I Hid Bourbon Inside the Vacuum Cleaner and He Thought I Was Cleaning the House – Sally R.

My name is Coleman Hollis, and I'm an alcoholic. Let's open this meeting with a moment of silent meditation, followed by a serenity prayer. Serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I'll read the preamble of the meeting. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strengths, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supported through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. It does not wish to be a member of AA. It does not wish to be a member of AA. It does not wish to engage in any controversy. Neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. At this time, I've asked my good friend Tom F. to read how it works. I knew last September, last November when we were up here that our speaker today, tonight, was going to be on the program, but I didn't know until I got up here today that I was going to be chairing the program, and I'm going to have the privilege to chair this program. I've known the speaker for a good long while now. I've seen her work in AA from all angles of it. When I first met her, she was working. She's been a worker all the time. When I first met her, she was from Wheat Tump to Alabama. I think she moved up to Birmingham now, but she's now our state delegate for the state of Alabama and northwest Florida. I've heard her talk, and I know you're going to enjoy it, so I'll now give you Sally Roy. Let's welcome her to the microphone. Thank you, Coleman. My name is Sally Roy, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Coleman, if we do this again, would you please wear those pretty red suspenders? I like the blue ones, but I like the red ones much better. And it's good to be here. I thank Jim and the trustees, whoever, the committee for inviting us. Jim needed some. I want to thank you, and I'm glad to be here. I'm so honored to be here and share with you this weekend. I've heard about Mount Eagle for a long time. I didn't know how to get here, and now I know how to get here, and I'm still trying to do things the hard way. If I'm not on the mailing list, I'm going to get Jim Drysdale after this. I am an alcoholic, and for a long time that made me very angry. I said last night, and I've said it several times, and I mean it with all my heart, I am grateful to be an alcoholic. Without my alcoholism, I wouldn't have found this way of life and the people, and I'm grateful for that. But for so many years and for such a long time, I was so angry and so full of resentment and self-pity, and I shook my fist at God and said, why me, God? And I don't know why, really. I can look back on my life now and see a few things, and through working the steps, I have some idea of what I was and why I was ready for chemicals. When I found them, I am the oldest of three children, and I share these things with other alcoholics. This isn't unusual. I'm the oldest of three children. My father was a Methodist chaplain and joined the Army Air Corps when I was two years old. He was stationed in Bangalore, Maine. I have a brother and sister. My sister now is in the program, and I think probably our brother needs to be here. But we grew up in a very loving family. We were very secure in the love that our parents had for us and for each other, and nothing traumatic happened. We led a life of gypsies in the military like so many people do. I counted one time I went to 18 different schools and 11 years of public schooling. And I don't say that that caused my alcoholism because many children grew up like that, and they didn't turn out to be drunk. I grew up very insecure. I was insecure, not with the family relationships, but I wanted so much to belong, and I wanted so much to have friends. It was so important to me. We'd move someplace, and I just began to feel as though they were putting down some roots and beginning to belong. And the orders were cut, and it was time to ship out and start the whole process all over again. I grew up very fast in that life. I skipped a year of school in seventh grade in Texas. And when I was 16, I graduated from a near high school in Montgomery. We'd been sent there the year before while Daddy went to Air War College. And from there, the family was sent to St. John's, Newfoundland. And there was no school there, no college. And I elected to stay in Montgomery and attend Huntington College for four years. It was a small school. My closest relative was a rather hostile grandmother in New York State, and that just wouldn't have worked out at all. But to look at me and to talk to me, I was mature. I was ready for independence. I played that game very well, and it was all a game. It was just a facade. And many years into my alcoholism, I blamed my problems on my parents for having left me when they did because I really wasn't ready to be on my own. And it wasn't until I came to in this program that I really remembered that that was my decision to stay behind. They wanted me to go and to be there a year or so. And I was ready to go. I was ready to go and work and then go somewhere to college. But I entered Huntington College. I'd had one experience with alcohol a couple of years before down in Biloxi, Mississippi, and we was living there. And my first experience with alcohol, I remember vividly. I got very drunk. I thought everybody that drank got very drunk. Jim can't remember when he had his first drink, but I do remember. I remember what I was wearing. I remember who I was with. And I remember I was drinking slow gin fizzes. And I've never had another one of those since. You know, I was the cure of that problem right there. But when I was in college, I didn't drink. But I did have an experience with pills. And I have to talk a little about the pills because there's no doubt in my mind that my alcoholism progressed from an addiction to the pills. Somebody was passing around in the dorm these little triangular-shaped pills, and it was his mother's prescription. And he said, look, if you take one of these, you don't have to sleep. You can stay up, and you can study, and you can take the exam tomorrow, and you'll do well. And I said, okay. And again, I have vivid recollections of that experience because when that drug hit this bloodstream, I was the setup for it. And I was no longer shy or insecure, and I belonged, and I was tall and slim and blonde and gorgeous, I thought. And I didn't study. I talked. And I would talk to anybody about anything. And I did it beautifully. All of these uncomfortable, painful things about me, this little pill was doing for me what I couldn't do for myself. I didn't study. I talked until somebody fell asleep, and then I'd wake somebody else up and start the process all over again. I didn't really get hooked on them then, but I do know that I was the setup at that time, and that's important to me. I met my husband at Huntington's. He had graduated from college. He had transferred to the university. And I have to tell you about Jim. He's an ex-Marine, and there's not much that he hasn't attempted to do in this life that he hasn't done and done very well. And that includes teaching himself how to walk again after a bad airplane crash. Until he met me, and he was an utter failure at trying to change this girl. It's been his one failure in life. But we were married the day I graduated from Huntington. He had graduated from the university. And I was the first one to go. I was the first one to go to Huntington University. And we lived a very good first year of marriage there in Montgomery. I taught school at Lanier High School, and Jim was with a telephone company. And at the end of that first year, we were transferred to Birmingham, and I was pregnant with our oldest son, Steve. And Steven was born in Birmingham in 1960, and I was given a prescription for tranquilizers. And I have a vivid recollection of the first time I took one too many of those pills, because I felt wonderful. I wasn't nervous. I wasn't anxious. I wasn't tense. Once again, I wasn't insecure. I didn't have to be angry. And I had a little glow about me, and so I had a couple of drinks, and I loved it. And I told Jim about it, and I remember his concern. He said, for God's sake, be careful of those things. And I don't think I ever took them the way they were prescribed from that time on. And other prescriptions were added to it. And we moved to Tuscaloosa. And our third child was born. We moved to Tuscaloosa. And our second child was born in 1963. And by that time, I had been prescribed amphetamines again, which of course is what I took in college to stay awake and cram. And when I got that prescription for those amphetamines, it was like welcoming an old friend home. And I had the tranquilizers and the sleeping pills and the amphetamines and the pain pills. And within a very short three years, I was completely addicted to massive doses of drugs. And the drugs did help. And the drugs did for me what I couldn't do for myself. And after the birth of our second child in the summer of 1963, Jim was transferred out of Tuscaloosa back to Montgomery. And the two boys and I stayed there trying to sell our house. And I was taking handfuls of pills. John, our second child, was premature, and I had to wake him every two hours to force feed him. So I would stay up all week because I was there by myself. And I was so afraid I'd miss the feeding. And by Friday, I was just in terrible, terrible shape. I was blacking out. I was suicidal. I was doing all the things that later on I did with alcohol. But we had a babysitter to come in on Friday and help me with the house and the children. And when she got there, I went to the bourbon bottle. And I knew that that was the one way I could get out of myself and off these drugs and get some good, quick sleep so that when Jim came home and said, How are you? I said, I'm fine, thank you. We listened to a tape coming up here of Ted Bishop from Texas. And he was talking about all the alcoholics who say, I'm fine, thank you. He said, I'm afraid to go to a funeral of an alcoholic for fear we get to the casket. And he's going to sit up out of the casket and say, I'm just fine, thank you. But I'd grit my teeth and I'd say, I'm fine, after I'd had some good, quick sleep brought on by a good, heavy dose of bourbon. And Jim did see what shape I was in. After I'd burned the couch and myself and did some pretty dreadful things. And he moved us to Montgomery to live in a motel for five weeks while our house was being built. And I came with a baby and with Steven, who was two and a half, and all the diapers and the pills. And I took all the pills and I went back to the drugstore there and I had them filled and I went back to the motel. And took a month's supply in two or three days, the way I'd been doing. And went back to the drugstore. And the pharmacist wouldn't fill those pills. And I know now what I did was I detoxed myself with alcohol. I got over a really bad addiction to pills, withdrawal with the help of alcohol. I hear my AA friends talk about crossing the invisible line in alcoholic drinking. And my line was not invisible and I know exactly when and where and how. Because I went to the liquor store and I bought two bottles of bourbon. And I put one bottle on the counter in the little kitchenette in that motel. And then I hid the other bottle. And that was mine. And I never ever again drank socially. I was never able to. My drinking caused all sorts of problems from that point on. We tried to have some sort of social life in a new place with new friends than we should have with his job. And I was completely unable to if alcohol was involved at all. I can remember right from the very beginning blacking out and coming to. And Jim would be snorting behind the wheel as he was driving us home. And he'd say, I even had to cut up your meat and feed you like a little child, you know. And all the humiliating, hurtful things I did right from the beginning. We moved into our house and one morning in late 1963, I think, after Jim went to work and after we had had a particularly bad time the night before. I called Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not really sure why I did, but two women came to see me that morning. They brought me literature. And they made plans to come back and pick me up that night. I remember very little about that meeting. I remember it was on Viv Street and I remember climbing 500,000 stairs. I remember that there were very few women there and there were no 24-year-olds. There just weren't people my age at that meeting that night. I do remember a few names. And I do remember Jim Roy when I got home that night because he was absolutely furious with me. Now Jim's father was an alcoholic. We didn't know it. We thought he was just a drunk. He was no good and weak-willed and he had caused the breakup of Jim's family when Jim was just a very small baby. We didn't know the man had a disease. But Jim was the table. He said, you're not an alcoholic. And that may be why I went to that meeting to get him to that point. I'm not really sure. But I did hear what I wanted to hear. He said, you're not an alcoholic. He said, you're too alcoholic. He said, your father's a minister and ministers' kids aren't alcoholic. I haven't told him today about ministers' kids and I don't plan on it. I do know I did many things in my life to try to live down that stigma. I've been in the business of that label. But he said, and besides all that, no wife of mine is going to be an alcoholic. He said, you just haven't learned how to drink like a lady and I'm going to teach you. And we had drinking lessons at our house. They were fun. They were hard at times. And I'd go someplace and Jim would supervise my drink being built. And that was long before women's lib. But I knew even then what a male chauvinist was. He was the guy that when we walked in the house said, here, Jim. And there was a big water glass full of bourbon and maybe one or two ice cubes. And he'd turn to me and say, Sally, would you like a drink? And I'd have to say, no. Is Betty Lill going to have one? Yeah, I guess so. So it wasn't the most important thing in my life. And out would come the little funny little glass with a stem and a lot of fruit and fruit juices and tonics and Coke and ice cubes. And God, I wanted what he had. Jim drinks like a lady. He still drinks like a lady. I don't understand that. I had to watch him. And when he took a sip of his drink, I could take a sip of my drink. And if I sipped too fast, he'd say, you're going too fast. Slow down. And I'd have to wait until he had two sips before I could have my next sip. And we'd go home. And you know what? I always thought if ever you took lessons in something, you really ought to practice a lot. So he'd go to work and I'd practice and practice and practice all day. Getting ready for my lesson. And he'd come home. And we'd have the lesson. And we'd eat supper. And we'd sit and watch TV. And I think, isn't he ever going to bed? And he'd go to bed. And I'd practice and practice and practice. I accused him once of overtraining me. He didn't think that was too funny. I remember the first time he ever said to me, and he said it with utter amazement, he said, you drink for the effect. And I thought, that's the craziest thing I ever heard of. Of course. You know. What else? I didn't like the way it tasted. You know, what else? But I heard something a couple of weeks ago that really makes sense to me. And I think of it a lot. That the non-alcoholic has a drink or maybe a drink and a half. And the alcohol hits the system. And they begin to feel out of control. And they stop. And the alcoholic has the drink. And the alcohol gets in the system. And we begin to feel out of control. And that's normal. And I want more of that, just as much of that as I can get. Because the alcohol did for me what I couldn't do for myself. I did all the harmful, hurtful, humiliating things that alcoholic women do and alcoholic women who try to be mothers in a way that's just completely incompatible. There's no way an alcoholic woman can be a good mother. But I tried. I tried to do the things that my mother had done and that I thought the children wanted and needed. And our oldest son told me just a couple of weeks ago, he said, you'll never know how much I hated Cub Scouts. I was an assistant den mother. And I thought that that was being a good mother. And I would get tanked up before I went to those den meetings on Tuesday. Steven said a couple of months ago, he said, do you remember the time we had to wake you up to take me home? And I didn't remember that. And I'm glad I didn't remember that. I do remember falling one night when Jim was out of town and I had to take our three children to a little church in the neighborhood for a pack meeting. And in a pack meeting, you have all the little dens with eight to 10 little boys in each den. And you have all the den mothers and the pack leaders and the parents and the brothers and the sisters. And I had to take those children out on the playground while the others got the hot dogs ready for them to eat. And I remember falling and I remember being paralyzed. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't talk. I couldn't move. I couldn't get up. And I remember Steven standing there looking at me and the tears rolling down his face. This was really being a good mother. I don't remember going home. I remember waking up later and all three children were in their bed and beds. And the next day, a friend of mine told me how she had gotten me home and her husband had stayed with the children and brought them home. And they made sure we were all okay before they left us. But I did all those things. And he played. You folks know about them. Jim and I played all the sick games that alcoholics and spouses play. We played search and seizure a lot. We played where is it, you know, whether it was the alcohol. And by that time, I was back on the pills. And I had three or four drug stores and four or five, six doctors. And I could give any doctor any set of symptoms and get just whatever relief I wanted, whatever type of relief I wanted. But we played search and seizure a lot. And I remember that. altitude. And when I went to the top of that bar, or one of those Excellent Troloail capsules, is it the alcohol? I called that on an American bus! Cig inhabits 17,000 bottles of these as serving food to somewhere in the American gullible Guinea. They don't have a habit. They've got a habit. Those are almost complete. Can you do that? I've gotten spasms. It's true. It is even more spirit! I've lost my breath! I've lost a few pictures. I was workers, and I haven't felt any really Cafe Cr那个 station at a speed of participating, It's not that the whistle beat! But I found that there's a couple of these so I do a brief Какie rare in the back of a πολύPP! and I could haul that vacuum cleaner around and close the door and leave it on and just drink away. And he thought I was in there vacuuming. But I told him about it, so I've used that place up whenever I get taken drunk again. But we had a workshop out behind the house, and I can remember him taking those bottles out there, and I'd watch him out the window. And the next morning when he left for work, I had to go out there and find those, and that was really quite a challenge. And I found those bottles up behind the rafters in that place. But it wasn't fun. It was very painful. And I can remember him sitting on my bed in the morning with tears coming in his face and saying, if you only loved me and if you loved the children, you wouldn't act like this. I wish we could get well because of the people that love us. I really do, but it just doesn't work that way. I did love him. And I did promise him many times that I'd be different, and I didn't mean it at the time. I didn't want him to take away my love. We had our third child in 1966, and I was very, very sick. I was so sick that three months before Jody was born Jim had to call my mother to come stay with me because at that time he was mother and father and husband and wife in that family. And my mother came to stay with me, and I had been hospitalized several times during that pregnancy, either directly or indirectly as a result of my addiction. And I know what they mean when they say in the book, The Life of the Child, that if you're sick, you have to take care of yourself. says that we surrender to the addiction because I did at that point. It was not a matter of if am I or am I not. It was when and where and how. And how am I going to pay for it. And I stole money from the children to buy the pills and the alcohol. I remember being very much aware of this new life within me and this baby that I was carrying and I wanted so much for her to be healthy. And I was completely powerless to stop. And I can remember thinking at one time that if anything ever interfered with the things that mattered to me, I'd stop it. And I was completely out of control. I was completely powerless over these things. And my mother came and one night I was telling them that I hadn't had anything and it was just because they didn't trust me that I was bouncing off the walls and I had an old red corduroy bathrobe that was my drinking costume and I had my pocket stuffed full of pills and I was literally bouncing off the walls. And I was leaving a little tract of little red capsules behind me because I had a hole in my pocket. And I can remember my mother looking at me with such fury and saying to Jim, you should take these children and get rid of her because she's no good. And if you need any help that's what I'm here for. And I remember that so vividly because this woman loved me more than anybody else and in such a different way than anybody else ever had or ever would. And this was my mother. and she was pregnant. But she stayed with me for three months until Jody was born, and she taught me how to knit. And it was the first time I'd really been around her for any length of time since I was 16. And I got to know her, and I'm grateful I did, because she died very suddenly a year later. But Jody was born, and Jody was and is a very beautiful girl. We're a little bit uneasy this weekend. She's going to be 18 in June, and this is the very first time we've left her and her 21-year-old brother at the house by themselves on a weekend, and we're using that telephone out there to monitor what's going on back home. But she is a very beautiful girl, and I was so grateful for her. And I need to tell you this, too, and I have to tell it when I'm talking to any women alcoholics, because Stephen was big and strong and a straight-A student, just graduated from a cum laude from university. And John Roy was born, and I remember I had taken all those pills and all that alcohol when I was pregnant with him. And John was born with all the symptoms of somebody coming off of amphetamines, very short attention span, very chumpy, and he was like this for a very long time, learning problems and behavioral problems. And Jody has had some learning problems, and it's very difficult to see the difference between Stephen and what Stephen had. I took nothing but vitamins and iron. I didn't prepare these. I didn't take any of those. I didn't take any of those. I took the other two children. No doctor has ever told me I was responsible for this, but no doctor has ever told me I wasn't either. I blame my alcoholism on everything out here, like all of us do. I blamed his mother. And boy, was she ever a good target, this mother-in-law who was right there in that town, and my parents were usually thousands of miles away from us. And after I came in this program and got sober, I really remembered and realized, how much that woman had done for us and for me, how many times she took care of the family when I was in the hospital or too sick to do that, and the meals that she fixed, and the way she cared for us. I blamed Jim, and he accepted that blame. He was sick. You know, we could have a fight at night, and I'd go to the liquor store in the morning, and he'd come home at night, and I'd be out of it, and he'd say, oh, my God, did I do that to you? And I'd say, you certainly did. And he believed me. He believed it. Until those Al-Anon gals got a hold of him. I blamed my parents because they had left me, and they were too far away from me. I blamed it on the fact that I wasn't working, that I was staying at home, taking care of little children with smelly diapers, and that's not what God had in mind for me. And so I went to work, and three years later, I was saying, if only I could go home intended for me to be, I wouldn't have these problems if I could get away from the stress and the tension of this job. And I did that, and boy, my drinking really accelerated. I was sent to a psychiatrist, and I was locked up in a psychiatric ward, and the psychiatrist talked to me about my depression, and that was really very strange to me. You know, he gave me the Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory thing, and I was 29 years old. I was locked up. The only person I could see was Jim, and I wanted to kill him. I couldn't see my children. My father was coming back from Germany with a new wife, and I was depressed. I had a little 85-year-old woman that every morning at 5 o'clock in the morning, she jumped in bed with me, and I jumped out of the bed wide awake at 5 o'clock in the morning with this woman in my bed. You know, and it was very depressing, and I should have been depressed, and I thought there was something wrong with the psychiatrist because he didn't think I was supposed to be depressed. Any normal person would have been depressed. But he talked to me about my drinking and about my relationship with my parents and what had happened in my childhood. And there was a song about that time a little bit later called Everybody's Talking at Me, and I knew exactly what that song was all about because that's what those people were doing. There was a very young, very kind, loving Presbyterian minister in Montgomery who for a while saw me every Sunday afternoon at 3.30, and he talked at me. He talked at me. He talked to me about my alcoholism and my relationship with God, and I had absolutely no relationship with any God at that time and didn't think I ever would. Anything but the bottle, whether it was the alcohol or the pills, that that was going to give me the relief that I had to have. And the doctors talked at me about my alcoholism and what was happening to me physically. In 69, I remember the name of a man that I had met at that meeting in 63 on Bibb Street, and I called Sonny Patterson. And Sonny was not anonymous in his fellowship work in Montgomery, in Alabama. He was