How It Works When You Suffer from Grave Mental Disorders – Mari G.

My name is Mari, and I am an alcoholic. Hi, Mari! I love that. Nobody does that anywhere else. Hi, mari. I want to practice it. I like it. I am just so delighted to be here. Thank you so much. This is just the most beautiful place. I mean this is certainly God's country you know and some of it reminds me a little bit of my home in Scotland and I'm just it's just been a very very moving weekend for me and I would like very much to thank John and Cindy for inviting me here and Mary and Bob and Rick the committee wonderful committee thank you for the things in my room for Nicole What a wonderful hostess she's been. She's been so thoughtful. She's being like Velcro. Really nothing, and you know, cut up little fruits and put them in my bag, and just very, very thoughtful. Really, thank you. And Corey and Kent and Vivian, the speakers have been fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And Jeff, you know, Jeff is going to speak tomorrow. He's a wonderful speaker and you're in for a treat. And seeing my friend Jerry there, I'm just, you know, it's wonderful. And I love the theme. How dark it is before the dawn. You know, when I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I had lost everything of value in my life. I had ended up living on the street. lost my children, lost my family lost my home had nothing and when I was told to read Bill Wilson's story when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous I read that story and I read when he said this when he was sitting in town's hospital after being admitted time after time as I was to mental institutions time after time after time. And I identified so much with Bill's story. And the only thing different between Bill and I was that he is a man and we suffer from this common illness. And I wondered what it was at that moment in time because he had, you know if you were to ask me how dark it is, what is the darkness? The darkness is the despair. It is when you reach a moment of despair that is beyond all other despairs, when it just cracks you open. That moment of agony and despair when you know that time after time after time after times you've done the same thing and nothing different is ever happening and it gets worse and worse and then I think it's a God-given moment of despair that is enough to crack you open for the aperture of God's grace to come through and bring the healing light that one day will be this wonderful fellowship. I mean, look at us. If you'd be an alcoholic of my type, you know what it is to be beyond human aid. You know what Itis to be unable to stop drinking of your own volition. you know what it is to feel hopelessness and despair what happened it has to be God's grace you know and that is why with all the various things that are going on in Alcoholics Anonymous just now people wanting to change things and I'm not going to get into it here but I mean what really has to change in Alcoholic Anonymous nothing absolutely nothing has to change. I want this to be here in case my grandchildren need it and just the way it is and you know Alcoholics Anonymous could only ever have started in the United States of America because it's only the United State of America that allowed for a God of your own understanding that had the religious freedom to allow the interpretation of a God of your own understanding in 1935 and that is the base of this program. This is a God-given program because this is a soul sickness and I'm not going to carry it on off in one of my rants tonight. I'll get into telling you what it used to be like, what happened and what it's like now. I told you I was born in Glasgow, Scotland. And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about powerlessness. And I've be thinking, I am as powerless today over alcohol as I was on the 10th of August, 1984, which is my dry day. I'm as powerless to date... I'm just powerless today as I once was then. Not because I've ever, in all of these years I have never wanted a drink, not once, by the grace of God and by doing what I'm told and following instruction and doing the steps. But I am as powerless today as I was back then. Because you see, the way my alcoholism operated from a very, very, very early age was in this potential to isolate me from my fellows. Dr. Silkworth talks about alcoholics being a separate entity. I was always a separate entity. Always. You know, isolation is a dark room where you develop negatives, right? That's what isolation is. And I always had this negative way of looking at life. And I know for beyond any doubt in my mind that if alcohol hadn't worked for me I would have ended up spending the rest of my life in a mental institution because I am one of those addresses and how it works when it says there are those two who suffer from grave mental and emotional disorders but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. I know for a fact if alcohol had not worked for me, so I feel blessed. I feel truly blessed. So I was born in Glasgow, Scotland. I've got Irish and English and Scottish blood. And I used to think that's why I was so crazy. You know, I used to think, you know, it's kind of like having St. Patrick, Maggie Thatcher and the Queen all rolled up in one, you know. And you know I just always, always felt different. I had from a very early age, I had this horrible, this unbearable pathological burden of self-consciousness. A self-consciousness that everywhere I went, I was examining myself. I wasn't really interested in the outside world except to compare how I was feeling inside of myself. That's what interested me. How am I feeling? Do I feel different? Do they think I'm looking... Am I awkward. Yes, I'm awkward. Do I feel different? Yes, I feel different. Why do I feel different? I don't know why I feel different. You know, what is it because there's something wrong with them? No, because they all look at me. You see, I always knew there was something seriously wrong with me because people were always saying to me, there's something seriously wrong with you. So I knew it was me. I knew the problem was me, you know. And, you know, it's only when I came in here and later on was told that the problem of the alcoholic centers in the mind, not the body. I didn't know that. But I will tell you that up until I took a drink at age 25, my life was a nightmare. It may have