My Ego Had a Vice Grip on the Illusion of Control for Thirty Straight Years — Liz A.

Hey, hey, everybody. Let's have an A.A. meeting. I'm Julie, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Napa Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on the passage from page 29 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish the relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on A.A. Blue Chip Speakers dot org, desperately in need, will hear our speaker. And we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing. I have the privilege of introducing our speaker tonight. And I'll tell you a quick story to give you some context. I am the last child of five children. My older sister was very special to me. And when I was a little girl, more than 50 years ago, when I was about three or four years old, I would wake up in the morning, and I knew better than to go try to wake up my mom, because, of course, she was the mother of five kids. She didn't do that. I would go into my older sister's room and crawl into bed with my sister Liz. We would throw the covers over ourselves. And then, you know, she was 10 or 11. I was three or four. And she would play games and tickle me. And we would laugh until our oldest sister would start screaming at us to shut up, because she was no fun. But Liz was the fun sister. Those are some very fond memories of mine. And so now, when we sit in an AA meeting together, sometimes we'll say something and we'll crack each other up in an AA meeting. And I think in those moments about the quiet miracle of AA and how it has given me my sister back. So with that, I'm going to... I'm going to hear what Liz has to say. Here comes Liz. Hey, everybody. I'm Liz, and I'm an alcoholic. All right. Well, Julie, you could have just kept on going. My father used to say, it's hard to tell a story when you've got an eyewitness in the room. He would say, well, that's another good story spoiled by an eyewitness. So that'll keep me honest. It might not keep me on time, but it'll keep me honest. Anyhow, my sobriety day is... November 24th, 2013. So that was my first and hopefully my last white ship. I'm a very latecomer to this program, but, you know, better late than never. Another thing our father used to say is, never be the first or the last to try anything. I gave it a good long time before I decided to join the group. Fifty-nine years is a long story to tell. So I'm going to just try to hit some of the highlights and some of the lowlights, get to the good part. You know, which is the fact that there is a way out. I am going to try to be as honest as I can. I haven't really practiced it. Chris has given me his clock here, thank you, so I can kind of keep an eye on the time. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-fifties, and I'm the second oldest of five children. My mother had six children in eight years. She was a pediatric nurse before she had us, and my father was an up-and-coming trauma surgeon. My father was very, very proud of his family. He was a fascinating enthusiast. He was a complex individual. He had a big, big effect on my life. You know, they say we inherit our character defects. You know, I think some of that is true, but, you know, my father had so many good qualities, too. I like to think that I inherited some of those as well. Like I said, he was just fascinating and complex. He made you want to please him. You know, think shades of the Von Trapp family from The Sound of Music. You know, it was not easy to be in my family, you know. We competed against each other. We competed for his attention. You know, while I'm pretty sure he preferred perfection, he expected excellence. So, you know, that was smart pressure. But, you know, I don't think that your parents make you alcoholic, you know. You could have good parents, bad parents. You know, our parents loved us. And, you know, I consider them country club alcoholics. You know, they both drank. They both drank every night. But, you know, and to me, that was normal, you know. And there was nothing wrong with that. You know. There was nothing dysfunctional about it. That's just the way it was. My mother died of alcoholism. My father had an ironclad will, but I'm pretty sure he was an alcoholic too. You know, as families have stories within the family, he used to like to tell stories about me. He said he knew from the first moment I was born that I was going to be willfully independent. Because when they wrapped me up in the little receiving blanket, the first thing I did was throw my fist to get that blanket off my face. You know, so that was one of the little family myths. The other thing he liked to talk about was my optimism. You know, he used to say that I would be delighted if I got a room full of horse manure for my birthday. Because I would be sure there would be a pony around there somewhere. And so that stood me in good stead too. I can't remember my, well, I vaguely remember my first drink. We were visiting some friends of my mother's, nursing friends of hers. And I must have been about four or five years old. And they were drinking gin and tonics. And I remember they let us have, me and my older sister, they let us have a sip of the gin and tonic. It must have made an impression on me because I remember it. I remember the piney smell of it. And I remember the fizziness of the tonic in my nose. And that was about it. I also