a very loving, dear man, and he came to our house. And he and I sat in the living room, and Sonny talked with me, and he told me about his alcoholism. And to me, that's the great miracle of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he didn't talk at me. And he shared with me what had happened in his family and what had happened with his recovery and how he had recovered. And he shared his experience, strength, and hope, and his failures with me. And Jim will tell you that he hated him, because Jim sat in the den eavesdropping in on this, and this man was saying some of the same things to me that Jim had said for nine years. And I was saying, that's right. You know, you understand that's right. And I wish I could say I went to Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober and never drank again, but that just didn't happen. I'm a great believer in pain as a motivator for us drunks. And that's very interesting to me, because I used to think that anybody who didn't or a little drink to block out all the painful, uncomfortable things in their life was a little bit crazy when all these beautiful medications were around. And these medications and the alcohol used to do for me what I couldn't do for myself, and that was blocking out the pain and the uncomfortable things. And then it was all this pain that had to get me to the point that I had enough humility to crawl to this program for help. But I hadn't heard enough at that point. And I talked to Clint about it this afternoon, and I played around with the program for another two or three years. I wanted what you had, but I didn't want to have to go through what you'd gone through to get it. Somebody said the other day that before you get to the first step, you have to take two steps. That you have to want what we have, and you have to be willing to go to any length to get it. And I just wasn't at that point, and I hadn't heard enough. So I had to hurt some more. Jim discovered Al-Anon. Now Jim came home from an Al-Anon meeting one time, and he's his first meeting. And he said, I can't go back there. He said, don't go back there. You know those women just sit and they knit and they sew and they crochet, and they do all these things with 90 miles to nothing, and the speaker's up there speaking? He said, I can't go back there. And I said, good. And I got drunk, and he went back. And after he'd been going a couple of months, one day he was in the grocery store because he was doing the shopping at that point. I couldn't. And he found a Woman's Day magazine, was it? And he said he was leafing through it, and he found an order blank for a cruel embroidery serenity prayer. And he took that thing to the office and mimeographed it and sent an order blank off for himself and passed the other order blanks out to his Al-Anon lady. And he got a cruel embroidery kit of the serenity prayer. And I can remember at night being half-bombed, watching that man sit there and, oh God, I hated him. And he'd sit there and he'd stuff this wad of wool into this needle and pull it and get it through, and he'd sew. And he had the biggest, fluffiest flowers and letters you've ever seen in your life. Got a third of the way through with it and ran out of wool. And then he went back and he read the directions. And I guess with cruel embroidery, you're supposed to separate it into three strands. And that's why he ran out of wool a third of the way through. But he still has that serenity prayer with a third of those needles. Those big, fluffy, full letters and flowers. And he says it reminds him that you never finish with the program of Al-Anon or Alcoholics Anonymous. But he started hanging out with those women on Wednesday night. And I tried to continue playing the game with him. Now, after a particularly bad time one Christmas, and I think it was Christmas of 70, I asked him to please give me anabuse. And the psychiatrist had prescribed anabuse several years ago. And I said, I can't take it myself. Would you please give it to me? And I must have been out of my mind when I asked that. Because that man gave me anabuse for seven months. I wish I'd said for two weeks, you know. But he'll tell you that anabuse prescription should have had his name on it. Because he gave it to me and he relaxed. And he went to work and he knew that I was going to be pretty much okay when he got home. And that's the way the anabuse works. But I played games with it. He'd give it to me first thing in the morning. And at one time, one point, I'd take it out of my mouth and stick it under my pillow. And I got drunk. So he started giving it. And I'm not against anabuse. I'm neither for it nor against it. But I wasn't ready to get sober. And what it sort of did was delay my next drunk about seven months. But after I drank it one time, he'd give it to me every morning. And he'd put it in my mouth. And then I had this slur. And I'd drink it. And then I'd swallow. And then I had to open my mouth. And then he'd rub my throat to get it down. And one Saturday, I was doing something funny with a chicken in the kitchen with some cooking sherry. And I looked at that stuff and I said, It can't be as bad as what they say. And I took a little tiny sip of cooking sherry. And nothing happened. And I waited for God to strike me dead. And he didn't. And I took another little sip. And God almost got me. And I said, I've never been so sick and so scared in my life. I went in my bedroom. I looked at the mirror. And my eyes are out to here. And they're red. And the veins are pounding in my neck. And my heart is coming out of my shoulder blades. Little Jody came in and said, What's the matter, Mommy? And I said, I think I've got the flu. Go get Daddy. And Jim came in. And he said, What's the matter? And I said, I think I've got the flu. And he looked at me and he said, Flu hell. You've been drinking. And I said, I'm not going to die. And he called the drugstore. And they told him that I wasn't going to die. I had such a little bit. And he looked at me and he looked at Jody. And Jody was about five and a half years old and all dressed up to go to a birthday party. And she'd planned on that birthday party the way five-year-old girls do for six months. And I said, Jim, I'm dying. And he looked at me and he looked at her. And he said, You may be. He said, But she's got to go to that birthday party. And you can't take her. And I said, I'm going to die. And he said, I'm going to die. And I said, I'm going to die. And he said, You may be. And he looked at me and he looked at her. And he said, You may be. He said, But she's got to go to that birthday party. And you can't take her. And therefore, I'm going to take her. And if you don't die, when I get back, if you want to talk, we'll think about it. And he walked out and left me. And I thought those women have gotten to him. And they had Mickey. They really had. And a very good thing happened to us because from that point on, he did not accept the response. He was so upset. I'm going to die. I went home and left. Now aynı 그리고 And I took him back to his cell was home that day. And I saw him there was nothing he could do about it. And I saw her face. But he looked the same, and he was surprised. I remember looking at and a heart attack. I went fairly willingly the first time I went to Minnesota. And I remember when I got there, and remember, I've been going to AA on and off for a year and a half. And I thought I had taken the first step of the AA program, and somebody there asked me if I had taken the first step. And I said, of course. And he said, how do you feel about it? I said, I hate it. He said, you haven't taken the first step of the AA program. And I really didn't know what he meant until four months locked up, literally, at Christmastime in an alcoholism ward at St. Jude's Hospital in Montgomery. And I took the first step of the AA program. And I didn't just admit it verbally. I accepted it. I had proven to myself, people who manage their lives don't get locked up at Christmastime in alcoholism wards. They're home with the kids and the Christmas tree. And my life was totally unmanageable. And I had to accept that. And I also accepted finally what I had heard from you people for a year and a half, and that was that alcoholism is a disease. And it's physical and emotional and spiritual. And we get well first physically. And that's what I had to do those three weeks at Christmastime. That was the worst time of my life and the best time of my life. Because I did take the first step. And I took the second step. And I had really blocked on that second step. And I took the second step for so long. I had a sponsor who was a very spiritual girl. And she used to say, Sally, you've got to turn it over. You've got to pray. And I said, I can't. Jim was surprised last night when I said I thought I was an atheist. He said, I didn't know that. And I really did. I had a lot of guilt because I absolutely adored my father. And he was a man of God. And I was supposed to believe in God. And I had absolutely no belief at that point. And I can remember telling this first sponsor, Yeah, AA is okay for you and it's good for you. But I don't have any faith in any higher power. And therefore I can't get sober in this program. And that Christmas I was told, and I'm one of these people who came in the program and had to use the program and your love for me and your love for each other and the steps as my higher power for some time. And I was told that Christmas that that was okay. That that was an okay way to start. I knew I was going to be a Christian. I had to get it out of me. Because I had tried every way possible to do it my way. And I had failed miserably. And I knew I had some idea of that point. And I did use the group. And I used especially the love that I found in it. I didn't understand the love, but I accepted it. This beautiful sponsor that I had. Every time I'd get drunk, the next day she'd say, Sally, I love you. I was not a lovable person. I was not a likable person. I was so filled with self-loathing at that time. But I believed her. Finally, I accepted it. And I knew that she felt that way. And it was not long after that that in a discussion meeting one night, somebody pointed out the simple thing that we hear in Sunday school over and over again. That God is love. And that was the very beginning of my spiritual relationship with my God of Lander's Daniel. And I'm so grateful that, that, the founders of this program in all their wisdom wrote the steps exactly the way they did. That it can be my concept of my God. And doesn't have to be yours or my father's or the Methodist or the, the Indian or what, whatever. I did drink one more day after that on, on April the 19th of 1972. And my sponsor at that time was Rose in Montgomery. And Rose will tell you if you take the first step, you don't ever have to drink again. I don't know that I agree with that because I had taken the first step. And I knew it was going to be bad. I knew I was completely powerless and I still had to drink. And I knew it was going to go ahead and my life was going to be unmanageable again. And it certainly was. Every bit as bad as I thought it was. And I think that it was very, very necessary for me that last drunk. I think every bit of pain that I've, that I've had to go through has been very necessary. I wish the family hadn't had to go through it with me. But I'm grateful for my pain. Because I came back to the program and I had a different attitude about it. And I had a certain degree of humility. And I knew that if I was going to stay sober, I couldn't do it myself. And I had to do all the very simple things that you people told me to do. And that was so hard. This business and this tape we heard the other day, well, heard coming up here. He said before you, if you want to stop drinking first, you got to stop drinking. Oh. No. Ha, ha, ha. It's so simple. It's hard to get sober when you're still drinking though. And before you can get sober, you got to stop drinking. But all the simple things that I kept hearing. Don't take the first drink. Go to meetings. Read the big book. Think, think, think. You know, with what, what, what. Ah, easy does it. I liked that one. I thought for a long time that, man, it doesn't matter whether it gets done or not. And that's not what it says, though. But the simple things. I wanted something very complicated. And, and for this intelligent person, you know, I wanted something worthy of me. And this was so simple. And it works that way. And it is the simplicity. And the good things started to happen. And not at first. My, my first six months of sobriety were very, very hard. I was still suicidal. There was no love in the family. There was a lot of suspicion. And Jim had been deeply hurt. The kids were scared to death. When I finally stopped drinking, Stephen was 11 going on 40. He was the oldest little boy you'd ever seen in your life because he had had to accept the responsibility of an alcoholic mother when Daddy was at work. He was the little man in the family. And he had to call Daddy and say, she's fallen on the floor. And she's, I can't wake her up. And she's bleeding from her head. What do I do? Or Jim would call, check on me. And say, let me talk to Stephen. Little John was nine. And the month after I had my last drink, he took him to a psychologist at the request of the