Mary R. at the 2nd Great Plains Roundup – 1984

I'm sure glad I didn't know you people when you were drinking my name is Mary I'm an alcoholic hi and I'm a product of countless vain attempts first I want to thank the committee for asking me to speak at this rousing, what can you say? You've got as much pizzazz as any place I've been. Gosh, it's just terrific here. I guess the sobriety date is important in Omaha. It's important to me. I'm a member of the early Birds Group in Tustin. We meet at 730 in the morning. You're still sleeping. And my sobriety date is March the 29th, 1961. And I will say that it hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink since then but that's a lie it's been necessary but I haven't had a drink so I'll get right with it and I can tell you that I can wrap up my whole drinking career by quoting what the cat said when he got through making love to the skunk he said I didn't get all I wanted but I got all I could stand I was an instant alcoholic I left home the day after I graduated from high school and I went on a road show because I was a feature dancer and it was there where I was introduced to the elixir which happened to be slow gin now I know when I say slow gin that isn't the end drink and hasn't been for quite some time so that naturally dates me right and speaking of that i have often been thinking lately of getting a facelift which is you know something that the gals are doing these days and uh on sober reflection though what's the point in getting a face lift when everything else is sagging two inches below where it used to it's a hell of a it's the hell of day when you find yourself trying on one of those cross your knees bras I'll tell you but you know I've learned a lot about acceptance in this program anyway I traveled on that road show and like I said I drank alcoholically from the very beginning I was never able to accurately predict my conduct at any time I started to drink and of course I did not know anything about alcoholism and so therefore um you know it just went on and on and on I finally wound up in the nightclubs of San Francisco where uh you know you would think that I had it made especially in alcoholic paradise in San Francisco I was like I say I was a feature dancer and I was written up in The Columns and I got a lot of attention from the men and I was table hopping every night giving everybody a break you understand and I wore fancy clothes and had a nice place to live and and all of that and you would think that I would be happy and I kept walking around wondering why I wasn't happy but there seemed to be something unfulfilled inside here you know some unanswered question and I didn't know what it was and I just felt at the time that uh really my talents were being wasted in nightclubs and as soon as hollywood discovered me then that would be the answer that i was looking for all of my life and so came the day when i was uh bid i was asked to go to holly wood to take a screen test and i went down there with the attitude that betty davis had better start saving her money because i was on my way down and what i neglected to tell you in the beginning was that i Was born scared and i didn't even know that until my sponsor told me that after i got sober so i went down there and i took a screen test and it was rotten how can you act when you're already acting i didn't know that i didn' t know any of these things but they did sign me to a stock contract and i was on that uh on that major studio lot for a couple of years but right away i got caught up with the drinking crowd now i know that a lot of the new people say well what am i going to say to my friends they all drink well of course they we don't hang around people that don't drink i never did anyway in fact uh i don't even like to be around those social drinkers they make me nervous uh did you ever hang around those people you know you know what they do don't you think they sip their drinks sip their drink i went over to my brother's house on a christmas one time after it sobered up uh for a couple of years and uh i'll tell you my head won't let me be anything but an alcoholic the way i think my attitude because the first person i met over there was a little old lady she had one of these tall anemic drinks with ice and mix and all that stuff in it you know she was sipping i wanted to belt her in the mouth you know uh and her her son was there trying to be funnier or drunker than he was and um people were uh well i went into the kitchen and there was a supply there were about six people there that was supposed to drinking and there was a pint on the table with the lid on it and it's embarrassing for me to tell you this but right next to that pint was a jigger. Is that disgusting? And they were talking about eating. You people drink like that? Then my sister-in-law put the icing on the cake when my brother came in and said, Connie, would you like to have another drink? You know what she said? She said no thanks i'm beginning to feel mine so you know i don't understand any of that i i saw a guy put a drink down on the coffee table and walk into the next room and leave that drink there unattended you know and that that brings a sweat to my hands right now i don'T understand that but anyway you know if if any of you people are new here tonight and that's the way you drink then I you may have made a big mistake here anyway um anyway uh getting back