remember my first spiritual experience. I was about maybe nine years old, eight or nine years old. Because I remember the house we lived in. I remember the room we lived in. And I was sitting and thinking about the perfect of life. And what was this all about? Why? Why? And all of a sudden, I mean, it really was a spiritual experience, almost like a dream. You know, fascinating to dream, but boring to tell. So I'll keep it short. I just had a feeling that washed over me. And it was a knowing. It was a knowing with a capital K. I'll never forget it. You know, it was, it washed over me. And at that moment, I knew that I had an inner resource that was bigger than me. And years later, I started calling it the little sane man. Because the little sane man in me seemed to always be able to drag me and my friends away from the precipice of disaster. You know, I was almost like the Girl Scout leader. You know, I was bad, but I wasn't so bad. You know, I could always, at that last minute, pull us back from doing something that would be, you know, lethal or terribly dangerous. So the little sane man was a great thing until a little bit later. But anyhow. My childhood was great. You know, we had a great time. You know, we lived in a suburb. It was the 50s. It was, you know, leave it to beaver. Got into high school. And, you know, that was really pretty okay, too. You know, my older sister was a real overachiever. You know, number one in this Von Trapp family. She was a Fulbright scholar. She was the valedictorian of her class. You know, there was just really no way. And she was 13 months older than I was. And there was really no way that I could live up to that. You know, so I had to carve out an identity for myself that would be different. And I was the social one. I was the fun one, like Julie said. You know, I was the cheerleader. I was the beauty queen. I was the, you know, out front, you know, social person. As far as alcohol goes, you know, it's interesting. People talk about having their first real drink and all of a sudden they were hooked. It wasn't really that way with me. We drank. You know, I always dated older boys. My boyfriend in high school was four years older than me. He was a senior when I was a freshman. So I went to parties with older guys and girls. And, of course, they were drinking beer. And I wanted to be a grownup. And, you know, to me, drinking was being a grownup. That's what I saw in my family. And so, you know, I would take that beer and I would drink a little bit of it. And I didn't really like it. You know, I was the girl that poured the drink in the potted plant to make it look like I was drinking. You know, I wanted so bad to be bad. But, you know, it really didn't do much for me. I remember the first drink I ever had at a bar. There was a place out by the airport that served to underage people. I must have been 16, maybe 15. 16. Passing is 21. And I drank Tom Collins. And one time I had two. And I remember feeling a little fuzzy. And I didn't like it. You know, I felt like I was losing control. And I didn't like that. So, you know, I wasn't one of those people that drank, you know, right off the bat and knew that that was going to be my solution. I just wanted to be a grownup. You know, there's that debate of are you born an alcoholic? Or is it something you drink yourself into? And, you know, I debated that with myself and with other people. And somebody shared this the other night. You know, I totally agree. What difference does it make? I am one. You know, while it is an interesting conversation. But for me, you know, those first few drinks really didn't do much for me. And I wanted to pretend to drink. Fake it till you make it. So we'll get to that. Anyhow, I went through high school. And, of course, I had to be good. You know, so I really didn't do anything too bad in high school. We drank. I had a fake ID. I bought the beer for everybody. You know, again, I just wanted to belong. You know, I wanted to belong to the drinking group. And I wanted to be a grownup. By this time, I was starting to have some run-ins with my father because, you know, our wills collided. And I wasn't as perfect as my older sister. My skirts were too short. My boyfriends were too old and too dumb. . Although I always liked them big and stupid. But, you know, so I decided that I was going to go to Dallas to school, far away from Memphis. You know, as far away as I could get. It wouldn't be a day trip for my daddy to get there. So I went to Dallas and went to college. And pretty much immediately allied myself with the counterculture people there. You know, I didn't have anything to do with the sorority life, any of that. . . . You know, we were the group that smoked pot and we experimented with drugs of the Timothy Leary variety. You know, we wanted to change our consciousness, but we wanted to raise our consciousness. You know, we wanted a cosmic consciousness. We wanted to be closer to God. We read Carlos Castaneda and Hunter S. Thompson and Ram Dass, you know. So, you know, I was seeking this spirituality in this counterculture of drugs. And it was really, it was fun and it was fascinating. And it was so, you know, it was so, it was just so avant-garde, you know. It was really, it was really something. I had to work in college because, you know, I had to buy my pot. And I had to fly to Mississippi to visit my boyfriend who was in college. And