Pat Y. on Grief, Amends, and the Rigid Direction of Sponsorship

Oh, good. Lots of newcomers. Great. Welcome. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call you a newcomer if you have 11 months of sobriety. I know that hurts. You don't think of yourself as a newcomER. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. If you don't hear anything else this whole weekend, you know, I hope, and I know every speaker, you'll hear it, you You know, my life is so much better than I ever dreamed it could be. And I had no idea when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that that would happen. I came here because I couldn't stop drinking and I couldn'T stand the way I was living one more second. And I came her without any particular hope that anything magical was going to happen, but I had NO better idea, thank goodness. And so I came heRe and I got sober. My life has changed beyond my wildest imagination. I started to say, I got drunk the first time when I was 13, and I thought I was doing social drinking here. But this is my first drink. I got drank. I went to a party. They were drinking rum and Coke as it happened, and I took a drink and tried to act like I'd been drinking all my life. I'm 13, you know. And I looked like I was about nine, I think. And I drank, I don't know how much rum and coke, however much it took, and then some, which is how I drank until I got here. And the magic happened for me that I assume happened for you if you're in this room, and that is that it changed how I felt going into that party. And, in fact, up until that point at all times, I felt shy and awkward and ill at ease. It seemed like you all had some ability to talk to each other, to do social chit-chat stuff that I, it's beyond me, and I drank that rum and coke and it went away. I felt totally relaxed. I felt really comfortable, more than comfortable you might say. And I was able to talk to people and made people laugh and I remember I got up and danced and did not feel awkward or embarrassed about that. I felt like I was the best dancer on the floor. I don't doubt very much that I was, but I felt like I was, and it was really magical how it made me feel. Now, I drank too much, I blacked out, I passed out, and I woke up in bed the next morning with a Marine that I didn't know, which was quite a bit more than I'd meant to do that night. You know, I was 13 years old, and the girls in my crowd were not behaving this way, and I felt bad the next day. I felt ashamed and guilty and embarrassed, and I was terrified that I'd get pregnant, and any bad feeling you might imagine a 13-year-old girl would have under those circumstances, I had those bad feelings. And yet, I drank again at the very next possible opportunity without a second thought. I was apparently willing to pay the price to drink from the gate. Now, I certainly didn't think any of that through at the time. If it sounds as I'm telling my story here, if it sounds like I had great insight into my life, Believe me, I didn't have it at the time. Any kind of insight that I may have to how I was living my life came long after I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I actually started having a little insight into my life when I started sponsoring other women and seeing myself in them. Anyway, from that first drunk, I essentially drank at every possible opportunity until I got sober in AlcoholicsAnonymous. I, for a while, was a periodic because I was 13 years old. to not have access to alcohol every day. But, you know, we're very resourceful people. Now, I don't remember seeking this information out, but somehow I became possessed of the knowledge of the people who drank, the one liquor store in Newport Beach where I grew up that would sell to minors out the back door. You know, my life changed and began to revolve around alcohol. Up until that first night that I drank, I was a straight-A student. I went to church on Sundays. I was very involved in a church youth group and I did those things because I wanted to. They were important to me. And within six months after that first drunk, my grades had dropped drastically. I'd dropped out of that youth group, only went to church when my parents demanded it. My life had changed as a result of alcohol, and I didn't see it happening. When I drink, I behave badly. I think of myself as a friendly girl. It sounds a lot nicer than some of the other terms that you might use. And so I developed this reputation in high school for being friendly, and, you know, that's not the reputation I had hoped for. And I knew that people were talking about me, and it was embarrassing and humiliating, but I don't ever remember thinking, you now, if I didn't drink, maybe I wouldn't behave that way. And, you known, I don' t ever remember thinkin' that. I worried a lot about what you were thinkin'' about me. but I don't remember thinking that I should stop drinking so that I wouldn't maybe behave that way. My parents sent me away to boarding school for my last two years of high school because they were very concerned about my grades, and rightly so. And I was actually sort of relieved because it was an all-girls school and it was like I got a breather there, you know? I was a very structured, that didn't come out quite the way I meant it. Anyway, you know, I brought my grades. It was a Very Structured All-Girls School. I brought My Grades Up. I think alcoholics, when they're applying themselves to whatever they're doing, work or school or whatever, when they actually apply themselves, work harder than anybody. The problem, of course, is that we don't apply ourselves very often. But when I was in boarding school, I did because there were really no distractions at all. It was very hard to drink there and there were no boys. And so I studied hard and I brought my grades up and graduated successfully. And I started going to a local college and I got married at the end of that year, that first year of college. I got marriage to this guy because he asked. I would so love to give you a better reason than that, but there simply is none. We met at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Newport Beach. Surfing music, this really dates me, surfing music was the big deal then. The Rendezvo Ballroom had Dick Dale and the Dale Tones, for anybody who followed this music. It dates you too if you know who I'm talking about. They played there, and they didn't actually serve alcohol there, but, you know, my husband-to-be would pick me up at my parents' house. We would go sit in the car and drink beer. You would go into the ballroom, get your hand stamped so you could go out in the parking lot and drink some more. And while you're in the ballrooms itself, the music is so loud you cannot possibly have a conversation with anybody. I mean, it's just music and you're dancing or we're sitting in the card drinking. When he asked me to marry him after, I don't know, six or seven months of this, I remember thinking that this was great. we had so much in common. Honest to God, I don't think we ever had a full conversation. So now we plan this big church wedding. I had these sort of little doubts as the day was drawing near. You know, I read a lot of books. And in books, brides-to-be seem to feel things that I didn't seem to be feeling. And that sort of concerned me. And I thought about that a lot. But I thought that I just didn't have that gene or whatever it was. I mean, this was a perfectly nice fellow, and he certainly seemed to like me, and there just didn'T seem to be any good reason not to. I can't even believe it as I say this out loud that I could be thinking this way, but this is what I was thinking. And so I got married. And I remember walking down the aisle on my dad's arm thinking, you know, this is probably a mistake. But I walked right down there and said, I do. It was a mistake。 