to uh to my big screen career which never happened uh I immediately got caught up with the drinking crowd and I made the fancy nightclubs and supper clubs and I became a play girl because that was my role in life and that's where I was most comfortable I really didn't do a hell of a lot in in the movies I did a few bit parts and I danced some and this that and the other but I knew that my career was going to wind down any minute and I started getting a little bit apprehensive about that when all of a sudden out of the blue came a man from the USO office and offered me an opportunity to go overseas and entertain the soldiers because the world war was on at the time world war ii was on at that time and I immediately jumped to the that chance because I thought well the first thing I thought of us, all the men over there. You know that. All the men over there and all the attention I was going to get because, see, I hadn't been getting much attention on that studio lot because I was just part of the herd there. And so I accepted this and I went overseas and I got into a lot of trouble. I don't know whether there's anyone here from that World War or not, but if there is and you kind of resent USO girls for fraternizing only with the officers i'm here to tell you that i was very democratic with my drinking i drank with yard birds generals didn't make any difference to me i just said where is it and let's go um you know people pleaser than i was but uh i like to drink you know and be popular and all that and um like i say i got into a lot of trouble it seems strange to me now that I've learned a little bit about alcoholism, that one of the big clues about alcohol is defending your right to drink. Now on this tour we were in China, Burma and India and when this incident happened we were somewhere in the Himalaya mountains and I came to one morning after having been drinking grapefruit juice and something with the guys the night before and i could not move i was absolutely paralyzed and my roommate called the medics and they came trooping in with oxygen and shots and i don't know what all they worked on me for a couple of hours just to get me on my feet and functioning again and you know i blamed the altitude i had myself so sold on that that i didn't even drink in denver after that i just knew that uh that was it altitudes i couldn't drink so i came back from that tour feeling very put upon and uh because the military had not told us that they expected us to entertain between shows and and do all these go to these parties and everything well actually they hadn't demanded that of us at all what happened was i demanded that of myself because as i told you i was a people pleaser and I would do anything to get your approval. One of the biggest freedoms I think I've gotten on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the fact that today I can live in a manner that's acceptable to me regardless of public opinion because I now realize that as long as I'm playing all those different parts and wearing all those differing masks to get you're approval I'm throwing away my own and that's the one I need the most I always did need that the most but I didn't know how to get it So anyway, I was offered now an opportunity to go over to the European theater. And I said to my... Well, this is where chapter three was written for me, my own chapter three. I said To Myself, this time it's going to be different. This time I'm not going to drink so much. This time, I'm going to get involved in all those parties and I'm not going do all those things and see everything go by me in a big gray haze. and this time it was different this time, it was worse because I got into more trouble and in fact, I'm probably the only USO girl that was up for court-martial because I always tell this story and I'll tell you about it as I go along here I was always madly in love either that or recovering from love and I don't know which I enjoyed the most you know when you're recovering from love you can get that sad music on you know that poor me music and then you get the jug out but then the music that's the important thing so you get that music whose lyrics give you no hope at all at any time and you get to the end you get your jug out and start crying and you start editing all the things about the love affair you know you edit out all the crap and just remember the romantic tender moments you ever do that uh and that's what i used to love to do that bittersweet agony you know and if i if i didn't have anything really to go on i would manufacture it because i loved i get lonesome for the agony did you ever do that get lonsome for the agony get right back see there's a guy nodding his head down there's always one there's always one other one around but uh anyway i had fallen in love with this uh handsome lieutenant somewhere in Germany it was and I found myself some several towns beyond where I first met him and involved again in another drinking party of course and I suddenly decided that I needed to get in touch with this handsome lieutenant and I sat and got on the telephone one of the field telephones which goes in relays and sometimes it takes quite a while to make the connection and while I was waiting for the connection a captain who was also drinking standing over me asked me to go play or drink or whatever he took his thumb and disconnected the phone and I said captain if you do that