Marty M. at the 7th International AA Convention – 1980

My feeling is towards this wonderful woman that's going to talk to you next, but I don't have. She will go down in history as one of America's great women. And I know that you're anxious to hear her, whatever she might want to say. She's been kind enough each one of these meetings to help me on this program. and I didn't want to impose on her tonight. But I asked her if she didn't want to do anything but get up and introduce herself, would she do that? She said, I'll do anything you want me to do. So Marty will be pleased with me. Thank you, Al. It's true. I couldn't refuse Al even though I hadn't planned to speak tonight and even though I think this was a more than adequate program I feel a little bit like a pointless period I sat here listening to the three speakers that have made up this program and I've been deeply impressed and I thought as they were talking of how difficult it is to say what A.A. is. It is so much to so many. It is so many different things to so many different people. But there's one thing that came through each of the three talks, and it would have with Al if he'd given his story, and it would with me if I told mine. A. A. is the bridge whereby the law becomes found. All of us were lost. That's what alcoholism does to you. It's been called the loneliest disease. And I think you heard in what each one of these men said, each with their different backgrounds, each with a different life, the loneliness came through, the feeling of separation. You know, the moralists and the clergy and the churches and many of the people for hundreds of years have looked upon this as a sin, a terrible sin. Alcoholics were sinners. Alcoholism was a sin. I found this very difficult to bear as I came to learn what it really was. a difficult and complex illness a sickness of body, mind and soul a condition beyond the control of the person who had it a thing that no one sees no alcoholic ever set out to become an alcoholic no one ever sought alcoholism it came upon them when they were seeking things that other people also seek just remember that when alcoholics start drinking they're doing what everybody else is doing too they aren't committing a crime they're not doing anything peculiar they're going to kill you they're never going to do anything they're now doing anything that is against all social custom and acceptance they'redoing what everybody does they don't start out to become the kind of people that alcoholism makes them the kind of people that gain only the contempt and the hostility of the rest of the world as their alcoholism progresses. When I began to learn this, after I discovered that what was wrong with me was called alcoholism, I felt a deep resentment at those people who persisted in blaming it on the alcoholic, calling the alcoholic a sinner and speaking of this terrible condition which had come upon us against our own wills and without any desire on our part as a sin because I felt that sin must be something that you chose. The whole fact of this was the power to choose between right or wrong or good and evil. And the alcoholic has no power, of course. That is the nature of alcoholism, the law of the power of choice over whether to drink, when to drink where to drink and how much to drink. And so I couldn't see this. Some years ago, it must be about ten years ago at one of our annual meetings of my organization we had an Episcopal bishop as our main speaker at our lunches. I seem to be joining this procession of Episcopalians up near. And this bishop talked on stint. This was at a meeting of the National Council on Alcoholism. And when he was finished, he had resolved many doubts in many minds, beginning with my own. For he had a definition of stint that not only made sense to me, but gave me some understanding of how that word could be applied to alcoholism. He said that in his belief, sin was separation. Separation from God and therefore separation from man. To put it in my words, sin means that you've either been kicked out or you've walked out on the human race. You've resigned from it. Many of us who have been through alcoholism don't believe that we resigned. We know we were kicked out. Many of us continue our drinking, I think Far longer than we otherwise might Because we do not believe there is anyone who will let us come back We are the lost We are those separated We are separated We are both who have Lost the ability to communicate with others Or to be communicated with were on the outside looking in maybe but looking in through thick glass it's quite likely that nothing might have come along that would have shown the way back into the human race and back into contact with our creator if A.A. had not come into being for this is what it really is This is the means by which the alcoholic finds acceptance back into the human race, acceptance by people like himself who were also separate, who were also lonely, who are also rejected, unwanted, unloved. Unlocked. And here is a group that opens their arms. And they say, come in, you're wonderful. You belong here. You're wanted here. More than that, you are needed here. Because AA says to every newcomer, we need you. We need more workers. Come in and get sober so you can go out