looked okay on the outside because I was trying to hold it all together by doing the things that I saw everybody else do. Some of those things were just very, very simple things. I did not have a program for life. You know, it's almost as if when God was giving out directions on how to live when you come to the planet Earth, I was too busy thinking about myself. And when I came out of thinking about oneself, God said, okay, off you go. and I am there and I don't know what's going on. And you know, my parents didn't know what was wrong with me and at a very early age like Bill Wilson, I happened to encounter death. When Bertha, Bill Wilson's girlfriend died, he realized that there was one thing in the world that he was powerless over at that stage because he wasn't drinking. And the thing he was powerless over was death and I realized when my old grandfather died and I was age 10 that I was powerless över death and that's when I started having panic attacks I had just like Bill Wilson had panic attacks I had panic effects and uh and and nobody knew what to do with me and my family you know my family because we you know there's a I come from a Celtic culture, and there's a lot of whimsy. There's a lot of fairies. There is a lot magic underneath our Roman Catholic religion in my family anyway, you know, and they used to say when I had these kind of panic attacks, and I said what's wrong with me? And they'd say well everybody's like that. Well everybody's not like that, but you see I I have an aunt and she can be sitting having a cup of tea and all of a sudden she freezes in time. And people will say, what happened to her? And they'll say, she's just away, she'll soon be back. And nobody ever knows where she goes. And then every year I would go to Ireland And when I was in Ireland, they said to my mother, she's not right. And if you're not right in Ireland you're not right anywhere, you know. You know and I was brought up in a very strong beautiful Roman Catholic home and taught nothing but good things. And I had absolutely no potential for it. It's like I was born with some kind of a criminal mindset. I was just expert at being bad. The first thought that came to me was always the wrong one. It was always to do the wrong thing and I didn't have a great comfort with God at a very early age and I remember when they took me to Ireland, they used to put me in this cathedral, a beautiful old cathedral in Ireland and I remembered I was 10, same age tent and they take me in and I was really grieving my grandfather dying and they sat me down on this chair at the front of the cathedral and on this cathedral dais just like this is a big glass cage and inside is the head of a martyred saint that the English killed 300 years ago. They hung him and quartered him and they couldn't think of enough things to do to this guy, burnt him. And it's a burnt head sitting in this cage and it's still got white teeth. Now, this poor man died for his faith. He died because he believed in Catholicism. But then my family sat me in front and they said, no, I want you to sit and really study St. Oliver Plunkett because he really loved God I thought if he really loved God then that's what happened to him it didn't do anything for my faith I was always self-will run riot because I was so nervous I was restless, irritable and discontent from the get go I was a very nervous person and because I felt so inferior so awkward, so less than I began to develop the neurosis that Bill Wilson talks about Bill Wilson had written a wonderful essay about the neuroses of the first 40 years of his life and that neurosis I identify with completely and what it has at the level, at the bottom is an inability to form relationships at the base of that neuroses is an ability to form relationship why is that? because I don't trust anybody why is this? because I'm talking about just regular relationships with my peer groups because I just feel so different And because I'm continually examining how I feel instead of listening to what they say. I didn't hear conversations, because I was too busy thinking about if I say something, how would they react to it? My entire life was reflected from your eyes. That's all I was. I was just a reflection from your guys. I was my own self-contained ecosystem. Thank you very much. I don't need anything on the outside. One day I'm going to drop apart. and uh you know like a lot of i i had a high iq lots of alcoholics have high i q but alanon does not give us that but it's true but you see the only thing about a high IQ is if I don't understand it I'm not studying it I either understand it immediately or I'm Not Interested you know I get bored real quick I now have to go think about myself some more because there is no subject in my classroom that is more intrinsically fascinating than me I was endlessly fascinated by myself and so that was 15 years I got kicked out of the convent I won't go into that now and then, you know, I got my first job and my first Job, I didn't think they were paying me enough so I decided to cook the books I didn' t know how to cook the books but I got the intuitive thought and it just came naturally you know it was very very easy for me to cook the books and uh the only thing is they found a tremendous amount of money going out the postal department they never used to go before and they brought in a chartered accountant and um they didn't call the police but they called my mother just like when i got kicked out the convent they called me mother and when i kicked me out this job they call my mother and my poor mother my mother was president of the union of catholic mothers god bless her and my my mother said i don't know where you came from and that that didn't make me feel any more stable you know And then one of the massive, massive obsessions I developed because I developed obsessions at the drop of a hat was when I found out that I'm on a planet that is in constant movement. That did not make me feel good. And I burrowed into myself for a while about that one I needed a drink you know, I really needed a drink and so then I think well you know what am I going to do my friends were having relationships and I thought you know maybe if I start going out with boys I'll be like my I didn't have friends because friends found me really odd but I had peer groups and so I had my first date he takes me back after the movies and he