once more I'm going to hit you and he didn't believe me because I just about got through again and he disconnected the phone again and I since I had it my hand what else could I do you know I hit him on the ear you know and uh I guess I hit him harder than I really intended to I like to think so but um the fact was that he either was so stunned or so loaded that uh he didn't realize what happened for a few minutes and I must have had some startled look on my face when I saw the blood gushing out of his ear and down his white trench coat and when he saw that he screamed like a banshee and ran across the street to where the mps were hostile and he signed these papers you know and uh they all came trooping over and um he pointed me out and i was ordered to appear the next morning at this hearing and they were i was just so afraid that they were going to drum me out of the core you know out ofthe uso uh and send me home in disgrace so i spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how i was going to get out of this one did you ever do that so i figured well since there were uh 18 girls on the show that if i took two other brunettes with me there was an off chance that this guy was so loaded he wouldn't be able to identify me so we showed up the next morning and that poor captain was sitting there and he had one of those hangovers that came over in waves you know with with a poached eyes and and his red face and everything and the poor guy was so sick you know and he couldn't identify me and i always tell that story because i have this dream and i'm sure you know what the dream is in looking back i'm almost certain that he was one of us and of course i hope he found the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous and that someday or some evening I would be telling this story might even be tonight and he would be in the audience and after the meeting he will come up to me with his hand extended and he'd say Mary, I'm the captain that you hit on the ear in Germany and I'm going to let him make his amends to me we weren't always wrong you know even a clock that stopped is right twice a day you know and from the same source i finally found out what makes the grass greener on the other side of the fence this is going to kill you it's so simple they take better care of their lawn don't you hate it anyway uh i continued and i didn't realize that at that time only in retrospect i realized that uh that the emotional erosion had already started this what alcoholism does to the emotion it had already started because i i found that i was always depressed and i was trying to drink back some kind of some kind of feeling of something uh i was trying to manufacture it i was laughing from the mouth out i was doing all those things just trying desperately to get back that feeling that i used to get from alcohol and i didn't know it was all gone i didn t know that and i kept trying and then i kept blaming that man's inhumanity to man because i'd seen all the you know i'd gone to one of the concentration camps and i'd seeing some of the evidence they had for the nuremberg trials and all that stuff and i just knew that that's what made me miserable that's What Made Me Depressed and that was only partly true because most of the people on that show even though they felt sad and shocked at what they saw they didn't have the same kind of melancholy i that seemed to just pervade me so I knew also that the only place for me was the nightclubs of San Francisco where I had so much fun god how much fun can you endure so I hurried back to San Francisco as soon as I hit the United States and everything there seemed to have changed and even my drinking buddy seemed to change and my philosophy was always change conditions and things and then everything will be all right so i figured that i'm like 22 years old and i'm over the hill because i've been every place done everything what's left get married so i carefully selected a victim happened to be a bartender i couldn't stand and i asked him to marry me now i know there's some alanons in here tonight and this guy didn't drink you know i told you i didn't hammer on people didn't drink but he didn't drink at all but you know the alamance will tell you that every pot goes out and finds a lid that fits it and certainly it's true in this case because uh he turned out to be a compulsive gambler and i gave you a clue as to what kind of a marriage it was he gambled my drinking money and i drank his gambling money and that's a very tense way to live i can tell you that. But at this point in my life, I just couldn't stand another failure. I just felt that I'd been a failure at everything I had ever tried. So I was determined to make this marriage a success. And so we moved to the San Fernando Valley, Southern California, because I was trying to get him away from all those bookies. I knew that once I got him straightened out, everything's going to be all right. And I'm quite sure he had the same idea about me get him get me away from all those drinkers and i'd be okay and we moved to san fernando valley and i found a drinking buddy right across the street for me and he found some bookies up on the corner and the race was on again and like i say i couldn't stand another failure and so i decided the way to fix this whole thing was for me to have a baby and so i got pregnant and now i was going to change my whole mary was going to change from the inside out i was going to be a perfect housewife perfect mother i was gonna be perfect in every way i was going to do everything by the numbers i was going to do my lawn on on sundays and do my laundry on mondays and chit check over the back fence like they did i was going to wear pink curlers to the market like they do and do all those things that those people do above all this woman that i was gonna be did not drink so i went on the wagon god that chokes me up when i say that you know that you don't know what a wagon is don't you that's transportation between drunks anyway uh i went out of the wagon and uh god i became crazy you I really got crazy I became a compulsive housekeeper There's always one or two others in the audience When I talk about cleaning the corners with a pen And having a pocket full of Q-tips To get the little drips and drabs under here I had a toothbrush in my pocket also That cleaned the lettering on the appliances with And if the old man got out of bed In the middle of the night to go to the john His bed was made before he got back And that's also a very tense way to live Anyway, you know By the time the kid was born It's a wonder I didn't boil him Because by that time I was cleaning the walls with hexo I mean this was crazy I knew that there was Something terribly wrong with me But I was compelled to do these things Knowing that it was insanity But I couldn't help it I just kept doing it And you know This went on for quite a while Until I found out that I was pregnant the second time after a few months of this and now um my whole attitude changed what the hell's the use you know i always drank with two attitudes one was what's the used and the other was i'll show him well here it was what the use didn't i try to be the best person in the world didn't I have this kid's whole life mapped out for him what he was going to be what kind of clothes he's going to wear what kind of friends i was going to let him have didn't i try my wasn't i going to be perfect and here comes this intruder allows things up for me what's the use you know what's even trying anything so with that kind of an attitude i went back to drinking much to my surprise i was drinking out of control again within a very short time i did again the progression of the disease i knew nothing about alcoholism and so this is the way it went and by this time I guess I just kind of gave up it wasn't that I didn't care it's that I couldn't care you know, I tried everything and nothing was working and so I now went back to my haunt the place where I felt comfortable me and my and the gal across the street from me the gal that I drank with the neighborhood bars where I like to be i love the bars i was a bar drinker that's where i felt at home i love that unreal dark atmosphere you know and i loved walking in there hell i could walk in with a dollar and stay for three days you know that and you guys that are laughing were picking up my tab you know but uh you know i loved uh i thought for a long time like everybody else you know they went in there to pick up guys well i didn't i went in there to get validated because nobody at home was telling me how gorgeous and how desirable and how sexy and how gorgeous they weren't telling me tell me that at home i want to tell you also that i never drank with a common laborer i always drank with uh brain surgeons and uh big people like that you know of course they were drinking with with a big movie star too you know I just love that unreal stuff I love the bullshit there that's what I love most yeah that's you know I really felt at home there but you know this went on and on finally that baby was born and my husband took a dim view of my activities and he left me and came back left me came back always we promised each other made promises that neither one of us could even keep to ourselves i mean that's the game we play i guess and uh as a result of that i got pregnant the third time and now i was outraged womanhood because i knew he was trying to keep me pregnant and barefoot and out in the country and i couldn't stand it so uh anyway i guess I was drunk most of the time when I was carrying my third child and I don't say that with any pride nor do I have to be as guilty and remorseful as I used to be either. I'm merely reporting to you the things that happened to me on the way to Alcoholics Anonymous and the things that I had to experience who get me down on my knees and this is the way it went. So after my third child was born my husband left me for what proved to be the last time and now i was free to live the way i wanted to live and now those things that happened to alcoholic women started happening to me in rapid succession i remember being ordered out of that bar where i was once welcome and not having any recollection of having been there the night before. I remember coming to in an alley, one cold gray dawn, sick and shaking and scared. And I hope I never forget a Sunday morning when I lurched down Ventura Boulevard, which is one of the main thoroughfares there, and came across a Catholic church where mass was just being let out and his family coming down the steps with their two little boys and i hope i never forget the look in those two little boy's eyes to see this drunken dirty reeling staggering woman you see i didn't want to be there i hadn't planned on being there i was choking on my own disgust and bad biting back my