so I worked in a Marriott cafe, a coffee shop. About six months later they changed the drinking age in Texas from 21 to 18. So I very quickly moved to the top of Hilton. And I traded in my orange Marriott cafe outfit for fishnet stockings and platform shoes. And I made a lot of money. And I learned to trade that would come in handy later on. But anyway, the drinking was there, you know, but not really very much. It was much more the other stuff. When I was 19 years old, a sophomore in college, I met my future ex-husband. He was so much fun. I mean, he was the smartest guy. And he was the life of the party. Best listener I've ever known. And, you know, if you wanted to be where the fun was, you just watched him and you went where he went. It was probably some of the best times in my life. I mean, we traveled. We backpacked. We hiked. We skied. We went to parties. We had friends. You know, we were still experimenting with the psychedelic drugs. Everything was deep. It was heavy. It was real. You know, it was that time of, you know, this was probably 1973. You know, so the culture at the time was very, you know, it was all new. You know, you could be a woman and you could be a feminist and you could, you know, the possibilities were endless. So we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun in college. Again, my drinking was never really the big thing. It was fun. And it was not abnormal, I don't think. You know, it's hard to tell because the denial is so deep in this disease that, you know, I may be wrong about that. But as I remember it. As I remember it. The best of my recollection. It wasn't so bad. So anyhow, we graduated from college and we moved to East Texas. My ex-husband was a case worker in a state school for adjudicated juvenile delinquents. Serious offenders. Males 15 to 19. And this program was a therapeutic camping program in the piney woods of East Texas. And it was an experimental thing. Of course, perfect. We were hippies, you know. And I followed him there after I graduated and went directly to graduate school. And we got married in like, I don't know, 1976, something like that. And that was the first time I remember really using alcohol as a solution. We had a big wedding in Tampa, Florida. That's where Julie was living at the time, where she went to high school. And his family was of some means. And so his parents and all their friends came to Tampa for a whole week. And we were down there and, you know, it was a whole week long of big party after big party. Each family was trying to outdo the other. There was a lot of social pressure. You know, it really wasn't my thing. But I found white wine. And it just did the trick. I drank all through the whole week. And I thought to myself, wow, you know, I have figured this out. You know. I can be at ease in my own skin. I can deal with these people I don't know very well. I can deal with all the things that go on with the wedding. And that was probably the beginning of the fatal progression. You know, literature tells us it happens far, far, far before we think it's going to. You know, what seemed to be mere habit really is the beginning of a fatal progression. We came back from the wedding. And I'll share this because I think it's just a little bit interesting to me. I was just out of graduate school. My undergraduate major had been theater. My graduate school was communications. And I was interviewing for jobs. And we lived on a big farm in East Texas. We were renting. And it was probably one of the best times of my life, really. It was just beautiful there. And I interviewed for a job in a little neighboring city. And I got offered the job to be the weather girl in a small town. And, you know, that's how a lot of anchor people get started. You know, as weather people. And, you know, I turned down the job because I had just gotten married. I had just come off this white wine thing. And this job required late hours. And I wouldn't be able to be at home to have cocktails and cook dinner. And, you know, that's kind of the first thing I gave up because of alcohol. You know, you think about the road not taken, you know. And I think, wow. If you could just do one thing different. Anyhow, I didn't take that job. I ended up teaching at the same school where my husband was a case worker. So I taught 15- to 19-year-olds, adjudicated juvenile blankets, and I taught art and music. That's when I learned how to play the guitar. Because these guys lived in groups of 12 in the woods. They built their own structures. It was, you know, natural consequence. You know, if you weren't responsible for yourself, you were going to feel the consequence. And they didn't have radios or TV or music or anything. So I learned how to play the basic rhythm guitar. And the boys loved it. And it was, you know, a really fun thing for me, too. I remember I had this old beat-up guitar. The bass string buzzed really bad. And the guys figured out if they wedged a cigarette butt above the top fret under the bass string, it wouldn't buzz. So I carried this guitar around with the cigarette butt sticking out of it. But it was fun. You know, we really had a good time. But it was a very high burnout job. You know, there was a lot of recidivism. And, you know, of course, the guys were so funny. You know, here was this young, you know, 20-something, long-haired blonde girl, you know, hippie chick in the woods