Leslie S. on Step 1, the Intellectual Alcoholic, and the Alpha-Woman Mother

Okay, so now we have confirmation for liftoff of our next meeting. This is so exciting. We get a chance to – now we're going to hear what Leslie's done. You've already seen Susie N from Honolulu, Hawaii. She's in the house. And when she's done, if you're not just fired up and completely ready to go somewhere, please stick around. Ralph W. is going to bring it home. We're going to have bases loaded at that point, and Ralph's going to put one right over the wall. He's from Los Angeles, California. Leslie, with no further ado, I've heard Leslie speak not too long ago, Leslie. I don't know where we were. I don' t know if we spoke together. Did we? Okay, yeah, we spoke to each other somewhere. I think we're all in for a big treat. I know Leslie's got an amazing program of recovery. She's very well spoken. She's lovely. look how beautiful she looks today. I think she's just going to give a great example of Alcoholics Anonymous. And with that, and no further ado, Leslie, you have the floor. All right. Thank you. I was waiting for you to allow me. Thank You. I appreciate it. You guys caught me off guard. My name is Leslie Strange. I'm a recovering alcoholic. As I stated earlier, My sobriety date is November 2nd, 1988, and I am 31 years sober. I have a sponsor who's got 34 years, and she resides in Los Angeles. I now reside in Atlanta, Georgia for the past 15 years or so. She has a sponsor. My grand sponsor has 50 years sober named Fran, and she's out of Los Angeles as well. So I'm connected. I am spiritually connected. I have an umbilical cord called sponsorship. That is the nurturing and the feeding of my spirit with guidance and direction. As per the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, that's what they told us to do. And that's What I Do. I'd like to thank the committee in advance. Mike, one more time, good to see you recording. Robbie, you remind me of Boardwalk Empire. I'm watching that again. You remind me OF somebody that should be broadcasting from New Jersey Shore somewhere. You're just phenomenal. know your character but so am I so we recognize um thank you Paula for keeping in touch with me um I did listen to the the lady before me phenomenal story awesome Jen love you to life um phenomenal um but I was caught off guard I'm checking the time I'm on eastern time and I had to hurry up and um get that like uh um I forgot what her name was she said she had to get her makeup people were on the way. I had to hurry up and slap this on, so forgive me. And if I could just get a moment of silence to gather myself and to say the serenity prayer, please. God, grant me the serENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Thank you so much for that moment. The topic that I have here is interesting, and I don't know if you're anything like me, but my ego's always challenged whenever I'm asked to speak on a topic because, see, I'm the intellectual variety. I'm an alcoholic of the intellectual varietal. I like to research. i like to look up words i like to look at the root word that the the um latin word or the hebrew or whatever and then i like to break it all down and tear it all apart and so i can explain it and and part of my ego is i want to sound profound i want to sound like i know some things or i just want to look good but for this thing this is a heartfelt topic to me and i figured that with me and god together that he will just help me to share my experience strength and hope with all of you regarding what is my primary purpose. I'm going to basically share with you in a general way what happened and what it was like, what happened, what I'm like today concerning the topic of my primary focus. And for me, my primary purposes, like most alcoholics, it was all about me. My primary purpose was to get what I wanted, when I wanted it, how I wanted it and from whom I wanted before and after getting sober. See, my primary purpose had nothing to do with God's will for me. See, I don't blame it on the religion, but because I didn't have an understanding of the religion. I'm recovering Catholic and in Catholic school as a kid, as a child in Catholic school, I thought that maybe I was supposed to just do what the priest and the nun told me to do and do what my parents told me to do or my mother or my guardians told me to do, and everything would be okay. I didn't understand, and seemingly nobody explained to me anything about a primary purpose. I wasn't hearing about a primarily purpose. I don't know about any of you guys, but I never heard anything about what my purpose was. In fact, purpose was one of those things that you find yourself. See, I'm from Los Angeles, so we're the peace hippie community. We're the find yourself, drop in and drop out or smoke a little of this or drink a little bit of this or take a tab of that. But I didn't know anything about my purpose. All I knew was I had adults reigning over me from school to home and I was supposed to do what they told me to do with no spiritual information, with no spirit. spiritual guidance, just them because they were the adult. Like my mother used to say, you don't ask me why, you just do it. See, I had a mother that was a dominant force in my life and she was an alpha woman. And she was one of those women that was in charge all the time, whether it was her children, her job, her income or her man, she was in church. She was in the church. All the time. She had that, like my boyfriend always says, I have a base in my voice. She had this bass in her voice, and when she would come into the room, it would startle us as kids because we were