tears and wishing to god that the earth would swallow me up then i wish to god i was dead but you know i wasn't through yet many many other things had to happen in rapid succession before it drove me into drinking behind closed doors and drawn shade and planning planning uh to kill my husband because i knew it was all his fault in my own insanity i really felt that was valid that was solid in my own mind that it was all his fault that these things were happening to me and I became totally insane by this time my friendly doctor had given me some of those tablets that they speak about in the book because I was distraught you understand and I was taking those along with my vodka in my cheese glass and became totally sane and for some reason or another sometime in March i reached for the telephone because something told me i desperately needed help and i called alcoholics anonymous clubhouse at north hollywood it took me two years to remember where i had heard about alcoholics anonymous and then i remembered that i had been at a drunken brawl across the street and there was a there was red-haired woman there drinking a coke i hated women i absolutely hated women especially those who didn't drink and no doubt i had asked her in my own inimitable fashion why the hell she wasn't drinking and she said something to me about having found a better way to live and she says something to me about aa and here it was two years after she said those things to me that i was calling alcoholics anonymous and that reminds me that my responsibility is not it my responsibility is to scatter the seed and not demand that it sprout on the spot because that woman to this day does not know that i'm sober does not know that she gave me you know the message in fact i don't even know if she's sober but nonetheless it was two years later that this came to me and when i called a young man answered the phone and he knew that i was not i'm sure he did but he broke one of the unwritten laws in aa and i guess you have the same law here that men don't call on drunk women but he came anyway i think god in his infinite wisdom sent exactly the right guy because you know if he came out there with a romance in his soul i can tell you when i opened that front door especially if he was downwind uh that romance would have flown out but like i say god in his infinite wisdom sent exactly the right person because i don't believe that i was ready for a couple of salvation foods to call on me uh and he came in with that big a a grin and i guess that clubhouse must have had some four days or something because the only literature he could bring me was the cover off of Grapevine, which was the Serenity Prayer. And I thought that was absolutely wonderful. Of course, I was drinking, again, out of my cheese glass and letting him talk while I was drinkin'. And I finally said, aren't you going to stop me from drinkin'? He said, no, go ahead. Well, God, that got my attention. No one had ever told me to keep drinkin' so I thought that was rather odd but he finally talked to me about an AA meeting and I thought gee you mean there's other people that will talk to me because no one you know my mother and father had turned their backs on me and my neighbors weren't talking to me nobody was talking to they were hanging up on the phone and I said okay and I you know he broke rule number two who told me I was an alcoholic thank god I thought that sounded rather scientific compared to what they had been calling me you know i liked him right away so uh anyway i i threw my raincoat on it wasn't even raining i don't know why i did that and i poured one more drink and i said are you sure it's okay to drink before i go to the meeting he said sure go ahead and i say to hell with it and that's the last drink i had from that day to this anyway um we i hope you realize that you're applauding alcoholics anonymous because i already stated that i'm a product of countless vain attempts and i couldn't have made it otherwise and i wouldn't have anyway he took me out to this uh little tiny meeting way the hell out in the hill someplace I thought he was going to take me out there and kill me And I was hoping he would But anyway we got into this little tiny It was a little tiny church Sunday school kind of building And there may have been 20 people in that And he told me to look in the window And I looked in and I thought God it looks like another PTA meeting And I've already been through that And I started to back off I'm sure he sensed that I was backing off Because he called me over to the front Where the door was And he said well look in here I looked and he took his hand and shoved me in and he broke rule number three well that's promotion that's not attraction i don't care what you say so uh he was then he then introduced me to the first woman who was to become my sponsor and she she was she represented everything i hated in women you know she was soft-spoken spiritual well-groomed cunning baffling and powerful and she spoon-fed my soul she was exactly what i needed at that time of myself i would not have chosen her because this is a woman that never went off the block but she was very spiritual and she was deadly i mean she spoke in quiet with little quiet tones but it was deadly and she scared the hell out of me uh she took me home that night and um in those days i don't think I don't think they catered so much to the alcoholic as we do