Pat Y. on Self-Obsession, the Big Book, and Living Sober

hi everybody my name is Pat Yeo and I'm an alcoholic and I am happy to it's hard for me to do this in the morning I'm not even awake yet I am happy to be here though and it's an honor to be asked I'd like to thank the committee for asking me to this is real distracting i gotta get rid of this thank you it's uh it's an honor to be asked uh i love alcoholics anonymous and i love the way that i live my life today and i assume that you do too you're a pretty enthusiastic crowd here and uh i've been to omaha before to meetings and and i uh i like it here for that reason you know you are enthusiastic and that's the way it is where i come from you know i if it wasn't if the people weren't having a good time if i wasn't having a good Time uh at least a good portion of the time i wouldn't stayed sober I know that for sure I've been to some meetings where I don't know how they stay sober I really don't I mean they seem real grim and if life were grim I wouldn't be doing this you know anyway I'm glad to be here I got drunk the first time when I was 13 the reason I drank that particular night is it was offered to me I was at this party they were drinking so I drank you know I wanted to fit in with those people in the worst way I'd never felt very comfortable with people I've always described myself as extremely shy I got here you told me that's just self obsession I like the word shy a little bit better but that's who I am you know I think I'll tell you how I'll tell you the kind of person I am when I'm in a conversation with you it's hard for me to concentrate on what you're saying when you're talking because while you're talk and I'm busy thinking about what I'm gonna say when you pause you know so I did you know i think about myself all the time and so I'm at this party I'm 13 I'm at this party and I wanted these people to like me which is all I've ever wanted out of life was for everybody to like me and they were drinking rum and coke and somebody offered me a rum and Coke so I drank it I didn't have any particular feelings about drinking or not drinking I just wanted to fit in there and so I drink that rum and coke and of course a wonderful thing happened to me you know I think I relaxed for the real very first time in my life I felt real comfortable at that party from from that moment forward got a little too comfortable as the evening we're on but I but I really felt good there for a while I I could talk to people real comfortably you know I could uh I said a couple of things that made people laugh and I I felt um it made me feel good and I could dance I don't know if I could Dance I felt like I could and I got up and I danced and I felt Like I was doing real well and and uh and I loved it you know i just loved it now I also um at night blacked out passed out and woke up the next morning in bed with the marine that I didn't know and that's not what I meant to do you know. I was 13 years old and I was a nice girl up until that night, and I felt real bad the next day. I felt guilty and ashamed, and I was terrified that I'd get pregnant, and I just had a lot of bad feelings about that night. And yet I drank again the very next chance I got. I could not wait to drink again because it did something special for me. I was willing, evidently, to pay the price until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I have never done anything that I would call social drinking. Looking back on it, I believe I just drank alcoholically from the first time out i i always drank to get drunk i always drank for the effect i don't know why you'd pick up a drink if you weren't planning to get drank i really don't um i remember years later i always like to tell the story because it's the kind of alcoholic i am years later i was going to a political fundraiser with my then husband and we um had paid a lot of money oddly enough it was in beverly hills um we paid a little bit of money to get a lot of these tickets this private home in beverley hills and the tickets came in the mail like on a Monday or something and the thing was on Friday or Saturday, I don't know. On the ticket there it said two complimentary glasses of champagne per person and I looked at those tickets every day and thought about that and about Thursday I called the house where this deal was being held and I said, I didn't identify myself of course, but I said I'm coming to your deal there tomorrow night and I see it says on these tickets two complimentary glasses OF champagne. I'm wondering if one, this is like it's not me, you know, if one wanted to purchase additional glasses of champagne could one do that and the woman said well no i'm very sorry we've invited x number of people we have you know that much champagne ordered and and there will not be any additional for sale so i didn't drink that night because i don't know about you but i knew by then that i couldn't go somewhere and drink two two glasses of champagne and stop it would make a crazy person out of me what i did that night is on the other hand see i'm not going to let a couple of free drinks go by what i Did is i went to that thing and I got a Coke or something and I stood behind the potted palm and felt ill at ease the entire evening and when my husband said are you ready to go dear I went over and had my two glasses of champagne because I knew then I could go finish that drunk out you know and that's what I did and I never thought about these things when I was doing them you know any kind of insight I have into who I am I certainly didn't have when I live in it and I didn't have I thought when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I kind of thought when you took your inventory you got all kinds of great insight you know and you really learned what made you tick and everything That has not been my experience. When I started learning about myself is when I started sponsoring other people in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's when I decided to learn something about myself. But anyway, to go back, I'm 13 years old and I started drinking every chance I got. I was a periodic for a while. I was 13 years older. I think if I'd had access to alcohol every day though, I would have drank it every day. As it was, I grew up in Newport Beach and mostly it was beach parties on the weekends. Mostly it was beer because that's what we could buy. You know, looking back, when I was 12 1⁄2, let's say, I was one person. I was a straight-A student. I went to church on Sundays. I went into this church youth group. I was real involved in this church Youth Group. It was a real important part of my life. And maybe six months later after drinking, my life had changed. I was getting Cs and Ds in school. I had to quit going to church. I dropped out of that Youth Group and I was hanging around with this whole different crowd of kids. I was smoking and drinking and my life has changed totally and I didn't even notice it. I don't remember thinking, I'm changing friends now, but that's what I did. I started getting in trouble. As I said, I generally got drunk when I drank. Generally, I behaved in a way that embarrassed me. Newport Beach was kind of a small town at that time. Everybody pretty much, certainly everybody in my school knew everybody, and I was developing a bad reputation, and that made me feel terrible. You know, I always meant to be the kind of person who would grow up and go to college and get married and stay married to that person forever and have a couple of kids and go to the PTA and church I was 13 years old and I already knew deep in my heart it was never going to happen I'd already broken half the moral codes most of the moral quotes I'd set for myself and I felt terrible about my life already and yet I never connected it with alcohol I just never did I got married when I was 18 I got marry because he asked i hadn't realized that i was feeling some desperation about my life but i remember the night he asked feeling this tremendous sense of relief like i'm not going to have to worry about that anymore i don't hadn't as i say been aware that i had been worried about it but but evidently i had obviously i mean i know today i had no self-worth whatsoever i was dating a couple of and there was i mean I was not an ugly person I had my share of boyfriends and and uh you know dates and whatnot and in fact he was not even the person that I liked the most right at that time but he is the one who asked and uh i said yes and uh so we embarked on our engagement and we had uh you know planned this big church wedding and i kind of knew as the as the day was getting closer that uh that this was probably a mistake but i was powerless to stop it i literally was i remember walking down the aisle i mean we had this big Church wedding with hundreds of people and you know my dad walked me down the island i remember thinking i should not do this this isn't right you know this just isn't right it's not that I didn't like this fellow he was a perfectly nice fellow but the truth of the matter is I hardly knew him when you get right down to it our entire courtship took place pretty much in the rendezvous ballroom in Newport Beach at that time surfing music was the big thing and at least it was there and he would pick me up at my parents house we would go sit in the car on the bluffs in New Port and we'd drink a couple of quart bottles of beer they did not serve at that time alcohol in the Rendezvous so we'd go in and you could get your hand stamped, so you could go in and out. So we'd get our hand stamped and keep going in and out to the parking lot and drinking and going back in. And when you're in there, the music is so loud that you can't even scream it. You can't possibly have a conversation with anybody. And then, of