terrified. So for me growing up, my primary purpose is to keep my mother from knocking me upside the head because she was physically abusive. My primary purpose was to get good grades and make my mother happy or make the nuns and the priests happy. My primary focus was just to have fun and play outside, and I didn't have a lot of stuff I had to do. You see, my primary purpose at that time, so I thought, was just to be a kid and to have fun. So as I grew up, I started looking at myself as I started development. And what I found out is I never liked who I was. I never like what I saw. I never lacked how I felt. I never lied to me. I didn't have enough. see i thought it was i didn't have enough love and fluffy and holding you and what stuff that i'd seen on tv stuff that i'd see my friends mothers do stuff that I've seen my friends parents do to hug their child tell them I love you and you're the best thing on earth and and like our previous speaker said she told her son I just look at that face I love that face and I didn't get that or if I did I don't remember i never got a mother that felt like she made me feel confident enough and made me feel like i was pretty enough or promoted my talents and my skills and told me how wonderfully i sang because i i was a singer and tell me how wonderful i could be as an actress and she to me she just didn't give me those things that i desperately thought i needed so you've got that part then i'm coupled with the low self-esteem low self worth and then the lack of love from mother because it's always mom's mom's fault isn't it it's always your mother's fault I wouldn't be sitting here this is what I used to think I wouldn'T BE AN ALCOHOLIC IF IT WASN'T FOR MY MOTHER I WOULDN'T BE SITTING HERE WITHOUT A FATHER GROWING UP WITHOUT a father if only my mother could hold on to one of those five husbands she married it'S HER FAULT I mean when you're going through life and you're growing up And I grew up in the 70s. And in the 60s, it was a time where, you know, I was the oldest of two that were alive. And it was me and my younger brother. He's five years younger than me. And people made up my primary purpose for me. See, I Was the adult child caretaker. My mother would go out, dance and go out partying. She wasn't an alcoholic, but I was to take care of him. that was my primary purpose for those times when kids would tease him or steal his bike for him for him I was the big sister they had to walk around the corner to go get his bike back that was My primary purpose to be a protector for my brother and then as I got older at 13 my mother contracted lupus erythematosus for those of you now they just simply call it lupis but my mother got lupas and she was always sick so I was The caretaker that was MY primary purpose Take care of my mother Make sure that my brother got dressed for school Make sure the food was cooked I was cooking at a young age I was ironing clothes at a younger age I told you I'm a recovering Catholic So I was ironing those plaid skirts With all those creases And plaids And that white blouse Making sure I polished my black and white Oxfords And make sure my brother's shirts were ironed I was the caretaker That was my primary purpose see it was always given to me and told to me what to do see I'm coming in a different perspective because for me primary purpose when you look at primary means first my duty I did things out of fear not a healthy fear but fear of getting beaten up beaten by my mom or fear of the school calling my mother fear of what someone may say about me and then my primary purpose among my peers was to get them to like me. Can't you see how funny I am? Can't you see I'm a hookup girl? I can always connect stuff. Nobody told me about gifts. Nobody told me about abilities. I was still trying to find out what they were and who I was. And then here comes King Alcohol. In the midst of all this trying to find disconnected from any kind of god of my understanding adults were gods to me because you just do what they say or you're gonna be damned and then catholic school throws on top of that this god that floods the earth and gets rid of people and makes people lepers so i'm terrified of that as a kid born into a confessional in a little dark room to tell this priest all my stuff so he could delegate whether i was forgiven or not whether i Was sinless or not. So all of those things combined with the fact that I had a disease and I didn't know it. Now, I don't know if I was born with this disease. I don'T know if it was just over a period of time and I developed it. I DON'T know, but I know one thing, I got it. See, what I found out is when I stayed around here long enough, I found how that this disease, it comes up and you don't even know you're headed toward it. Just one day you look up and it happen. So when I grew up and we were going to parties, and I'm 16 years old now, I'm really, really liking boys. And one boy I like at this party, he's there and he's cute, but he's not paying me any attention. So I have to get something done. I have do something to get his attention. I want to get his attention, he needs to see me. So someone, I don't know about you but remember teenage parties when someone would go and spike the punch we were talking about it the other day that big bowl of that sweet we all should have diabetes i mean that sweet bowl of hawaiian punch that somebody would pour in there that syrup and then they add the water maybe put some fruit in it and then some older boy 17 or 18 come over and take a screw the top off the cheap wine and pour it in there and we called it spiking the punch it spiked the punch so that the parent