gets a bit passionate with me and wants a reward for taking me out when he's trying to kiss me at the high of his passion I said to him, so what do you think about death? He said, I think you should go home. So eventually I went into nursing and I thought, you know, make my mother happy. God love her. And I did something. I had a little brother and he was just continually good. he looked like the archangel and blonde hair, blue eyes just was a little snot beat him up a few times he was a good little guy my father was in the navy he had been in the second world war he was actually in Dunkirk my father and I was very proud of him then he came out and went into the merchant navy so he only came home intermittently and so I really didn't have any discipline it was left to my poor mother and eventually I went down to London, England and at 21 years of age I joined British Airways I got all this stuff going on inside of me I'm having these panic attacks still I'm not on any medication a doctor told my family once because of something they asked him about that was really, they thought was very odd. He said, she'll grow out of it. She'll grow our of it and I wasn't growing out of that. I was growing into it more and more and more and and I thought maybe if I get a job and I put on the British Airways uniform and we were the creme de la creme of all the airlines in Britain and flying all over the world and I'm up in a plane with all these people and I don't like people and I'm having panic attacks it was not a good career choice and and then I thought if I get married maybe that'll fix me so at 23 I met a nice man I married a lovely man and he married a figment of my imagination and he took me to live in Kingston, Jamaica and in Kingston Jamaica I had everything that money could buy and I had my BMW and we had all these homes on the island and he came from a very old respected family in Jamaica and after a year my first son was born and after he was born I thought look at this beautiful child I've created something perfect I couldn't believe it but just two weeks after he was born I thought I was going insane I was 25 years old 25 years of sucking it up walking around with untreated alcoholism the one that centers in the mind the one is those severe mental and emotional disorders the one other people call neurosis the one some people call personality disorders whatever you want to name it I had been walking around with it for 25 years and at the pivotal best moment of my life I think I'm going to go insane and I'm never coming back again I had a moment when I knew I was going to implode into madness and be gone forever never come out again and they came and a friend of mine said give her a drink and Jamaica has 151 proof rum and it will cure anything and I don't know if it was the first drink the second drink or the third drink but for the first time in my life my skin fit that's all I didn't drink to get high I was born high I wasborn on high alert when I was born they were still dropping bombs in the UK you know I wanted something to calm me down right and that's what Silkworth says men and women drink because they like the sense of ease and comfort not because they want a high because they want a sense of easing that's where I craved all my life I want ease and comfort my god here's a solution in an innocuous looking fluid incredible wow Jekyll and Hyde stuff give me some more. And I drank every day. I drank on a daily basis every day and I drank like that for four years and did very well. I became really, I became, you see alcohol gave me a change of personality. Alcohol, you know the solution to alcoholism as defined in appendix two of the big book. Is a change of personality sufficient enough to bring about recovery from alcoholism? And we get the change of personality through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Okay? But here's the deal. Alcohol gave me a change of personality. So the 12 steps will eventually do for me slowly what alcohol did quickly. Because you see, the alcohol stopped working. Now, nobody ever will you never think that when you're drinking it do you you think that this is utopia forever and ever and I don't know why I don'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS but I had my second child and I've been drinking every day and he was born okay and um yeah you see I lost the power of choice and drink very quickly. And I lost the power of choice and drink because alcohol was such a solution for me. It was such an transformer. It was a transformative agent. It was everything that I had ever craved, needed, desired without even knowing what it was. I knew that I needed something but I never knew it was an alcohol because I was always afraid of alcohol. Always. Because I grew up in a culture where there's a lot of alcoholism you know a baby gets a little whiskey and milk if he's just not sleeping well no they never ever gave that to me because I was crazy back then anyway but some babies do and so it's a culture of alcohol I was growing up in and um then I became obnoxious you know when the cucumber becomes a pickle what is that what is it when all of a sudden that thing that was working so beautifully that great transformative agent that thing that was making me feel all right with the world that thing I knew and anticipated because they used to say to me don't drink before noon and I would be waiting for noon and that you know that surge it's better than anything else that anticipation for that gin or whatever it is, does anybody know that feeling? don't you I still and then I'd have it and then i'd know it was mine till I patched out mine for the day and um it's not working anymore and I'm drinking more and more and I am becoming obnoxious and also what is happening to me is I might be ok after two drinks, I might not I might function well after one, I may not but here's the thing I have no control anymore I don't know I have a phenomenon of craving so when my husband who suffered a lot from my behaviour used to say look just have one drink that set off the phenomena of craving I didn't know that I just know that the one is not getting me there I need another one and then that other one is not getting you there and I need a blackout I'd be at the country club and everybody there they take the tea with their pinky and they're all the old colonials and they don't know who I am anymore