and help others. There are so many. whom we haven't reached yet. We need all those we can get. And for the first time, perhaps in many, many years, the alcoholic is no longer separate. This, I think, is what the essence of AA is. This bridge that restores the law to the human race. and at the same time heals the separation between the lost soul and God. Thank you. Marty M. That's off your heart to meet your little teacher like that. And get these guys picked up with their current vices. You know, I'd rather agree with Ray than for me to be introduced as Marty M at this point if this institute is a little silly. But this kind of thing happens to me very frequently, and I usually explain to people that actually I'm a schizophrenic. I am two quite separate people, and the person that they have been listening to at the Institute, known as Mrs. Marty Mann, wouldn't possibly be there if it weren't for this anonymous individual called Marty. for had there not been a martyr who developed the disease of alcoholism and suffered intensely from it and was fortunate enough after five years of searching to find a way out there certainly couldn't be a Mrs. Mann who worked in the field of alcohol that's putting it personally But I think since this is an AA meeting, for the benefit of a great many people who are not members of AA, who may have no cause whatsoever to even consider they'll ever become members of AA—many of whom may not even agree—that it ought to be said right here and now that this institute at the University of Texas, and all of the talks that have been heard here, and all of the work that has been done everywhere which made the talk possible in the way of research and studies and all of the rest of it. None of this I don't believe could have happened had it not been for AA. AA is the other side of the coin in the field of alcoholism, just as in my own personal case, Marty the alcoholic recovered through AA. Had to be there first before anything else could happen. You see, until AA came along, the general impression was that drunks were hopeless. There was very good reason for that impression. Not very many of them ever got over it. I don't think anybody's ever been able to make a tell, because while here and there throughout history there are records of people whose names we know who stopped drinking and went on to make something of themselves, and the founder of this state that we're in is one of them. I don't know how many Texans know that Sam Houston had been drunk among the charities for many years, constantly, consistently, and hopelessly drunk. When friends went and found him there and told him there was a job to be done that they felt only he could do. And in his particular case, this is what put the light back in his eye and gave him the enthusiasm and faith and the reason to stop drinking and go ahead and become the man that is revered in this case. And if you should do any historical reading with this in mind, you would find that there were others. But all put together, they don't make very many. And there was never a case on record in any of them where they were able to form about them a group of people like themselves. because apparently in all of these cases they didn't quite know what it was that had happened. They didn't quite know how they had been able to stop and so they had nothing to pass on and I'm sure there may have been others besides the ones that we can read about in history books who also were able to start possibly through a religious conversion for this creates miracles when it happens. Possibly through a great love for love is somewhat like a conversion and it too creates miracles. Possibly true an infinite compassion and patience on the part of someone who helps so this is a kind of miracle too. But when these things happen to the ones we don't know about we can be pretty sure that they didn't talk about it very much. That if they wanted to go on and lead a normal life and become respected citizens and be accepted back into human society, they didnít want it too widely known that they had been drunk. Because to most people, that word was a word of opprobrium. It was a world that had a lot of meanings and all of them were unpleasant. A drunk was bad. A drunk with no good. A drunk where they weakened. A drunk had no character. A drunk who had no willpower. A drunk had no backbone And once a drunk, always a drunk Because what could you expect from that kind of a person? This has been a widely held viewpoint For hundreds and hundreds of years And if a person had been a drunk Knowing full well that these were the things That were said about him and thought about him and believed about him, knowing full well that no one believed that a drunk could ever be anything other than a drunk. He would have been thrice crazy to have brought it to people's attention. He was only wise. He was the one who was only acting in self-preservation to be as quiet as possible about it. And this was true also of all those who cared for him, his family, his friends, everyone close to him. For they all knew that this was the opinion. A good deal of this opinion, I think, was rooted in this belief that this is a hopeless situation. You can find all kinds of logic for it, but one piece of logic is that