wouldn't see it and all of a sudden the party was on the music got louder the lights got dimmer and it was all about hey the party is on and I got me a sip and I remember how that sip made me feel I felt taller I felt everything I didn't feel when I didn'T have it and it worked it worked and I paraded back and forth you know how you are girls when you see that guy but you want to act like you're not paying him attention but you try to look out the corner of your eye to see if he's paying you some attention but you dance real like hey I'm not paying you no attention but watch how I'm dancing so I'm pretty sure I went through that because that's what I did when I was an adult drinking and something happened that night that night I had a blackout instead of enjoying the rest of the party and seeing how the story would end i ended up in the laundry room they put me in with the washer and dryer and closed the laundryroom closet door because i was so drunk they had to carry me because i passed out and they later told me in an amusing way what was so funny and i ended up in there smelling like downy or tide or something i don't know but i slept in that closet all night hidden from my friend's mother but that wasn't enough to make me I mean that's just something you do 16 you get drunk you pass out okay fine so then after that I'm starting to grow up and I'm getting older and older and then I get into my 20s and and I get a good job I'm working at the phone company Pacific Bell in Los Angeles I got my moved out my mother insane mother's house um um and I've got my own apartment from the time I'm 18 I've Got a car that I bought on my own. I'm doing all the stuff that I think. My purpose at 20, between 21 and 28 years old when I got sober was to just party. I got my car. I've got my job. I ain't got no kids. I am 21 years old. The club is open. I have proper ID. I can snatch this baby and walk into a club with $2 and come out drunker than any man in the club because you men sat there. Just like I was a predator to you, you was a predictor to me. So we prayed upon each other and I ended up getting all the drinks that I wanted. Because remember, I told you, I didn't have a primary purpose. I just went along and drifted through life. See, I was raised with just get a good job with some benefits and you'll be okay, Leslie. And I did that. I did exactly what they, I always did what they told me to do. I was told I'm a rules girl. See, I sneak around them where the repercussions were so slight. It wasn't that much. So I do little stuff, but I basically overall, until I was this year's old, discovered that I wasn't really a bad kid. I was really a kid that was disconnected from a power and didn't have any idea. I didn't know anything about being connected and enlightenment and all of that. They were still talking about transcendental meditation when I grew up. I don't know nothing about that. All I know at 21, I wanted to party. All my friends were my age. All my friend's had jobs, had cars, had their own places. It was a group of girls, a gaggle of us. And we'd go out partying every single weekend. Not only that, we'd party during the week. Then my drinking got into the way of my job because then I'd go on happy hour. then it started happy hour and we drinking after work then we go to a club and then it backed into noon so we had liquid lunches i'd get drunk with my boss and and go back to work at the phone company and screw up and disconnect the wrong line so if you ever got your phone mistake when you disconnected in the 80s i apologize because it was probably me drunk on lunchtime yes donna i apologize you know what i'm saying but that's what the thing we did it was doing the prince era it was nothing but go out half naked with a corset and some gloves uh material girl madonna i was in that era in the 80s and that's I'll party till my face fell off I start out with the long island iced teas I started out with those long island ice teas I started off with that and then I changed over to the zombies because it made you feel like one again when I took a drink I got taller my breasts got fuller I got prettier my hair just grew and I felt like I was the prettiest girl like I always pretended like there was a camera following me I always acted like I was on film and one day somebody was gonna surprise and pop out say we got you on camera because I always acting like somebody was watching me I don't know if I'm the only one I know one other person on here who did that I always felt like I was on camera. I know Robbie did. I was always on camera and then on top of that, I'm a Hollywood baby. My mother was in the movie industry so everything was just like, I had to have the right profile and the right stance because again, I didn't have a purpose. I just wanted to party and that party led me to drinking my alcohol and smoking my alcohol and doing other things that come along with that alcohol and once i took a drink i couldn't stop with the drink i'd end up laying across my seat with that nice beautiful dress on turned around backwards and inside out with one shoe in my hand and with my stockings and underwear and my purse if i had any on there see that's the girl that i was and i did that for years and years i'd wake up with strangers I'd look over and say, what did you say your name was again? I do one night stands for three days. God only for two, three days, I just, I did everything that I thought I wanted to do, but I never thought of it being a problem until later in the 80s. Later in the 1980s, uh, in 1988, it started getting progressively worse. I was waking up in strange places with strange