because I've had to change a personality and if they don' t agree with something I'm saying I'll break a bottle and challenge them to a duel I hit my husband over the head with a piece of mahogany when he was sleeping and he didn't have any humour and he had no humour about that whatsoever and then his parents came and they said nobody knew how much I drank at that stage and they say we don't know what's wrong with you you used to be such a lovely girl they didn't know me they knew this figment of my imagination and they said you know you don't go to church no you don' t seem to have any connection with God maybe you need to get back into the Catholic Church maybe you needs to be doing something because you seem so unhappy everybody says how unhappy you are and you look like you have anorexia in Jamaica I had all these peer friends of mine and they were all came from very wealthy families but they had joined the Bob Marley movement and became Rastafarians. And they said to me, you know alcohol is against the Rastafarian religion. You know it's forbidden. Alcohol is forbidden. They just smoke pot. And they said to me, Mary come try a little sense of miyoya man. Come try a little ganja. Look how the liquor's making your eyes red. I said I don't want nothing that's going to screw up my brain. I'll stick to liquor. Thank you. Anyway They thought I was dying or something. So they thought I needed something spiritual, and they took me up into the mountains where all the Rastafarians meet and there are prayer meetings and they smoke tons of pot and they call God Jah. They're very religious people, good people, peaceful people. And I watched them. They said, see if you can get in and out of this. And I watching them. And they drew a big spliff and it was so big you couldn't even see their face. You know, and they'd go, I just want to mellow out, man. Have a little vision. And they'd lie down and meditate. That's not me. When I drink, I want justice. When I think I want freedom. when I drink I want love I will eventually end up lying down whether I want to or not not right now and Bob Marley used to live across the road from me and I never get away without telling this story so Bob MarLEY had been given a big old great house and he disliked me intensely because he thought I was a drunk and a waster and he was a humanitarian and he fed the poor and he cared about other people and he kept doing things for others and everything he sang about was how he lived his life he was an authentic guy and I didn't like him you know I didn' t like him and I thought he was a pothead and I though he brought down the neighbourhood and he had a BMW and I had a BMW and one day I'm in the garage and I'm standing half drunk swaying in the breeze with my downhill lighter you know half in the bag and he drives up in his BMW with a couple of his Rastafarians there and I look at them disapprovingly of course and he shouts across at me. He shouts my name and I just look at him and he said, you? You're a narcissist and a hedonist and you don't care about anybody but yourself. He said, do you think you're so smart? I said, I'm known to have some intellect. No, no. He said if you think you're such a smart person or so smart what does BMW stand for? I said, Bavarian motorworks. He says, no man, it means Bob Marley and the Wailers. Anyway, what happened was I was selfish, self-centered, self well run right to the extreme. I lived to drink. I was getting the shakes in the morning. my alcohol was progressing at a horrendous rate women go down the hill quicker than men it's like a rapidly moving train and um I wanted to leave the island because I had caused them I won't even talk about how much chaos I caused on that island and damage and hurt but you see I love my children that has been the constant in my life I love my two boys with every fiber of my being I can't stop drinking but I love My Boys and I'm not leaving the island without them and I tell my husband if he doesn't divorce me and give me these boys I'll write something in the newspaper about him and I was a horrible human being and I actually manipulated him into let me take those children off the island and then a man called and said let's get married I'll take you to Canada I'm a drunk, I'm looking for a solution the solution for me is not not drinking by the way, the solution for me ist finding somebody else that will look after me because I'm an user and I'm a taker, that's all I am and I just want to be able to live with some degree of comfort and drink and get back to the place I used to be, he said let's get married I'll take you to Canada I married this nice man, he was a born again Christian, he used to take me to prayer meetings he had me dunked in everything he did everything to try and help me he's a nice man we went to live in Calgary, Alberta when we landed in Calbury I don't know if it was truly this but it felt like it was minus 40 I realised I'd made another bad decision and I got a job as a pharmaceutical rep because I was shaken so much I knew I needed Valium and that nice man he never worked, my kids went to school they were just so little, they were 9 and 5 and one day I came home and I said to him don't you think you should get a job and he said God would provide so I sent him away and God's still providing for him and he's fine and my children suffered from the, I won't go into what my children suffer, I never physically abuse my children but I'm an alcoholic mother who's lost the power of choice and drink I love my children I try God knows I cannot tell you the agony as an alcoholic woman trying to be a good mom to my children. I tried, I tried I tried. I'd go to school and I'd go drunk because I wanted to be there for them. I bring food to the school and I fall down drunk in front of my sons I tried so hard I drove with him drunk in the car and eventually I went crazy I lost that job, crashed a car one too many times I don't know if anybody in here ever suffered from alcoholic telephonitis alcoholic telephonitis is a phenomenon that never attacks in the day it usually approaches around midnight when you're sitting alone with your jog and you want to call somebody and tell them how you've been screwed by the world but you don't want to call anybody nearby because they might come so you call other countries and I'd call Scotland and forget there's a time change and my family