We were married, as it turned out, for six months only. We might have actually been married longer, but other things intervened. We were buried about five months, and my brother, I had one brother growing up who was three years older than me, and he was in the Navy at the time, and he wasn't married until he was six months old. He was injured in an explosion aboard his ship, which happened to be in Japan at the time,and my mother got a telegram from the Navy Department or whoever sends these telegrams and saying that he was very badly injured. He was put in the hospital in Japan. Now, I adored my brother. He was totally my hero. And so I started sending him cards every day to this hospital and sometimes two and three cards a day. I would go to the card shops and try to find the funniest cards I could to send to him to cheer him up. By now he was alone there. His ship had sailed, so now he's in a hospital in japan, doesn't speak the language. It's a terrible situation. So I'm sending these cards off every day. About a month went by and my mother got another telegram saying that my brother's condition was enough improved that they thought they were going to be able to ship him back to the States, that he would still be in the hospital and have a long recovery. But it meant he'd be in San Diego or somewhere and we'd be able to see him. So we were very excited about that, kind of celebrated that good news. And right around the time we got that phone call, I had sent another of these many, many cards I had been sending. And this one said on the front, I heard you were ailing but not to worry. and on the inside it said, only the good die young. I sent it and he died. And you know, I couldn't have felt worse if I'd killed him myself. I really couldn't. I couldn'T believe that I'd sent such a stupid card. I just couldn't believe it. I remembered praying that the card didn't get there in time, that mail being what it is, that please God let him have died before that stupid card got there. A couple of weeks went by and his trunk of belongings got shipped back to my mother, and I remember the day she opened that up. The card was in there. It had been opened. I took it when nobody was looking. I went in the bathroom, and I tore it up in little pieces and flushed it down the toilet, and I just cried and cried and prayed. Now, I tell you that story because I never told it to anybody. That happened when I was 19 years old. I never sold it to anyone. I never ever told it to anybody until I got sober and alcoholic synonymous when I were 30 and did an inventory because I couldn't. I felt so ashamed of what I had done now I know standing here today from the perspective of being sober a good number of years and working these steps that my brother certainly knew that I loved him but I had no tools for living, none and I certainly could not talk to anybody about any of the feelings I was having and so it became one more thing one more secret that I was carrying around I remember a few years after that my mother who was by now very concerned about me had offered to send me to a psychiatrist. She said, I'm very concerned about you. I will be happy to pay for it if you will go. And I by then knew that something was terribly wrong with me and I was more than willing to go. I did not have a cavalier attitude about it. I saw it as an opportunity to maybe get some help and I went to this guy every Tuesday for I think the better part of a year and never told him anything. I sat in his office, and I would think to myself, I should probably tell him this story about my brother and that card and how I feel about that. Or I should tell him about the things that were going on in my house when I was growing up with my stepfather that shouldn't have been going on. But I never did. I couldn't. I would sit there and talk about, like, nothing topics, you know. And I would leave his office and I'd feel worse than when I had gone in. And the first thing I would do, I remember his office was on Hollywood Boulevard. I'd go right around the corner and stop at the first bar and have a drink because I'd feel so sort of stressed and upset from having sat there thinking about these things and not talking about them. And so essentially I wasted my mother's money for a year. I have nothing against psychiatry. I think they probably do wonderful things, but I think it's hard for psychiatrists to work with practicing alcoholics because we seem to be incapable of telling the truth about anything. And really if you're going to get some help, I think you've got to give them a little input But anyway, and so it went. So now my brother has died. I am completely beyond distraught. I cannot stop crying. My poor husband has no idea how to help me. We're 19 years old. We might as well have been 12 for all the maturity that was going on in our house. And he said to me one day, you know, I don't know how to get over the grief about your brother's death. Maybe you should go stay with your mother for a while and she could help you get through this because I just don't want to help you. And he was really trying to help him. He was not trying to get rid of me. He wanted to help me. And I said, okay, and I went to my mother's, and I never lived another day with him. I divorced him after I'd been at my mother'S for a while. Now, this poor guy didn't quite know what had happened there. He's trying to helpme, and now I'm not even taking his calls, and now we serve with divorce papers. When I got sober, it occurred to me that this is clearly somebody to whom I owed amends. I guess I was 19 when I got divorced I got sober when I was 30 and I hadn't seen him since I divorced him and I was sober about maybe 5 or 6 months and I ran into him and I thought wow this is great God dumps him right in my path here's a real opportunity to make amends and my next thought was you know I'm not sober all that long and I'm actually not to that step yet And I let the opportunity pass by. That was 31 years ago, and I haven't seen him from that day to this. I always like to tell that story when I talk, and it sounds funny, but it's not funny. You know, that's an opportunity to make amends that I let pass by I hope God gives me another shot at it. You know? I'd really like to make that right, or as right as I possibly can. And it's my hearty recommendation, if opportunities to make amends present themselves, that you do it. You know, I sure wish I'd done that one. Anyway, so I got divorced and I moved up to L.A., which was like 50 miles from where I was living, and got a job in an apartment. I was 19 years old and I got a jobs as a secretary at a trucking company and I started drinking with these truck drivers. And I got drunk every single night. I behaved there exactly the way I'd behaved in high school, which is to say before that job was through, I knew most of those truck drivers in the biblical sense. And I developed essentially the same reputation there that I'd had in high School. I remember one day being at work and my desk was in the warehouse building and my desk was like here and there was sort of a picture window to my right that looked out on the loading dock and I was typing and I sort of felt somebody looking at me there and I glanced out of the corner of my eye and there were three or four guys standing on the loading dock. I couldn't hear them because the glass was there but I could see them and they were looking at me and they were talking and laughing and it was humiliating. It was really humiliating but I acted like I hadn't seen them. I turned to my typewriter and tried to pretend like I hadn'T seen them and when I decently could I got up and went to the bathroom and cried because I felt so humiliated and yet that night when I got off work I went down to the bowling alley where they all hung out, and I got drunk, and I took somebody home with me because that's what I do when I drink. I don't mean to be this kind of a woman, but it's what i do, you know? My father was vice president of