with him. Oh, come on, chief ladies, I know you smoke marijuana. And, you know, I used to tell them that that really wasn't any of their business. But clearly I hadn't gotten caught. And it was a real learning experience. But, again, and we drank. You know, the teachers and I, we had to drive an hour to get there. And on the way home, we'd buy beer. And I never liked beer before. But, boy, those piney woods, hot, hot summers all day long out in the woods with those guys. We could easily drink six beers on the hour drive home. And, you know, that was something else, too. You know, it started getting to be the pressure reliever. You know, it was the smoothing out. And now it's the pressure reliever. And then there was the parties, too. You know, we would still party. Our friends would come from Dallas. We'd have huge parties on this farm. I had a horse there. We'd play music. I started playing for benefits and big sort of festival things. And people would come from all around and sit on the back porch. And we'd, you know, get high and drink. And it was a blast. You know, I loved my life at that point. I got pregnant. And we moved to Kansas. And my husband was admitted to a Ph.D. program there at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. And I moved there almost eight months pregnant. Didn't know anybody. Had the baby. And, you know, that's kind of funny, too, because thank God the little sane man piped up when I was pregnant and said, you know, you don't really want to be drinking. And I couldn't drink. It didn't even taste good. You know, it was God doing for me what I couldn't do for myself. And even in childbirth, you know, of course I was a hippie, but I had natural childbirth. You know, that was when Lamaze was a big, big thing. And I had a 10-pound, 2-ounce baby girl, natural childbirth. And my father said, why did you want to do that? I've never known you to pass up a free high. Oh, Lordy. But anyhow, it was, you know, I was a devoted mother. I loved being and still love being a mother. I stayed at home for the first nine months. And I had a lot of time on my hands. I pulled out the guitar and brushed up my skills and learned a bunch of songs and played with the baby. And then eventually I had to go back to work. And all of my family, my husband's family, my family, they all wanted me to go be a teacher. That's the last thing I wanted to do. You know, be in a classroom under fluorescent lights. It just didn't seem like fun. And, you know, fun was kind of important to me. So I went to work in the bar, of course. I started making some friends. I started going to open mic nights. I gained a little bit of local popularity. And my husband, at the same time, got real serious. You know, we had this baby. He was a Ph.D. student. This was in the days when nobody had a computer at home. So he was always gone. He was at the computer lab. You know, that's where you had to go if you wanted to work on the computer. So I was back to work in the bar with a nine-month-old baby, a husband that was never home, and getting a lot of attention elsewhere. I would say that I was a good wife. I was a very good cook and a very good housekeeper, a devoted mother. But I wasn't very good at being married. So we'll just leave it at that. So I decided that I would be better off without this marriage. So I left him. You know, you think the grass is always greener. But, boy, did I open up a can of worms. By this time, I was playing pretty regularly around Lawrence, you know, as an opening act for blues bands. And I had a duo for a while and a trio. And, you know, I was kind of a big fish in a small pond. You know, honestly, I was just a very mediocre, amateur musician. But my head started swelling a little bit. And I call these sort of the self-seeking years, selfish self-seeking years. I became the manager of a roadhouse bar in Lawrence that's very popular, still there. We had musicians coming in and out from across the country. To make a little money while they're on their way through town. So, you know, I got to know and meet and play with some, you know, pretty famous musicians. All of this. Feeding my ego. And the other thing I found during that time. Oh, and worse than that, I was a mother for one week and then I was not a mother for one week. We shared custody of our daughter. That was very difficult. You know, because for one week I would be, you know, taking care of the baby, being a good mother. The next week I felt so guilty and so bad. You know, and I was working all hours, middle of the night. And I found this drug that was able, that kept me able to stay up and drink as much as I wanted. That was a big find. I got pretty attached to that. In fact, so much so that it was really hard for me to go to work or do much of anything without that. And, you know, and I still never really thought about the alcohol. You know, the alcohol was normal. That was normal. You know, my problem was cocaine. That was my problem. I did that for, stayed in Lawrence and did that job and lived that life. It got really sordid. You know, those gritty, gritty mornings when you go home and it's dawn and you just, oh, you're gritting your teeth and you feel awful. It just, it really got bad. It got really bad. You know, and at that point, you know, I just wanted it to be fun. Especially when, you know, because I felt the guilt about, you know, leaving my husband and not