would wake up and I would pass out And eventually my two old aunties came and they took me in detox. And I was in detox, I had DTs and seizures. And it was just me and five Native Canadians. And it's amazing to me how Native Canadians have played such a large part in my sobriety because, you know, we come from two different cultures, but we have a common theme. and these native Canadians used to hold my soup to me and my coffee to me when I was shaking too much to hold it by myself they told me they drank because their spirit was broken and I realized at some level my spirit was breaking and I realize there is such a thing now as a fellowship of alcoholics people who suffer from something like I suffer from and were put in places like this because we're so different but I never heard about AA in there and when I got out I decided to go back to Jamaica my aunts went back to Scotland because they thought ok she's relieved of alcohol she'll be ok they think the problem is alcohol they don't realise the problem is not alcohol it looks like alcohol but it's not alcohol the problem as the book says centres in the mind that's where it sits We certainly have a bodily function where we have this terrible, you know, Silkworth said it was an allergy, this phenomenon. It's a body thing. But the problem is in the mind. It was in the mine before I drank. It's in the mined after I drink. It's on the mind when I stop drinking. It's the mind today. It's always in the myned. Always. But we have a solution. And I went back to Jamaica and unbeknownst to me, my eldest son who was 11 had written to his dad and said, when I come back to Jamaica, I don't want to live with mommy anymore. She drives with a drunk. She brings men home. Don't tell her, but we're supposed to stay with you for a week, but I don'T want to LIVE WITH MOMMY ANYMORE. And that's what happened. I went back to jamaica. He said he's taking them for a weekend after a week. He told me they were i'd never get them back and I had my first suicide attempt and it was a nightmare. I can't live without my children, but I can't die try to die, I can not die I take Valium I try to kill myself I can kill myself I keep coming to and they are pumping out my stomach and I get angry about it I get anger because I want to die but I don't want to hurt myself and that sounds funny but that is how it was I didn't want the slush on my wrists no I want a drink myself to death I want drink and go into one of those beautiful oblivious blackouts the pass out kind and just sink away and it's not happening and eventually the father came and gave me all the back money he owed me for the years I'd been out of Jamaica the child support he hadn't paid me and he told me that if I didn't leave the island he'd kill me I ended up in Miami, I had an apartment I drink and drink, people come in to steal my furniture. People would come and steal me. I got thrown out the apartment when I couldn't afford it anymore. I lost all my money. It was all gone, and I ended up living at the bottom of Lincoln Road on Miami Beach. I don't have to get into my life there, but I will tell you this. I never ever thought I could lift my head up. When I came into AA, all I ever did was look at the ground because I was so filled with shame. I didn't believe I could ever lift up my head again and look at people like good looking people in the eye I was so full of shame I had been spat on I had been abused I had seen everything that happens to alcoholics when we're on the street and it takes a lack of self-esteem doesn't even cover it it is a shame beyond explanation my life there is I can't even describe it to you here I don't have words I will never have the words because it seems to me like it was some kind of nightmare, some kind up. My life was like going through a sewer in a glass bottom boat and I was encased in the sewer and that was it. There was nothing else. And I panhandled off an old woman that used to live in Jamaica and now she lived in Fort Lauderdale and she contacted my family they've been looking for me and they came and got me and I wept when they saw me I found out my father had died while I was on the street I went back to Canada I spent four years in and out the mental institutions in Canada I'm a retread in the mental institution I love being in the metal institutions I love it I love the yum-yums the librium the ballyum the yum yum oh they love it you see we spoke structure when I'm in the mental institution I'm an a structured environment I like it I like the last time I was taken there I was taken by the police and what happened is I had been a horrible accident a five-car pileup and and all I have is a police report that's the only way I know what happened according to the police report I was very drunk I'd taken a car I'd gone to a liquor store by this time, yeah it was Calgary no, it was Edmonton, Alberta I had stolen a car gone to the liquor store they wouldn't serve me took their inventory came out hit an old lady and then caused a five car pile up and they had to get the jaws to get me out of the car but of course because I'm so drunk nothing happens to me, I'm like a piece of rubber you know, they're lifting up the car to get me out and I'm kind of going, I am alright you know indestructible, you know hard to dead, don't die easy right you know when alcoholics say me I know if I drink again I'll be dead I say you wish you wish now when I was that last time in the mental institution they used to take us to, they used to make us go to AA meetings and because they knew by now that not only was there all these other diagnoses they had tried to give me because alcoholics in mental institutions, we don't tell the truth. If I like Trazodone, I'm going to act like a schizophrenic. Whatever it is I think I can act like to get a little bit of that. It's going to give me a little ease and comfort. I like hydrochloride. I like that. I like it. It puts me to sleep. Wherever it is they got, I am going to be. Eventually the doctor said to me, you know what? You're an alcoholic. he said I don't know what I can do for you anymore I've been looking after you for four years I've being told to write a letter to keep you out of prison you're a chronic alcoholic you certainly have other problems but you're chronic alcoholic all of this medication we've been having you on it doesn't seem to work for long I drank on I mean I used