these days because she didn't ask me if I would like to go to a meeting the next night. She said, I will pick you up at 8 o'clock and we are going to a woman's stag. I almost threw up. I couldn't tell her I hated women. I knew I didn't belong there. And as she drove away over her shoulder, she said, by the way, please take a bath before I pick you off. And I thought, what the hell do they want from me, these people? So the next morning I woke up and every pore in my body wanted a drink. And I want to tell you, I left a half a quart of vodka there. I wanted a Drink so badly and yet I remembered one thing because I was so drunk and crazy that night. I remember one thing that they said. They said, we don't drink on a 24-hour basis. we don't drink for any reason at all and that, we've got a new expression down in our area we don' t drink before meetings we don´t drink after meetings we don''t drink between meetings we don'T drink if our ass falls off we learn a new way to sit down so uh anyway that's what i remembered and i went to the woman's tag that night and i knew that i didn't belong there because the woman who was leading that meeting was such an elegant looking god she was a she had long blonde hair every hair in place long blonde page boy with little black expensive dress with pearls and i mean she was so elegant and oh god a toast burner you know never been off the block i mean i just didn't identify with her at all and i knew i didn't belong because all the ladies there looked so oh god you know and i thought i i just couldn't wait to get out of there and but then you know i think when the student is ready the teacher will appeared because the next gal that got up she talked in my native tongue profanity and that made me feel a lot you know it made me feel welcome and I talked to her immediately after the group and and I started going to 10 meetings a week I was going to ten meetings a week not because I had this strong desire to stop drinking because I really didn't want to stop drinking I you know I've been on the wagon a hundred times I told you that but I I couldn't get enough of what i felt in those rooms that power and the love unconditional love and the enthusiasm and i just couldn't understand it and of course i couldn't read the book because of the i was i had double vision for such a long time the words were up on stem you know and i did pretended that i was reading it and all that you know i did a lot of pretending and i faked it a lot and they'll be fake it till you make it they kept telling me i dida lot of that in the beginning but I just couldn't get enough. I kept drinking up all the feelings that I used to get and I still get in every meeting I've ever attended and I just could not get enough My husband found out that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous and he took a dim view of that He didn't like that at all He wanted me to go back to drinking like I used too which, you know, the poor guy, he was sick too and I couldn't tell him that I didn't I just cannot stand that anymore and he gave me a real bad time, he used to call in his own insanity, threatened to kill me threatened to take my children away from me he threatened all these things and he was driving me right up the wall and finally I couldn't stand it anymore and I called up my sponsor and I said Rita, this man is driving me crazy every time he calls me I want to kill him again he keeps this homicide alive in my soul and I'm going to kill them and I asked what am I going to do and she said well why don't you hang out never occurred to me never occurred to me because see I come from where you get even and I thought God these people are crazy they keep telling me to do things that are just so foreign to me they just don't really understand they don't understand my case is real different you know and I became queen of the yabba club everything is as a yeah butt you know and uh finally i you know i ran i had to run out of my own resources again and i started to uh pick up the phone when he called and say i'm sorry you're hey you're upsetting my serenity and i'd hang up on him and i kept doing that until he stopped calling in the meantime i kept going to the meetings and yeah i just loved it i just love it and finally one of the old mossbacks in my home group uh told me i was doing very well and instructed that i should take my inventory and all those stuff you know i just did such crazy things the first few months i was i just Did everything they told me to do because it was easier than fighting them finally and uh everything was going along smoothly and i was going to all these meetings and all of a sudden um he had a bad day again and he called me on the phone and it was about three months after i was sober and again the whole this whole homicide bit came up and i went screaming to the woman stag that night and telling him i was going to kill this guy please help me and you know what that elegant lady said to me the instruction she gave me she said pray for the son of a bitch and god you know i just i welcomed that kind of advice because that told me she understood so you know that night at the end of the meeting I started praying for him and I didn't mean a damn word of it I'll tell you that but I did it anyway and strangely enough pretty soon it started to work because this terrible terrible anger this terrible resentment this terrible feeling that I