having the baby all the time. I just wanted it to be fun. In fact, if I had to write my memoirs, my AA story, I think it would be Reflections of a Frustrated Party Girl. Because, you know, I just wanted singing and dancing in a pretty world. It came clear to me that this cycle I was on of, you know, up all day and all night and then crashed all day and all night and then up all day and all night was awful. I remember coming home one morning and trying to sleep. And literally feeling like my life was going down the drain. I don't know if you remember that movie Forrest Gump. You remember the character Jenny when she gets tired of the militant, druggie guy. And she's standing on the ledge in her platform shoes and she's trying to decide whether she's going to jump. When I see that scene in that movie, that's the way I felt. And I made the decision right then and there, my ironclad will, that I was leaving Lawrence. I was going to move back home with my parents. And I was going to stop all that. I was not going to be a drug addicted mother. My daughter was getting ready to start kindergarten. And I just, that wasn't an option. And so I did. I moved across the country. Baby in tow. She was almost five years old at this time. And to start a new life in Atlanta. You know, I was dead broke. I didn't have any money. I had an old bombed out Chevrolet. And no skill set, really. You know. Five years out of my graduate degree, I'd never used it. You know, I was a bar manager. So it was really hard to find a job. But I, you know, hooked up with some recruiters. And in doing that, I decided, well, what do you have to do to be a recruiter? And they said, oh, you wouldn't want to do that. It's 100% commission. And I said, well, try me. You know, my back was against the wall. I had a burning desire to prove something to someone. And it, you know, it was me, it was myself, and it was my father. You know, that I wasn't just a washed up drug addict at 30 years old. So these are the self-will run riot years. I lived with my parents for a year. Got enough success within that first year to move out. And I was driven. I was absolutely driven. I was able to put down the cocaine, the rock and all. And drink. You know, because drinking was normal. And that was okay. So that was really the big decline. And at that point, you know, I drank to relieve the stress. You know. My ego had a vice grip on the illusion of control. And, you know, that's really the best way I can put it. I was a full-time mother. I was a full-time career woman. You know, I had to get the daughter to school at 8 o'clock in the morning. And be in midtown in heels and hose. And back at 6 o'clock to avoid the penalty for picking up the daughter's leg. And then homework and dinner. And more phone calling. And just, you know, it was a very, very difficult time. A very difficult, difficult life. And alcohol eased the pressure of that. You know, I felt like I deserved to drink. You know, I worked hard enough that, you know, I deserved to drink. And I drank every night. And I drank, you know, pretty heavily every night. This was really the beginning of the fatal progression. But I was 30 years old then. And I didn't come in here until 59. So it was a long, long, long mid-stage of alcoholism. And I think it was because, you know, for long periods of time, my ironclad will, I could moderate. Except for when I couldn't. You know, so it was, again, sort of a vicious cycle of, okay, everything's kind of okay. And then there would be a big party weekend. Julie can remember some of those. It wasn't good. But I was holding on. I remember when my daughter was about 9 or 10 years old. We had our own place way, way back then. I would get so lonely and so in need of some attention that I actually would leave the house once she was in bed and drive to Buckhead and not tell her I was leaving and go have drinks and come back. She said that she never knew this. Of course, we've talked about all of this now, you know, through the amends thing. But, you know, that's one of those things that I wasn't very proud of, you know, the fact that I would put that ahead of her. And I remember one time in high school she asked me, she said, Mom, do you think you could quit drinking for like a month? And I had never tried to quit drinking. I mean, drinking was my solution. You know, it gave me peace. It relieved the stress. And it made me not feel so lonely. And I said, sure, you know, I'll quit drinking for a month. Well, that lasted about two weeks. We were getting ready to go to dinner one night. And I'm upstairs getting ready. And I thought, well, you know, I'm just going to have a little bourbon. All the vodka was gone. That was my drink of choice. I took the bourbon upstairs with me and stuck it in the cabinet by my sink. And not long after that she comes running up the stairs for something. I'm looking in the mirror. I see her behind me, her face in the mirror. She glances over and she sees the drink. And the look on her face was just devastating. And, you know, we never said anything about it. She just turned around and left. You know, I would do anything for my daughter, but I couldn't stop drinking for her. After she went off to college, it became easier for me to drink. You know, so then things escalated. And not only that, the division of the company that I worked for got acquired and we didn't like the management team. So