course, when we were in the parking slot, we were either making out or drinking. And so it seemed to me, I remember thinking, well, we do have a lot in common. I remember thanking that. I didn't even know him. I knew nothing about this man. And we got married and we stayed married for six months. and I believe that I would have probably stayed married to him forever at least until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm basically sort of a people pleaser and I don't like to hurt people's feelings it's inconceivable looking back that I ever could have looked him in the eye and said you know what I don' t love you and I'm leaving it kind of even gives me chills today I could not possibly have said that to him but a lot of other things happened during that six month period that we're married that sort of made it easy for me to slip out the back door and that's how I usually do things If there's a back door to leave by, that's the way I leave every time. I don't want to look you in the eye. I don' t want to have a confrontation with you. I just want to move on now. So we were married. My mother was real sick that year and I got kind of involved in that. She had cancer and ultimately recovered. But then my only brother died in sort of a tragic accident and I did not deal well with that at all. I did no know what to do with the feelings that I had about this. This brother was three years older than me and I just idolized him. I thought he was the most wonderful person in the world. looking back i think he was probably an alcoholic or at least a budding alcoholic uh but at the time i just thought he was just wonderful and uh he was killed in the service and in a sort of a tragic accident and i he was in japan at thetime and and i had been injured and the uh navy department whoever does this kind of stuff was sending my parents telegrams about his condition and it looked as though he were going to recover and and be sent back to the states for you know further recovery. And I was sending him letters and stuff during this time, about a month's period. And one day I sent him one of these funny cards, one of These Studio Cards. On the front it said something like, heard you were ailing but not to worry. And you opened it up and it said, only the good die young. Now it seemed like a real clever card when I picked it up in the store. I wrote something on it and I sent that off. And a couple of days later, a few days later we got the message from the State Department or whoever that he had died. and I felt so bad that I had sent that card. I couldn't, I thought, my God, I hope he didn't get that. You know, I hope you didn't get that card and I waited and waited. It was about two weeks, I think before his belongings got shipped back to my parents. It all came in a big trunk and I remember just like it was yesterday, my mother opening up that trunk and that card was laying on top and it had been opened and I was like, I felt, I felt so bad about that. I remember I grabbed that card and I went in the bathroom and I tore it up in little pieces and flushed it down the toilet so nobody would know that I'd ever done anything that insensitive. Now, of course, I didn't do that on purpose. I didn't mean to hurt him, I loved him but I felt so bad about that I never told anybody about that until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous 20 years later or whatever it was when I was reading my first inventory to my sponsor I read that and I cried because I felt så bad about it and I just never told anyone it's not a big deal today but it was a real big deal at the time it turns out that most of the things I saw as big deals really are not big deals I always thought I was the only person who did things or felt a certain way or whatever and what a comfort it was to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and find out that you all were pretty much like me and my case really is not different so my brother has died and I feel real bad and I'm feeling this guilt because of this card and I've been crying a lot and my poor husband had no idea what to do with me and he said to me one day I don't know how to help you maybe you should go stay with your mother a while maybe she can help you get through this because I just don't Know What To Do and he really was concerned and I said okay and I went home to my mother's and I never went back see I can do that I never had to look him in the eye and say, I don't love you. I talked to him on the phone, and I said, I've decided not to come back. And this poor fellow had no idea why. We had never had an argument that I recall. And he kept saying, but what's the matter? He wanted to, he said, I'll go to marriage counseling and I'll do whatever you want. And I said no, I wouldn't even discuss it. He called the minister of my church, which was not his faith, and said, could you talk to her? He wrote me a letter. I mean, I just would not talk to anybody. Clearly I owe this fellow an amend, and when I got sober and read that amend step, I thought, eww, you know, I'm going to have to do something about that I was about I guess six or seven or eight months sober I don't really remember exactly and I ran into him and I hadn't seen him in years and I saw him and my very first thought was well, here it is God's put him right here on my path I better make this a man and my next thought was no, I am not sober long enough and I am still not on that step yet and I'll tell you what if that should occur in your life it would be my recommendation to just go ahead and do it I did not do it, I let the opportunity pass by and now I don't know how to find him I'm almost 14 years sober now and I haven't seen him from that day to this and I've tried to find them a couple of times and I really do regret that I let that opportunity pass so I always like to mention that if you're new or not so new my theory is if you bump into him there's a reason for that and you ought to just quit and take advantage of it anyhow, I stayed with my folks for a while after this divorce and then I moved to Los Angeles, I got a job in an apartment and felt incredibly grown up and sophisticated finally I'm on my own, you know, in the big city and I remember thinking, I was moving into that first little apartment now I can be the person I was meant to be evidently the personIi was meantto be was a daily drunk because that's what I became from the very first day my first job in LA was for a trucking company my father was the vice president, which is how I happened to get the job I was a secretary and I had real good secretarial skills I had no experience so he said I'll let you work here for a year so you can have something to put on your resume but then I think you should move on, I don't really want relatives working here so that was fine, I was real grateful for the opportunity and I started working in this trucking company and I drank in these bars where these truck drivers drank and I loved those bars of all the places I've drank in over the years I think I liked those truck driver bars the best they were truck driverbars one time I mentioned the name of one of them in a meeting locally in LA where I was talking and a man came up to me afterwards and he said, I can't believe you drank in that bar he said I drank inthat bar for years and never once saw a woman in there that's why I liked it there I got a lot of attention I likedit there just fine there were about 4 or 5 of these bars that we sort of rotated amongst in my days I'd get up in the morning now I'm young, I think I was probably 20 at that time I have this tremendous capacity for alcohol I could drink a lot of these truck drivers under the table and I thought that was something to be proud of and I would often prove it to you and I did not yet suffer from hangovers I mean, I was young and healthy so I'd bounce out of bed in the morning I'd go to work and at noon we'd go to one of these bars and we'd have four or five drinks and a hamburger and weíd go back to work and get off at five and weíd go to one of these beers once a week weíd goto the bowling alley where they were in a league and I drank and kept score and wherever we were at the end of the night Iíd take one of those truck drivers home with me and Iíd get up in the morniní i'd do it all over again if i could still if drinking still made me feel the way it made me feel in those truck driver bars i'd still be drinking no question about it no question about it but of course um it stopped doing that down the road what happened to me there at that time though was that i started having uh what i've come to know as little moments of clarity about my life and i didn't uh much care for that you know you can't stay drunk 24 hours a day you know you're sober up there in the daytime and i i remember the first time that at least that i remember i was sitting at work at this trucking company one day i was uh it's about 10 o'clock in the morning and i was my desk was like here and into the just to the right of me was sort of a picture window that looked out onto the loading dock where these guys would load the trucks and i'm sitting at my desk and i felt somebody looking at me you know and i glanced over there out of the corner of my eye and there were four or five of these truck drivers standing on the dock there all of whom i had known in the biblical sense you might say looking at me talking and laughing and i was i mean i couldn't hear him because this glass was there you know but it was clear they were talking about me it was humiliating i wanted to die i remember i sort of turned my back like and acted like i hadn't seen him and pretended to type and and i want just wanted to die i thought just please don't let me cry here i was so humiliated now i went out that noon to the bar with the guys and had five drinks and a hamburger and i went after work that day and drank until closing time and took somebody home with me, maybe one of those five, maybe somebody else. I don't know. You know, I don' t remember. But that's what I do when I drink. And eventually I had to leave that job because of moments like that. Eventually I just couldn' t stand facing those guys in the morning. My father had wind of some of my activities and was extremely concerned as any father would be and he tried to talk to me and I just simply wouldn' t talk to him. I said, in fact, a lot of ugly things to him, and we didn't, in fact, speak. I hardly ever talk about this. My real father and I didn't speak for a good number of years from that time, from the time I left that company. We barely started speaking again before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was only after I made my amends to him that we had any kind of a relationship at all. And it's really only in the last few years that I have what I call just a real loving kind of relationship with him,and that's because of Alcoholics Anonymous. No doubt about it. But at that time all I could see was that he was button in my life and it was none of his business you know who asked for your opinion get out of here i'm not talking to you about this and and of course he just loved me and was trying to help and didn't know what was wrong with me he didn't Know I was an alcoholic nobody did you know um i left that job i went to another job i i could stay on a job about a year you know eventually i behaved so badly that i gotta leave eventually i embarrassed myself to the point that i simply cannot face you in the morning at work again uh i am the i once quit a job after an office Christmas party and never even went back to cleaning my desk out because I knew I couldn't face those people the next day. I remembered, I drank a lot in blackouts for which I'm grateful but I remembered enough that day that I knew I just couldn't face those people. Here's the kind of drunk I am. One time I went out with my boss and several of my co-workers. Now everybody was drunk that night. We were all drunk. We would bar hop around some sort of tacky bars in downtown LA and we all were drunk it's true but when we wound up in the strip joint I was the only one who auditioned for a job that night see I don't do it quite like everybody else does I got that job and I started I quit the day job and then I I got another you know I sort of see those people were on to me at that job so I had to leave but then I got another secretarial job and I was leading this sort of double life in the morning I'd go to work and I'd be dressed kind of like I am now and I and I be real quiet because I was not getting a lot asleep and so i didn't have a lot to say during the day and i just sit at my desk and do my work and and just sort of this demure person you know and i'd get off work at five o'clock and i drive downtown to the whatever bar i was working at they were basically i worked mostly as a go-go dancer it's sort of at the height of this kind of dates me i guess but anyway it was sort of the zenith of go-do dancing and and there were at that time some very nice bars in los angeles that had go-bo dancers i did not work in them i worked down in chinatown and two two main places nicks and joes and uh i'd get off work at five i'd drive down to nicks or joes wherever i was working at the time and i'd go in the back room to put my costume on and and i have a few drinks of course because i can't uh there's no way i can go take my clothes off or most of my clothes off and dance in front of you i'm this shy person i described to you a while ago so clearly i got to do something to and now i've worked from whatever it was six to two and that's a lot of hours to try to maintain that you know the right level of of being drunk to drunk enough to do it and not so drunk that you're passed out um obviously it's almost impossible often i passed out sometimes on stage uh it was fortunate that this was these places it didn't matter they would sort of drag you off and one of the other girls would come out and dance and i'll tell you it was great you know if you if you came to later they put you in their little back room their little dress if you can't do it you could come back out and they'd give you thunderous applause you know that you were bad great i saw myself in this showbiz career you know i really did i just thought god this is great it was all so tacky i i just uh i went through my mariachi phase you know i i discovered this mariachi band in san juan capistrano now i'm living in l.a just for those of you who aren't familiar with california we're talking about 60 miles or 70 miles away maybe this little bar in San Juan Capistrano had this mariachi band came up from Tijuana and they played there Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and they stayed in a little local motel there on those nights and then Sunday night after the last deal they'd drive back to Tijuana presumably to their wives and many children I don't know because none of them spoke English but there were about 10 of these guys in this band and they were all I was, I don' t know maybe 21 at the time and they where all probably 50 and none of em spoke English and I thought they were wonderful I mean, it really was like they're groupie. I would drive every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. During the week when I got off work, I would ride down in rush hour traffic these 70 miles to go to this bar to be there, you know, and I would go in the bar. The first thing I'd do is I'd hand the bartender my purse and he'd put it behind, everybody knew me, he'd putting it behind the bar there so I wouldn't lose it because I had kind of a habit of doing that and at the end of the night I'd figure out my tab with him and pay him and I'd sit there and drink and I request my favorite song over and over again and they had this little dance floor there that the patrons of the bar could dance and at some point during the night one of these mariachi players would put his instrument down and ask me to dance and I can still remember like it was yesterday the feeling that I would have moving around the dance floor with this guy I felt special, I felt loved I felt like the people and the other patrons in that bar were looking at me thinking I must be somebody because I knew these guys I knew them, alright I mean I knew they all I would go to the motel with one or another of them and spend the night, and then I'd have to get up real, real early because I had to drive all the way back to L.A. to go to work, you know, and I did that every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night for a long time, months and months. A couple years ago, or maybe a year ago, I had a meeting in that area, and there was no traffic, and I got down there real early, and I thought, I'm going to see if I can go find that place, and I found it, and it was dark, and I pulled up the car across the street and stopped and turned the lights out and just sat in the car, and the lights were on, of course, in the bar, and the door was open a little bit there, And I could see just sort of into the bar And I sat in that car for about ten minutes looking in there And you know, I couldn't come up with one single happy memory from that place Not one time that I really had a good time Or felt good about myself Or felt happy or had some laughs The only things that I could remember were Just kind of bad, embarrassing, tacky Awful, sleazy things And yet I drove down there every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night For months And did it over and over and again You know I got married again to a man that I met in one of these bars where I was working it's the only place I ever went to meet anybody he drank quite a bit, I would not have married him if he didn't it turned out he didnít drink quite as much as I did though and my drinking became noticeable not so much my drinking but my behavior became noticeable we started having serious discussions about some of my behavior he would get upset when I wouldnít come home after work or sometimes I would come home missing parts of my clothing and I couldn't account for what had happened to them, or I would leave work at 5 and get home at 3 a.m., or, you know, I just never meant to do that. My intentions were always good, but I just can't predict what's going to happen to me, and things were getting bad. Also, I started getting arrested, and I did not care for that. The first time I got arrested was just before he and I got married. We were living together at the time. We were not yet married, and they said, You can make a phone call, and it was Thanksgiving night, and he was at some sort of a dinner at his boss's house and I remembered that so I called the boss's wife and I identified myself and said I'm down here at jail it never occurred to me that maybe this might cause him some problem I never ever thought of anybody but myself when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and heard you talk about making amends I really thought for a long time well I never really hurt anybody but my self and I believed that nonsense for a long time, I hurt everybody when you get right down to it, pretty near everybody I knew I hurt and I certainly hurt him anyway I had started getting arrested and what was happening to me then and I didn't understand it, I do today is that alcohol was starting not to work you know I was still getting physically drunk but it seemed like no matter how much I drank, I couldn't turn my head off, you know, I was so afraid and lonely I just could not get rid of those feelings that alcohol took away all those years I started drinking at home and it took a lot of heat off for a while because nothing much happens when you sit in a purple flannel bathrobe in your living room drinking, you don't get arrested you don' t wake up with bizarre people you just kind of sit there and drink until you pass out every night I thought I had my drinking problem under control I remember thinking that very thought I would sit there every night I was thinking about it this morning there was something on the TV about Ray Charles I'd play those sad records over and over again Ray Charles Born to Lose I bet I played that record 12,000 times you know, I loved that record my downstairs neighbors one time said to me do you have any other records? over and over oh I'd cry it would make me feel so so good and so bad I'd call people on the phone I never meant to wake you up I really didn't I just kind of always assumed if I was up you were up by the time I got sober the only person who would everybody i knew uh if they heard you know if they answered the phone it was me they would say not tonight pat and hang up except my mother you know she uh she loved me to the end i'll tell you if if i never got anything else out of alcoholic synonymous except the fact that i no longer torment my mother like that i'm grateful you know i'm overpaid if that's even if that'S all i ever got i um i hated myself i hated my life i knew it was going nowhere i got up every morning, I went to work. It's real important to have a job. Alcoholics don't work. Everybody knows that. So that job got real important. I'd go to work, I'd try to hang on, I'd come home from work,I'd start drinking immediately and I'd drink until I passed out and Id get up the next day and Id do it over again and I knew that nothing was ever going to change. I had no hope that it was ever going to changed. I remember one day, hot summer day, maybe it was the 4th of July or maybe just a weekend, I don't know, it was about 10 in the morning,I was drunk already, I was wearing that purple flannel bathrobe and 110 sweat was pouring off of me and I was sitting in the rocking chair in my living room. We lived in a second floor apartment. You could look down into the neighbor's yard. The neighbors were a young couple about my age and they had a couple of little toddler type kids and the kids were playing in the sprinklers on the lawn there and the mom and the dad were sitting on the porch steps talking and laughing and I'm sitting there watching them from my apartment and I cried because I wanted what those people had. I wanted to live, that's all I ever meant to do was to live like those people were living. What happened to me? What happened? I didn't know. I just didn't known. I had no hope that my life would ever change, I really didn't I had heard of Alcoholics Anonymous but I didn't think it had anything to do with me I knew I drank too much, I think I knew I was an alcoholic but I just didn't think AlcoholicsAnonymous had anything for me you know if you're an alcoholic I remember thinking if you are an alcoholic which you might very well be here Pat, you probably shouldn't drink and so I won't drink I will stop drinking and I'm going to get my life together and I'd get up in the morning now I'm also getting a little older here and I am not bouncing back quite so fast in the mornings, I'm feeling bad you know and so it was fairly easy in the morning to have that firm resolve by god i'm not going to drink anymore today is going to be the first day of the rest of my life you know that one and um and i go off to work with this strong resolve i am not goingto drink anymore and i and the morning would wear down and i'd think uh and i'm going to join a gym you know take some physical exercise really get in shape and then in the afternoon i don't go back to college and finish my education and it's gonna be a whole new life and i get off work at five o'clock and go home and there'd be maybe a half a fifth of scotch sitting on the kitchen sink. And I think, geez, it'd be awful hard to quit with this open bottle sitting here. I think I'll drink this down and tomorrow when there's nothing in the house, it would be easier to quit. And that made a lot of sense to me. But the problem is I'm an alcoholic. And before the night was out, I'd have to order a new fifth. What I'd had the next day, that would be more or less a half a fifth a scotch. And didn't do that once or twice. I did it a whole bunch of times. And I meant it every time. Tomorrow when there is nothing here, I'll quit. I never seem to hit it right on the you know where there was nothing there uh the uh the day that i that i did have my last drink there was scotch there it just didn't matter i'm a real believer of you know it's time when it's not a minute before or after but anyway i called alcoholic synonymous one night i was drunk when i called i have no idea what triggered the notion to call maybe i read something that day or i don't know you know but i remember dialing information and getting the number writing it down on a little piece of paper and dialing that number and a real nice man from my home group as it turns out, answered the phone and asked me if I was having a problem with alcohol and I said that I was and I started to cry and he talked to me a long time he had this real soft voice to this day when I hear this man participate at the podium I get this sort of warm feeling he just has the most comforting quiet voice you know it just always makes me feel kind of safe when he talks he talked with me a lot about himself a lot more than I really wanted to know if you want the truth but he was talking to me and I was grateful for that I remember he wanted to send some women over to my house I said, oh no, no, I don't think I'm that bad I couldn't think of a worse idea than some women coming to call on me I really couldn't He seemed to understand, he said, that's okay, you don't have to do that It was a Friday night when I called He said, do you think you could not take a drink tomorrow and go to a meeting tomorrow night that I'll tell you about this not too far from your house. And I said, yeah, I thought I could do that. So he told me where a meeting place was and I wrote that address down and we hung up and I of course drank until I passed out. And I woke up the next morning and I remembered making the call and I remember bits and pieces and I found that little piece of paper and it didn't seem like quite such a nifty idea to go racing off to Alcoholics Anonymous in the light of day there but I couldn't stop thinking about it all day. It was just sort of there in the back of my mind and I find myself saying to my husband at the dinner table that night I'm going to a meeting of AlcoholicsAnonymous tonight. he was kind of underwhelmed I think we had not been getting along in a long, long time we fought all the time he was a gambler it was kindof a perfect match actually because he was gone gambling all the time and I was home drinking which was just fine with me but when our paths did cross we fought there was some violence in our house and I like to say this it's not the most popular thing I ever say at the podium there was some violence in that house and I always saw myself as a victim I have seen myself as a victim all my life I don't think there's ever a good reason for a man to hit a woman however, when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and stopped behaving in the way that I had been behaving all those years he stopped hitting me, it's that simple that tells me that perhaps I have some responsibility here that was my experience anyway anyhow, I remember I dressed with some care because I remember as I left the bedroom there was this whole pile of clothes you know how we women do there was this whole pile of clothes that I had put on and discarded as not being exactly appropriate of course when you've never been to AA, you don't know what to wear and I wanted to kind of strike the right note I didn't want to be overdressed so I changed three or four times and finally got what apparently struck the right note in my mind, which was jeans, rubber thongs, and a knit top that all the knit had gone out of I guess comfort was maybe what I was going for I don't now, and I went off to this meeting it was in the basement of a church in Santa Monica and you had to park in a sort of a multi-leveled parking structure across the street from this church. And as I, as I passed the church on the left there to turn into the lot on the right, I could see people going in there, you know, going down those basement steps. And they were like you, they were dressed well and they were hugging and kissing and talking. And I thought, no way could I go in there. So I'll just park the car over here and I'll watch them a while. And I parked over there and I watched these people going down there and, and I wanted to go in, but I just didn't think I could. There's a thrifty drugstore on the corner, a couple of doors down on the other side of the street. And I thought, well, I'll get out of the car here and I'll walk down past that church. You will think, like you're thinking about me, you will think that I'm going to the thrifty drugstore. And in fact, I will go to, I make this real. I will buy something just so I come out with a bag. So I've got this whole script in my head. I get out the car and I'm walking past that Church to go to the Thrifty Drugstore. Somehow I turned into those basement steps and went down there. There's a man at the door who put out his hand and said, hi, my name is Clint. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went into the room and stood, of course, way in the back of the room, sort of behind this pillar. It was 825 at night. You don't want to get there too early, you know? And I didn't have a drink that day. I know you don't drink before you go to AA, so I didn'T drink. But I'm a daily drunk. I needed one bad by then. It's way past the time that I start drinking, and I needed a drink real bad. I'm sick, and Iím shaking, and sweat is pouring off of me. Iím in these terrible clothes. Iím going to cry any minute. And a man came up to me and asked me if i was new and i remember thinking how did he know that i mean there were like three or four hundred people in that room and he just write to meand i acknowledged that i was and and it seemed like that there were about 50 women standing there with their phone numbers on little pieces of paper handing them to me telling me to call him anytime and i thought that was really nice it made me feel real good and i put those phone numbers in my purse and they got me a seat in the meeting started a man by the name of normay talked that night And this guy made me laugh. You know, I felt, well, I got hope is what I got. You know? I felt kind of good when he was talking. And he even drank in the rendezvous ballroom, which, you know, many years before I had. He was an older man than I. But I identified with some stuff that he said. And I felt good when we were talking. The minute his voice stopped, that feeling went right away. But I bought the big book that night and I took it home and I read it. I sat up all night and read the book and I thought, this is great. I'm going to go to that meeting every Saturday night and be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard you say go to a lot of meetings and it seemed to me that every Saturday night would be a lot of meetings think about it, you know I didn't drink till Friday, six days I did not have a drink and I was impressed I hadn't been six days in a row without a drink for a long, long time and I remember thinking every day, God, AA really works I'm in AA and I'm not drinking but on Friday night I was struck drunk I couldn't understand it, I was sitting in my regular bar drinking a Diet Pepsi and the next thing I know there's a couple empty scotch glasses in front of me and I am half drunk and I thought, how did that happen? I don't, I'm an AA. And of course I, you know, you can't stop. So I, You know, finished that one out and I went back to AA the Saturday night and raised my hand for being a newcomer again and I was pretty sure all 400 people noticed and a lady came up to me and gave me her phone number and she said, You know we have found that this program works a little better if you call one of these numbers before you take a drink and I thanked her for that information and drank a couple more times that week and I finally called her Wednesday of that week and I, uh, was drunk when I called and she says, You seem to be having just a little trouble grasping our program you might find it helpful to have a sponsor and i didn't of course know what a sponsor was and i said okay would you be mine and she sounded quite thrilled actually and she said she'd be happy to and why didn't i meet her early at the meeting tomorrow night we talk about it tomorrow night is thursday that's not meeting night but uh kind of wanted to get off on the right foot with this woman so i said ok you know and i went down there and uh we met she said do you should you have a big book of alcoholics anonymous i said yes and she said we'll bring it with you and so i did and so we sat down and the first thing she did is she opened my big book to the front cover and she told me to write the date in and i wrote the date and she said that's your sobriety date i remember thinking i should not have done that in ink i'm happy to report that's my sobriery date up to this date the next thing she did was worse she took a copy of the LA meeting directory lists all the meetings in the area and she started circling meetings she said on Monday night you'll go here and on Tuesday night there and Wednesday night over here I couldn't believe it I said I'm a married woman I can't possibly you're crazy I can'T go to a meeting every night she said well maybe you could do this on less but I canT be your sponsor if you're going to go to less she said we'll never ask you to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous that I have not done assume it's because you want what I have and if you want What I have this is how I got it and this is what I would expect you to do. I didn't know this woman. I mean, I've had five, maybe 10 minutes conversation with her, five of which I was drunk. You know, I don't know her, but I remember feeling kind of panicked that if I said no, I was going to lose her. So I said, okay, I'll do it. But my husband isn't going to like this one bit. She said, it doesn't matter. She says, it does not matter if you believe that these 12 steps will work. It doesn't mater if you do them with a good attitude. It does not matter if want to do them. It just matters that you do the them. And that seemed pretty stupid to me but i uh started going to meetings every night and i was right this husband didn't like it at all we started fighting about alcoholic synonymous and i understand it today you know for years he knew right where i was i was sitting in a purple flannel bathrobe in a rocking chair in the living room every night i'm not suggesting i was the perfect wife but at least he knew where i was you know and and now i'm gone every night and um see he thought i was coming here to meet guys now i had cheated on him all the years we'd been married it's just kind of a way of life I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and nobody here was asking kind of personally humiliated me actually it also annoyed me a lot that he was accusing me of something that I wasn't doing at that very moment and we fought a lot it seemed like my days were all alike I'd get up in the morning, I'd go to work I'd come home, we'd have dinner, we'D have the fight I'd be crying, I'D drive to the meeting I'd think I can't do it I'll go to your damn meeting tonight because I'm already out of the house but this is the last one I can't live like this if this is sobriety you can have it I can do it one night when I was about three or four months sober and I believe that this is the most important item of my sobrietry up to and including this very day I walked into my home group meeting and Larry G said to me hi Pat how are you and I thought he cared so I started to tell him he said and then I said and then I cried and whatever and he cut me off right mid-sentence he said I don't want to listen to that why don't you go talk to a newcomer perhaps you'd feel better and he pointed at this girl across the room and I though you SOB, why don't you talk to me? I'm a newcomer maybe you'd feel better. I didn't say that but I thought I mean, I'm spilling my guts here and he's telling me go find a newcomor and he stood there looking at me and I knew that if I didn' t go talk to this girl he was going to tell my sponsor who would never speak to me again so I better go talk to this girls. So I walk and it was a big room like this and she was like on the other side of this room and so I'm walking through this crowd of people to get to this girl and my exact thought, I remember it, was I don't care if this broad lives or dies that's my exact thought but i went over there and i put my hand out and i said hi my name is pat and the girl who had 12 stepped her that night said oh pat i'm so happy to see you this is whatever her name was it's her first meeting of alcoholics anonymous we've just been sitting here waiting for you she had this big fight with her husband about coming to aa and i knew you were the right person to talk to her i couldn't believe it you know i stood there and I thought well I don't have any answers it doesn't work look at me I kind of overlooked that I was sober there all I could see was poor me how sad it all is but I also thought well it doesn't work for me but it seems to be working for some of you I really ought to try to say something positive or encouraging I mean this is this woman's first meeting I should try to say something encouraging and I opened my mouth and I heard myself say keep coming back it gets better a day at a time and I couldn't believe it because that's not true it's not getting better it's getting worse you know I felt like such a hypocrite I talked to her for about 30 seconds maybe not too long I'm sure and as I turned to walk away from her, I had one of those real clear moments, you know. It literally almost stopped me dead in my tracks. I was about halfway back across the room and it struck me that I was not crying. That was the first time in the three or four months or however long I'd been sober that I had been in a meeting. My sponsor told me to get to meetings an hour early. And so that was the first times during that hour, you now, from the time I got there until the time the meeting started, that I wasn't crying. And it's like I stopped and thought, God, I'm not crying? What, it's, like, what's wrong with this picture? You know, I couldn't believe I wasn' crying. And it was clear. I mean, God really gave me the answer. The reason I wasn't crying is because for that long I thought about somebody besides myself. For that long I tried to think of something positive or encouraging to say to this girl. I mean I put her right out of my mind a minute later but for that Long I got out of mine own head. It says in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as working with another alcoholic. It was true that night when I was three months sober and had practically nothing to share and it's true today when I have some more years of experience to share. I know that the reason I feel happy, joyous, and free so much of the time is because I sponsor women. I sponsor these women. I don't have time to think about me. You know, they call me in the morning before they go to work, and some of them are new, and some OFM are crazy, and some OFM are going through, you know, job problems, marriage problems, illnesses, life. And I'm thinking about this one or that one, or how can I help her? What should I say to her? And I am all the way to work and haven't even thought about myself once. It's a great way to start my day. and I know why I feel so good it absolutely works, what my sponsor said is true it doesn't matter how you feel about doing this just that you do it anyhow, I kept coming back I'm in this terrible marriage and I just thought if I were married to somebody in AA I wouldn't have any problems I was about 10 months sober and I spotted him across the room one night he was new of course he had a Fu Manchu mustache and a shaved head and my heart started to pound I leaped across about 12 rows of chairs to introduce myself to this fellow and my sponsor was standing over here and kind of noticed this and beckoned me over and reminded me that I was a married woman and I said yes but I'm so unhappy and she said nonetheless while you are married I expect you to act like a married women I said fine I'll get divorced that's what I want anyway and she says well no we don't make any major moves in our first year of sobriety see they don't let you sponsor just do what your sponsor says it's so much easier But I was obsessed with it I mean, I knew that this was the answer to my prayers And I had to be with this man It was kind of complicated You know, I was married And so obviously we couldn't go to my place He was a newcomer He didn't have a place He didn'T have a car either But I had a car And I Had money And at that time I was working at this record company in Hollywood and he was conveniently working in Hollywood also at this porn bookstore and so hey, he had a job, you know I picked him up I arranged for a long lunch hour one day at work and I picked them up at the bookstore and we drove up to this motel on Sunset Boulevard and knew each other and I dropped him back off after the event and I'm driving back to my job and I was thinking to myself you know, Pat you haven't changed a single thing in your life the only thing you haven'T done yet is drink I'd been sitting in these meetings for 10 months, and I'd heard you say over and over and over again that we have to change here or we will drink and die. And I realized that day that I hadn't changed anything. Not one single thing. And i was afraid. I was afraid that I wouldn't make it here. I was afraid that I would be able to do this because I didn't think I could stop doing that kind of stuff. I've always done that kind of stuff . I was terrified to tell my sponsor, you know. But I did. I'll tell you another little aside about that. I had arranged at work that day for this woman to cover, you know, because I was taking this long lunch hour. And she was like my friend at work, you Know, and she was not on the program. She knew that I was. And a couple of, about three or four months after this incident, I left that job, and I stayed in touch with that woman for a while. We had lunch together occasionally. And about two or three years later, I heard through another mutual friend that this woman's husband had developed a very bad drinking problem, and they had joined some bizarre church in the hopes that, you Now, religion might cure him. And when I heard that, I thought, well, that's funny. I mean, she knows I'm in AA. Why wouldn't she call me or why wouldn't she just have him call AA? And of course, why would she? What she saw about AA was that it's a place where people cheat on their spouses. I've always felt real bad about that. You know, I think we have a real obligation here. It's a program of attraction. I mean it's real clear in the traditions, I think. You know I've also felt bad that I maybe hurt that fella's chances to get sober and Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't know what happened to him I've had the opportunity in later years To be a better example Around people that I've worked with And in fact a couple of husbands of women that I worked with Have gotten sober sort of as an indirect result Of some help that I was able to give And I feel a little bit like I made some amends for that But you know I think that we really have to stop and think If we're going to tell people that we're sober and Alcoholics Anonymous I think we have an obligation to stop And think about how we're behaving and how we'RE looking Anyhow You know, I started trying to work these steps when I was new and I read those steps and I knew there were certain ones I couldn't do 4 and 5, 8 and 9 were actually the ones that I didn't think I had any particular interest in but my sponsor seemed keen on me starting an inventory so I said okay See, I knew that she wanted my secrets there and I did have a couple I would lay in bed at night and I would try to visualize myself saying the words out loud to her and I knew I couldn't do it of course that's not doing the fourth step that's imagining the fifth step it wasn't helping me at all I finally decided, okay, I'm never going to do a fifth step but I'm going to go ahead and do a thorough fourth step I wanted to stay sober and I could see that you all were taking these steps and you were getting better and staying sober and I wanted that so I wrote these secrets down and I did a thorough inventory I had no intention and this was not a mind game I played with myself I really had no intention of ever taking a fifth step but I had hoped that if I just did the fourth step maybe I could stay sober and one night my sponsor Thursday night she said to me have you finished your inventory I said yes she said come over Tuesday and read it to me that is cruel that's Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday I get to think about this you know of course I thought of nothing else and it finally occurred to me she doesn't know about these secrets. She doesn't know my life. I mean, I'm going to just leave out those two little paragraphs. You know? She won't know that I've left anything. Believe me, there's enough other bad stuff in there. She will assume that I have told her everything. And so I drove over to her house with the intention of just not reading those first two little paragraph where those secrets were. You know, I got there and I sat down on her couch and I flipped open my little notebook and I put my finger on my starting paragraph so I wouldn't make a mistake, you know. And I'm ready to go and she said, wait a minute before we get started, let's get on our knees and say a little prayer. And we got on our knees, and she said something like, Dear God, please help Pat be honest tonight. I could not believe it. You know, it took me longer to read those two little paragraphs than it did pages afterwards, because I choked and cried and carried on over every word, but I did it. You know? I did it. When I drove away from her house that night, I felt kind of conflicting emotions. I was afraid. I remember thinking, And what if she gets drunk? She knows a lot about me. It turned out she did get drunk. She's now sober over 10 years, but she did get drunk and none of that ever came back to hurt me. I have never shared anything with anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous nor do I know anybody who's ever shared anything with anyone in Alcoholic Anonymous that's ever come back to harm them. That's a real comfort to me to think about that. But the other thing I felt that night was I felt, I think for the first time, committed to AlcoholicsAnonymous. I really, I knew that night driving away from house that I had done something that was impossible for me to do because I knew I couldn't do that step. And yet somehow with her help and the example of the people around me, you know, I had Done That, and that felt good. It really felt good, and I think I really believed that night for the first time, really deep in my gut, this might work for me too, you know? I started doing some of these amends. I made amends to my father I mentioned a while ago, and it was hard. That was the first one I did, and it Was just hard because I didn't know how to do it, And I didn't know how it would be received. And it was very well received. And that kind of eased the way to do some of the others, you know. And I just kept coming back. When I was a year and a half, as I mentioned, this first sponsor drank. When I Was A Year And A Half Sober, I Got Another Sponsor. And this woman was sober a long time, and I wanted what she had, which was happy, joyous sobriety. I did not have that. I was not drinking. I was trying to work these steps, but I was not what you'd call a happy camper. And this one was sober for a long period of time. And she said to me, you know, Pat, I've watched you in the year and a half or so you've been around here. It seems to me that all you do is whine and complain and moan about this marriage that you're in. And why don't you, a day at a time, just try to act like a kind and loving wife to this man? I remember we talked about it that night, and I said to her, you know, I don't think that this marriage can be saved. I really don't. I mean, it's really, I think, gone too far. And she said, it may very well be that it can't be saved, it may Very well be That you're going to have to walk away from it someday. But how about if, in the meanwhile, while you're still there, a Day at a Time, you just act like A kind and loving wife. Maybe If you do that, you can make some amends to him, which you certainly owe. and then if you do have to walk away down the road you might be able to do it without any guilt guilt is the only word that got my attention in there I was guilty, I mean I really was guilty I told you I cheated on him a lot he didn't know about most