Pretty-Girl Syndrome and High-Bottom Drinking — I Never Got the DUI I Deserved – Brooksie W.

You may be young and frightened, and trying not to show it. You hear the voices shouting, and only feel confused. It's hard to tell what truth is, and where you should be going. You look around for guidance, and wind up feeling used. Let's have an AA meeting. My name is Stephanie, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabloochipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker. And we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, