He Like Me Is Perhaps Spiritually Sick — Page 67 From the Witness Stand – Carla R.

Thank you for having me, Dane, and thank you, Sandy, for picking us up at the airport and being just the number one host. In the world, and taking good care of me and my husband, and Kathy for the beautiful gift baskets, and my husband for taking the weekend to come out here with me and celebrate with all of you. My husband was one of the gifts of the program. I met him when I, well, I knew him in AA for quite some time, but we got together when I was 21 years sober and 51 years old, so there's hope for you. I'm glad I didn't stand around tapping my foot waiting for that one, you know. I can't get sober if I don't have a boyfriend, you know. But he's the first face I want to see in the morning, he's the last face I want to see before I go to sleep at night. And it was Alcoholics Anonymous that made me ready to be able to see and accept a gift like that. It wasn't always so. And, I mean, he's perpetual. He's completely joyful. He's non-violent. He's got no recent prison experience, and I could have walked right by him, you know what I mean? I just could have missed it completely. But I didn't get here, we didn't get here until yesterday morning, because Thursday was the high school graduation for my oldest grandson. And, you know, it sort of came full circle. Eighteen years before that, I... My daughter spent the last, her senior year in high school being homeschooled because she was pregnant. She had come home, and she and her boyfriend sat in front of me, and I said, I told them they were pregnant, and they nodded, you know, and it was the first time that I was able to tell her, without all the bumps that we had gone through, it was the first time I was able, I was about seven years sober, and I was able to tell her, I'm going to be there for you no matter what. I got to be the kind of a mom that could be there for you no matter what. I'm going to be there for you no matter what you decide, I'm going to be there. So on her graduation day, when she was in her cap and gown, my father, my daughter, and me were holding her baby while she graduated high school, and Thursday we came full circle and he graduated. So thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous. And a whole bunch of stuff in between, you know, an hour is not long enough to do justice to all that I've done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We sort of wrap this thing up like some bad chapter of law and order. You know, we get the law and the order, and boom, we're done. But if you've been around a while, you know what I mean. You know, it takes the tincture of time, and if you're new, I just want to tell you to be patient. They told me it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. So come in here and sit with us, and the fellowship is what we do while we're waiting for the steps to take, while we're waiting for that internal, inside job. to happen were with the fellowship, and I'm just so grateful that we have it. I was one of those who wondered when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. My sobriety date, by the way, is September 25th, 1987, so I've been here a little while. I haven't always done it perfect, but I'm still here. A little, I don't know. My home group is Sober on the Rock group of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's in Sunland. We live in Tujunga, but Sunland is right down the street, and it's on Monday night, 730, if you're ever out there in Sunland, California, come and visit us. It's a little over a year old, and it was just time for us to plant another flag of Alcoholics Anonymous and see what happened. We're getting a lot of enthusiasm, and it's great to be a part of. As we move to the front of the line in our 20s, we're sort of like David said this afternoon, we're in the middle of the herd now. We've got a lot of people with 40 and 50 and almost 60 years of service. There's sobriety in AA now, but as we move to the front of the line, I am more responsible, more responsible. I need the hand of AA always to be there no matter what, so we started this little meeting. If you're ever out there, come and visit us. I was one of those people who all kind of wondered when I first got here, why am I an alcoholic? Is it my crazy, dark, dramatic, violent, perverted family? If you had my family, you'd drink too, and now I found out that that'll give you an inventory, but it doesn't make me alcoholic. My husband comes from a family who just had everything they wanted, everything they needed. They didn't have too many of those deviant bumps, and yet he sits right next to me in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. What makes us different is just the fact that what makes me alcoholic is that allergy of the body and that obsession of the mind. I finally, finally end up in that horrible state, that horrible, torturous, alcoholic state where I'm either drinking or thinking about drinking. Drinking or thinking about drinking. Drinking or thinking about drinking. I don't want you to think my childhood was all bad, though anyway, I had a great time in elementary school, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade were just terrific. My mom was a single mother by that time of two girls, and we moved around a lot for the rent, so I was a new kid on the block, and I found my way in just by participating, by raising my hand and jumping in. Whatever it was we were doing, I needed to get in there. And that was okay. When I started to get in that edge, you know, where whatever it is we're doing, now I gotta be first. I gotta be the best. I gotta be the most. I gotta be on top. I gotta be in charge. By the time sixth grade was over, I was tired and I needed a drink, you know what I mean? Because when you're running the world and you're ten, that's a big job. And I got my first social resentment behind a game of Spin the Model soon after that. Going up into junior high. I don't even think they play that game these days. Drinking. Drinking. Drinking. They just get right down to business, don't they, but. But I was at a friend's house and we were passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey, and these weren't my first drinks. They weren't the first drinks I ever took, but these were the ones where I really started to make the connection that alcohol would do something for me that I couldn't do for myself. So we're spinning the bottle and the bottle landed on me and I went off into the bedroom with one of the boys. We were both doing the same thing as far as I could tell, but when we came back out of that bedroom, they called him again. a player and me a slut. And I did not think that was fair. I still don't think it's fair if you want to know the truth, but every sponsor I've ever had has told me the fair comes around once a year and it lasts two weeks. That's all you get for fair. So I got a reputation I didn't understand in junior high. And you know, when you're a kid like that, your reputation runs through school like wildfire. You know, boys my age were looking at me funny, so were the girls. And I just didn't, I didn't understand those unwritten rules, you know, that a lot of people seemed to get right away. I was kind of self-centered. Never occurred to me to ask those those pertinent questions, you know, like, do you have a girlfriend? You know, it just never occurred to me. And why would that matter? So I got my feelings hurt. And what happened then, just like what happens now when I get my feelings hurt, my pride kicks in. I start to back away from my life while I fight, and then I back away. And I just start to let go. And I start to let go. And, you know, and I have to say that I wasn't a stupid kid. I mean, I was a straight-A student. School was my refuge. School was where I went when I wanted to get away from home. And it was just so, you know, I was good at it. I was good at academics and sports and everything. And I just began to let go and to start to live that double life that we talk about. Any gifts or talents or anything that I was given by God, I began to trade away for the effect that alcohol would produce. I started spending more time in the girls' room than I did in the classroom. And I started to hang out with the other girls who were backing away from their lives. And after a while, I just let go completely. And I started to be found out on the on-ramps of the freeways going east and west and north and south. And I'd stick my little thumb out there. And, you know, and I disguised, I rationalized that as like being a gypsy soul. You know, that's what I was. I'm a gypsy soul. And I was 12, so. And I'd hop in the car or the truck going wherever with whoever, and I'd be on my way to somewhere else, which is my favorite place to be. On my way. That's where the hope is, right? Just up the road. And consequently, I started spending a little time in the Southern California hot spots, like the Indio Jail and Riverside Juvenile Hall and LA Central Juvenile Hall and like that. And we did the dance of sending me home to mom and home to dad. And we did that for a while until after a while, the courts just took over. When I was 14, I found myself in a place called North Beach in the San Francisco area. And I was in a place called North Beach in the San Francisco area. A lot of you old hippies know where that is. And we got a long ride all the way from Santa Barbara up to San Francisco. And this guy dropped us right off in the middle of this party town, a friend of mine and I. And we weren't on that street 10 minutes. You know, we looked around and we saw hookers and dealers and pimps. Oh, my. And we weren't on that street 10 minutes before a couple of guys offered us, approached us and 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 our book talks about our alcoholic life seeming the only normal one. And it certainly was that way for me. I started to walk deeper and deeper into that life. And it seemed to make more sense. More people were out there doing what I knew to do than to try to go back home and reintegrate into my old life. I just couldn't get back into that community. So, you know, I just went for it. And by the time I was 15, I was admitted to a mental hospital. And I was admitted to a mental hospital. And I was admitted to a mental hospital by a court-appointed psychiatrist. And they were not talking to me a lot about alcoholism. They were talking to me about disorders. I was a very disordered-looking child. I was alternately violent and withdrawn and living with a level of frustration down in my gut I didn't even know how to talk about. And I didn't know I had alcoholism. And they didn't know I had alcoholism. It wasn't until another 14, 15 years later when I finally washed up on the shores of Alcoholics Anonymous that when I finally washed up on the shores of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was I heard you talking. I heard someone say in AA that they felt like a scream without a mouth. I got it. I thought, you know. You know. But they didn't know it back then. And so I'm in this hospital. I'm supposed to be there for two weeks observation. I ended up being there for a year. I just sort of made myself at home and moved in. And they were giving me daily nutritional supplements of Thorazine, Melaril, Valium, Dalmain sleepers. I suppose they were concerned I wouldn't sleep. And I had become familiar with five-point restraints. And that's what I look like at 15. If you don't want to go crazy in the Nuthouse you've got to get busy. Now got to, I call it a Nuthouse. I call it, it was a mental hospital. It was not a treatment center. They didn't have very many treatment centers back then, and certainly not for adolescents. So I was thrown in there with a lot of kids who had some serious illnesses. Untreated I look a lot like them. Serious manic depression. Real schizophrenia. You know, and untreated I look a lot like them. So they don't know what to do with me. And I don't know if I'm one of them or one of me. I don't know what I am. But if you don't want to go crazy, you've got to get busy. And one of my favorite ways to be busy, I've already told you, was boys. Now, I loved all the boys, but my favorites were those sexy smoldering types. You know the kind. Don't we, David? They just sit back there and simmer. You know, you just never really know when they're going to blow. And I used to find them so exciting, you know. Now, today I know that feeling is fear. So I stay away. But I used to find them very exciting. But the trouble with guys like that in the nuthouse is that, you know, they don't stay for long because they blow. They're trying to lay low in the nuthouse, but they're hiding from a junior prison sentence, and eventually they blow. So, you know, because they don't know what else to do. They don't have any tools. You know, my first boyfriend, he blew, and he threw a chair through the big plate glass window of the boys' unit. And my next boyfriend, he blew, and he threw a nurse through the big plate glass window of the boys' unit. So that was progressive, too. I don't know about you, but I've always thought I should have a soundtrack to my life. You know, music playing in the background of all this drama. We used to sit around and play those sentimental jailhouse songs, you know, like, Ooh, when will I see you again? And press our little faces up against the big bay window and long for what we couldn't have in the boys' unit across the pool. After all, that's where it is, right there, in that anticipation, right? It's in that, as soon as I get that, I'm going to be okay, right? Never going to end the getting. You're never in the getting. You get it, you've got to get another one. That wasn't enough, right? So, always that. But I remember one afternoon sitting outside on the smoke break bench, and I was watching my boyfriend, Terry, being cuffed and escorted off by security. He's leaving the Nuthouse now. He's off. He's off to YA. And I'm heartbroken. I can't believe it. And so I'm channeling Greta Garbo and smoking my tragic cigarettes and watching this whole terrible scene go down. I just can't believe it's happening. And just inside the girls' unit, I could hear Diana Ross singing at top decibel, touch me in the morning, then just walk away. It took me a long time to realize I was brokenhearted and blue before I ever had a real date. Because it's what goes on in here. It's what I'm looking with. It's what I'm looking at, what I'm looking with. And the trouble with that is that every time I'm looking at, I'm looking out there for what I think is going to fix me. And I'm always about half a bubble off what it is I think I'm looking at anyway. You know, I'd mistake arrogance for confidence. I'd mistake sex for love. I'd mistake brute strength for strength. I'd mistake the character. And I'd get it up in my hot little hands and it would just dissolve where I stood because it wasn't it. It wasn't it. I had to come to Alcoholics Anonymous to learn that it's when I'm thinking of you, when I'm trying to see what you might need, trying to help you that that gaping hole in my soul gets smaller. Never going to come from out there. Even if it did for a minute, there wouldn't be enough. So it was a long walk from there to here. I went from the girls' unit to the co-ed unit to the unit where they put the kids. They just don't know what to do with anymore. And I was, like I said, I turned sweet 16 in the nut house and eventually went over that wall too and spent most of my adolescence in one rehab or another. They're just trying to fix me. My dad used to say, they're just trying to buy you some time, Carla. Just trying to buy you time. And maybe that's true. Maybe that's true. I come from a family where my baby sister died of suicide at 17. My baby brother died of drug addiction and alcoholism at 30. And I have one remaining sibling who, who may or may not be able to stop drinking, we don't know yet, but she's just diagnosed with, just had a double mastectomy and can't stop drinking. Can't stop drinking. We drink against our will. So at the end of all of this locking up and, oh, jeez, just always sitting in front of a judge waiting for placement, waiting for placement. You know, it just, might as well stamp that on my forehead. And I ended up in this girls' unit. I was home at the end of all of that. And here's where I want to tell you that I've always believed in God. I've always known that there was some great power that runs in and around and through us. I knew that when I was a small child, I felt the presence of God. I knew that something like that existed, but I just didn't know how to tap in and maintain that, that conscious contact. I didn't know, I was born into a Southern Baptist home, and that religion worked very well for my mother till the day she died four years ago. But I couldn't hear it. I tried being a Catholic for a couple of years. I was a Catholic for a couple of weeks in the fourth grade, you know. Then I got tired of that and traded sides and burned black candles and prayed to the other guy for a while, you know. Just trying to hedge my bets is all. I just want to be on the side that's winning. I didn't really care. But in the meantime, I'm taking these drinks, you know. I'm drinking, and once I discovered that the effect that alcohol would produce, it did all that for me. You know, it connected me right up. It connected me right up to that power. It seemed to give me the illusion that I was connected again. You know, alcohol did the growing up for me. It did the maturing for me. It was cool for me. It smoothed the edges off my life. And after I had a few drinks, I didn't care what God's will was anyway. I just moved right through. But by the time I got to this girl's home, I'm 17, and I, you know, I've developed this sort of idea of a power greater than myself. And it was a combination of what I thought the 60s might have been had I been a Christian. I've been out there in them. I was 12 in 1969, so they were over by the time I got out in the world. But I loved the spirit. You know, I loved what I thought they were. I watched the news. I saw them. Those people marched. They marched. They said no. They stood up, didn't they? They had character. They stood up. They had peace and love and flowers and free love. And I wanted what they had. There was Crosby, Stills, and Nash and the Grateful Dead. And then there was Kung Fu. David Carradine, Kung Fu. Boy, I got some of my most spiritual lessons from that TV show. And if you don't know who I'm talking about, you ought to rent it on Netflix. You know, I mean, this dude, he was a Buddhist priest, and he walked the Wild West in bare feet. You know, he was tough. He was tough. And he was Chinese, so there was a lot of prejudice back then, you know, in the old Wild West. And whole groups of guys would greet him with great hostility. You know, he'd walk up. He'd walk into a new town. And they'd just see him coming. And they'd just assault him verbally and talk to him in a horrible way. And he would just let pearls of Buddhist wisdom roll off his tongue. He'd just say a few little words, you know. And they'd change. And they'd go off to help somebody, you know. That is power. That's real power. And then he'd walk to another town. And whole groups of guys would greet him with great hostility again. And they'd assault him physically this time. And when he did that, he kicked their butts. And I wanted what he had. It seemed to me he was the strength and serenity personified. So this is what's going on in my head. I'm 17. This is my higher power at 17. And what's more than that, more baffling to me at this age than it ever was, was that all of our friends said, man, those people moved to Oregon. I thought, there's people. There's real people who know what I'm talking about. And they're in Oregon. So we went out the second story window of that girl's home. Down the tree and into Randy's truck. And off to Oregon where God might be. And we were up there for a little while. My friends rented a little house. And they let me come with them. And two things happened that I certainly couldn't see while it was happening. But I see it looking back with respect to alcoholism. And one was that I couldn't always drink the way I needed to drink. And when I had no booze, and I had no steps of fellowship with God in my understanding, I was restless, irritable, and discontent. Very hard to get along. When I went without booze for any period of time, my skin didn't fit anymore. And my life quickly became your fault. And it was very, very, just no fun. And the other thing that happened was when we could drink the way I needed to drink, I was always overshooting the mark. I couldn't guarantee if I was going to have two or 22. And after a while, my friends had to ask me to leave. And I was asked to leave a lot after that. And I ended up in a roundabout way back down to my father's house at about over 17 years old. And against his better judgment, he let me stay there for just a little while. Every morning, we'd get up at the same time, and he'd take off for work. And I'd go sit in his den. And I'd drink from his liquor cabinet until he'd come home in the afternoon. And he'd see me sitting in the very spot where he left me that afternoon or that morning. And I'd see that brokenhearted look in his eyes. And I would have nothing to say for myself. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know I was afraid. I didn't know how to tell him I didn't know where the last few years of my life had gone. I didn't know. And right before my 18th birthday, he came to me, and he said what I know were the hardest words he ever had to say to his oldest daughter, and that's, I'm not going to watch you die, and I'm not going to help you do it. You've got to go. And on my way out the door, all I could remember was that one of the counselors at the rehab had told me I was a great actress. And I know today I must have misunderstood, but I ended up on Hollywood Boulevard. And there's not a lot of auditioning going on out there. I can promise you that. I was 18 years old, starting my days off with a pint of pop-pop vodka, and I would go wherever the day took me. And some days, it was a party. And some days, it was just surviving. There was not a lot of hope about it getting any different. And to this day, I love driving down Sunset Boulevard. I love getting to go through Hollywood, and I see a whole new generation of the same girl sitting out there with very little hope about it getting any different. And I get to say a prayer of gratitude for myself and a prayer of hope for her that maybe someday she'll get to find what I found here in AA, if alcoholism is her problem. A few months into that, I met a man walking down Hollywood Boulevard, and I saw the light in his eyes. And I didn't realize it was orange sunshine. But we hit it off, and I moved in with him that night, and I didn't even know his last name. And six weeks later, he's asking me to leave, and I still don't know his last name. But I like to bring him up, because years later, he was on my eight-step list. He was someone who came to mind very quickly and clearly that I owed him amends. He'd been nothing but kind to me, and I was just that tornado, that proverbial tornado that just went through his life, and he'd just done nothing but try to help me. So I spent the last part of my first year of sobriety looking for him. And I found him. I found him. I found him. And I couldn't find him, of course, anywhere I looked. And my sponsor finally said, you're going to have to leave that alone. You've got to set that down for a while. And if you're supposed to find that guy, you'll find him, but in God's time, not yours. But in the meantime, there are a few things you can do to help yourself, to change. And if you're supposed to find him, you'll find him. But right now, you're kind of spinning your wheels. So why don't you try being a friend to a man in a vertical fashion? Why don't you start there? And... You know, that's the fellowship, until that internal conversion, you know? And I've got to tell you, all these years later, all these years later, there's no room I can't walk into anywhere in the world and hold my head up. You know, I love that feeling of self-respect, and you can't take that from me. I can give it away, but you can't take it. Right up there with that feeling of being useful is that feeling of self-respect. And I learned that here, as a side effect of doing what you suggested. Okay? That's what I do to save my own life. That was a long time to come, and well, right before my 13th A.A. birthday, I had to go give a talk on the other side of town, and it was a hot Sunday afternoon, and I didn't feel like going. And thank God, you guys have taught me it's not how I feel, it's what I do that matters. And I went out and I gave that talk, and of course, I felt better. When the thank you line came through at the end of that meeting, this man stopped, and he said, hey, where were you in 1976? And it was a guy who said, I don't know. I was in 1996, and it was a guy from Hollywood Boulevard, standing in front of me with eight and a half years of sobriety, and I was almost 13. So only a very well, yeah, I like that. So only a very well-organized, loving God could have made that happen when I, in all my efforts to get it done, just couldn't get it done. God's time, not mine. That was a long time to come, and I, well, I got to make direct amends to him. And he said, oh my God, Carla, that's long forgiven. Long forgotten. I just can't believe you're still alive, you know? And he's right. You know, if we're in this room today, somehow, someway, we're the lucky ones, you know? We've managed to slip through that window of grace one more day to come in here and sit together and recharge and regroup and see what we can go back out there and pack into the stream of life. And I left Hollywood, and I was going to change. I wanted to change. You know, it's, our book talks about us having moral and philosophical convictions galore, but I couldn't live up to it. I couldn't live up to them as much as I might have wished. I wanted to be that. I didn't want to be who I was. I was never going to be that. I was never going to be this. I want to be that, and I am this. I want to be that, and I have to be this. I'm stuck. I'm stuck with me. And I left, and I hooked up with another boyfriend from another rehab, because that's where they keep the boyfriends, you know, in the rehabs. And we're the kind of drunks who live by the side of the road, and, you know, we drink until we pass out. And we moved into a tent in the mountains in southern Oregon, and then moved up into a roofless cabin just five miles in and five miles up a mountain, and threw a plastic tarp over the top of this, and called it a skylight, and then the baby came. We had this little girl, and, you know, we live on the fringes, and we don't know how to get along. We love the idea of peace and love and all that stuff. We just couldn't stop knocking the heck out of each other really long enough to implement the principles fully of peace and love. And we had this little girl, and I thought having this little girl was gonna change the way I drank. Of course, it's gotta be little girl, and then booze and everything else. And we all know that alcoholism doesn't care who you love. And it quickly became booze and little girl and everything else. And she 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 had to be better somewhere else. And we were up in Idaho, and I'm tending bar and I'm cocktail waitressing. I'm trying to get back into the legitimate world. And what better way for an alcoholic to live in the legitimate world than to be a bartender and a cocktail waitress? And it never occurred to me not to drink on the job. Why else would you have those jobs? It just seemed to me that whatever power was working in my life was being quite efficient, if you want to know what I thought. I still couldn't bring home enough money to pay rent for more than a week at a time because I drank it. And my kid was one of those kids that you see in her T-shirt and underwear and yesterday's lunch down the front of it because her mom's not paying attention. And so I'm dragging her from pillar to post and we're living in the rent-by-the-week motels and I get her back down in L.A. and I'm renting a room for my aunt in Covina and I've got a job in Hollywood tending bars about 40 miles away from where we're living. You know, not a terribly long way, but you've got to take a break. You know, driving out there, you've got to take a break about 20 miles in and stop and have a few drinks to get ready to go do my shift. By that time, my daughter's almost four years old and I leave her with my aunt every day, kiss her goodbye and take off. And I'd stop at that halfway point for those afternoon drinks before my shift, those shots of Cuervo Gold and Bud Bax and hang out for a while and then get up every day like clockwork and go off to work and do my job and crawl back home. One afternoon, like I had done every day for months and months, I kissed my girl goodbye and I took off for that bar in Hollywood and stopped at that same halfway point, had those same shots of Gold and the same Bud Bax. To this day, I don't know what was different on that day from the day before except for 24 hours because I didn't hate that job in Hollywood and I didn't love my daughter any less. I didn't love my daughter any less on that day. than I love her today. But I sat on that barstool and I drank those drinks and I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop drinking long enough to get up and go take care of business in either direction. So I sat on the barstool and I lost them both in one fell swoop. The kid and the job were gone. And I stayed and I lived off the kindness of strangers there in that little area in that city for a little while until I fell into another job at another dive bar. And I was trying it all. I thought after that I met a man that I would marry. I thought maybe if I got married, maybe if I got out of the bar business. It's just business. It's just business that's doing it. Maybe if he and I got married and I made my life look like I thought yours was. Get the kid back. Put it all back together again. Let's do that. And he and I got married about the time we should have split up and we moved into that little apartment and we became the neighborhood entertainment. We settled our arguments with a shotgun and that's how it worked. Whoever gets to the gun first wins. That's how it goes. And my first exposure to AA that I could remember. Now I was exposed to AA. Many times before that in over the years I've remembered. But but my first exposure during this marriage was I wasn't ready to hear it. I must have been getting ready to hear it now. But he and I got in a fight in a bar where we used to drink. And I ended up with some black eyes and broken ribs. And nobody in that bar feeling sorry for me. Just glad I was leaving. And my husband picked me up and took me to the hospital. And I got fixed up one more time and he brought me home. And then he had to leave for work that weekend. And before he left, he set me up with a giant ice chest full of beer and a bottle of Beefeater gin chilling on top. And now I'm drinking gin because tequila had been making me really mean. You understand. And I don't know if we have any drunk dialers in the room. But he had to leave for work that weekend and he's gone. And I'm drinking the gin and dialing the phone. And I don't know all of who I called. But I know I felt like a battered woman. So I called a battered woman shelter and asked the woman who answered the phone to fix my life. And she asked me if I'd ever been to an AA meeting. And I don't know how she made that leap, but she did. And I went to that AA meeting with everything but readiness. I went in there and I sat and I listened. And I heard the woman talk for about 45 minutes. And all I heard her say was that somewhere during her drinking career, she switched to beer. So I did. I thought AA said switch to beer. And it really kind of made sense to me. I had a kind of warped sense of thinking. I wasn't ready to quit completely, you know. And beer is really not drinking as far as I was concerned. I mean, it was more like a breakfast food, you know. In fact, I mean, it's got hops and barley and grains. And it's more like a whole grain breakfast food is what it is. So if you're not drinking beer, you know. And it gave me the illusion I was controlling my drinking. It allowed me to drink for another couple, almost two years. It gave me the illusion I was controlling it. My husband and I got the kid back for better or worse. He wasn't her father, but he helped me get the kid back right before I got sober. Just a couple years later, we ended up one more time across town in a little apartment. And the cops in the driveway one more time. And the neighbors peeking out their windows wondering what's going on at Charlie and Carla's house one more time. The kid's standing over in the corner in her mismatched clothes and her unkempt hair. And she got that look of fear in her eyes one more time. And I can't tell her it's going to be any different. Hadn't been different in a very long time. And the husband left. They took the gun. The cops took the gun. They left. Everybody's gone. It's me and the kid and the booze. And I can't stop drinking. And I know it's got something to do with what's going on here. But I just, I can't stop drinking. And my first sponsor told me if I wanted to affect a conscious contact with the power greater, than myself, that I could start by counting the coincidences that happened in my life. And one of the first ones 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 fight go down and that weekend. And she came over a couple days later and knocked on my door. And she brought me a big book and a 12 and 12. And she just sat on my couch and she told me her story. And she was just a woman properly armed with the facts about herself. And she sat on my couch and she told me her story. And in her story I heard me. She talked about her drinking. And I heard mine. And I had seen with my own eyes over the last year that she wasn't drinking anymore. But what impressed me more about that was it didn't seem to bother her that she wasn't drinking. And that got my attention. You know, because God, you know, when I am not drinking and I've got no steps or fellowship or God or my understanding, I feel like you've stripped the coating off my wires. You know what I mean? I feel oversensitive and underloved. And I don't know what you meant by that or why you looked at me that way. And my head closes in on me from there. And it gets loud and it gets tight. And sooner or later, you know, I just, the only relief I know, no matter how small that window of relief is in that first drink, I know it's going to be about ten minutes. It's going to be a good ten minutes. I don't have to invite trouble anymore. Trouble comes to visit me unsolicited. I can't guarantee if I'm going to have two or twenty-two, but I'm going to have to take that drink because I've got nothing that stands between me and that first one. And then the second, the first one takes the second. So I don't know how her twelve thinly veiled Sunday school sentences are going to have any effect on me in the face of what I've become. I mean, it just seems so pale. It seemed like I'd heard them all before, and I had. I'd heard all, these are not new principles, but they certainly are packaged differently. Packaged very simple. And I needed simple when I walked in here. I need simple. So she walked away and left me that afternoon in my apartment. And it was about a week and a half later, I just didn't go back and buy any more booze. And I shook and started to shake it out one weekend. And the kid was somewhere else that weekend, and I was alone. And I just shook. And I don't know why. I just stayed. And I shook into Monday and shook into Tuesday. And by Tuesday afternoon, I was wondering what to do. I was real sick. Stark, raving sober. Those terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair. and I went back to my neighbor and I asked her what to do and she set me up to a meeting not far away and I went up in there and I sat way back by the exit sign just in case and the hope I heard that night in that room came in the form of small talk and I don't know why that was but it just did you guys seemed to care about each other on the face of things you seemed to care about each other I heard you asking each other how you doing didn't your kid start a new school yesterday how's he doing didn't you have a job interview how'd that go how's your lawn really your lawn could my life ever be so elegant as simple as to be concerned about a lawn other than to sleep on you know do you have a big book who's your sponsor how you doing and at the end of that meeting the secretary asked me to do something she asked me to read just like these kids up here read you know and I and I said yes I said yes for the first time and as I read I came into the room just a little bit just like I do every time I say yes to something you asked me to do and I say yes a lot because it keeps me in the rooms all these years later it keeps me in a posture of hearing and delivering the message yes I'll make coffee yes I'll leave yes I'll read yes I'll go find a job yes I'll find that newcomer and I got a sponsor and I started to take the steps with my sponsor and about nine months sober I was able to make that first round of amends to my family and my family has required a lot of follow up you know I followed up on breaking their hearts for a good long time and now I owe them to this day there's not one member of my family who will stand in the doorway and say no please don't go to the meeting you know they never say that in my family but this is where I really want to keep running and I was able to show that I was correct when I told the pastor after he wanted to go and speak with me because it's no longer important if man and woman, if it's not his advice then I will leave you enjoy this other time I was waiting for you to do it and you dare to do anything with you when I did end up again each time he wanted to do a 100 sleep I knew he knew he was being taught he knew he was closer than I had known when he became an adult he'd not talk at all and that's what started happening when I didn't get through like better than mine is yours. And I'll tell you why that is for me, because in your eyes, I see redemption and I see forgivability and I see lovability and I see growth where I don't always see it in myself. And something very special happens when I get to share my story with you. And then I could see your story turn around. I see the light come on in your eyes and the fire burns brighter in me. And I'm just a big believer that we got to give it away to get it. And I hope that if you're new, you'll stay long enough to have that experience. I know that a spiritual experience for me a lot of times has been very uncomfortable. You know, it feels a lot like a nervous breakdown. So I get them confused, you know. But to stay and we'll walk you through it. After a couple of years, I'd had you guys, but my daughter didn't have anybody really. And she was starting to, you know, find her sense of family and camaraderie out in the street. She'd been jumped into a gang. She started to come home at all. Hours of the night. She was 11, almost 12 years old. She was coming home beat up and bloody. And she's finding her life out in the street where I used to. And I was getting worried. And it took more than just, you know, the fellowship of AA was great, but it took, it needed something else. It needed something in addition. And so I had found a treatment center, found a treatment center to put her in. They were, it was kind of an experimental deal and they were treating kids like her. And I had to lie to her to get her in there. But I went in there and I was signing what I thought. I was signing her life away. And as I was signing these papers to put her in there, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I looked up and it was a guy from my home group who was the recreation guy there in this program. And so I felt a little better about turning her over to you in disguise. And she was there six months and we got to work on our relationship. And there were some days that she told me how much she hated me. And there were some days she told me how much she loved me. And it was for me to show up. It was for me to make myself available to her, whether she was going to see me or not. It was for me to stand up and do that. I had not been the kind of a mother I swore I would never be, you know. Or I had become the mother I had swore I'd never be. And she got out and she wanted to go live with her dad for a little while so I had to let her and step out of the way and stop talking about her father, you know, in the derogatory way I had been. And, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, does not remove the problems from my life. It just has allowed me to live a life, you know, awaken alive. And the awakening has to continue. And I hold on. And my God has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger over the years. He's had to. I came here, the bewildered one that the 12 and 12 talks about. I came here with so many disjointed ideas of what God was. And I had to start over with just calling him God and let him get as big as he needs to be in my life. And our second step says we choose to believe that God's everything that we have. And we choose to believe that God's everything that we have. He's everything or he's nothing. And if God's everything, there's nothing else. I'm a part of that. I'm a part of the everything. At five years sober, I came home late from the gym one night and I went to bed as usual. And I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a man standing over my bed with a knife to my neck and his hand over my mouth. And he said, don't say a word or I'll cut your head off. And he took the telephone cord and he tied my hands behind my back and he raped me and he robbed me in my room that night. And I want to tell you at five years of sobriety, I had a much bigger God than I got here with. And I got to call on him during that time. And I had learned in AA that, you know, God is with me, whether I like what's going on or not, that God doesn't leave the room and that I could call on him. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew that things were as they should be. And this guy was there for a little while and a few hours. And after a little while, we got into a little wrestling match and I ran for the living room and my bolt lock on my front door stuck, but, but it was enough to shake him up a little bit. And instead of getting mad or he went out the window, he went out the same window. He came in and, and it turned out that I knew this guy. I'd watched this guy get sober. I 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 when I watched him join the church and leave AA behind. And when he went out, he went out like that. And what I choose to learn from that is that while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right, this is where I learned the terms and conditions of my disease. This is where I learned that I'm not one of those people who can go home after a Sunday sermon and have a glass of wine. I come here and I remember who and what I am, and then I can go anywhere I want to and practice in addition to, but not instead of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's for me. Um, they caught him a couple of weeks after that and I'd had a sponsor up till then. I, he was a man, his name was Lee and he'd been my sponsor for a few years by that time. He was just one of those good old boys who say things like, well, that's going to feel a whole lot better as soon as it quits hurting. And, uh, you know, he just sort of, sort of rolled with the punches and I loved him. You know, I watched him two years ago, bury his son who died of alcoholism. And I watched him do it with the dignity and grace that Alcoholics Anonymous affords us. And I watched him go about helping other people who might relate to him. Well, after he buried his son. But he helped me find Marguerite. It was time for me to get a woman and he knew it. And we, I asked Marguerite, he walked me right up to her because it wasn't a sponsor. She didn't believe sponsorship is ownership. It's just, we just help each other get to the next place. And I asked Marguerite, the first thing she said was, you're going to have to forgive this guy, you know? And I know she's right. At five years of sobriety, I know that we're people who can't handle even seemingly justifiable resentments, you know, but how, how do I let this go? Because at five years of sobriety, I'm still like on, uh, you know, I've got a hair trigger still. And I, you know, anger is my favorite way to, to respond to, uh, some of these things. When I get that afraid, anger is my favorite. It makes me feel like I've got a purpose and like you can't hurt me. And I'm very, very focused, but I know I got to let it go. I know that I, it's like a suit that doesn't fit anymore. I can't be angry and I can't not be angry. And so I stand at another crossroads. And the only thing, the only remedy that we could come up with at the time was a seven step prayer. And that became my mantra. And I'm looking for the way I'm looking for that little, little, little tiny crack of light in the doorway. And like I said, there was a trial that followed. 