of it but I did and there didn't seem to be any good way to make amends for that when she suggested that if I just acted like a kind and loving wife maybe I could dump some guilt I became willing to try to act like a kind and lovely wife, it's that simple that was my motivation this woman taught me so much there are women in Alcoholics Anonymous who taught me an awful lot about being a wife that don't even know it because i watched them you know i watched the people who were married and who who seemed like they were doing it happily and i tried to to act like they was acting this woman taught me stuff like treat him with courtesy it was not an idea that ever would have occurred to me you know uh i treated people in meetings better than i treated my own husband on a regular basis you know and i started trying to take some of that home and i remember another big direction in the beginning was every day when i came home from work i was to ask him how his day went and listen while he told me and i wasn't interested and my direction was i had to listen for a minimum of 10 minutes and i literally went in the first day and checked my watch and said how was your day and he looked a little surprised that i was inquiring but he said a couple of things about work or whatever and when 10 minutes were up i left the room but i felt a little better you know um i did you know i didn't understand now we had a fight that night i remember that day we had a fight at night before i went to the meeting but I was driving to the meeting, and I wasn't crying, and I didn't feel that bad. And I remember thinking, God, that's funny. I mean, nothing's changed, you know? It was a long time before I understood. The reason I felt a little better that night is because I was in the solution finally. You know, I had finally taken my focus off the problem, and I was busy in the situation. And I always feel better when I do that, always. It works every time. Time passed, you know, and, uh, and I kept trying to do this stuff. Some days I did it well, and some days I did it horribly, you know, but I just kept trying. And one night I was on my knees saying my prayers, which were fairly simple in those days. In the morning I would get up on my knee and say, Dear God, please help me stay sober today. Amen. And at night I would sit on my knees and say Dear God thank you for keeping me sober today, amen. And I did that because I was told to do it. I believed in God, I've always believed in god, but I certainly never felt any connection. Believe me, I'd get on my kness and say this prayer. I did not feel like there was anybody listening, but i did it. And this particular night I went on my knees saying that prayer, Dear god thank you keep me sober today amen and i started to get up and it struck me that i was happy in that house with that man in that marriage i mean not ecstatically so you understand but but i was comfortably happy and uh and it didn't happen that afternoon it happened a long time ago and i missed it think about that you know this is the most major problem in my life and i miss when it went away obviously the reason i know today the reason I missed it is because I was so busy in the solution I've kind of forgotten about the problem and that's I still can hardly believe that today I got back on my knees and I added some stuff to my prayer there you know, I said, God, I believe that if you mean for me to stay in this marriage married to this man, that I could do that and stay sober and somehow have a happy life here thank you for this other new feeling here and I went about my business and not too long after that we found out that he had cancer now my first reaction to this was I wish this would have happened when I really hated him see, right away I think about how is this going to affect me I'm a selfish woman I really am and my very first thought, no matter if he's going to probably die how is it going to affect me and I felt bad for feeling that, I felt guilty for feeling that and I did what I've been taught to do I went and told my sponsor right away what I was feeling and I shared it from the podium as soon as I could and the feeling went away, you know, I just kind of kept doing what I was doing, I kept going home and acting like a kind and loving wife he was sick for a year and a half and it was a hard time he was the hardest year of my sobriety I think it was also, though, up to that time, the best year. And if you're new, I can't explain that to you. You just have to take my word for it. I've certainly had better years since. But it was—I felt good a lot of the time. And it was certainly the best years of our marriage. We were married 11 years, and it was absolutely hands down the best year of our wedding. It was the best of our marriages by a million miles, and that's because of you all, because you taught me how to do that. You know, I was real grateful that I was there and believable. You know what I mean? he knew that I was there because that's where I wanted to be not just because he was sick you know because I had been there consistently for a long period of time he died and I went down to this little chapel to make some funeral arrangements and the day of the funeral came and I don't know a couple hundred people from Alcoholics Anonymous showed up and none of those people ever met him you know but there they were that day because they knew that I would need them and I did need them you know and I realized that day sitting in that chapel what my sponsor had promised me was true I had no guilt you know somewhere in there a day at a time, apparently I made my amends to this fellow because the guilt was gone. It just simply was gone, I was real grateful that I stayed in that marriage when all of my best judgment told me this marriage can't be saved, there is no good reason for staying, I don't know what would have happened to that marriage if he hadn't died, my guess is we probably wouldn't have stayed married but I don' t know, it's immaterial, it doesn't matter, he did die and I'm so grateful that i stayed, I know today that one of the reasons Vince and I have such a, at least from my perspective, from my half of this marriage the reason that we have such an happy time together is because I learned how to do it there you know, I learned how to be a wife when I didn't particularly want to learn how to being a wife, I learnt how to do it and I used those things that that sponsor taught me still today and I'm real grateful that I stayed. Vince and I had a great life, you know I can't, I always, every relationship I've ever had I would meet a guy, we would go to bed then we might have a relationship you know um vince was my friend for um i mean i met him when i got sober he's sober a few years longer than me and he was there in my home group when i got there and he Was somebody that i heard share and shook his hand you know five nights a week in meetings or whatever and uh you know i liked this man i mean if you had said to me when i was new well here's what's going to happen see your husband's going die and then you and vince are going to find i would say don't be silly that's vince he's my friend you know uh i always kind of knew that you ought to be friends with your husband but it never was that way for me when we started after my husband um died and Vince and I started dating I I just felt so good about it I was just so comfortable you know I thought this is what it was always supposed to be like you know uh I never knew that I could feel that way about somebody I was kind of secretly new deep you know in my heart of hearts that I just couldn't love like other people you know that there was just that little piece of me that was missing well I'm here to tell you it wasn't missing it's there you know and I really love this man a lot and and uh and I'm just so happy that we're married to each other. We have such a good life together, you know? We're real active members of Alcoholics Anonymous and our big cry if you whine, if you want to call it that, is that we don't get to see each other enough we live in this nice house and we hardly get to spend any time in it, you Know? And from time to time we catch ourselves whining about that and then we have to laugh. I mean, it's like a joke. We wouldn't have the house if it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous. We'd have each other, we'd have nothing You know, it was all a direct result of Alcoholic Anonymous, every bit of it every bit of it whatever that's good in our lives comes directly from from you my other major problem when I got sober was my relationship with my stepfather my mother married my parents were divorced obviously and my mother buried my stepfather when I was eight years old and there was some stuff going on in my house that shouldn't have been going on when I was growing up but I hated this man a lot with real good reason and I never of course ever ever talked to anybody about it and I um I just hated him and I didn't see it as a real problem and once I grew up and left that house I didn't see this as a particular problem I mean it's over you know I'm out of there and it seemed important enough to mention in my inventory and in fact was one of my secrets and I wrote about that and I I thought that would be the end of it I thought okay I've told my secret now it's over you know except I still hated him I still had this terrible resentment and the longer I stayed sober the worse it got and I don't know if this happens to you but it seems like when I'm going through something big every meeting I go to that's what they're talking about you know and what i was hearing everybody say at meetings was that resentments kill alcoholics particularly justifiable resentments resentments that we have to find a way to get rid of these resentments and i was afraid i didn't want to drink and uh i was sober over a year before i really became willing to even think about this much and i i and so it seemed like every meeting i went to i was having to think about it because that you know the people were talking about these resentiments and i Was just crazy and i um talked to my sponsor she said you're going to have to make amends to him. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, come on. If anybody should be making amends here, he should be making them to me. I'm willing to work these steps, but you're wrong in this case. You're really wrong. I am not the bad guy here and I just dismissed the idea for as long as I possibly could. The problem was the longer I stayed sober, the more I thought about it. He is still married to my mother today and whenever I'd call my mother or go to visit my mother i mean there he is you know and it got real hard to be cordial to this man and it just got more uncomfortable more uncomfortable and i finally became willing to consider there might be something i needed to do making amends to him is clearly not the answer but i'm willing to do something i don't want to drink over it you know it was pointed out to me that i had by now a long time ago made amends for you know the stuff we do to our mothers the grief the anguish the worry the you know if you have a mother you did that to her you know and uh it was pointed out that i had made amends to my mother a long time ago for that stuff why didn't i just make amends to him for those same things after all he was living in the house with her at the same time i was causing her all that grief presumably he was a little concerned too so why not just take that same little list of things and and make amens to him for those and i didn't really want to see i love my mother and i'm sorry i'm really sorry i did that time that i hate this man what do i care if he was a little worried but i didn t want to drink you know i did not want to drink so i i said okay i'll do it and i now i'm ready to rush out there now she's holding me back she says you better um you better pray about this a little bit and read you know it's real clear in the big book of alcoholics anonymous and in the 12 and 12 it talks about um what i think of a difficult demands where they're like bad guys too you know it's really clear that we have to stick to the subject which is our men that we don't um we can't get off into talking about what they did it's like if you do that you negate the whole thing and you have to start over again from scratch and i didn't want to have to do this twice so I read that over and over again and I prayed about it and I finally went out there one day and I talked to him and I said what I had to say and I left right away because I was afraid if I stuck around I wouldn't be able to stick to my subject and so I kind of spit it out and left and I was driving back they live like about 50 miles away and I'm driving back into town and I um was thinking well it doesn't work you know because I not only do I hate him as much as I ever did now I'm really really resentful that I said these things to him you know it's like somehow this made it worse and I went back and talked to my sponsor and she said you're going to have to do exactly like you did with your late husband a day at a time you're gonna have to act like a kind and loving daughter to this man and I really didn't think I could do it but I didn't have any better idea and I didn' want to drink and so I became willing to try eventually not that day but eventually became willing I don't like to rush into things you know and when I hurt bad enough I became willing to try doing that and so I did the first thing that I did every day or every week rather when I called my mother, if he answered the phone instead of saying, let me talk to mom I would say, hello, how are you? Let me talkto mom. Now that might not sound like a big deal to you today but I'll tell you what the first 30 or 35 times I did it it was a real big deal. I was so uncomfortable talking to him. I just I remember I'd dial the phone and I'd be sweating and I just think, God, please let mom answer and of course she never did and it seems like she never did. And I talked to women in women's meetings there's a women's stag meeting that I was going to at that time and I shared about it several times there and I got a lot of suggestions from women there some of them were just too awful to even consider but I took what I could and a woman there said, you know, Pat, a kind and loving daughter might chat with him a little bit too and so I thought, okay so before I dialed the phone every week I'd think of a couple of topics I could chat with him about. I think of these as generic topics, you now, nothing to do with me. If I'd seen a movie that week, that was a perfect topic current events, world events, those were good and he'd answer if he answered, I'd say, hello, how are you? And he'd respond. And I'd talk about my first topic and he'd response. And then I'd go, can I talk to mom? You know? And, uh, and I just kept doing that. Christmas was coming up that year that I started doing this. And a woman that I barely knew, but who had heard me share about it one time said, um, Pat, I think a kind and loving daughter would not rush out on Christmas Eve, pick up a shirt and have the store wrap it. Now I don't know how she knew I was planning to do that, but I had to agree that perhaps that was true. And so I went home and I sat down on the couch and I said, okay, God, you're going to have to help me here. I'm willing to get this man something he might like or use or appreciate, but I have no idea what that's going to be. So you're gonna have to give me a little inspiration here. Amen. You know, and I Sat on the Couch and I waited for inspiration to strike and nothing happened. It finally dawned on me to just perhaps there was a little footwork involved here on my part. You Know, I don't know if this is true for you, but it has been my experience, no matter what the deal is since i've been sober i cannot just ask god for help and sit back and wait and have anything happen because nothing ever does it seems like my job is to get on my knees ask god for helping then get up go out and do whatever it is that needs doing and then i get the answer to my prayer and so i thought well maybe the footwork here might possibly be to get up and go out to a shopping mall where stuff is you know maybe inspiration might strike a little sooner so i got up and i went down this i don't like to shop either but i went down to um my husband thinks i'm the perfect wife actually i don't like to shop i uh i went down to this um shopping mall and i went into a needlepoint shop and there was a needle point thing to uh you know to needlepoint frame and hang on the wall a little saying about fathers and daughters a sickening little saying About Fathers and Daughters the long and the short of it is i bought it and i did it and I never for a moment felt the sentiment involved i just did it you know needlepoint takes a lot of hours those of you who do it no and i i did my nicest work i never felt a thing i got it framed real nice i wrapped it up i took it over there on christmas and there was a moment that christmas we were opening our gifts in fact a spiritual experience he opened that gift up and he got a little tear in the corner of his eye that's all it's here and gone that fast this feeling i knew in that instant i was on the right track i knew at that instant that if i kept doing what i was doing if i keep trying to think of ways to act like a kind and loving daughter, that somehow God was going to make this resentment bearable enough that I wouldn't have to drink over it. I didn't know how that was going be, but I believed it in that instant. That little moment kept me going a long time. It really did. I could just sort of pull that little moment out when it got hard and remember it and keep going. About three or four years ago now, he was in the hospital, and I went to go visit him, and they announced that visiting hours were over. I got up to leave, and I bent over, andI kissed him on the forehead, and I said, Goodbye, I love you. And I walked down the hall of this hospital and punched the elevator and rode down to the first floor, and it was nighttime. My car was parked way on the far end of a big parking lot, and I walked out to the car not thinking about anything, just my mind kind of blank, and l got out tothe car, and I just was going to put my key in the door, and it struck me what I'd said up there, that I loved him, and the fact of the matter is it was true, andl don't know how that happened. I stood there by the car trying to get my key in the door and I couldn't believe it it's the same thing that happened with my late husband it didn't happen that day in the hospital it happened a long time ago and I missed it I was so busy in the solution, I missed when the problem went away I'll tell you what, it made a real believer out of me these steps work, they really do work they work in every area of your life I would sit in meetings when I was new and I'd hear you say the answer to all of life's problems is in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous I'd go home and I'd leave through that sucker And I couldn't find the answers You know, I couldn' And I'm here to tell you The answers to all of life's problems Are in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous They are there They are their I hope if you're new That you stay sober I hope that you come to a meeting every day I hope you get a sponsor And I hope your stay long enough To find the answer to all your life's problem In the big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous Thank you very much