to be treated as a manic depressive because alcoholic, rampant alcoholism looks like manic depression. And I drank on everything, you know, and just kept being admitted. He said to me, but, you Know, there's some things we're going to try and we're gonna send you for assertiveness training. And I said, assertiveness training? I don't need assertiveness training. I said remember I was in here once because I tried to kill my husband he said that's not assertive that's aggressive alcoholics don't have enough self esteem to be assertive alcoholics need self esteeme they need a hard dose of reality and you're going to be getting that hard dose of reality very soon because you're gonna court when you come out of here and they might put you away this time how are you gonna feel about that he said you've been lying to all these doctors and gps all over the place and getting them to write you phony prescriptions and you've got them all in trouble and i used to go to these aa meetings in the mental institution but i never heard anything and the aa members told me when i got sober they said they used to say to me do you have hope I said I had no hope because you see I had no hope I had no hope so anyway when I got out of there I went to court and he the psychiatrist said after four years of treating this woman for many many conditions it is our opinion that's me and his team of psychiatrists that she suffers from three major psychiatric illnesses number one she's a chronic alcoholic two she has an abnormal personality and three she is a depressive and he also went on to say some other stuff in court I don't know what happened that day but the judge said that this woman is a tragic social circumstance and I was a tragic social circumstance till I came to you and one day I picked up the phone I was drinking myself sober you know what that feels like? It's hell and I picked it up and I got the phone in a Fondé A and a native, a Métis he's called a Mété, French native he came and 12-stepped me and his name was Stan and he had 28 years sobriety and he told me his story and he said tell me a bit of your story Mari and this is 3 o'clock in the morning how dark it is before the dawn and I told him my story and for the first time in my life he said something to me that nobody had ever said before he said I think you're one of us i think you're one of us and because i'm terminally unique i said stan i know i'm an alky but i'm also nuts i have a psychiatric report that says i'm nuts he said marie the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous is like 12 adjustable wrenches they fit any nut that comes through the door I love that I love it I had one slip my dry date is the 10th of August 1984 on the 9th of August 1984 I had a drink and some AA people came and took me to a meeting they said I was in bad shape I was shaking so much strangers were waving back at me and that night a little gal from Alcoholics Anonymous spent the night with me she spent the whole night with me Linda she was only 12 years sober and the next day she said to me I'm going to leave you know because my sponsor said you're a loser and I want to stick with winners in AlcoholicsAnonymous but before I go I'm gonna ask you to kneel down and say the third step prayer and I said to her I kneel for nothing nothing and then something said think of your children's eyes and I knelt down and I held her hand and I repeated a third step prayer after her and I had a vision in my mind as if it was a movie playing through of the previous Christmas, I'd just got out of the mental institution one more time I'd arranged through my family in Scotland and the children's father in Jamaica to go down and see my boys for five days at Christmas. And my sons had been put on the phone to me in Canada from Jamaica. Mommy, mommy, we worried about you. We hear you've been in hospital. We miss you, mommy. I said, what do you want for Christmas? I'm coming for Christmas. And they're screaming and happy. And I get their Christmas presents and I go on the plane in Edmonton and I got off in Toronto to catch an Air Jamaica flight to Kingston, Jamaica and I buy a bottle of vodka and between Toronto Airport and Kingston I drink the bottle and when I got off the plane in Jamaica my sons are standing there waiting for me and I drop down drunk at their feet and the person who brought them to the airport said you won't be seeing your mother this trip and led my boys away and I'm lying on the ground in the airport and they're looking over the shoulder at me with the eyes of the child of the alcoholic. The broken promises and broken dreams one more time. And that's what I thought about. And that was it. I had many despairs but that was my moment of total despair when I saw that. It was the look in my children's eyes that brought that final breaking despair that cracked me open for God's grace to come in. and i have not wanted a drink since then i have not wanted to drink since the 10th of august 1984 and i don't understand it i don'T know what happened but i know it's god's grace because nothing else could ever do it for me i was hopeless beyond human aid and i got very active in aa i had a i knew something profound had happened to me i got shingles when i sobered up it was quite traumatic for me sobering up and when I had shingles I decided I was going to do my fourth and fifth because I'd done the third step with her. First and second was a snap for me and I knew that I could not live consciously because recovery from alcoholism is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition and that means that every day I wake up, I wake up with the illness of alcoholism. And what that is, is I have to be clear in my mind to be conscious. I have to be able to be consciousness, to be awake, to be in the world without thinking about all the things I've done in the past. So when I was six weeks sober, I did a four-step on a yellow four-scap pad. They told me, I phoned and made an appointment with a priest who was a recovering alcoholic and finished that fourth step, got better from shingles, went down, did my fifth step. And I'll tell you it felt like a new world was opening up for me. I had a completely changed perception of the world. I no longer walked. I used to walk on the dark side all the time where the clouds were, where the shadows were on the street. I would never walk on this sunny side of the