all of the women that I'd worked with for 18, 20 years at this point, we all left the company and reorganized under independent company names. So now I no longer had a child in the home and I was my own boss. So that sped up the progression. You know, I was home alone. You know, and I never could, you know, I used to make a joke that I forgot to remarry. But you know what? I didn't forget to remarry. I couldn't remarry because for anybody to get that close to me, they would have to know how much I drank. And I had to protect my drinking at all costs. You know, Julie will attest to the fact that, you know, my house was always immaculate. You know, my car was always tuned up. My clothes were always from the dry cleaner. You know, I had friends, but I loved for them to come to my house for dinner because I could drink as much as I wanted to if they did that. If we went to a restaurant, for me to drink as much as I wanted to drink, number one, who could afford that? And number two, you're having a fourth drink? A fifth drink? You know, nobody does that when they go out to dinner. My friends were normal drinkers, but I could invite them over and wow them with a great gourmet meal and run to the liquor cabinet and fill it up. You know, so there was a lot of that going on, you know, protecting my drinking to make it look normal. You know, I knew that I was powerless over alcohol by this point, but I damn sure wasn't going to admit that my life had become unmanageable. You know, I had a, my ego had a vice grip on the illusion of control for a long, long time. So, anyhow, it went from bad to worse at that point because I didn't have as many responsibilities. Oh, and I couldn't remarry because, like I said, somebody would have to know how much I drank. I wasn't in for anybody to know that. That was the problem. It was just my little secret. So, as it got to the very, very bad part, it was because, you know, I really couldn't control myself and I started falling down. You know, it used to be I would try to see if I could get through a week without getting any bruises on my arms. It never happened. A few months before the end, I fell and cracked a rib, but I didn't tell anyone. I had to cancel a yoga class. I had to cancel a few things. Nobody could see it, but I knew that that's what I had done. But I kept on, and I was at the point that, you know, I couldn't imagine my life without drinking, but I couldn't imagine keeping on drinking. I mean, it really was no fun anymore. The drink needed me more than I needed the drink, for sure. I was powerless. But I still was hanging on to the manageability until the very bottom, and that was one night I fell so bad that I gashed my eyelid open, a huge, inch-long gash, inch-long and inch-wide bloody gash, I don't even know what I fell on, but I know I looked in the mirror, and I saw that, and I knew that I couldn't drive myself to the emergency room, and I had completed step one. My life had become unmanageable. I called my little sister, Julie, and fortunately she picked up the phone. Sometimes she didn't when I called her at 9 o'clock at night, for good reason. But she came right over, and we went to the emergency room. And, you know, that's another thing I want to say real quick, and I want to get to the good part. If you have a family member that you're worried about their alcohol consumption, don't proselytize. Love them. Don't ostracize them. You know, Julie had been in the program at this point almost 20 years or more, and I never would have called her if she had alienated herself from me. So, you know, that's a really important thing to keep in mind. You know, they'll be ready when they're ready, and be there when they're ready. So she took me to the emergency room. I was a mess. I said, well, maybe you should just take me straight to rehab. She said, no, no. We'll talk about it in the morning. And sure enough, we did. In fact, I got home that night from the emergency room 16 stitches in the eyelid. I just looked awful. It was 3 o'clock in the morning. What did I do when I got home? Had another drink. It was my last one. And I spent the whole day in bed the next day. Talk about pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization. I was there. So I went to my first AA meeting the next day, which was November 24, 2013. I was so nervous. I didn't know what to think. You know, all I knew was that I was done. I was willing to ask for help. I knew that I couldn't do it by myself. You know, I had tried. I didn't know what to think about what this was going to be like. All I knew is that I would do whatever they said. I mean, I would have crawled across crushed glass if they asked me to do it. I was so done. The story does have a happy ending. Because I came in and I started taking the suggestions. I was a little nervous about being a part of this group. I would sit out in my car until just a minute before the meetings would start. And then I would race right out at the end. I felt very uncomfortable. But before long, you know, the fellowship did start to rise up around me. I got involved in service work. I got a sponsor right before my first 30 days. I got a sponsor because that's so, so important. In fact, I asked Julie to be my sponsor. That shows you what I knew. That wouldn't have worked out very well. But I was desperate. And I wanted it to happen fast. You know, I was a woman that wanted to be