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, including my ex-husband. And that's, that's the mark I'd left on him was the fact that he was more inclined to testify on behalf of the rapist than he was for me. And he's never been interested in any of my amends, but that has to be okay now. And then we had to get a character witness for me. To testify on behalf of me, as to who I was at five years sober, because he, you know, all the stuff he talked about, man, did not make me look good. By that time, I was working at a big financial firm, downtown Los Angeles. It's a place I never even would have walked in the front doors of years before. I would have had no business being there. It's a big fancy place. Henry Kissinger walked the halls. He was on the board of directors. And yet I walked in there for six years. I walked through those halls and did my job undetected. They didn't know. And so the division head of the department where I worked came and he, and he volunteered to testify on my behalf. And they told him all about who I used to be. And he said, yeah, but she shows up early and she stays late. And she was where she said she was. And see, that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself. He didn't have to be coached. He just got up and told the truth as he'd experienced it through me. And then it was my turn to testify. And I'm still looking for the window of forgiveness. I'm still looking at how to let, looking for how to let go. How do I let go? Not, not to be so in the witness stands, and not be so defensed, not to be so guarded, not to be so. I know how resentment colors my present. I know how, resentment of the past can make the, the present look skewed, but on my own will, on my own, own unaided will, I can't do it. And so I'm sitting in the witness stand and I look out and I see him, I see him sitting at the defense table, and that's a place where I've sat before and I could sit again, I could easily sit again and why to take a drink. to me. That recipe for forgiveness we've got on page 67. You know, I saw he like me, he like me is perhaps spiritually sick. I could be sitting in the same place. And forgiveness comes not from a hilltop, not from a spiritual hilltop, from a better than place, but from an I am you place. And what happened for me was we became two alcoholics sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom. And just like that crack of light under the doorway, I started to be able to let that grow. And it took about 18 months. But over time, that fear and that anger and all of that stuff subsided, those nightmares and everything attendant to something like that subsided. Now, he was sentenced to 20 years and he did 17. And since then, he's not been able to stay out of prison. I know it works in prison because I've had the privilege of going in there and talking to some of those guys. You know, I've talked to lifers, you know, I've gone in there. And the first time I went in to tell that I did not want to tell this story. I didn't want to tell them that I was the one who testified on behalf or against somebody. And I went in and I told them because you told me to say yes and you told me to show up. And I went in and those guys came in around me after it was over. And he said, and they all said, you're in the safest place you could be. And I got to find out that with Alcoholics Anonymous, through Alcoholics Anonymous, they've been able to make themselves available to each other, stay sober themselves and make themselves available to each other and the people that they'd harmed in prison. And some of those guys are never getting out. And they walk free spiritually. The detective who worked this 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, you keep doing it because it seems to be working. And see, that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself. I've made a lot of mistakes in my sobriety, but thank God for the inventory and the amend steps. You know, I get to be responsible. There's a remedy for it all. When I take that fourth step, I'm going to have to be responsible. When I take that fourth step, there's a remedy for it all. When I take that fourth step. It takes the sting, or a tenth step. It takes the sting out of any responsibility or any anger, any resentment that I might have. It takes the sting out and I can live. I can live and walk free. You know, even though for some times I can still, you know, kid myself into thinking it's easy to drag you guys around for a little while. My daughter came back to live with me and like I told you, I got to be present at the birth of my first grandson and my youngest grandson will be 13 this year and I got to sit with those boys and watch their mother graduate from college, or I mean from, yeah, from Cal Poly Pomona just a couple years ago and she wanted to be a probation officer for a while, but now she wants to be a marriage and family therapist and help people, help put families back together. You know, that apple ran screaming from this tree really and my father doesn't have to sit up. He doesn't have to spend nights anymore watching the news to make sure his daughter's name isn't on the list of the victims of the serial killers of the day. You know, he sleeps well and he knows why. And my mom was the hardest. You know, it just seemed like it was so hard to take, stay on my side of the street, you know, with her, even though I knew I'd broken her heart, but it just, I don't know, mom and daughter stuff or whatever. About two years before I got sober, my baby sister committed suicide at the age of 17 and it took her all weekend to die and while she would lay in the hospital on life support, the family would gather and they would go to the hospital and they would go to the hospital and they would go to the hospital and they would go to the hospital and they would go to the hospital and they would gather in the waiting room and then I'd go out to the parking lot where the booze was in my van and then I'd drink and I'd go back into the waiting room and I'd just rake my mother across the coals and I'd talk to her in a way a daughter should never talk to her mother, especially when her baby lay dying in the next room and I don't know how you make amends for that really except that I started by calling her once a week in my first year of sobriety and trying to find out how I might add to her life instead of take for a change. And it required some listening, some real close listening. She didn't know what she was talking about. And over time we became very close. And by the time she died just about four, almost four years ago, we were clean and clear. And I know that for sure. Well, we got so close that a few years ago when my baby brother died of this disease, 30 years old, 6'10", 160 pounds, laying on life support, his heart disintegrating from doing crank and he wasn't going to stop drinking mercifully when he died, I got to go out and be the kind of a daughter my mother needed while she buried yet a second child. And I don't know what kind of pain that is for a parent. And I don't know what kind of pain that is for a mother. But I know that this time because of Alcoholics Anonymous I got to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Sobriety is rock and roll, isn't it? I've made my own problems. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but every once in a while I start to take myself a little bit too seriously. Maybe it doesn't happen in this room, I don't know, but it does for me, you know. That perfectionism crawls in and, you know, you just like, my sponsees are, I want, if I can't be perfect, they're going to be, and work the steps or die. And they're like, I don't want to call her, you call her. I love her, but I don't want to call her, you call her. Then I know it's time to find something new to relax, you know, take the steps back up. I've always had to do something physical and Bill talked about this, too, and I love that littler book The Language of the Heart. It's an ongoing narrative of what his life was like and what sobriety was like and what he saw and our emotional sobriety. So I've gone from it anyway and he talks about how exercise gives us that Serotonin that we go to and that's the tip we take. I mean, for example, serotonin there for the macht, Sera. And how it neighborhoods us and does our ways of life down our way. Whatever. Unless, for helps kind of replace that, so exercise is real good for us. I've been in the gym, and I've been rollerblading. Rollerblading was kind of a contemplative meditation for me, you know, that practice that step 11, you know, shh, shh, shh, shh. You see the curb, you lift your foot. You don't argue with the curb. The curb exists. Shh, shh, shh. Tried surfing for a little while. My friend Lisa says that surfing is kind of like being in a domestically violent relationship without actually having to have a boyfriend, and she was right about that. So I had to find something else, and I fell into a dance studio. I fell into a dance studio, a ballroom dance studio, no less, and I found myself taking a free rumble lesson. Now, I don't know how this came. You know, I know there's a God today because he answers questions I don't ask out loud, and I don't even always know they need asking. You know what I mean? I just find. I find myself in the answer before without, you know, I just wake up in it. But you can't do the rumba and be stiff. You know, you've got to get a little wiggle on. You know, you've got to be loose. And I got about halfway into this lesson, and my teacher, he said, Oh, Carla, do not try to dance like a good girl. I don't think they will believe you anyway. That's a true story. In the ninth chapter of our book, it says our dark past and God's hands become our greatest possession. My past has been woven into a huge tapestry that is my life. It's there for those who need to see it. They can see it. And yet I walk a free woman in the real world, awakened alive and looking you in the eye. You know, when I'm paying attention, I get to be of service. I get to find out what I might be able to do for you. When I'm thinking of you, I'm not thinking of myself. Self, self, self. All the things that I used to take and drink, trying to access that power greater than myself. As soon as those were gone, now it's, me that's in the way. You know, there were the very things that were blocking me, and now I block me. Do you guys have a remedy for that? My friend, old-timer Don Newcomb, came to me one time and he said, I didn't know about that dancing thing for you. I wasn't so sure that that would be good for you. I thought you'd fall in love with it and leave AA like a lot of people do. They fall in love with something and they leave AA. And he said, but what I see had to happen now is that that little girl who went to North Beach had to step aside. The lady who dances could come out. The transformative power of Alcoholics Anonymous. And every day I've got to pay attention. You know, every day when I'm walking through, when I wake up and upon awakening I say that prayer and I make that conscious contact with that power that I know is God, that great power that's not me, it comes through me but not of me. When I make that contact and I sit quiet, I'm ready. Then I'm ready to walk out and be of service. And I'm grateful. I get to feel that gratitude. I get to think of what I'm grateful for. And it reminded me of a little puppy. I'm going to close with this story because I just love this story. It just reminds me. I need to be reminded at 25 years of sobriety about being grateful. We had this little pit bull puppy. Do we have any dog people in the room? I know we do. Yeah, yeah. We were taking care of this little pup a couple years ago. And, you know, one morning I found myself feeding her, setting her food down for her. Like I'd done last night and the night before. Same food. Nothing special. Just same food from last night, the day before, the day before that. And she'd look down at the food. She'd look up at me and down at the food and look up at me. And then she'd down at the food one more time and look at me and be like, I can't believe we're going to eat. And then she'd eat her food and she'd run into the bed where me and Doug were. And she'd hop on the bed and she'd look at him and look at me and look at him and look at me. Same faces she saw last night and yesterday and the day before and the day before. that and she'd be like, oh, it's you. We're going to party. And then she'd take off and she'd run out in the backyard, the same yard she was in last night and the day before and the day before that. Same yard, same yard, same outside circumstance. And we'd see her running, running in circles around that yard. Just like, it's my yard, it's my yard. You know, goldfish mentality. Ooh, a castle. Ooh, a castle. Ooh, a castle. But when I make that conscious contact in the morning, I get to remember to be that grateful. Same job I had yesterday, same people in my life, same thing. My attitude has everything. It's not my circumstances, it's my attitude. That's how we walk through this stuff. When I'm not paying attention and I blow past that prayer on awakening, making that conscious contact, I blow right past to the coffee pot and I get what's important, right? I fill up that coffee mug and I go, before I know it, I'm sitting on, sitting in front of the computer looking for a fight on Facebook. You know what I mean? Talking about stuff I don't care about with people I don't know. Every day, every day I get the choice and the chance to make that conscious contact with that. That power that you reintroduced me to. Through Alcoholics Anonymous, I have a life I never knew how to ask for. I never knew I could live. A lot of people in my life I get to love because of you. And I want to thank you for that, Alcoholics Anonymous. Thanks for listening.