street Now I could walk on these sunny sides of the street and I'm so grateful the old timer said to me Mary you usually say no relationships for a year but for you it's two because you have a potential for getting married and the other thing they said to me is Bill Wilson was my higher power and they said you have to find a God of your own understanding and I didn't know how to do that. I knew something had happened to me I didn' t know what it was and one day I heard the messenger and she was an old woman who had lived a life much like mine and she's she says she's given her story and she said as a drunken woman I never went to bed with an ugly man but I sure woke up with a few she said but I don't do it anymore because I am a lady in Alcoholics Anonymous and I went up to her afterwards and I said who is this God you have I'm looking for a God she said Mary my God's called Harold I said Harold she said you know that prayer our father who art in heaven Harold be thy name she was pulling my leg the consciousness of the presence of God is the greatest fact of my life today you know I got into Alcoholics Anonymous I got moved to Toronto because my son was going to be there for a year I made amends my parents were dead I won't get into how I was able to make amends to my parent it was all directed under a sponsor I have always needed a strong sponsor, I need a sponsor today as much as I ever did because I don't want to mess up one more time because I can still wake up in the morning and have distorted perception, I can see things completely different I can be extremely sensitive one day, one day I can be emotionally immature how does alcoholism affect me today how does it affect me it affects me by maybe just one day I don' t feel right and when I don''t feel right I think it's somebody's fault and maybe then I'll get a little resentment against somebody for nothing that's how my alcohol is that's how my alcoholicism works because my alcoholism is seeking to isolate me from my fellows and it was that's how it starts or I will be judgmental to somebody because it's not about them it's about me and I made all the amends I could as quickly as I could I got into financial amends I got an apartment in Toronto I got a little car I got active in AA I loved it two years sober I met a man I just knew God had sent me my reward you know there's a thing in the book that says when boy meets girl on AA campus I love that underneath it said they should both examine themselves to see if there is no deep psychological disorder preventing them from having a relationship I don't like that part I like the poetry of boy meets girl on AA campus. But here's the thing, if you haven't had a change of personality, sufficient enough. Now, I've had changes of personality but in two years I was still crazy, believe me. I was Bill Wilson red hot, I was AA red hot but I was not ready for a relationship that involved something called intimacy which is beyond me. I don't know that. Here's what happens when you fall in love in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and you haven t had the necessary personality change to enable you to live in intimate circumstances with another human being I still John and I would go to a lot of meetings and someone would ask me to read how it works my eyes would flit across a crowded room and I could just imagine John and i walking off into the sunset under the circle in the triangle with Bill and Bob saying bless you my child it was a beautiful vision and I shared it with my sponsor who had no romance in her soul she said don't get married you're an emotional retard and I knew she was jealous so John and I eloped here's what happens I loved him, he loved me in the close intimacy of marriage one by one your peacock feathers start dropping off and in the end all you have is the same two old turkeys sitting staring at one another you know I have been married four times and I love being in love thank God it's all gone but I used to love being in love, you know. And, you know, I love it. I used to love that ding-a-ling-a ling. I used to love that great magic, you know. And then him and I would get together, and of course we have to get married or just live together immediately. And then after two weeks, I can hear him breathing two doors down, you know. Did he always breathe like Matt you know and here's what happened uh with John many years later John and I still lived in the same building and I got an intuitive thought to go look for him and he'd had a massive stroke I found him lying on the ground I still had the key for his apartment and if I hadn't called the ambulance and gone and then he would have died alone in the floor he had a passive stroke and um I had him home for five years he couldn't speak he couldn'T understand the spoken word there's only two words my husband could say and I can't say them from the podium but what it means is take a journey and and I'll tell you God showed me what it was to love because I loved that man because that man had been a brilliant lawyer and he couldn't speak he couldn'T understand a spoken word it's like he woke up in China and everybody is speaking Chinese and eventually he had paralysis his throat we still went to meetings I took him to all his meetings and he got his medallions and he died on October 2001 and just before he died I read him how it works and then when he died, I held him until he grew cold and I'm so grateful to God I had a chance to do something of value for another human being because my parents were dead when I got here. And I'm very grateful for that. And my sons, eventually I went back to Jamaica. My sons were put out at their father's house and my sponsor says, go back to Jamaican, make amends to the island. I went back to Jamaica, made amends to the island. When I was down there, my sponsor who was in Toronto, she died with 53 years of sobriety. and before I went to Jamaica I said Renie I'm afraid I'm only 8 years sober I'm going to go back to Jamaica I won't be able to associate with all those wealthy people I'm gonna have a little job there I'm scared I'll drink again I'm worried I'll end up in the street again I was full of fear she said look Mari I've never been in a mental institution I've ever been in the streets but Clancy has and when you go to Jamaica contact Clancy because you'll be travelling up and down to the states for your job and