school people because his behavior was so out of control. And he was given a complete battery of tests by the psychologist. And the next day, Jim and I went back for the results of this test. And the psychologist, the first thing she said was, Mr. Troy, have you been sick lately? And I had to say from the moment he was conceived, yes. And that was the first thing and the only thing really that she had to say about John that made any sense. And little Jody, when I finally stopped drinking, was five and a half years old. And I went to as many AA meetings as I could go to. I babysat him Wednesday night so he could go to Al-Anon with his ladies. And I was miserable. And that's just about all I did was go to AA meetings and be miserable. And one night when I had been sober three or four months, we were camping up at Wind Creek State Park. A little pop-up camper. And I was having to take Jody to the comfort station. And it was pitch black dark. And she was scared to death. And she was holding my finger, my hand, as hard as she could. And she looked up at me and she said, Mommy, I like you. And I was completely wiped out. And it wouldn't have been as nearly as effective if she had said, Mommy, I love you. Because from that point I thought, maybe I can be the type of mother that my children someday can like. And maybe someday I can be the type of woman that maybe I can like or be comfortable with. And that was the beginning of a real spiritual experience. And I had to say, thank you, God, because this was something that was not of my doing. I had tried to be the mother that my children would like. And I couldn't. And it wasn't until I came here. And you people told me and taught me how to be a mother. And you people told me and taught me how to turn it over and to follow these very simplistic things. That the good things began happening to me and to us. She would have said that to Jack the Ripper if he had been holding her hand in those woods that night. She was so scared. But that really didn't matter to me. We moved to Ratumka, Alabama after that. It was about six miles away in a very beautiful, woodsy place. And all the neighbors knew I was in AA. Because John and Jody made sure that they all knew. They told everybody. Stephen came in one day from the bus. And he was so angry. He said, if you don't tell those two to shut up, I'm going to kill them. But John and Jody just broke my anonymity all around. One night we were over at a neighbor's house. A young couple. And they had a little boy about a year younger than Jody. I need to tell you first that one of the few friends I had left in my heaviest drinking. The girl that I had worked with was one of my friends. And she had a little girl Jody's age. And I used to try to talk her into leaving little Eva with us. And let me babysit with her when she went to the doctor for her regular checkups. And it would have been so much fun for Jody to have her there to play with her. My friend kept putting me off and putting me off. And finally one day she came right out with it. She said, Sally, I promised my husband and my mother I would never leave Eva with you. She said, we never know what shape you're going to be in. And I said, I'm not going to leave you. You'll never know what shape you're going to be in when we come back. And that hurt me so much. But then I've been sober a little while. And we were up in Blue Ridge, in Wicomka. Over at these friends and the husband said, Sally, we're drawing up a will. And our lawyer has suggested rather strongly that we find a couple that we can name in our will as guardians of Chris. In case something happens to the two of us at the same time simultaneously. And he said, we love you. And he said, we like what we see. We've been watching you and Jim and your children and your family. And we like what we see. And could we name you as guardians of Chris if something should happen? And one more time I was just completely and utterly wiped out. And I cried. And I walked back across the yard that night and I had to say again, thank you, God. Because one more time, and the promises say that we'll find that God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And the alcohol and the pills used to do, I thought, for me what I couldn't do for myself. And it was this very loving and forgiving God. And so many good things have happened. My little sister called me from Hawaii. She lived there from 1960 on. And she called me on my 6th AA anniversary to wish me happy birthday. And she said, I think you ought to know. She said, I've been going to AA for four months. And this child had had some very traumatic, trying things happen to her. Some very sad things. And I worried a lot about her. And at that point, I didn't worry about Elise anymore. Because I knew that she was going to find the same love and the same care and the same program on Maui that I found in Wetumpka, Alabama. And in every AA club room I've ever been in. I had a really neat experience. I had a really neat experience two weeks ago. And my area did allow me the great privilege of serving them as delegates for these two years. At the General Service Conference, they had a reception on Sunday afternoon. And we were in there. And there was a new delegate from Alaska. My little sister is living in Alaska now. And it's quite a shock from Maui to Alaska. But she's still a little bit flaky. And she goes to the group in Wasilla, Alaska. And at this reception in New York City. And standing there, somebody says, I'd like you to meet the new delegate from Alaska. I said, where are you from? She said, Wasilla, Alaska. I said, do you know Elise? She said, I'm her sponsor. And I said, I'm her sister. And here we are. And it's the most beautiful woman I have ever met in my life. And I'm so grateful that she's touching my sister's life. And here we are. And here we are thousands of miles away in this bond of love. From the language of the heart that was passed on so freely so many years ago. It hasn't been all good. There have been some sad things that have happened. And some trying things. And I hope I've learned from them. Working this program is still not first nature to me. Sometimes I have to remember. And I have to work it hard. And I get complacent. And I take everything for granted. And in June of 82, I found myself with a heart attack one Sunday afternoon. And I remember very vividly going in the ambulance from North Shelby County down to Brookwood Hospital in Birmingham. And I felt such peace and acceptance. And I knew it was a heart attack. And I knew it was probably bad. And I remember being grateful to God for everything that he had given me. And I remember thinking, you know, if I