if these people indeed were so lacking in human attributes, if they were indeed rather subhuman because they didn't have any of these things which make a man, then how could there be any hope for them? What could you do with people like that? And so the idea that this was hopeless, I think, aided and abetted the picture of the individual who was a gun as someone that no one wanted. No one wanted to know, and no one want it to have around. The world at large, the human race, looks down its self-righteous nose at these people. And almost throughout history, if you read about it, you will find that they were vilified, ostracized, and left severely alone just as much as was possible. Over a hundred years ago, something happened that looked as if it might change that. A movement was started by a few gums. They gave it a name. They called it the Washingtonian Society. And for a few years, it made a difference. And quite a lot of alcoholics stopped drinking. But the Washingtonian society came into being at a time when there was strong feeling and very widespread that alcohol itself was evil, that it should be abolished from the face of the earth. And when many, many thousands of Americans were dedicating themselves to this cause of abolishing this evil. And they joined these alcoholics. And it became something other than a means of recovery for those who could not drink like other people. And it lost the ability to help alcoholics and very shortly thereafter it died out and hope once again was deferred deferred until the mid-1930s when the thing we call Alcoholics Anonymous finally came into being. And here, for the first time, when an alcoholic recovered and with the help of a spiritual conversion he had some idea about how it had happened and why it had happened and he could put it into words. Enough so that he could pass it on to a second and a second to a third. And this chain reaction was started. The chain reaction that put hope where there had been no hope and which gradually was to reach out this idea of hope and take in all kinds of people who weren't alcoholics and who now, because there was hope, saw a reason to be interested and to do something. I don't think any of this would have happened if AA had remained a tiny thing with a handful of people. But the need was so great for it And the suffering of those who needed it was so intense that it could not stay small. It was bound to grow, and truly it swept this country like a prairie fire from end to end. You know, curiously enough, in the very beginning days of AA they didn't think it was for women. The stigma that I talked about that resulted from this hopelessness and misconception about what alcoholics were like rested twice as heavily on women as it did on men. All of us, who are women, were brought up from the time we were little girls, recognizing that because we were girls, we were different. That certain rules were stricter for us. Certain things that men could do we couldn't do. In many ways, we were expected to be better than men. We're not so far away from the generation that placed women on a pedestal, you know. And many of us who are adults today grew up in that kind of atmosphere. one thing women didn't do was to drink too much. I still think it's frowned upon in most of our society. They accept the fact today that women can drink. They even permit women to go into bars where men go, although this is within our generation. And there are certain occasions and certainly in some social circles where if women have a little bit too much and get a bit tight, they're not ostracized. But to get drunk, falling down drunk, to go out of control. Even now today, in our rather over-liberal time, this is not acceptable anyone. By anyone. And so when drinking begins to go out of control with a woman, she tends to be even more secretive about it than a man. To deny it even more strongly. To make even greater effort to conceal it, and in many cases to do most of her drinking when she is alone in a safe place in her own home. Yes, women alcoholics are the most deeply hidden. In a way, I suppose this was true with me, accepting that I grew up in the wild days at the 20. And I lived in big cities here and abroad, and I moved in circles where nothing was too much. But even though that was true, even in those circles, when my drinking began to go out of control, people began to speak to me about why you're becoming a drunkard. What's happening to you? Why don't you drink the way you used to? And gradually, perhaps later than in women in this country who were living in smaller communities, I too went underground. I too could feel this from myself as well as from anyone else. I too began to run away from myself and move from place to place. And I was sure that all was lost. For although I asked many questions and I went to many places where I might have found answers and could have found answers, no one had any answers. For this was in the 1930s. And the word alcoholism was not in use. I was living in England. I remember in one year visiting nine doctors. All of them highly recommended to me. All of whom people of eminence. Not a one of them ever used the word alcoholism Or told me that my trouble was the drinking Oh no I was having a nervous breakdown I had an anxiety neurosis I was working too hard and burning the candle at both ends I ought to move to the country A thousand things they told Were the real trouble The reason why I was drinking too much I did as best I could to follow most of their advice but I discovered what they didn't apparently know I took myself unchanged with me wherever I went and therefore the drinking continued as before and gradually I lost everything I had and I managed to get back to my own country here with nothing and with no hope excepting that I might find someone here who knew answers I hadn't been able to find there. And I spent another year seeking those answers and I didn't get them for no one knew. No one knew and I am including doctors the husband of my best friend and I've been made of honor in their wedding was the head of a department at Columbia P&S. One of the greatest medical schools in the world. I went to him. Why? He said, trouble with you is you need a job. Survival. You have too much time on your hands. I was too drunk to get a job! I couldn't stay sober long enough to be interviewed for a job I said, look, Sam, I think I'm crazy. Why? I wouldn't send a friend of mine to one of those nutcrackers. You come in, let me give you a physical. And I had the best that there was, and there wasn't anything wrong. Not seriously, not deeply. And so I went to psychiatrists anyway. And they wouldn't take me on. I went for honest funds, apparently. They wouldn't put me on because in the 30s they didn't know what to do about alcoholics. The eighth one I went with told me honestly that people like me had one chance in a hundred. That one person in a 100 like me occasionally recovered. Oh, they didn't put a name to it. In all of these visits, I never heard the word alcoholism. I never had heard it. I didn't know there was such a word. But this one who said that one in a hundre of people like he had a chance like me but he wouldn't put an aim to it did get me into a hospital, and I did get into a sanitary. And I did fit into the hands of a doctor who was open-minded and who was seeking answers. And he heard of AA. And that's where he directed me. and I considered that it was not just great good fortune for I discovered through A.A. a way back to Satan I received again the greatest gift that I believe has been given to man the power to believe the power and the ability to recognize our Creator, to find our place in this universe, to have some notion of why we're here, and to find through this faith some way of doing the things we were put here to do. And this, I think, is what every human being is seeking. I don't think just alcoholics need this and are looking for it I think everyone on the face of this globe is seeking the same thing and needs the same things And when I say that I feel this was more than great good luck I do It's a curious thing but sometimes those who are the poorest the saddest the most kicked around the most unloved the most neglected and the most forgotten are precisely the ones through whom a great message may be given and I'm not sure that it's an accident but this kind of message was given to alcoholics People who were in about the worst fix that a human being could be in People who had absolutely nothing more to lose, nowhere further to go Who were almost the pariahs of our day We have been called moral lepers, you know Very often But these were the people Who received a message which said If you will believe and if you will follow your belief and if you will act upon your belief in loving others and wanting to help others you will be healed. This isn't the first time this message has been given to the world. But this time it has come in a way that many can use. For every alcoholic who hears and learns of AA has this great gift placed in their hand. And every member of AA that lives by the AA's test in an effort to remake himself and herself in something closer to the image that was first created. And in an effort to help others like himself and herself, each of these people, I think, are living instruments of a divine power. This is what AA is. It's all very well to talk about technique. We use it. We need it. For alcoholism is a cunning and a devastating enemy. But while the techniques may make it easier for us to hold out our hands to receive this gift, and easier for use it, and easier to pass it on, the techniques are only a minor part of what AA is really all about. Yes, it is a way back to health and sanity. Yes, it is the way to stop drinking, as Ray said. But that's not all it is. If that's all it was, it wouldn't have spread across this country and the rest of the globe like a prairie fire. It wouldn't be it wouldn' t have made the dent in the impact that it has made not just on alcoholics But on all the world, it knows anything about us. And it wouldn't have made the kind of impression it has made on all of us who are a part of it. So that after our 16 years, our 18 years, or 20 years, 22 years, for it is 22 years last April that I attended my first day, we are still in it and of it and a part and action. We wouldn't have to do this if it were just a way to sobriety. We wouldn't be doing it. No, it's a way beyond sobrietry. It is a door to life. The kind of life we always wanted to have. The