that trucking company. My parents had been divorced when I was really young, and when I had got divorced from my husband, I had asked my dad for a job, and I remember he said, you know, I'm kind of reluctant to hire a family member. He should have listened. But he agreed to give me It's hard when you're young And you never really had a job This was like my first real job And so he agreed To give me a job for a year So I could have something To put on my resume And I actually wound It was a good job I was grateful for it But I wound up leaving Before the year was out Because I couldn't Go in there anymore And that is how I behaved On jobs Until I got sober I could stay just about A year on a job I would get the job Now I'm new on the job So I'm kind of nervous So I keep my drinking Separate for a while You know, I work real hard. Again, as I said earlier, you know, I think when we're working, we do work hard. And so I'd work real heart and they'd be impressed and tell me how a couple months would go by and they'll tell me glad they were I was there and then I'd relax. And then I'm drinking at lunchtime and I'm going out after work with the boss or the clients or the coworkers and then sleeping with them or their spouses and then it gets to be a huge big mess and eventually I have to leave because I've created such havoc here. I've quit jobs after office Christmas parties without going back to clean out my desk because I knew that I actually drank in blackouts a lot and I'm grateful for it but you know you remember some stuff here's how I drink I went out with my boss and some co-workers one night maybe 8 or 10 of us were in this group of people we were bar hopping around downtown LA and we were all drunk but apparently I was drunker than the rest of them because when we wound up in the strip joint, I was the only one who auditioned for a job. Now, I know if you're an alcoholic of my type, you're going to understand how this happened. It wasn't my fault. We were sitting at this bar. We were siting at this strip club. The stage is like here. We were sittin' at this round table directly in front of the stage. I had excused myself to go to the ladies room, which was down the hall sort of behind the stage my memory is a little hazy on this but I do recall bumping into the owner or the manager or whatever he was at the bar and I vaguely recall making some derogatory remarks about the caliber of his entertainment out there and you know how this went something to the effect of if I thought I was such hot stuff which apparently I did think that so remember a moment ago I was sitting at the table with my boss and some co-workers essentially dressed as I am now And now, only moments later, I am on the stage dressed in essentially nothing. And there was that moment when my boss's eye and mine met, you know, when he realized who that was up there. It was a moment. I can see the look in his face to this day. I doubt I will ever forget it. That actually began what I like to call my show business career. Now I'm a nice girl from Newport Beach, and nice girls from New port beach do not work as strippers. And so I got a job as a go-go dancer. I cannot tell you why I thought this was a cut above stripping, but I did think that it's not. But I somehow convinced myself that it was. And so people actually paid me to dance in their bars. I'm not a particularly good dancer. this is kind of at the height of popularity of go-go dancing all the really nice clubs on Sunset Strip had go-do dancers, I did not work there I worked in terrible the first place I actually got paid to dance was I'm the only person I ever met in there who spoke English then I moved uptown to a place where they spoke English and I actually met the man who was to become my second husband there he was a customer and somebody who clearly recognized talent. And he was possibly the most unsuitable man in the state of California for me. And so, of course, we moved right in together and then got married. Now this second marriage was not quite as fancy as the first. We went to Las Vegas. I understand there's some nice chapels in Vegas where you can get married that are kind of lovely. You can even get married by an Elvis impersonator if you want. We didn't do any of that. We went to the courthouse. It was a Sunday. What they did is they, you went in and filled out your paperwork and then they said, you know, it'll be about an hour, hour and a half wait. You can either sit in, they had an open courtroom. You can sit in the courtroom where there's other couples waiting and when there's, you knows, so many couples, 30 couples I think or something, then they call the judge and he comes over and he marries the couples in his bedroom slippers as it turned out. And so we had some time. So first we went in the courtroom and we were sitting there, and I remember we were looking around at these other couples and making comments to each other about how pathetic these people were and not really getting that there we were. And then we thought a cocktail might be nice. And so now you can get a cocktail. You can walk in any casino and they'll just bring you a cocktail for free if you're gambling. So we went to a liquor store and we bought a half pint and we sat in the car and drank it and then went and got married by this guy in his bedroom slippers so now we're married but I'm an alcoholic and I don't stop drinking because I'm drinking I'm incapable of changing how I live my life and so I'm still essentially behaving like I'm single and you can well imagine that I was creating a whole set of problems in my marriage that made it really difficult We had just some terrible years there, and there was a little bit of violence in that house. And I always kind of hate to say this because it gets misunderstood. I don't ever, ever, never think there's justification for a man to hit a woman. But I'll tell you what, when I got sober and started acting differently, the violence in my house stopped. So I just put that out there for all the victims in the room who think that life has dealt you a dirty deal. You know, the realization I had to come to is life didn't deal me a dirty deal. You know? I played the cards. I picked the cards My husband laughs at me because I'm like the worst gambler in the world If I have two pair, man, I think I'm on to something You know And I'm betting the farm And that's pretty much how I live my life And so, you know It's kind of a rude awakening when you're sober When you realize And my husband says it a lot when he talks You know my life is my fault. And that's actually good news in a way because if it's your fault, there's no hope for me. If my life is your fault. If I really am a victim of horrible circumstances then what's the use? I might as well just kill myself today. But the fact of the matter is I can change. I can do something about this and that really is as it turns out good news. It doesn't feel like good news when you first hear it but it is. Anyway, so now we're married and we were having all these problems, and, you know, life was just, it was bad. I started drinking at home, and I spent the last, I don't know how many years, I really was in and out of blackouts. I don'T even know for sure the order that things happened, you KNOW, but stuff happened, and I know that for the last however many years I spent pretty much drinking in a rocking chair in my living room in a purple flannel bathrobe. My husband was a gambler, and he was at the racetrack a lot at night, which was just fine with me. I, by now, sort of preferred it when he was gone. When he was there, it seemed like sort of a lot of work. I would have to, for example, go in the kitchen and mix a drink, and scotch is my drink of choice, although I will drink anything. In fact, one year, my husband was the chef, and so at Christmastime, vendors would give him bottles of booze as gifts and he would bring them home. One year