well by Thursday. But I threw myself into it, just like I always had everything. And got into service work pretty early. Started working down in the kitchen. Started making some friends. Started to get the message. You know, started to sit and listen enough to understand. Started to work the steps. You know, step two and three were pretty easy for me. Because, you know, although I almost drowned the little sane man, I was able to revive him. You know, that connection came right back. You know, alcohol blocks the sunlight of the spirit. But as soon as I took the alcohol away and concentrated it a little bit, you know, it came right back to me. And I'm very, very fortunate in that way. You know, when I was willing to turn my life over to the care of God, it was pretty easy. You know, it was sort of like putting my boat on a river and letting the river, you know, go where it was going to go. Not to say I don't have a paddle to push myself off the rock. But, you know, that part of it came pretty easily for me. And then, you know, the real hard work began. You know, like I said, I was very willing. But as we say, willingness without action is fantasy. And the hard work began. You know, those steps four through nine. A lot of hard work. A lot of self-examination. Peeling back the layers of denial. But oh, so well worth it. You know, the way it is today, you know, I have good days. I have great days. And I have lesson days. You know, and lesson days are days when I feel a little uncomfortable or when I'm upset or agitated about something. I almost look forward to lesson days because that's just going to be another layer of stuff that I could peel off. Whenever anything disturbs me, there's something wrong with me. You know, when I'm mad, you don't make me mad. You know, I'm allowing myself to be mad for some reason in me. And so I always like to jump on that because, you know, it just gets better and better and better. You know, just like my alcoholism was a downward spiral, I feel like my recovery is an upward spiral. And even though I'm only a little ways into it comparatively, you know, I just see how it's, you know, just growing and growing and growing. And, you know, there is no finish line. You know, there's no destination. And it's just such a much better way to be. And it's interesting to me that, you know, all the things that I ever wanted, it's just ironic. You know, I wanted to be a grown-up. So now I feel like I'm finally a grown-up. I wanted to belong. And, you know, now I feel like I finally belong. You know, and I just wanted to have fun. And, you know, we do have a lot of fun here. Most importantly, you know, I wanted to feel peace. And I didn't want to be alone. You know, that's probably the greatest thing that this program has given me. I'm never alone. You know, I've always got somebody to reach out to. I can't do this by myself. There's a lot of things that I can't do by myself. Finally, being able to admit that, that I'm not perfect. And I'll never be perfect. Sorry, Gaddy. But with the help of you people and God, you know, I could be a whole lot better version of myself than I ever thought I could be or that I ever thought I could find in a bottle or a pill or a powder. So I'm going to close, because I'm going to be on time. And there's so many things that you could pick to close with. But for this time, I'm going to pick this. And this is from Alcoholics Anonymous, page 89. And then there's a little bit from Daily Reflections after that. Life will take on new meaning to watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about it, to have a host of friends. This is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives. And this is from Daily Reflections. To know that each newcomer with whom I share has the opportunity to experience the relief that I have found in this fellowship. It fills me with joy and gratitude. I feel that all the things described in AA will come to pass for them, as they have for me, if they seize the opportunity and embrace the program fully. Last thing I'll say is, you know, what we really need is each other. And I thank you so much for that. I have gotten to be her little sister for a long, long time. So nanny boo boo to y'all. She's the fun one, I'm telling you. She was. She still is. Oh, I've asked Tinsley to help me. My name is Tinsley. I'm an alcoholic. Hey! And I love that story. I don't think I've felt an hour go by so quickly in here. And that's good. I could also relate to the ending where you talked about how AA delivered everything that alcohol promised but failed to deliver. A sense of camaraderie and belonging and certainly laughter, because we laugh at some weird shit in here, don't we? And that's what I wanted in drinking, and it let me down. It was all a big lie. So anyway, here at this meeting, we give out a chip system to mark our time away from our last drink. If you'd like to try this way of life one day at a time, we offer a white chip. Would anybody like to try this way of life? After 30 days, we have a silver chip. Anybody got 30 days? We have a red chip. 90 days or three months? Anybody else got 90 days? Red chip. Six months, yellow chip. Green chip for nine months. Does anybody have a year or multiples of years? Any birthdays? Does anybody want to reconsider on a white chip? Big hand for the chips you hold. Thank you one and all for joining the Blue Chip Speakers meeting.