had was lifted was lifted for me it didn't change him at all but it sure changed me i just kept praying for him and finally uh it came down to when he called me one day and he wanted to make plans for the children's future and we became friends and you know it really worked out that way finally one of the old mossbacks again said don't you think it's time you made amends to this man and i said if you think so and so i was privileged to make my amends to him just two weeks before he died of a heart attack and i can tell you that that was one of the greatest gifts that was given to me in my early sobriety because i don't know what would i i would have done had he died when i hated him so much but uh because somebody cared about me when i couldn't care about myself i was given this privilege and i guess this is the time really when I, when my never-ending love affair with the people of Alcoholics Anonymous really began because although I was only four and a half months sober it seemed to me that literally hundreds of people came by car, by wire, by phone, by card every way you could come to ask if they, you could do something for me and ask nothing in return and I was just overwhelmed and sustained and so uh so it was that i was left with three little kids and no money because of his debt and my drinking and all that we were very severely in debt and i was told by those hard mock backs that i who's the home group i belong to said that i had to keep running the restaurant that we were running until i paid off all the debts and uh and they were teaching me responsibility so i ran that restaurant for about a year and the aaa people kept coming in and drinking up all my coffee and pretty soon we started a meeting there and pretty soon we start at two meetings there and very soon we've started a couple of more meetings and finally at the end of the year all the debts were paid and we went to the landlord and he allowed us to turn it into a clubhouse and it's still in existence today Keith knows about it and some of the other people and I don't want to stand here and pretend that I caused this to happen what I'm telling you is that's the way it evolved God had it in mind and we needed a club house out there and I just happened to be the proprietress and it was the AA people that really formulated the whole thing anyway, I entered into a brief AA marriage if you haven't done that yet you've got to try that one too I was five years sober and thought I was well and I married a spiritual giant and he thought he did too and we were both disappointed so anyway that marriage ended but without the rancor and the bitterness that my other dissolutions have you know anyway I got a job in a hospital kitchen because it was necessary for me to put the bread on the table for me and the kids and I was working for $1.15 an hour cleaning pots and pans and employees' toilets now that's a hell of a long way to come and certainly is no AA success story but by this time my first sponsor had moved up north and I got in touch with another sponsor he adopted me and some of you know him his name is Clancy and I really needed his discipline and I need it today because I've needed it all along i was working in this hospital kitchen and i finally worked my way up to assistant cook for god's sake which is pretty good and i hated that job i just hated it but he wouldn't let me leave he told me when god wanted me to move he'd move me and so uh in fact keith had a heart attack one time and he was rushed to that hospital and i was there to hold his hand and you know i guess God put me there or he put you there or something I don't know anyway it's strange the way these things work out at that time at that time my daughter who had been involved in a lot of alcohol and drugs and stuff had come to some kind of crisis in her life and she finally made a decision that she wanted to get out of it So it was precisely at that time I wondered, you know, it's fabulous the way God's timing is, if you don't mind heart attacks, that is. But it was just at that point when the bank at the corner wanted to buy my house and I was able to sell my house and I said to my daughter, we'll go over to Honolulu so we can get you away from all these bad people. Now you know how crazy that kind of thinking is? You know, the geographic. it anyway we were able to do that because both of my sons had left home one was in the army and the other was over in spain in college so uh we went over to honolulu and i became the director of a woman's half the step house over there st francis hospital isn't that strange you know me coming from where from the alleys of encino hating women to running a woman's recovery house in honolulu that used to be a nunnery i mean that's very strange but only an aa you know and i was very glad that uh i was great glad that i had that job because my daughter only stayed she only stayed clean and sober for a little while and she got caught up in it again And I was very grateful that I had 18 women there that I was looking after. And it was there that I joined Al-Anon because of all the things that were happening with my daughter. And she finally got into so much trouble that I said, that I have to do the last thing I wanted to do in this world, and that was to take her down to the Honolulu Airport. And while she was screaming and pleading for another chance, I had to shove her on the plane and tell her to