he brought home, I can't remember now what it was called but he brought him this bottle of some terrible kind of brandy and we had a friend over who in retrospect was an alcoholic and so the three of us were there and we drank this brandy, whatever it was and then Eddie, this guy, called the next day and he said oh my god that's the worst stuff I ever drank. I had diarrhea all night. It was just awful. Now it did the same thing to me but I started buying that stuff because I knew that when Eddie came over he wouldn't drink it And that's where I was with my drinking. You know, I don't think that's social drinking. Anyway, so I turned into one of these people who pretty much always worked, always had a job to go to. Everybody knows alcoholics don't have jobs, and so the jobs got real important there. They also got real small. I peaked in my career at about age 23, and then it started tapering off. At 23, I was a legal secretary. Really gone places, you know. And then at 30, when I got sober, my last job was for a YMCA. My job was if you were a member of that Y and you came in to pay your dues, I'm the person who wrote you the receipt. I was barely hanging on to that job too, I'll tell you. It was hard. It was really hard. The hardest thing about that job is people in the afternoons, they bring their children to the Y. You know, kids make a lot of noise. And when you're feeling sick and hungover, it's just, I could hardly bear it. I have memories of several times standing in the middle of that lobby screaming at everybody to shut up. I don't think that's how people want their children to be treated when they drop them off at the Y after school. I mean, I couldn't be wrong, but, you know, it was not a good job for me. Anyway, I tried not to drink during the day by now, by the time I'm on that last job, Because I know if I drink during the day, one of two things is going to happen. I'm either not going to go back to work, not especially good, or I am going to goes back to workforce, not especially good. I remember one day, I had a friend that, a girlfriend that worked there who drank quite a bit. I keep expecting to see her in a meeting and we had gone out to drink at lunch and as we were going back to the office, it was just around the corner from our office, we'd walk back and she said, you know Pat, I think you're too drunk to go back to work. I think you need to go home. And I said, yeah, you're probably right. And she walked me to my car and I remember I was in the car and I was trying to get the key and the thing there and I couldn't and I member she was standing there going, you can do it. This is my dearest friend. She's sending me off to die on the freeway. Finally got that key in there and obviously I made it home. So I tried not to drink at lunchtime. I really did. assuming that I got through lunch without drinking I would get off work at 5 o'clock I would go home, just remember this as clear as can be I would open the front door of my apartment put my keys in my purse on the table walk directly into the kitchen pick up a bottle of scotch and have a swallow now I'm okay now I can take my clothes off put on my bathrobe get comfortable and settle in for an evening of drinking once I got that first drink it's going to be okay now So I dealt with whoever introduced me made reference to the fact that I, you know, often had my utilities turned off and so on. But I never did bounce a check at bottle and keg liquor. Bottle and keг liquor delivered, and I would call them. You know, I wrote that for years. I don't remember now how much the check was, but I remembered it for at least 20 years of my sobriety because it was the same amount every single night. A bottle of scotch, two packs of cigarettes, and a tip for the delivery guy. it's all I ever bought from there I was such a good customer that sometimes when I called the liquor store by the time they got there I might already be passed out they would actually leave the bag on my porch because they knew that I would run down in the morning and give them a check which of course I always did and as I said, my husband was at the racetrack a lot at night and that was just fine I never did finish that story I don't think, when my husband was there I felt obliged to make the drinking look different he drank, I would never have married somebody who didn't drink but he didn't drink like I did and so I would mix a drink in scotch and water now there's like a right color that a drink should be not too dark I'm not real clear on exactly so that was sort of a dilemma now I've got the drink and now I'm out in the living room and I'm drinking this drink now there is some sort of reasonable period of time that a drink ought to last. I'm really not familiar with... Yeah, exactly. And so that's really a dilemma. When he was gone at the track, I would just take the bottle and put it on the table by where I sat. Now, I don't want you to think I'm just some kind of a common drunk. I used a glass. But I didn't bother with ice and water and all that good stuff. I'd play those sad records over and over again. and my own personal all-time favorite was Ray Charles' Born to Lose. That is a great, great song to drink and feel sorry for yourself too, you know? Sometimes I'd call people on the phone. You can hear the Al-Anons murmuring. You got those calls, didn't you? Always somebody completely inappropriate. In my case, it was like boyfriends I had when I was 12. And I wonder what Danny's doing now. And so, of course, I have no idea where Danny might be living. So I wake up 30 other people to find him. And I'm sure he was just thrilled to hear from me when I finally did catch up to him. I hated myself. I hated my husband. I hated life. I had no friends. I remember one time my husband got sick. He had, I don't know, a flu or something. But he had a really, really high fever and was delirious. He was laying on the couch in the living room. It was a very cold, rainy night. We lived on a second-floor apartment. He was very sick and, as I said, delirious with his fever, and I thought he should be – I should take him to the hospital. But I knew that I could not get him down the stairs in this condition that he was in, and there was not a single person I could think of to call who could come help me, not one single person. And I remember I thought, okay, when I was a kid and I had a fever, My mother would get cold cloths and put them on my forehead, so I can do that. So I got a little bucket of cold water and a washcloth, and I put it on his forehead, and I kept changing it every few minutes. Then I thought, oh, I need a drink, and so I got to drink. Then the next thing I remember is waking up in the morning, and I was in my chair across the room from the couch, and my glass was overturned in my lap. That moment before you open your eyes when you remember what was going on, of, oh my God, he could be dead. He could have died in the night and I wouldn't have even known it because I passed out. He was not dead. His fever had broken sometime during the night, and he was better that morning. But you know, it frightened me. And yet, I did nothing. I just kept drinking. I don't know how long it was from then until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Things just got worse. One day or one night, I called Alcoholics Anonymous. I was drunk when I called. I don't know what triggered the notion that particular night above any other night to call, but I called that night and a real nice man answered the phone and asked me if I was having a problem with alcohol. I said that I was and I started to cry. He told me a lot about himself. We wanted to send some women to my house and I said no, no, I don�t think I�m that bad. He seemed to understand. He told me where our meeting was the next night and asked if I thought I could not take a drink the next day and go to that meeting? And I said, yes. Now, I doubt very much I cannot take a drink tomorrow. I drink every day. But yes is clearly the right answer, so you bet. The next day I came to, and I remembered making the call, and I found the piece of paper where I'd written the address down. Now in the light of day, I thought I'd been a little premature. I was 30 years old. I'm almost certain that's too young to be an alcoholic. But I couldn't get it out of my mind. All day long, it was just right there. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I heard myself say to my husband at the dinner table that night, I'm going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said something really loving to me like, yeah, whatever, and went off to the track. And I remember I dressed with some care. You know, I always like to be dressed appropriately wherever I go. Now, I've never been to AAA, so I'm not sure how that would be. So it's kind of a dilemma. I don't remember. I just remember when I left the bedroom, there was this pile of clothes. Women understand this. There was a pile of clothes on the bed that I had tried and discarded as being not quite right. I'm assuming in the end, I don't remember what I was thinking, but I'm assuming that I decided to go for comfort because what I arrived in, and in fact what I wore for the first few months to meetings, was baggy jeans, rubber thongs on my feet, and a knit top that had no knit left in it. You know what I mean? Just kind of hung there. It's really comfy. Nobody ever said a word about how I was dressed ever until one night, I was maybe three months sober and I was sort of running late and I didn't have time to put my meeting clothes on. And I went to the meeting dressed in a pantsuit, a nice pantsuit that I was wearing that day which is a very soft sort of a rose color. And I think that every single one of the 200 people in that meeting individually said to me, Ma, you look pretty tonight. And I started dressing better after that when I went into meetings. But anyway, to go back to this first meeting. It was a meeting of about two, maybe 300 people and it might as well have been 30,000 people. It's just overwhelming. I thought there's no way I can go in that room but somehow I did. A man was standing at the door and he put out his hand and said hello my name is Clint, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. I think that's the most important thing anybody ever does in a meeting right there. It made me feel welcome. I was not to know that he was to become one of my dearest friends today. I mean, I just was so terrified that night. I went in the room and it was an 830 meeting, so of course I got there at 828 because I know I cannot talk to you sober. I'd have to have a drink if I'm actually going to talk to You. And I didn't drink that day, but I needed a drink. By 828, I needed a drink pretty bad. I went into the back of the room, of course, because that's where newcomers go, and I was standing sort of behind a pillar. Now it's 829. I'm sick, I'm shaking, I mean these terrible clothes. I am about to cry, I am sweating a lot which was this sort of side effect of drinking that I had and a man came up and asked me if I was new and I thought how did he know that? And knowledge that I was and it seemed like that there is about 50 women coming at me and they are all writing their numbers on little scraps of paper and telling me to call them any time, and got me a big book, whatever that is, and found me a seat in the meeting. It was a speaker meeting, and the speaker that night was a man by the name of Norm Alpey. And I heard him. I won't tell you my life changed that night, but I identified. We actually drank in one of the same places many years apart. He was an older, much older man than I. But I identified, I believed him. I believe that he drank the way I drank. I believe That he was sober and I believe That he Was living this happy Joyous life you could see it you could Feel it when he was talking I think if you'd pinned me down that Night i might have said Maybe if i do whatever that guy's doing i can stay Sober but i know i'm never going to feel The way he feels you can't get from where I am to there it's impossible But what i got of course that night was hope I the minute the lord's prayer was Over and they dropped my hands i was out the door Again i am like stark raving sober There is no way I can chat with you after the meeting. So I went home, and I stayed sober for a week, six days I stayed sober. And I remember every day thinking, wow, AA really works. This is great. I had heard you say go to a lot of meetings, and I thought, well, I'll go every Saturday night. That sounded like kind of a lot. Friday, I was drunk. Now, six Days I didn't drink, but Friday I was drunk. And so I went back to the meeting Saturday night, and I raised my hand for being under a week of sobriety and got some more phone numbers. And one of these ladies said, you know, you might want to actually call one of us. Which, of course, I hadn't done. What would I say to you? I mean, I just can't even imagine. I actually drank a couple more times that week and called that woman drunk. And she said, You might wantto get a sponsor. You don't seem to be doing too well on your own. And most of us have found sponsors to be pretty helpful. I had no idea what a sponsor was. But she seemed to think it was important. So I said, Well, all right, fine. How do I do that? And she sort of lit up and said, Well, I'll be your sponsor. and I should have known, you know. So she said, meet me tomorrow night and bring your big book and we'll talk about it. Tomorrow night was a Thursday. That's not meeting night. But I sort of sensed that I shouldn't say that to her, you know? So I went down there the next night and I took my big book and the first thing she did is she handed me my bigbook, opened it at the front cover and told me to write that day's date in there. I wrote that date in here and she said that is your sobriety date. I thought, oh, I shouldn't have done this in ink. I don't think that's going to be my sobriety date. I'm very happy to report that that is my sobpriety date, August 28th, 1975. The next thing she did is she took the meeting directory, you know, that lists all the meetings in the area, and she circled a meeting for every night of the week. I said, excuse me, I cannot do that. I'm a married woman, and she said, she was so sweet to me that night. That night, did you catch that? She said something like, well, perhaps you can do it on less. But I'm afraid if you want me as your sponsor, this is what I would expect you to do. She said, Something like, I assume if you want me to be your sponsor it's because you want what I have. If you want what I have, I only know one way to get it and that's to do what I do. She said I will never ask you to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous that I haven't done. But if you want me to be your sponsor, this is what you're going to have to do. For me I believe the miracle happened in the next second because I agreed to do it. If you're new, it's important for you to hear that I didn't agree happily and I didn't do it happily but I did it and that's why I'm standing here tonight. The really, really good news about this program is your attitude doesn't matter one little bit. In fact, we expect that you have a bad attitude really. We would be surprised if you didn't and so what's really great is you just take these actions and your attitude is going to change. When you're brand new, you just got to take it on blind faith and it's hard. It's really hard. I felt so sorry for myself. I thought I had the saddest life of anybody who ever came to Alcoholics Anonymous. My husband and I started fighting. Now, I don't want to imply that AA was ruining my marriage. I had a terrible marriage but now we have a new topic that we're arguing about. We are arguing about AlcoholicsAnonymous and he thought I was coming here to meet men. Look, I wanted to be sober, but there were men here. And I, some of you looked good to me. None of you appeared to be interested in me, which hurt my feelings quite a bit. And it also really annoyed me that my husband was accusing me of something that I was not actually doing at that moment. And so we fought about AA pretty much every night. Every night we'd have dinner, we'd Have the fight. I'd get in the car sobbing hysterically from the fight. My sponsor told me I had to get to every meeting an hour early. 