type of life we were meant to have. And we learned that it isn't sobriety that we found in AA, but what to do with our sobrietry. How best to use it? And we found also that what we could do with ourselves had no end. That indeed the biggest room in the world is room for improvement. But what we had entered upon was a way of growth. And please, God, that all of us who are in AA will continue to grow as long as we live. As long as we keep contact with AA, we will. For it is a living, dynamic program. It's not care. And I think that many who are not in desperate need, as we alcoholics are, of this way of life can also find something of value to them in it, can also see this force at worse. This force that made us, this force that all of us in AA acknowledge as that power greater than ourselves that we call God. Thank you. And that was Marnie Mann's questions and answers on alcoholics. I think that really what had happened after, from 1939 to 1944, when Marty realized that there had to be some exposure for us all. There were no doctors or hospitals who were particularly interested in hearing about our plight, and a little bit of it had to been aired. And so she presented her opinions and feelings about this strongly, and they were accepted and talked about eagerly, and Bill thought it was a wonderful idea. Andso she started the National Council so that we could spread the word on alcoholism. And look what wonders it has reached. It's just absolutely astonishing. It was a great deal of love and admiration, affection and appreciation that I'd like you to welcome our next speaker, Marty. Talk about crying. It's pretty hard to find my voice even looking around this room. I can't tell you what it feels like to be a great, great, great, grandmothers to so many women. Because that's what you are, all of you. You're my children and I'm so, so proud of you and I am so proud of those two who shared with us today and so thankful to you, Jackie that you mentioned the other part of my life because I was one, and now we're beginning to hear it again and again, who became so involved and so caught up both with alcoholism and my fascination and curiosity about it. I read everything and there wasn't much. I think there were three books in existence. and with the idea that the growth of AA could be speeded up that the people we weren't reaching in those early days were women and I didn't think it was because women were different from men not in their alcoholism and I still don't think they are it's the same disease And we have the same feelings about it, and we have the same suffering. Sometimes I think that women suffer more than men do, but I think that's ego. Because certainly I have tried to help quite a lot of men and their suffering has been just as poignant and just as hurtful to them as ours is to us. Our situations are different, and sometimes that makes it seem worse because we have been laboring under what I call a double stigma. The stigma on alcoholism is bad enough, and it's still there. Don't forget that it hasn't gone away just because we're all here. It hasn't gone away because we've proven over and over and over again that it is a disease which is treatable and from which people can recover, and there are a million and a half of us recovered as proof. And yet I still work in a hospital that treats alcoholics, and I'm still amazed at the ones who come in have never heard the word any more than I had back in 1939. They don't know what alcoholism is. They're absolutely smothered under the guilt of feeling that they're bad, somehow that they are less than human. And when you see what can happen to people feeling about themselves when they realize that it isn't their fault. I never in my life heard of anybody who set out to become an alcoholic. We just wanted to drink. And we had no way of knowing that we were so constituted, and I believe physically as well as emotionally and psychologically and socially, that there was something different about our reaction to alcohol. And I include the men. Our bodies had an abnormal reaction to alcohol, I think, from the word go. In my early days in AA, I used to bravely talk about the ten years of social drinking I did. Well, in a sense it was because I never got into any trouble. And the reason I didn't was what I now know to be one of the early symptoms of alcoholism in most alcoholics. I had hollow legs. I'm awfully glad it's right here that I'm saying this, because one of the hardest-drinking towns in the whole world is called New Orleans. And I married a man from New Orleans, and I lived here, and they said I could out-drink anybody in New Orleans! A woman that knew me then was at the meeting last night and came over to speak to me. She said, remember, I knew you when you were still beginning your drinking. Well, I wasn't just beginning it. I started when I was 17, and I wasn' t married until I was 22. So I had a good head start. But I wasn''t having any trouble. I never had a hangover. I never had a blackout I never had to shake and I never had weather lag or fell down I never got sick speech and I didn't look drunk and most people didn't know I was and I didn't know I was drunk I'd had lots of drinks but it didn't seem to affect me very much I also discovered right