people. I couldn't stop the length of time. might be missing from family events would be more than three days. It started going into a week and then I'm calling out on work. I'm always calling out of disability and I can't go to work and I manipulate a psychiatrist. I go to the therapist and cry and say that they're abusing me at my job and my job is prejudice. And I try these different methods of trying to get some sympathy from somebody it's just i'm stressed that's when we use the word stress to them and so i go into this stress stress thing and then and then i try to go to psychiatrists and then they give me different medication and and i'm i'm already crossed the line by now the invisible line by now because now valium sound good and quain sound good of course i gotta put some alcohol on it It always starts with alcohol for me. Swearing up and down that I'm not going to drink like this one more time. I'm laying down with my face on the cold floor in my bathroom because I'm throwing up. I can't eat anything. By the time November 1st, 1988 came around, I was down to 88 pounds. I was drawn. I was shrunken. I was internally as bad looking, feeling on the inside as I was on the outside. It was horrible. My mother hadn't seen me in months but one night I called my mother after having been on a spiel with a friend of mine. I'd been on the run with a friends of mine and I told him I don't want to do this anymore. Call me a cab, I'm ready to go home and he looked in amazement as I left all of that stuff right there. I had more. I could have been drinking until the cows came home. It was at least a few days worth it. I was ready to go home. I didn't want to do that anymore. I finally called my mother because, see, I was good at disappearing. I would disappear whenever I'd been doing what I do because I was too ashamed to let her see me because I knew I was losing weight and I knew something was wrong, but I didn' t know exactly what she took me to the hospital and after they took the blood and the samples the blood samples and the urine samples the next day the man came down November 2nd he came down from from the um test room from the labs and asked me was I tired and I say yes see somebody might say in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous they might say that that was a moment of clarity or somebody else might say that it was a God shot or it was grace or it wasn't. It was willingness. It would surrender. They could say that in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, but for me today, I don't know what it was, but there was this ounce of willingness. For a nanosecond, I was willing to admit, conceded to my innermost self that I was tired. So when I got tired, I told them that that man gave me a big thing directly. and he said, go on and take this. There's some people in this book that can probably help you. My mother and I went home and she's not an alcoholic, but she was excited for her child. And I could imagine how excited she was to find out what was the problem with her child? And as she circled those directory, the meetings in that directory and found places that we knew about, and she said, we're going to start going to these meetings. And she traveled with me for 90 days. That was my travel dog. I came into the rooms and I got a sponsor and I worked the steps So it took me a year and a half to get through the fourth step because I didn't feel like it. But what I've come to understand is I was too afraid to look at myself. See, that was the beginning of the road of finding out my primary purpose. See, I know what my primary purposes are. It's amazing when I stay around here now and I ask alcoholics who are either new, old or in between, and I asked them that question, well, what is your primary purpose? Especially when you're an alcoholic like me and you get off track. things and stuff and the kids and the car and the house and the man and all that other stuff comes into play. And I forget. And it's so amazing how many people really don't know their primary purpose, according to the Alcoholics Anonymous rules. My primary purpose is to get sober and to help another alcoholic. Because there's something about once I get sober, and that's including steps four through nine in our clean house then i'm able to transmit this thing this experience strength and hope to another person who felt hopeless like me transmit something in this spiritual program see when they wrote the book which was amazing to me they were able to take an experience and put it in there so that somebody like us could read it and get something out of it. And what's so amazing in that, in the Oxford group, the whole thing, the tenets lead to helping someone else. See, when I got through those steps and I found out what this was all about, first of all, I'm spiritually disconnected from a power greater than myself that not only can manage and control my life and help me and give me his will, it can also keep me from getting drunk the first few days were horrible detoxing is horrible I'd rather surrender and go back and get another drink so my head tells me but I cannot because I don't want to feel like I felt so it was horrible so you guys gave me something to do you said just come to meetings every day and I went to meetings two or three times a day because I was on disability I could sit there see when I came into the rooms I was excited when i came into the rooms and i saw the g word on the wall i am okay with that word because that made me feel safe oh if they're talking about god in here it's a safe place that was my perception that's what i thought and that's how i felt and you guys made