60 minutes, not 55 minutes. 60 minutes early. I'd get in the card, be sobbing hysterically, driving to the meeting and I'd think, you can have it if this is sobriety. I might as well be drunk. My life is so terrible. I'll go to your damn meeting tonight because I'm already out of the house tonight but this is the last one I'm going to. She had me have early commitments at all my meetings like cookies or coffee or, you know, something that setting up chairs. And so I'd get to the meeting 60 minutes early and I'd slam the cookies around in the kitchen or whatever my job was. And then my next instruction was when I finished my commitment was to come back in the main room and just shake hands with people as they got there, introduce myself, ask them how they were as though I cared. So here's what I do. Hi, my name is Pat and you'd give me your name, and I'd say, I have no social skills. So I'd Say, How long are you sober? And they'd say something ridiculous like three years. Nobody stays sober three years, I mean, please. And then they'd ask me, and then I'd stay 30 days, and then they would say, How are you? And I thought they cared, so I'd tell them how I was. With great dramatic sobs. Oh, well, it's so sad, my husband. until their eyes would just glaze over and they'd wander off and just go on to the next person. That's what I did for an hour every night. People were so kind to me. I don't know, I sponsor a couple of girls like that right now and I'll tell you, I don'T know how those people were so nice to me I have not that patience. Mercifully eventually the meeting would start. I went to a lot of speaker meetings which was great because nothing's expected of me when a speaker is up here talking I could just hear it you know in discussion meetings I was kind of useless because the discussions coming around the room this way towards me and I don't hear what any of these people are sharing because I'm thinking of course about what I'm going to share when it's my turn now it's going this way and I'm saying God that was stupid why did I say that so I don' t hear any of those people either in a speaker meeting I was freed from myself for 45 minutes or an hour, and it was great relief. I always felt a little bit better by the time I went home from the meeting. It's not like anything magic happened, but it always would just get me through another day, another fight to another meeting. My sponsor had me just do terrible things that made me. I remember one year she told me I had to pick up these two old women, Claire and Zelda, and bring them to the meeting on, I guess it was Tuesday nights then. To say that I didn't like Claire and Zelda would be to understate it considerably. They, of course, you know, didn't live anywhere conveniently to where I lived, and so I couldn't cut into that hour, that 60 minutes. I had to go early so I could get them and still get to the meeting an hour early. Every week I'd call my sponsor that afternoon with something like, well, you're going to have to go to work. Well, you don't know, it's kind of busy here at work. I may have to work late. I'm not sure about picking up Claire and Zelda. And she'd say, well, you better have a sandwich at your desk then because you're not going to have time for dinner. so off I'd go to get Claire and Zeld and they'd get in the car now I smoked then too so this isn't an issue about smoking but they both smoked and they both had emphysema so they had these awful coughs and they would get in their car and fire up their cigarettes and start that terrible coughing and the truth of the matter is I was afraid that somebody was going to die in my car and I think about it all the way to the meeting and I'll just pull up on the lawn and I'm going to get the three biggest guys and say get them out of my car you know but going home of course there's you know taking them home after the meeting there's nobody anyway so i get to the meeting we'd go in the meeting and the minute we hit the meeting door i never spoke to them again it's like they're dead or not even in the room and i'm talking my for now the meeting's over and i see them you know sort of we've all thanked the speaker whatever and i See them standing by the door waiting for me and i deliberately go over here and start a new conversation you know i was so mean-spirited just so mean spirited i did not like, do you get that I didn't like them? And so one night I went to pick them up and Zelda was sick. And so it was just Claire and me. We went to the meeting and the next day I was at work and I thought, gee, I wonder if Zelda's okay. And I called her. I can't believe I got, I hate this woman. What do I care if she's sick? But I called her up to see if she was okay. You know, I believe that that was the beginning of me learning how to be a friend. I didn' t know that. You You know, I didn't know why my sponsor had me doing this, picking these women up. But, you know, I gradually learned to care about somebody besides myself. I think of sponsored direction as having this sort of ripple effect. You know? If you're like me, you get a sponsored direction. They say do this today. You want to get some kind of really major results by tomorrow afternoon. You know. And it just doesn't have to work that way for me. I get a direction from my sponsor when I'm a month sober or a year or 10 years or 30 years, whatever it is, and I incorporate that action into my life. And somewhere down the road that I cannot possibly see at this moment, that my sponsor can't even possibly see, that action is going to benefit my life in some way. And that's been true for me over and over and again. One of the things my sponsor had me do very early on was at every meeting I went to was to ask three women for their phone numbers that I didn't already have. And then the next day, in addition to calling her, I was to call these three new phone numbers that I'd gotten. And boy, I struggled with that. I mean, my fear was when I called you that you wouldn't know who I was. So I'd dial you and I'd sweat and think about it and agonize over it and sit by the phone and finally dial your number, take one giant breath, you'd answer. And in one giant exhale, I'd say something like, hi, my name is Pat. I have long brown hair and glasses. I met you at the meeting last night. I'm new. My sponsor told me I had to call three people every day and you're one. So how are you anyway? Now, I don't know if anybody ever understood a word I said, but they all got that I was new. And they all were kind. Everybody was kind to me. I especially am fond of the people who would say things that made me laugh. Marianne Kaye, who is my dear friend to this day, was one of the first people that I remember could actually make me laugh out loud. And what a blessing that was because I was not laughing much in those days. And so I won't say I absolutely called three every day, but I did a lot. And that was one OF those directions I didn't get. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? You know, I never got particularly comfortable. I'll tell you why my sponsor had me doing that and why it would be a good idea for you to do it if you're new. When I was three years sober, my then-husband was in the hospital dying of cancer. And he had been sick for a year and a half, hard year and а half, but the best year andа half of our marriage because you taught me how to make amends to him. And so things were, between us, good. He was obviously ill and dying. That was bad. But I was at the hospital this day, and it was not a day different than any of the other days that he'd been sick. It was just a harder day for me. And I remember sitting outside the intensive care waiting room thinking, I can't do this. It's not that I wanted to go get drunk, but I just, I don't know, wanted to run away from my life, I guess is the only way I can think to express it. And the thought ran through my head it might be a good idea to call somebody like my sponsor and so I stepped into this phone booth there and I called my sponsor and she wasn't home this was before anybody I don't think voicemail had been invented I didn't know anybody who had an answering machine I mean nobody did so the phone just rang and eventually I hung up and the dime came back which shows you how long ago it was and without even really thinking about it I put the dime back in got my little phone book out that I carry of numbers and called somebody else I called 11 people that day before somebody answered the phone Never once did the thought come to me that, oh, screw it. You know, I just kept putting the thing back in. God, it's funny we're talking about that, about Bill Wilson standing in that church lobby, you know? Just made me think of that. I just keep dialing until somebody answered. Now, the person who answered didn't have any magic anything for me. What mattered is that I was talking to another sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It somehow got my life, my perspective on life back in place a little bit, and I was able to go on. That has come back to save me time and time and times again. My husband did indeed pass away. I went down to this little chapel and made some funeral arrangements, and a couple hundred people from Alcoholics Anonymous took the day off from work and came to that funeral. They didn't know him, but they came that day because they knew that I would need them, which of course I did. and what my sponsor had promised me had happened by making amends to him I knew that day that I was clean and right about my relationship with him I was sad obviously that day but I knew there was nothing I wish I would have said or done if only, you know I had done all of that and I'm so grateful that I stayed in that marriage when all of my best judgment suggested I should leave I'm glad that I listened to my sponsor who insisted that I stay there and make those amends you know the thing about those phone calls I'm married to Vince today we're married for 26 years it didn't happen quite that fast after my late husband passed away but I'm thinking I'm on a train of thought here so you just got to bear with me thinking about the phone calls right now three years ago Vince had colon cancer and was in the hospital and he was really really sick. I was at the City of Hope one day, and I really thought, you know, he's not going to ever come out of this hospital. I really believe that. And I thought I need to call somebody. So I went out in the courtyard where my cell phone would work, and I called my friend Rita, and her voicemail picked up, and I said, hi, it's Pat Yeo, and I burst into tears. If I hadn't have said my name, I would have hung up, but I had identified myself, so now I feel obliged to try to stay on here and leave some kind of a coherent message, but I was incapable. I just was choking and crying, and she just told me later this call just made her sob. Anyway, I finally just hung up. I went back in the room with Vince, and about 20 minutes later I thought, I've got to go call Rita again and let her know that I haven't killed myself. So I went out to the courtyard and I called, and I got her voicemail again, and I said, I just want to let you know to please disregard my prior message, and I'm feeling much better now. Thank you very much. I tell you that because it didn't matter. This is the point of the story. It did not matter that Rita wasn't home. What mattered is that I picked up the phone and called another sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It changed how I was able to deal with that day. By me taking that action and reaching out to anybody, Rita, that day, it made me be okay for that day so that's why my sponsor had me call in three people every day when I was new so that when the day would come, which it will for everybody, when you absolutely positively must be talking to another sober remember of Alcoholic Anonymous you'll do it without even really thinking about it. And I'm real glad she taught me that. You know, my biggest... I really will shut up soon. My biggest problem and biggest secret when I got sober was my relationship with my stepfather. I really hated him, and I had good reason to. And I didn't see it as a problem. I didn'T live in that house. Once I moved out of the house, the things obviously that were happening weren't happening anymore. And so I didn't see it as a problem for today, so to speak. I mean, that's what happened to me then. Now I'm gone. Everything's fine. Except the longer I was sober, the more I thought about it and the more I hated him. And then it seemed like, I don't know if this happens to you. I bet it does. It seemed like every meeting I went to, the speaker would lean right into the microphone, stare directly at me, and say something like, resentments kill alcoholics, particularly justifiable resentments. And I just sit in my chair sweating and think, okay, I resent him. It's justifiable, but, you know, I don't know what to do with this. And I let way more time pass by than one needs to, but I guess you're ready when you're already. I finally talked to my sponsor about it, and she said, I think you need to make amends to him. And I said, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Perhaps you've forgotten. He, I mean, I was a kid here. He was clearly the bad guy in this relationship. You know, you're wrong. And she said, well, Pat, you have made amends and still making those amends today to your mother for the grief and the anguish and the worry that you've caused your mother behind your drinking. Your stepfather was living in that house with your mother at the same time you were causing her all that grief. Why don't you just sort of take that same little list of things and start there to make amends to him? Now, there's a problem with this. I love my mother. I was sorry when I was doing it to her that I was causing her all that trouble, and I certainly was sorry when I got sober. I am sorry to this day that I caused my mother all that grief and anguish and worry. I hate my stepfather. What do I care if he was a little bit worried? You see the problem here? But again, it seemed like the longer I stayed sober the bigger it got in my head and so I finally became willing and I drove out to their house and they lived about 50 miles away at the time and I drove out to their house one day and I had this little chat with him and I it was pretty brief I just said something like you know I know that I caused a lot of trouble in this house when I was a teenager and my drinking and all of that, and I know that there were many sleepless nights and blah, blah, and I'm really sorry. I know I can't change any of that that happened, but I'm going to try to be a better stepdaughter to you from now on. Now, I left pretty much spit these words out and left because I knew if I hung around for more of this conversation, we were going to wander off into discussing his shortcomings, and the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is very, very clear that that's not our job, and I really got that if I did that, I was going to have to do this all over again, So I said what I had to say and I left. And I was driving home and I thought, these steps don't work. I've made amends and I hate them as much as I ever did. Well, I hadn't actually made amens. What I had done is I'd made the announcement that an amend was coming. You know, the amend isn't saying I'm sorry. The amend is in fact being a better stepdaughter. Oh my God, what a horrible idea. I mean, I really, I honest to God didn't think I could do it. I really really depended on my sponsor and other women in Alcoholics Anonymous. I started watching people how they treated their parents and trying to emulate some of that. The first thing I did when I called my mother every week which I was doing then if he answered the phone instead of saying hi let me talk to mom I would say hi how are you and then maybe chat with him about something And I really would have to think about topics of conversation before I dialed the phone, generic topics, you know what I mean? If I'd seen a movie, that was a really good topic. I remember the Olympics were in Los Angeles around this time, and that was a good topic, you Know, so I would say, hi, how are you? And he'd respond, and then I'd say, oh, I saw this great movie last night, and I'd, you Now, a little something about the movie, and now I'm just drenched in sweat. I'm so uncomfortable, and finally talk to mom. And then Christmas was coming up, and somebody said, you know, Pat, a kind and loving daughter would not just pick up any tie or shirt or something and have the store wrap it. A kind and living daughter might actually put a little thought into a gift. And so I remember sitting on my couch that afternoon and asking God to help me. He actually, even if you liked him, was one of those people who's just hard to buy for. You know, some people just like don't have hobbies, don't, you Know. And so I sat on the couch, and I said, okay, God, you're going to have to help me out here because I really have no idea what to do for this man. And I sat On The Couch there and waited for inspiration to strike, and nothing happened. And I thought maybe, just maybe, the action for me is to go to a store where stuff is. And so we went down to a mall, andI was walking around thinking about it. And I went into this needlepoint shop, and there was this thing to needlepoint and frame and hang on the wall, a little saying about fathers and daughters. Just an awful little saint. I thought, oh, I cannot possibly do that. It just followed me around the shop, honest to God. So I bought the damn thing and I did it. You know, needlepoint takes a long time. I did my nicest work. I got it framed nicely. I took it over there. I gave it to him for Christmas. And when he opened it up, there was just a moment, just a momento where I could see he had a little tear in the corner of his eye. It was a powerful moment for me. I knew just here and gone that quick that I was on the right track here in making these amends. I knew that somehow if I kept trying to do this, that God was going to make this resentment bearable enough that I would not have to pick up a drink over it. I knew it. Again, the feeling was just here undone so quick, but that instant, boy, it held me a long time. It really did. I remember at the next event, The next gift-giving event, Vince and I had been in Yosemite. And Yoshemite is when my stepfather married my mother, camping in YOSEMITE was the first vacation that we all went on. And this was like before all the trouble began. And it was a great vacation. It was like the greatest vacation we'd ever had. And I still to this day remember hiking up to Vernal Falls and laughing and just having this great time. And so they have an Ansel Adams studio there, and I bought a picture of Vernal Falls. And I wrote on the card essentially what I just said to you, that this was like the greatest trip, blah, blah. And I gave that to him, and he loved it. He immediately hung it up in a prominent place in the house. And I thought, well, that was good. About six or seven months after that, I was at their house one day, and I happened to sit in his chair. And there on the table where his glasses and his stuff were was that card where I'd written that message. And it was completely dog-eared. He had obviously picked that card up and read it hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Again, you know, the moment keeps you going. It just keeps you Going. He actually committed suicide about, oh God, it's over 10 years now, I guess. I went down to see him. He was not conscious. I sat by his bed and I said a prayer, but there was never a moment where I wished that he'd wake up so I could say anything because I knew, again, I totally made my amends to this man. and I'm so glad that I did all those things that I didn't want to do. I'm free of it. What a gift. If you're new, this all seems so serious somehow. It is serious, but on the other hand, we absolutely insist on enjoying life, and I do. Vince and I got married, I think I said 26 years ago, and we have, well, other than heart attacks and cancer and financial problems. We've had a really great life together. You know, of all the troubles that we've had, they've never been with each other. And what a gift that is. We are not either one of those people who are like in a marriage for the long haul. You know what I mean? We're kind of short-termers. And yet here we are 26 years later. I love him more today than I did the day I married him. And I'm so grateful for that. If you're new, I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I hope that, you know, this is really a great weekend to be here. Go to all the meetings. Listen to all of the speakers. Immerse yourself in this. You know, it's the most wonderful thing that's ever going to happen to you. I know you don't feel that way right now. Believe me, I know it. And actually everybody in this room knows it. Everybody in this group has felt exactly the way you're feeling. right now. If you're new, I would recommend you do three things. I recommend you get a sponsor before you leave this room and certainly before you leave this weekend. A sponsor is somebody who's going to walk you through this and show you the way and lead by example and love you and care for you. And the second thing I recommend you to do is get a home group, a place where you are the person who throws the cookies around in the kitchen or whatever it is that you do. And, and the third thing I recommended you do is make a friend, Somebody around your own length of sobriety you can hang out with and talk to. When you're new, it's nice to hear how stuff is going to sound out loud before you call your sponsor with it. You might want to tweak the wording a little then before you... I used to call my friend Betty. Betty knew everything about me. I'd call her three or four times a day. I'd tell her something and she'd say, it's either something I'm thinking about doing or something I've already done which isn't so good and sometimes she'd say what I hope which is oh yeah that sounds cool but mostly she'd says oh god you better call your sponsor with that and that's a really good kind of friend to be I hope you find a friend like that she was sober 3 days less than me when we were 10 years sober she went out the last time I saw her was when I was 25 years sober she brought me a little gift and shortly after that she went to prison so it's not like she's been having a great life since she left Alcoholics Anonymous when I was new I remember thinking boy if I were as pretty as Betty and as smart as Betty my life would be perfect I am not a more deserving person than Betty I am NOT a better person than Benny as near as I can tell the only thing that I've done different is I've tried to do everything that's asked of me in AlcoholicsAnonymous whether I wanted to or not in fact especially when I don't want to it is the only as I can see difference between why she is where she is and I am where I am if you're new I hope that you grab onto this thing I hope you find what I and most of the other people in this room have found this is a fabulous way to live and I'm very happy to be here thank you