at the beginning that two or three drinks were no use to me at all. I might as well have water. It wasn't until it got up to four or five or six that I began to get what I was looking for, which was some effect from it. I tell kids that whenever I get checked because they still believe that the person that can hold their liquor well, male or female, is somebody to be looked up to and modeled themselves on, and to try to achieve that same miraculous stage. Well, all it is is a very early stage in alcoholism, in my mind. So if any of you are wondering what to teach your kids, don't forget to make a point of that one. Now, if they find that they have this remarkable capacity to hold their liquor, watch out. That's the first red flag on the road to alcohol. When we lose our guilt, when we come to really accept, and I don't mean intellectually in the top of your head, but I mean right at the gut level, down here. That we are different in that sense. If we are suffering from a disease called alcoholism which is incurable and which can only be arrested if you never touch alcohol again, because your body cannot take alcohol safely, ever. Then one thing I think we have to do is what, is it Janet? Janet made a point of this and I thought it was a very important point. God put it there for some reason. We do not remember pain very well. We have a saying about it. We say that kind heals all things, and it does. It heals the acute pain of an illness or an accident or a loss or grief of any kind or terrible trouble or something dreadful that we've done. It gets dimmer and dimmer And dimmer And if we forget that If we don't do Oh let me say one thing I know many of you have heard me Say this before I've done so much talking Everybody here has heard my story I'm sure Well there isn't time to go into it all Or we'd be here next week I have to dole it out in little pieces when I get a minute. But I think that built-in forget-it was put there primarily for women, because if it wasn't, I don't think anyone would have a second child. And there might not be a human race at all. But we have to recognize that we have that, and that it's particularly active on the troubles we had with drinking. The easiest thing in the world is after a matter even of months, but certainly of years, to begin to forget just how bad it was, Just what led up to our surrendering, to our giving up and saying, I'm licked, I can't sleep, I need help. And this is why I think we can never stop any of us who are alcoholics from being active and involved in AA. Most of you know I've spent a great deal of my sober life traveling. I've been all over this country and all over the world, and there was a long period of time, many years, when I gave some 350 talks a year, four or five a day. I was going to tell everybody what they needed to know about alcoholism. I tried. Fortunately now, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who have joined the ranks of those who are doing just that. And I think maybe we're making a dent at long last. And I'm talking about the public. Everybody. body. Because that's where all those alcoholics are hiding. The ones that we haven't reached, the ones that haven't dared come through the doors today, the ones who will do anything but go to bed. And so we now have treatment places that will lure them in under any pretense at all. And little do they know that the conspiracy that's going on is to get them from wherever that treatment place is into AA. I know this to be a fact, because that was part of my job at the National Council. And I knew most of them, and I spent time in many of them with people, staff, and cases. And the only ones that have survived are the ones who have that goal. The ones who think they can do it all professionally without the aid of AA quickly go out of business. Of course, sometimes it's not strictly enough. But the ones that make a partner of AA and a goal of their treatment to get the patient into AA, they flourish. And more and more people come to them because they hear about it. and they hear that they're successful and that people come out of there and they're getting well and they've got a job and they get busy and they are getting active and that's one of the things that I do at the one where I work is act as a kind of liaison with AA you know since I stopped going to my office and traveling all the time I moved up to Connecticut permanently and have become a Connecticut resident I was able to start a whole new AA life I'd been going too fast and too far To get to enough meetings to suit me I always got to run wherever I went But usually as the star speaker You know, I didn't get to hear anybody else And that's what I needed But now I can go to AA Just as another member And the big kick I got as I walked up here was finding that two members of my home group were here today. And I'm particularly pleased because I wasn't happy about missing last night's meeting. Now, if you weren't either, it's Friday night, the one I go to. Well, I go there more than once, but that one I never miss. And when I make a plan to go anywhere, which isn't very often, and I try to get back by Friday. And last night, there I was sitting over in that Superdome, and I didn't know that Doc and Pat were here. I didn' t