sure to it that i was okay that the men weren't running up on me as a newcomer and that i got some coffee and you guys took me out to eat and all that made it a self-safe place but i was i didn't know i was on the road to having a purpose. I didn't know that there was a plan in this. It was so funny that my pain would turn out to be something wonderful for someone else. My alcoholism could be a vision for someone else. It's something about, that I discovered in this program, that it's something about the way that God hardwired us as humans. And this is in my opinion, if you don't agree, I understand. But there's something about me being hardwIRED by somebody, known or unknown, something inside my soul is happy. When I see someone achieve something that seemed unachievable, when I see a woman twinkle come back in her eyes, and her face looks years younger, and she gets happy, and she gets her family back, and he gets the job, and gets the career, and starts to understand this program. And she starts doing the work, and calling her sponsor, and talking to me, and this aha moment over and over again. It makes me happy. Even if I'm at the liquor store, and the bun is standing out there, and it's freezing cold here in Atlanta and I give him or her $20 or whatever I choose to give it, whatever spirit lays on my heart to give, it makes me feel good that I did something with someone else. Why is that? Because the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous said that I am selfish, self-seeking. I suffer from self-pity and delusion. And everything is about me. See, that's been the crux of my problem besides having resentments because see, everything is about me. See, I'm like the actor. They talk about that. If you just do what you're supposed to do, if you just stand where you're supposed to stand, if You just have the lighting at the right angle, if you just sold the tickets and seated the people quickly enough, and if you just opened up and parked the cars where they're supposed to be parking, you just pop the popcorn and not burn it. If you just said your lines in the play just right, the play would come off because it's about me. In the middle of my thinking, it's all about me, so my ego is prevalent. My ego's in the front. My eagle is the thing that feeds my dis-ease. My ego says that I'm God. See, I remember at one point, my problem was I wanted to be God. At one point, I wanted to be God. I just wanted to run things, direct the show, and everything would be great. I love that analogy in the book when they talk about that. How do you treat selfishness and self-centeredness? You get out of self and you get yourself centered. See, if you remove the dash from self and centered, you remove the dash you get you come in here self-dash centered all about me and you remove the dash and then you get self-centered centered with what centered with god's will and centered with the most high so i get centered in this program because i'm armed with facts about who i am and who i'm not then i stop becoming delusional and i stop self-seeking and i stopped i go through the trials of not being as resentful then i deal with my defects of character and my shortcomings those little imps that come up through my daily living then I start seeking his will God what would you have me to do I'm gonna take you back see that third step prayer says something real simple God I offer myself to you to build with me and to do with me as you will relieve me of the bondage of me so that I can better do your will take away my difficulties my difficulties are anything that block me from my communication and connection with not only my fellows but from you God remove whatever that is but before I can have something removed like this obsession to drink I have to be done I have to be so tired of self And so tired of me and so tired Of just my mess that I have To be willing to let it go see I used To think God was a pixie dust guy I used to think God was just going to come with his magic wand His rod his staff and he was Just going to bow and everything was going to be Perfect once I got sober Well I'm here To tell you it got more worse Once I got Sober I started seeing all kind of stuff because I found out that alcohol is nothing but the period at the end of the sentence and I found Out that the whole sentence is a mess but I'm here to tell you that my stories and my travels to find out what my primary purpose and to be solid and live in that primary purpose has been a wonderful love story I call my life I call our lives a beautiful love story because in a love story there's losses there's tragedies there's surprises and there's things that come around the corner that you're blindsided you don't know it's coming and it's all kind of stuff that happens and then all of a sudden that the people in the story they fall in love and and that's my story with God I have a healthy respect and now I have a purpose not only to just to be of service to another human being but also to please him see one of the biggest dilemmas when i came around here and they used to talk about god's will the knowledge that god's will and the power to carry it out i don't even know sometimes today what is god will but once you build this house and you start walking this walk regularly you improve your conscious contact with god you will intuitively know how to handle situations you will have that intuition in that fourth dimension which is a spiritual level of understanding of what is good and what is not good i don't like to use bad i like to see what's good and was good because there's something about my experience when i make mistakes in the