didn't know where I was
sometimes for a while, and I was getting so nervous at work because I had to, you know,
you didn't want to drink. You got up in the morning. You went to work, and I would start
to feel this so shaky all over that I would come home at lunch and have to have a drink
and to try to get through work. Well, I decided that that relationship wasn't for me because I
didn't want to do the outside substances anymore. I'm sure that was the problem. Certainly,
alcohol was not the problem. So, anyway, I broke that relationship off, and I was just really
afraid of everything getting out of hand. Well, one day, I was working for, I was a
administrative assistant for a vice president of a paper company, and in those days, we had
postage meters, and I don't know if you remember the postage meters, but you had to take them to
the post office to get filled. So, anyway, I take this heavy duty,
they were pretty heavy. I took it to the post office, and I was standing in line,
and this guy comes up behind me. He says, that looks pretty heavy. Can I carry it for you back
to your car? I'm going, well, okay, you know, and he invited me to lunch the next day.
Well, I had all this social anxiety, you know, about what am I going to do? I, you know,
I don't really want to go in restaurants. I don't really want to be around people,
and this guy shows up the next day. He's got a Corvette, and he's got a basket,
and there was a picnic basket, and it had wine, and it had sandwiches. I don't know if anybody
knows where Henry's Bakery is, and, but anyway, he had all this stuff for me. I mean, it was
wonderful, and he told me he was an ex-pro ball player, and I thought, this man is perfect. You
know, I just thought, wow, and we dated for three years. We, we measured where we went. He was a,
he was a traveling salesman for his own company, basically,
and he would end up in different cities at the end of the week. Like, sometimes he'd start out
on Monday, and he'd end up in Florida, and I'd usually have a plane ticket delivered to me on
Wednesday to fly, or, or we would go somewhere, and we would measure how far it took to, how long
it took to get there by how much we drank, so if he showed up with, like, I don't know, three or
four six-packs, I knew we were going to Hilton Head, or if he showed up,
you know, with kind of, however much alcohol he had, I knew where the trip was going, and we did
a whole lot of drinking, and I was having these experiences where I would feel like my body,
my head was leaving my body. I, I, it was just, I was having some really weird experiences. We,
we dated for three years. He told me that he didn't want me to work anymore, which
sounded great, and that he wanted to marry me, and he,
he could afford me just staying home, so we married in April of 1976,
but by September of 1976, I became really sick, and I was pregnant, and we had never discussed
children, never. I mean, what do you do? You drink. You have a good time. We just never discussed any
of those things, and not only was I pregnant, but the doctor told me that the pregnancy had a bit
of a problem.
And that the one thing that I was going to have to do was go home and go to dad,
and then he pointed his finger at me, and he said, and you guys stop drinking, and I thought,
how did he know? How would he possibly know that I was drinking? I probably reaped of it,
but I didn't know that I reaped of it. So, I had this motherly instinct, I don't know,
but I stopped drinking. I stopped, and that was in September of 1976, and I, I was all of a sudden,
stone cold sober. Now, I, the, the husband, he is my ex-husband now,
he got very, very angry with me because I was pregnant. He, he told me that he was going to
be very, very busy building his business. He wasn't going to have time to raise a child,
and that I was gonna have to do this. He would, you know, I could definitely,
you know, get an allowance and stay in this house. I wasn't going to get my child, I wasn't going to
get a house, I was going to get a home. He told me that, and, and I, and, and he, and I, and I
It was much, much better than anything I'd ever experienced in my life growing up or anything.
And he was just going to be gone all the time.
And I was going to have to raise this little girl.
And I had a beautiful baby girl.
And she is wonderful.
Isla knows who she is.
But she was, as I said, she was wonderful.
But all those issues.
Here I was sober.
My husband had basically kind of walked away from our relationship.
And all those issues from 11 years old, you know, started coming to the surface.
And I became so full of anxiety and fear that I could hardly walk to the mailbox.
I could hardly leave our house.
And I had an awful lot of problems with that.
I didn't know what I was going to do.
I had put my daughter in private school, a little, you know, a private school where she started.
And this woman in this private school, it was a Christian private school, this woman told me about a relationship with God that I could have.
And it was wonderful.
I became a Christian.
And I became a strong Christian.
And the problem was when I got this religion, and it was a wonderful thing.
I mean, it helped me a lot.
But when it went through my head, as Gary often says sometimes, that I have these filters in my head.
And when it came through my head, it came out of me really weird.
I would beat myself up.
I would beat other people up.
I knew the Bible backwards and forwards.
I, you know, I could beat you up with scripture.
I could tell you what to do.
I was the most miserable Christian.
Anybody would want to be around.
Nobody, I feel bad for the people that were around me at that time.
And I just, you know, it was just something, it was the way it happened for me.
And with my family, a whole lot was still going on.
My father died in 1988 and had his funeral.
My brother brought his girlfriend to the funeral.
And his wife showed up.
She was a Christian.
So I prayed.
I prayed with her and helped get her to a, get her to a plane so she could go back to where she came from.
Because she didn't, you know, have to deal with this.
But in the meantime, our family got into a family feud.
And half was on one side, half was on the other.
And in the middle of it, I got disowned by my mother.
All of that drove me into counseling.
And the counselor told me that I was an adult child of alcoholism.
And he told me that I'm not.
And he told me that I'm not.
And he told me that I needed Al-Anon.
So that's when I came into Al-Anon, around 1989 is when I came into Al-Anon.
Now, Al-Anon really, really helped me.
I have to say so much about the Al-Anon program.
It's a wonderful program.
I learned about the family disease of alcoholism.
Boy, I really needed to learn that.
And how I've been passed down.
I had no idea.
I mean, I had no better teaching than to pick alcoholic.
Or for husbands.
And to drink myself.
I mean, it was just going to happen.
I learned how to face the reality in my own home.
What was going on.
And I hadn't been facing it very well.
I was mean.
I was throwing religion around, just like my mother did.
I was angry all the time, just like my mother was.
I wasn't the best of persons to be around.
But I learned to detach from the sickness in my home, in my family.
And I learned I could recover.
When others in my family had decided not to.
That was a big deal.
I wanted everybody to recover.
I wanted everybody to get help.
And most of them still haven't.
But you know what?
I got to get help.
I learned acceptance.
I had to accept where I was.
I didn't have to like it.
But I learned how to accept it.
And I learned that my family really didn't hate me.
They really, you know, my father didn't hate me.
My mother, you know, wasn't all that.
You know, she was angry.
She was angry.
She was angry.
Of course she was.
But she was just sick.
They were just sick people trying to, you know, trying to get through their life.
And I told them about Elena.
And I told them about all these wonderful things they could do.
But, of course, that only made them more angry at me.
In 1997, my mother was dying.
My ex-husband would only let me go either for the funeral or I could go to see her before she died.
Well, my family became extremely angry with me because I went to see her
before she died.
I didn't make the funeral.
So I wasn't told that where she, when she died, she died two days after I left, but I wasn't
told she died.
I wasn't told where she was buried or anything like that.
Not only that, but I came back home and I found out that this ex-husband who had no
ex-husband, you know, he was still in all of his addictions.
He was still doing everything.
I found out he had a sex addiction.
He was having many, many affairs.
He had a permanent hotel room not far from our house.
He had kept it away from me very, very well.
He was just that good at it.
He signed my name to a lot of financial documents.
He forged my name to IRS stuff.
He had me in debt that I didn't even know I had.
And he had liens on me that I didn't know about.
At the same time, my daughter left for California and I was a walking back decays one more time.
Someone in Al-Anon suggested, why don't you go to AA meetings?
Maybe you can gain some understanding about this whole thing if you sit in AA meetings.
Well, I went into the AA meetings and I had this cutesy, quote, little Al-Anon program.
I had no idea what you guys were going to teach me.
I got here and I heard what you guys were saying.
And all I could say was, oh, my God, that's me.
AA was telling my story.
My story was that I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was dragging my sponsees in from Al-Anon.
They didn't want to go to AA meetings.
I go, come on, did you hear that?
And they would go, no, Mary, we don't really want to go to the AA meetings.
Well, I couldn't stop going.
And in AA, I got the strength I needed to leave this man.
Not only that, but if you could see how God works in somebody's life, I didn't have a penny.
I mean, I was very poor.
Suddenly, this uncle died that I didn't even know died and left me an inheritance.
Then I got this job in a law firm, of all places.
Now, I had no idea I was going to need this law firm that much.
I had to get out of IRS debt.
I had to get through a divorce.
I had to do so many things.
I mean, all, I didn't have to pay a penny for that.
It was unbelievable how God was working.
The problem was, was I was, I had, I always had the idea that I was going to go to AA.
I was going to go to AA.
I was going to get an apartment.
And what I was going to do was I was going to buy a bottle of wine.
I really, all the stuff I'd heard, all this AA stuff, all this Al-Anon stuff, well, guess
what?
I didn't think I was an alcoholic.
And I was going to get a bottle of wine.
And in AA, this is what I heard.
We were reading this one day in the meeting.
And I nearly thought, I thought, oh my gosh, I went out to my car and I just sat and cried.
This is a man of 30.
He was going.
He was going to take off.
He was going to go to his first time at the bar.
He was taking out his water bottle.
He was going to bring his water bottle back.
He was going to get cold.
He was going to take out his plug.
And he opened his water bottle and he had a little beer, just a little bit.
He was drinking a lot.
He was taking a shower.
He was doing a great deal of spray drinking.
He was very nervous in the morning after these bouts and quieted himself with more
liquor.
He was ambitious to succeed in business but saw that he would, he would get nowhere if
he drank at all.
Once he started he had no control whatever.
He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired he
would not touch another drop.
An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for 25 years.
and retired at the age of 55.
I remained bone dry for 30 years.
I had brought up my daughter.
It's time for me to have alcohol again.
And it goes, after a successful and happy business career at 55,
then he fell victim to a belief, which practically every alcoholic has,
that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.
Al came as carpet and slippers and a bottle,
and in two months he was in the hospital, puzzled and humiliated.
He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital.
Meantime, then gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether, found he could not.
Every means of solving his problem, which money could buy, was at his disposal.
Every attempt failed.
Though a robust man in retirement, he went to pieces and was dead within four years.
That scared me to death.
My sponsor insisted I do a very serious fourth step.
She was in both programs.
I did this fourth step, and I remembered all the staff around I had,
and I said, we were in her car, and I said, oh my God, I think I'm an alcoholic.
And I picked up a, I had been attending the early morning study group as an Al-Anon for like three years,
and at that time, I was in the hospital.
At the early morning study group that next morning, I picked up a white chip,
and they gave me a standing ovation.
And I learned so many things in AA.
There's just, there's not enough hours to tell you what I learned and continue to learn,
just like you guys are doing, and I know.
I had no idea what the bondage itself was.
I didn't know.
I didn't learn that at Al-Anon.
Al-Anon was wonderful, but I didn't learn about the bondage itself.
I was driven by a hundred forms of fear.
You bet I was.
I still have the fears, but they're a lot better now.
I mean, they're, you know, they're just in different locations, but I still have them.
I have to work on them.
I was here by a series of my own choices.
I chose that husband.
I chose what I was doing.
I chose to drink, and if I chose to drink again, where was I going to end up?
And I learned how much.
It's just how much alcoholic thinking I was carrying.
I mean, I was doing crazy stuff, and I was going to buy myself alcohol.
After all this work I had done, I was going to buy a bottle.
I work today, the AA program, very seriously, and I wake up.
I have to remember that I wake up every single morning with the programming of that 11-year-old little girl,
and I have to remember that there are tools I have to use.
And on a daily basis, to continue to keep myself in a place where I'm not going to want to have to drink.
And, you know, the fears, like I said, they're not necessarily gone,
but they're definitely better than they used to be.
And then the good things started happening in AA.
My sponsor insisted I do a lot of service work, and I did a lot.
And then one night, they were having a Valentine's Day dance at NABBA,
and I began.
I did not want to go.
I was going through this divorce.
I, you know, I was miserable.
I didn't want to go watch other people having dancing and having fun.
You know, I wasn't dating anybody.
I figured at my age, when I left my ex-husband when I was in my 50s,
there wasn't going to be any more men in my life.
I just figured that was pretty much over.
Well, I got to this dance.
What happened was I went to the meeting that night.
My sponsor.
Who said, you're going to the dance.
And she, she said, you're coming with me.
And she got in front of me and she said, you follow me down these stairs.
Well, her husband was in the program.
He went behind me.
They, the two of them go down the stairs.
They pay and get my, my hand stamped and they leave me there at the dance.
And sweet Debbie Olmsted, Debbie O, she was running the meeting, I'm sorry, the dance.
And I asked her if I could help out.
And she said, no, I have everything under control.
And I was like, okay, what am I going to do now?
Well, another guy that was president of NABBA, Bob M, came and got me and said, why don't you come sit at my table?
So I went and sat with him thinking, oh, maybe we'll dance.
Well, he got up and he danced with everybody in that room but me.
And I'm thinking, oh, this is single life.
This is really going to be fun, you know.
So I walked across the room because another friend of mine was sitting over there.
And I ran into Gary N., who's in this meeting.
And we have been married now for 14 years.
And the thing was, was that Gary, Gary introduced me to a whole new program.
He was, I don't know if anybody remembers Bill Roop, but Bill Roop had many, many years in the program where he was an icon.
And Bill Roop spoke all over the place.
And Gary was his driver.
And they.
took me with them. I cannot tell you how many places I've been, places that I was scared to
get out of the car because we went to some places down in Haightville and places like that where
Bill was going to be talking. I got to sit up front, always in the front row because we were
with Bill. I got to meet so many wonderful people. We went to conferences. We went to roundups. We
flew all the way out of California to the Pacific group. I mean, so much wonderful stuff to add to
my program. And if any of you are just, I was just going to stay in the early morning study group
and just see where it was kind of comfy and cozy. And, you know, nobody had to make any changes. I
didn't want any more changes. And I needed to grow in the program. And I didn't realize
how much growth is available out there. And there's so much.
And Gary and I, you know, we're very fortunate that our marriage isn't perfect, but we have what
we call a recovery marriage. And when one of us is in trouble, when one of us is upset or we get
into a problem, we let each other go. We let each other go and get to our sponsors. And it doesn't
matter how many meetings you want to go to, just leave and go. You know, and we understand that.
I'm so grateful that we have that.
And
and
one last thing, skidding towards the end.
In 2013,
I became very sick. I woke up one morning with a very high fever.
And Gary, basically, I couldn't stand up. Gary carried me to the doctor.
And I, he gave me all this medicine. And I couldn't,
for some reason, what I had wouldn't go away. So I kept going back and getting more medicine. And I had
six
rounds of
antibiotics and some of them were 14 days rounds and I couldn't get over
these problems. So they ended up sending me to a pulmonologist and he had to give me more antibiotics.
And what I didn't know was that they were tearing up my body and I became very, very ill. I ended up
having a heart procedure. I ended up very thick in bed for 18 months with two autoimmune diseases and
I was mad at God. I was so angry.
And here I got my husband and all, and I couldn't get out of bed.
I was so angry.
And I was just looking at the ceiling, cussing him out.
And, you know, when the student's ready, the teacher appears.
And out of this program, a beautiful woman came out of this program who is my sponsor today,
who had been through something similar.
And she walked me through that.
We worked on the steps.
We did serious inventory work.
I read page 60 through 63 every single day.
And I'm not through with this.
I still have, you know, some of these things don't necessarily leave you.
But I can handle it a lot better than I used to.
I'm not crying over it.
I'm not depressed.
I've learned how to live my life with what I've got, you know, and it's been really good.
So I just wanted to say it, and I just want to remind everybody in this room
and how I feel.
That I have walked into a miracle.
AA is just an absolute miracle.
This is not common, what we go through.
What we come into these rooms and we learn is not common.
And taking it for granted is something I never, ever want to do.
And I just, you know, there are people out there that are hurting.
That I don't know why they're not in here.
I don't know why somehow I'm still sober.
I don't know.
But I'm still here.
I'm very, very, very grateful.
And, you know, I get to see, every day, I get to see marriages restored.
I get to see health restored.
I get to see families restored.
And I'm so grateful for it all.
And I'm grateful for you guys tonight.
And thanks, Tim, for letting me tell my story.
I'm done.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you, Mary.
Thank you for sharing the miracle with us.
I'm going to unmute some folks to chime in.
Allie, you're unmuted.
I think you're unmuted.
Thank you.
Let me be the first.
That was awesome, Mary.
Thank you so very much.
Love you.
I'll bet you.
I don't remember.
But I'll bet I was at that Valentine's dance.
Probably were.
I've been at most of them.
But what a wonderful telling of your experience, strength, and hope.
Thank you so very much.
Thanks, Isla.
Love you.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
That's so typical.
And give my love to that beautiful daughter of yours when you see her again.
And kisses for all the Dolls.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mary.
I've seen you around in several meetings and it was really nice to hear your story.
So, thank you so much for sharing that with us and I hope you're doing well.
It's really good to see you.
Thanks, along, too.
It's good to see you, too.
Thank you, Mary.
So nice to hear your story.
I appreciate that very much.
It's good to see everyone.
Yes, Mary, thank you both.
I would like to also mention that in a meeting,
Tim mentioned that next week is the rebuttal meeting.
And I didn't know if you were aware that that was said,
but it's made me giggle.
I've been looking forward to this all week.
Thank you so much for your bravery and your candor.
Thanks.
My name is Gary.
I'm an alcoholic.
I was leading a meeting at, actually, a Zoom meeting at noon in Loganville.
And would you believe, after the meeting was over,
some female that I'd never saw before knew Debbie Olmstead at NABBA
and knew this story and knew that we were put together by Debbie.
The word does get around.
That was a hoot.
You guys definitely, y'all both are a miracle.
Hopefully, we'll get Debbie on the docket in the next few weeks.
That would be great.
Hey, Mary.
You know, I've probably known you almost the entire time you've been sober,
and yet that's the first time I've heard your story.
I could just about tell Gary's story, but that's the first time I heard your story.
That's awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael.
Thank you.
Love you, too.
Thank you, Mary, for your story.
I'm Katie.
I'm an alcoholic.
We don't know each other, but I feel like I know you a lot better now,
and your journey and your courage telling your story tonight has really affected me
and really helped me.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Katie.
And, Mary, it's always great to hear.
We've got another AA story that includes Al-Anon.
We've got more than a handful on the website.
I have had to turn to Al-Anon, and actually I've seen you and Gary meet at Al-Anon meetings.
You two were the first two people that I really felt safer in Al-Anon.
When I first came in, there's some rules about, you know,
alcoholics and their sharing.
They can shut you down, you know, if you're whining and crying.
That's for sure.
I tell you what, it's done me a lot of good.
It's a wonderful program.
It really is.
Well worth your time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
So thank you.
Now, many of you may ignore me.
All you know that I am somebody who is an relative and has done something for me through
my own calf.
And you know, a lot of people have told me a lot about myrics.
I'm sticked in it for a few weeks now.
It's but.
Can't be working till I work it on out
But please, please, won't you stand enough light on me
Till I'm free from the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
As I try to make some sense
Of this world I'm up against
Well, I know my best defense is your love
When the struggle gets its day
And the lessons fall apart
Keep me calling out your name with love
But oh Lord, don't make it easy
Keep me working till I work
Work it on out
But please, please, won't you stand enough light on me
Till I'm free from the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
Keep me working till I work it on out
Keep me working till I work it on out
Keep me working till I work it on out
Keep me working till I work it on out
Well, I whisper in the dark
From the bottom of my heart
And I'm searching for one star to shine
Well, I whisper in the dark
I'll shout from mountain high
And I'll reach into the sky
Till you open up my eyes so blind
But oh Lord, don't make it easy
Keep me working till I work it on out
But please, please
Won't you shout enough loud on me
Till I'm free from the shadow of doubt
Keep me out of the shadow of doubt
More Tapes You Might Like
Discussion
Be the first to share your thoughts on this tape.