you'll be able to see Clancy. There was not a lot of AA in Jamaica at the time. I called Clancy when I got down to Jamaica and I said, Clancy, I'm going to be here for a couple of years and I told him what was going on and he said, okay write me a little bit about you and fax it. That tells you how long ago this is. He said, fax It to me. So I faxed him my story and the next day the phone rings and he says, Marie, it's Clancy I just got your letter and I thought it was very important that I phone you immediately on reading this. And I thought, oh he's going to say he can't sponsor me. He said, I have something to tell you. I said, what is it? He said after reading this you really shouldn't drink. And he sponsored me long distance and I would be up and down the stairs. I got my sons off to school, one to Florida, one to Scotland and eventually went back to Canada and my sons came and we lived together and then they got married and I danced at their weddings. They danced for me at their weddings and danced for Me Too Tunes called Mama. And my youngest boy got married in full dress, Scottish full dress and beautiful, beautiful I saw my ex-husband there at both weddings and the one who took the kids away from me you know I behave well because my sponsor had someone looking at me and it was so funny he said to me, my god we thought you'd never come back we thought a leper could never change its spots. We hear you haven't been drinking, and you're doing something of worth for other people. It's amazing. I said, you look, I was my best AA Madonna, you know. Yes, you look wonderful. Your wife's lovely. What beautiful girls you have. And inside, I'm thinking, 20 years ago, I hired two gunmen to shoot you. Bless you, my child, you know. And, you know, I've done all the things that we do because we live life here. You know, there's a stupid saying that but for the grace of God, there go I go. God does not dole out things to some people and not to others. You know? There's things that happen in the world just because the same way it rains. The same way It rains, the same Way It snows, that's what's going to happen to us as individuals. The other day I was out walking and it was a particularly beautiful day and I saw this tree. And I thought, my gosh, what a beautiful tree that is. It is so gorgeous. All it has to do in summer is come out and spread its leaves and look beautiful. And then I thought yeah, that's all it has to do because it doesn't have a choice. I have a choice. I have free will. I want God's will. I want to have a soul that's as beautiful as this tree you know I want to keep working on my soul and not get carried back into the resentments and the despairs and everything else that can be there at the drop of a hat this is a magnificent life I have today I have five grandchildren my youngest my youngest one used to call me all the time and say Sean Ma I love you more than fresh vegetables I mean look at the innocence of that you know the innocence I love it and I have a lot of sponsors now I've made a lot of mistakes and I haven't had to drink over them and I've suffered for them because they have been my will you know sometimes people will say to me you know why is it that this is God's will for me at this moment in time because the circumstances that they explain to me and I know for a first hand are not good they are not great circumstances the reason being is that I was not following God's will to get myself into that circumstance. And God is going to make me have the consequences of my actions, because otherwise I will never learn. I learned through making mistakes. That has been my greatest teacher in Alcoholics Anonymous, messing up and making mistakes and suffering the consequences on my actions. I have a lot of sponsors, and I love them very much. And you know, when the phone rings, I pick it up. I don't ever look to see who's calling me, because that's not what this life is. And you know, powerlessness, I am grateful today to know that I'm as powerless as I ever was over alcohol. There is only one who has all power and that one is God. And, you know I no longer try and control the universe. I no longer try and have people behave the way I want them to behave. I realize too that I have to honor people and honor their choices and honor their decisions. And that's a big, if the essence of Alcoholics Anonymous is love and the essence of alcoholics is kindness. That's what I got when I came in here. I got that and I never expected it. Bill Wilson said once that Alcoholics synonymous is not a success story rather it is the chronicle of our colossal human failure turned to usefulness by the divine mercy of a loving God that's what it is I was a chronic human failure and I came in here and you converted me into something like all of us can be of meaning and value and save lives and and be so grateful to Bill and Bob and not want to change this thing into something that looks nothing like it was, I have a singleness of purpose it's called alcoholism that's all I know about, I don't know about anything else I used to think I knew a lot of things but I don' t and the greatest thing to me today too is my you know this year, and I'll finish with this I just spent, I was three weeks in Aruba with my eldest son my youngest son rather and his son and daughter and my daughter-in-law because they live in Aruba now and he said to me mum I cannot tell you I need you so much today in my life and I love you so mucho and you're a great example and anytime I get down I think of where you've come from you're my inspiration mum that's what he tells me my youngest boy and when I leave there I speak an engagement straight and then I go and see my eldest boy on Vancouver Island and my eldest Boy the one who wrote that letter to his father at 11 he's there beaming at me shouting to everybody this is my mother this is ma mother and I want to weep with gratitude and I've got three little granddaughters there and this year I'm taking my two eldest granddaughters from both my sons they're 15 I'm taken them to Scotland and they're going to be walking on the soil that I walked with my grandfather with my grandmother with my mother they're going to be walking on the soil that my people have walked on for centuries they're gonna be walking on the soul of my hero Braveheart freedom you know so I thank you thank you thank you for my life today thank you