rooms of alcoholic synonymous which is the best place to make them i'd rather make a mistake with a big book in my hand than to make a mistakes with a bottle in my hand so pick one because if you're human you're gonna make some i'd rather make a mistake with a sponsor on this shoulder and a sober friend on this shoulders and have uh the alcohol slicker store man on his shoulder at this shoulder and some man that's beating and abusing me pick one and when i come around these rooms and i find out that my primary purpose is to please god and to help his people. But wait a minute, what's God's will for me on the inside, in between time? I may not always know. And sometimes I'll call my sponsor. She's not available. I don't know which way to go. I'm at a fork in the road today, God. I got 30, 31 years sober. I got 28 years sober and my son is trying to commit suicide on a slow plan. And God, what do I do with him? How do I help him? Even today, that's one of my dilemmas. he called and he said he was suffering from depression i just told him to call uh my sober friends call this person call that person but what hurts is when my primary purpose can't even help the family member i can help all of you guys because you surrender yourselves to the god that you see in me but i can't help my own babies i'm sorry and I'm scared for them and you tell me to let go and let God I've learned that my primary purpose for my children and for my family is be maybe the only big book that somebody will ever read. When I talk to my sponsors and they break principles and they don't do certain things and they do things that are not integrity based and humble and honest I tell my ladies, we don't do that. We don't roll like that in here. Maybe it sounds egoic or whatever, but we don' t roll like here. Not on my watch. Now you're going to get you another sponsor that will validate that bull or you call one of your friends, but I'm not that girl. You're not going to do that on my wife. See, sponsors keep me in check because I can't talk all of that and walk differently. The same girl that they see on the screen, all my sponsors i love you it's all the same girl y'all know one-on-one i'm that same girl i'm even more gut bucket on him but it's amazing when you have a son who suffers from this depression he's not even an alcoholic and i can give you guys all this good stuff and i could be the spiritual guide and be the mother be the representative of god and i cant help him find his primary purpose but what i have learned after i've had making men to my mother and understanding and walking in her shoes with empathy, walking in her shoes. I know how to treat him and give him all the love from the bottom of my soul so that I am going to be clear no matter what happens with him. This is just something else, another page in my chapter of my love story that I can share with another woman who's having the same difficulties with their child baby stay out the way let me share something with you I may not know what God's will is but I know what it ain't and I don't think God wants me to kill myself on the installment plan and I think God has blessed me with enough wisdom enough character defects and character assets that he can take my defects and turn them into assets he's blessed me with enough of that that can be of use to my fellows, male, female. See, I had a chance to have the party. God gave me two things. He gave me chances and choices. We're the only plant animal on this planet that we have two things, chances and choice. And when he gave me the keys to my car of my life, I took it and ran into the wall over and over again. But until I got tired of running into the wall like the jaywalker getting my ass hit now my back's broke then I surrendered he was just saying baby I was waiting for you to come on so I could give you the rest of your gifts but he didn't give these gifts to me for me to hold them in and not reach out to anybody and I don't know how people go around not sponsoring and not being sponsored I don'T I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT WORKS because I always have somebody sponsor me because I want to hone in and I want to enlarge and progress in my spiritual growth. I have to because I've had a spiritual awakening, which means I was in a spiritual coma. Once I'm out of the spiritual coma, now I'm awakened. There's something about this program that if I don't stay in constant contact and on top of my program, I can slide back to sleep. First, it starts out with daydreaming. All of a sudden, I'm detached from y'all. I ain't heard nothing the speaker said. I ain't heard nothing my sponsor said then I slide into a slight sleep and you know how they talk about REM my spirit can go to a rapid eye movement I can go into a REM sleep in the spiritual walk in this program and just miss out on a whole lot of stuff so I try to stay awake to everything around me what that looks like ladies if you walk into a car the mall is closing you walking in the underground parking you're walking briskly you're looking around because you're staying awake making sure that there's nobody you might look under the door under the car that or go around the car make sure nobody so you can be safe well you have to stay awake so you can be saved see what I found out my primary purpose is to stay away and aware of my own conduct see my primary purpose is the stay awake of my and be aware of Mike defense see my primarily purposes to do the work stay on top of 10 and 11 find out immediately and correct the mistakes I make as I go through the day and apologize where necessary or amend where necessary and still be of