know anybody from my home group was here. I'm so happy. It's just as good if you get another chance and you can sort of start all over again with a new AA life and a new place in a new area and new friends and it seems to me after 41 years just as fresh and just as exciting and just as alive as I did the first time Because A grows on you And it grows I don't think basically one single thing has changed We've been very careful to try not to let anything change If you have a good thing, you don't want to monkey with it And we don't need to monkey with it Because it is a live, growing, spiritual force We couldn't monkey with that if we tried But we don' t need to What it seems to do to all of us Is to set us on a road to growth just when you say and I think it's in chapter 5 that we are not we're not looking for spiritual perfection we're looking for spiritual growth well that's just what we get and you don't get it if you don' t work for it and you dont get it if you stay away from it and you dont get if you dont put a lot of yourself into it all the time. And I've learned all these things, you might say the hard way, although I haven't had any trouble. But just by seeing things happen to other people, and I think one of the things that breaks my heart is to hear somebody that I know after 25 years of sobriety, going back to drinking. That is a real heartbreaker. I don't think that has to happen. It certainly isn't going to happen if you keep it green. If you remember your built-in forgetter and never let it take over. And if you stay close to the faith where you learned how to live, where you learned how to love, where you learned how to care, where you learned how to be, all of us found ourselves in AA. We didn't know ourselves before. We didn't know who we were, or where we'd come from, or where we were going. I think every alcoholic who's gone far enough to look for help is lost. As Mr. Sandy said last night, lost, really lost. And then we find our spiritual home in this fellowship. And that's something that we all seem to recognized instantly. You know, we all repeat the same things. Everybody here this morning has said them. About feeling different. About not belonging. Feeling that we don't belong. I used to try to describe it to my psychiatrist pre-AA, the one who pushed me into AA, thank God, and him. He was a wonderful man, and there are an awful lot of his patients in AA. Well, not just all over the East, all over country. His name was Harry Keebo. And I was his guinea pig. He couldn't believe it when he saw what had happened, because I had the original words in the 12th step, spiritual experience. He changed it to awakening because the kind of being windblown on a mountaintop that Bill had and sitting in a room with a presence that enabled me to walk out of a third-story window and not fall, which I had, and a variety of them, quite a lot of them described in a little book called Came to Believe it's worth reading. I don't know if that's saying literature or not. I get it from all sides and all sources. If I could find anything in it, I don''t care where it came from as long as I've got it. Anyway, Keebo didn't believe it, and so he kept me there for six months after it happened, and all my AA friends in New York, all 24 of them, It's all the worse. All kept saying, well, what are you doing up there? You know, you're in AA now. You don't have to stay up there anymore. Get out of that hospital. But he would let me go. And since it seemed to be sticking and it didn't pass so away in a couple of months and I didn't revert to my old thinking in my old ways, and clearly a change had occurred which was permanent, a 180-degree change from no faith whatsoever. In fact, an almost antagonistic attitude toward God. I guess I wanted to be an atheist, really. That was the intellectual thing to be. I was an intellectual, of course. How I came to believe, I don't know, but it happened. And I was lucky I'd never lost it. And it propelled me. It propelled me whether I wanted to move or not, whether I felt that the pains of growth, and there are a lot of pains in growing. There are lots of ups and downs, and for many of us that also have problems with depression, and that's a very difficult period. It's very hard to get through a depression and hold your faith intact and your belief that there really is the light at the end of that tunnel. And this is something that many alcoholics share. But it helps us when we talk about it together, with each other. We can help each other a great deal in that as we can in almost any problem. It sounds ridiculous to say, but I just don't think, I can't think of any problem that we've had to have help for within AA. It's that broad and it's that strong and it' s that powerful and now it's back everywhere. I really got such a kick last night when those flags went up. Oh, I remember the very first trip that I took. I guess over eight months. And something awful happened in Cleveland. They ran a series of two steps at a time in a box on the editorial page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer with a box number. And the mail arrived in bushel baskets, and there were 24 members. And we just thought the whole thing was going to blow up. How are they going to handle