get the hell out of my life and walk away as fast as I could because I couldn't stand another damn minute of it and so it came to pass that did you ever notice it doesn't say and it came my boss gave me a vacation about three months after that And what I wanted to do is to go to Southern California and fill my cup with that wonderful, strong, enthusiastic AA that you have here. And so I went there, and I was to goto my Sunday night meeting on Shoop and hear my daughter read Chapter 5 from the podium. And it just knocked me out. It just tore me up. and i would like to say to you that from that day to this she's never had another drink but unfortunately i have no such report to make because after two and a half years in this fellowship she went out to that never never land where there is never any hope and started again and so it has been a rerun and it's been a series of heartbreaks it's bee a series of sleepless nights it's be a series of disappointments and then topped with some hope and then disappointments again and heartbreak and tears and pleadings and all these things that I'm going to tell you not to do but hope springs eternal in the heart of a mother i want to break here and tell you that both of my sons are just doing fantastic you know neither one of them have a problem they they both married wonderful gals and they've given me five grandchildren between them and in fact i spoke up near my second son's area and he took me to the meeting and heard me speak for the first time and when we got back into the car there was silence and finally he said to me mother the next time you tell you talk to those people you tell them that if it wasn't for them i wouldn't be where i am today i thought you'd like to know that because uh he last year he was named rookie salesman of the year for massachusetts mutual for the whole united states and he was the one that was uh a football player so was my other son and i have to tell this because keith is here i almost forgot to tell it, Keith. Because one day, Keith's son and my son were playing on opposing teams playing football. A lot of you know Keith. He's a pro football player. You hear him before the weekend's over. And they were playing an opposing team, so Keith and I went to the game and my kid intercepted a pass that was meant for his and ran that ball back 65 yards and i went ape you know i was beating i was beaten keith on the head i was going crazy i guess it's the first time i wet my pants since i sobered up And, you know, I got to go to those two boys' formal weddings. And, God, it was such a wonderful feeling to walk down that aisle at church with my kid squeezing my arm in pride. You know, and that's because people cared about me when I couldn't care about myself. And they're both living wonderful lives. But, again, I've got to get back to the most painful period of my whole sobriety which has been in the last few months where my daughter's been involved in drugs shooting cocaine and in the meantime she's had a little baby who's now 18 months old it still hurts for me to talk about this because she was dragging that kid around to all the worst dope tents in Santa Ana, and I had to practically kidnap him maybe to save his life while she was going crazy. And I did let go of her. I really did, but I couldn't let go of that kid because, you know, I do have a responsibility to any little kid whose life is in danger, I think, but especially that little kid. And I had to take him and I took him home and kept him with me. My boss gave me a month's leave of absence so I could take care of these things. And I got to love that little guy. He was so traumatized by all the experiences he'd had, what he'd seen, God knows. but when I got him God he was in such terrible physical shape and he was so traumatized that I couldn't even walk into the next room without his screaming and crying and so afraid and in the meantime the most painful thing of all is that I've had to put him up for adoption and I tell you I got damn tired of being brave of being strong and trying to be a good AA member but sometimes as Clancy says sometimes you just hang on that's the thing that I kept going back to sometimes you're just hanging on and sometimes you don't even believe that it's going to be alright I didn't because you see I didn' t trust the power that brought me here but I did the best I could I did the best I could everything is alright everything is alright because the woman that has that little baby now has called me every week and that baby is getting love it's getting everything that it had been denied up to this point and that baby will be adopted by her and as for my daughter God bless her I didn't do this to punish her you know that she's doing that to herself but you see what I live in I live the knowledge that every day, every night in meetings like this all over the world there are a million recovered alcoholics that are praying for people like her and I guess I'm not the only one in this room there are others like me right in this room and we're living examples that it's possible to stay sober with a broken heart so for me to express gratitude I don't have to I think you feel it everything I have everything I hold dear was given to me by the people who cared about me when I couldn't care about myself but most of all for teaching me to walk in the dignity of sobriety I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.