service. That's my primary purpose. Got a few more minutes. I'm trying to understand today, why is it that once I find out my primary purposes and I know what I need to do, why does my ego come into play when y'all don't want to do your primary purpose which is usually if you're an alcoholic you got the same primary purpose i have see i it says i can't transmit what i don't have i gotta have it to transmit it so when i ask that newcomer that's been around a couple years and been in and out or i asked one of those five C's. What is your primary purpose? Is it to get the job and is it to get the stuff? What are you doing all of this for? See, I found out this thing too. The big book is designed to help me have a spiritual experience, producing a spiritual awakening so that I can be connected to God and help his people. Now, the cool part of this for me is while I'm doing all this good work for God, I'm getting it in the meanwhile. I'm being blessed in the meanwhile. See, I don't want to miss the message that God has for me. I don' t want to go to sleep and turn a blind eye and miss whatever it is he has for m. God is a guiding force, and I'm talking about God a whole lot because that's all I got. God is a guiding force in my thoughts. My sponsor, Betty T, used to say, pray for the right thought, word, action, and deed. Pray for the white thought, the right word, the right action, and the right deed. See, my ego is connected in this thinking, and my ego likes everything that's anti-principle. It likes me uncomfortable. It likes me jealous. It likes me envious. It likes me slothful. It likes me selfish and self-centered and self-seeking. It likes me having resentments. It likes me having sexual misconduct and loves me to be afraid. But there's one thing in my primary purpose getting of understanding that I do know. Once you tap in on the source of this power, once you tap in on a God that gives you the power that helps you to breathe in and out to help save another person, once you get that you maintain it and you keep up the relationship you develop with God by helping other people by reading, by praying by meditating by reaching out to people and checking on them there's an old timer that lives here and I check on her time to time and I say hey I can come over there with a mask on if you want me to come bring you some groceries you good? And she said, yeah, baby. People don't even know I do that. See, there's so many things that people don't, I don't have to say that I do. It's something about the spirit of me. And it's something about the Spirit of you. When you're doing this thing for real and you're really in the middle of this boat and you really doing this think is something about the Spirit that shows even on Zoom. I ain't got to win votes and influence people. This is not a political contest where I'm trying to convince you of something. This is something real And it's something about my spirit, my spirit talking to your spirit, my God speaking to your God. Whenever somebody like Mike who sits in that room that I want to organize so dang on bad, always recording, he knows his primary purpose. You got Robbie T over here, who's always team 30s radio guy, but I know he's working in the middle of his purpose because he's on here for a whole two days. you got people like Paula making phone calls you got people like Donna taking care of that pretty baby on it you got people who are working in the midst of their primary purpose we may not like each other but I know one thing an alcoholic won't do we won't wish you dead and we won'T wish you drunk we will never wish you dad and we will never wish You drunk. In fact, they got something for us in the big book and I'll say this there's sometimes there's some sick people you got to pray for when I was new I didn't want to pray for you I wanted your leg to fall off but it's opposite of what this program is about that's why when people come in here who've never been here before from all over the country they're amazed because we here in America we really walk this thing they talk about in the book you guys really calling and checking on me we clap for the newcomer so if you don't know what your primary purpose is I I don't Know What You're Doing but I ask that you may pray and ask God show me your will not mine be done it's just like we say in the Lord's Prayer thy will be done in the 12 and 12 I'll wrap it up with this in the twelve and twelve they said do not pray has prayer specifics. We stay away from specificity. He doesn't say that word. I just wanted to be fancy and say that work. I love that word we stay away from specifics, but if we have to pray a prayer if you're going through something real tough real dark real hard, but you in here best place to go in best place to going right in here the best place to do you ain't got to go through it by yourself. If somebody can't do nothing but sit and listen to you moan on the phone because you don't have the words. Hey, just call somebody. We're supposed to pray for those who are sick. And more important, we add, if it's thy will, what is your purpose? Yeah, you might be a great engineer and you might do a great job, but you're not going to be great at what you do on your task. But what is Your purpose? What are your spiritual skills? What are Your spiritual gifts? And don't get mad if somebody else has been portioned something that you thought you wanted, ask God what's your purpose and how can you go about being best suited for men and women that need your help. My name is Leslie Strange and I'm a recovering alcoholic and thank you for your time. Wow, Leslie, that was absolutely phenomenal, Leslie.