that? What could you do with that? And so there was one car in the whole group. and Bill and Lois and Jack and his wife the owner of the car and I decided to go to Cleveland and see for ourselves what was happening save it maybe we didn't have any money so we started at 4 in the morning because we couldn't afford to stay overnight anywhere and we got there very late at night and found the house crammed with people waiting for us we were kind of tired so we didn't have a meeting right away this was about 1am but we did the next night and it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen there were 100 people in that room and Phil and Jack and I all spoke and I remember saying wouldn't it be wonderful someday if we could go all across the country and in every big city like Cleveland we should find an AA group and everybody roared with laughter. Most ridiculous idea in 1939. And now look at the damn thing. I'll bet if you were in a helicopter and put down in the middle of the jungle in the Middle of Africa you'd find a loner maybe even a goose I just want to say again that I don't think we're any different, basically, from the men members. The same steps work for us. We use them the same way. We get the same benefits. And I don' believe the figures they give us. I think that the proportion of women is higher. I go to an awful lot of closed meetings, especially in big cities or big communities, and sometimes in smaller ones too, where the women outnumber the men. And in the last few years they've been coming in in droves. and as the stigma lifts and more and more of us talk about it openly freely and show that we don't feel ashamed and we have no cause to we don' t need to feel ashamed we should be proud If we could make all of those women who haven't come in yet realize that, they'll come in in still bigger droves. Because it's shame and stigma that keeps them from it. In my opinion. Oh, there's a little thing called denial, too. But that's easier to overcome than the other. And that's not easy. But it can be done. And a good 12-stepper can do it. I've seen it happen over and over and over again. So just let me say to you how grateful I am that you're all here this morning and that I could be here with you and that I could stand up and see this room packed Lined up, standing at the back. And we even have quite a lot of men here. Of course, they're probably just curious. They want to know what we're really going to talk about. Not very different at all. You know, there's a big controversy brewing in the professional world about the difference between alcoholism and women and how they're out of special treatment facilities and special things set up and special points done. I don't see it. We haven't been doing too badly the way it is, I don't think. So I don' t think we'd better tamper with that either. I don''t think we will in AA, but they may outside and give us some extra problems we'll have to deal with. Convincing those women they're no different from the rest of us or from their fellow AAs who happen to be male. so truly we have a bond in a disease it's a strange way to have a bond that is deep and strong and that flows constantly through us and passes on to anyone who will hold their hands up And it doesn't stop flowing. And I just think we're the luckiest people in the world. It's been an extraordinary morning and very exciting for all of us. I'd like to just, before I close, tell you very quickly, it's curious that Janet is in four and a half years and Kiki's in eight and a half years, and I'm in twelve and a half years. So evenly spaced. That was not meant to be. It was coincidental. But when I came into the program, I belonged to a little group in New York called the must have seen at that time. And we had quite a number of women members, but I was the only woman who would speak. They were all terrified and they'd sit in the corners and in the back and they were afraid to raise their hands and they weren't afraid to share. And I must tell you that it was, I guess, a little bit of an ego trip for me because I had an absolutely a marvelous time. I went everywhere. I spoke to the U.S. Navy and colleges, and I was all over the place like apple butter. But it was great for me, but I think what it did too was to help them see that it was all right for them to go out and speak, and nothing terrible was going to happen, and that it Was important for us to be able to share with other people, and the identification with the particular problems that perhaps we do Heather, they're a little bit unique from time to time. Not especially too much, but a little bit. Can be shared with other people. So I urge you all, if you're not sharing in your group by going out and speaking, please do as much as you can. It really is so tremendously helpful to everyone else. I'd like to thank you all for being here, and especially our three speakers, Janet and Tiki, and of course Marty. And I think Joan would like to close the meeting for us. Thanks again. I would just like to join in thanking our wonderful speakers for this very moving and inspiring meeting. Janet, Tiki, Jackie for sharing our meeting and of course Marty. Thank you so much. And now in closing, for all those who chose to join, in the Lord's Prayer.