die today, at least I have lived more in ten years of sobriety in this program than most people live in a lifetime. And I had this attitude pretty much until a week later when I was put in my own room. And then I woke up one day and I was madder than hell. And one more time I was shaking my fist at God. And I was saying, I'm going to die. And I was so resentful and so full of self-pity and went into a depression that lasted several months. And it was a very, very bad time for me. And I remember waking up or lying in my bed one morning at 4.30 in the morning and I was all clenched up like this and angry and frightened and feeling useless. And it occurred to me I didn't have to feel that way. That I had a program that afforded me not just the ability not to cry. But the ability to be a better person. The ability not to drink. But afforded me a life of quality if that's what I wanted. And that's what I wanted and that's what I want now. And I went right back to that first step. And the only thing I was doing right was not drinking. But I was completely powerless over Sally. And my life was completely unmanageable. And I went from there to the second step. And I came to believe that a power greater than myself would restore me to sanity. And I tell you that just to be as honest as I can. That I don't. I give good lip service to this program. When I go to my meetings you know I can tell anybody how to stay sober and how to work these steps. But sometimes I have to get a kick to remember how to work it myself. A couple of years ago on my AA birthday we went with some very dear friends to school. We went with some very dear friends to Stone Mountain, Georgia and their Winnebago. And there must have been 120 little boy scouts there. And their parents and then mothers and PAC leaders. And it was 9.30 or so in the morning. And the PAC leader had them all sit down. And he got out his Bible and we sat on the outer rim of this conclave. And he read from the book of Genesis. And he talked about the God of creation. And he talked about the God that loved the greatest of his creatures. And we could see the magnitude of God's love all about it. This mountain and the forest and the river. And then he talked about the God that loved even the most. He loved even the smallest, most infinitesimal of his creations. And he talked about the little fresh water shrimp that live in that mountain. And there are potholes there. It's been carved out I guess by hundreds of thousands of years of glaciers and wind and weather. And these potholes in this granite when it rains they fill up with water. And the sun heats the water to a certain temperature. And these little fresh water shrimp eggs hatch. And these little shrimp swim like crazy. And they mate. And they reproduce eggs. And then the sun comes out and the water is dried up. And the shrimp die. And the eggs lay there and wait until the next cycle comes. And he talked about the smallest of these creatures that has this love of this God. And I was so filled with so much gratitude that morning. The greatest gift is the ability to love and the ability to be loved. And I felt that for the first time when I came into this program with Alcoholics Anonymous. And I felt the sense of belonging that I had wanted all my life and fought so hard for. And I felt the love of a husband up there and these good friends with us. And I found myself saying, why me God? What a miracle we are for each one of us to get sober and stay sober. I'm 32. I'm 36. Others have to die alcoholic deaths. And how truly blessed we are. Our family is good now. Steven, the old man, is 23 and he's married. I have a very beautiful, loving little blonde daughter-in-law and she does love me. She and I can talk about some things that she and her mama can't talk about. And she and her mama can talk about things that she and I can't talk about. She stays with us when Steven travels. And she was with us last Tuesday night and I told her I had to go to an AA meeting and she got really excited. She said, can I go too? And I had to say, Tracy, it's a closed meeting. And the next time Tracy's at the house, I'm going to find an open meeting and she and I are going to go. But they understand my alcoholism. And when they were planning their wedding, it was going to be in July. And she came to me, she said, Mrs. Roy, she said, don't you have some AA thing to go to in July? And I said, yeah. I've got an area assembly the second weekend. And they were married the first weekend in July. And I'm very grateful for that. And Steven isn't an old man now. He's acting pretty much his age. John will be 21 this month and John is still having some problems. He's our maverick and I believe that mavericks have got to hurt. But I think too that sometimes they appreciate life. They know a certain joy through their pain that some folks don't know. And Jodi will be in the house. And I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you. And Jodi will be 18 and is going to be leaving home, going to college some place this summer or next fall. And I'm going to miss her terribly. She's my AA child. She doesn't remember my drinking. But she loved AA meetings. And she loved them no matter what or where. And she'd sit there with her coloring book and halfway through go to sleep sometimes. But she could tell you if somebody forgot to read the preamble and if they didn't say the serenity prayer right. And she got very puffy and huffy when I told her I was going to a closed meeting and that she couldn't go. I'm not sure that she really knows what an active alcoholic is. She thinks that alcoholics go to a lot of meetings and drink a lot of coffee and laugh a lot and smoke a lot. It's a good life and I'm very, very grateful. There's a song that Bette Midler sings. From the road to the sky. From the road and it seems to me it sort of epitomizes our drinking and our recovery. And I heard this read by a sister nun who made a talk at St. Simon's a couple of years ago. But I'd like to read it. It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance. It's the one who won't be taken that never learns to give. And it's the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live. So when your night has been too lonely and the road has been too long. And you think that love and sobriety are for the lucky and the strong. Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snow lie the seeds that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose. And the spring becomes the rose. Thank you for my life and I thank you for my strife. I bless you. Everyone. Let's remain standing and hold hands and repeat the Lord's name. Amen. Be Jumped Oh, ah, Oh, Keep coming back.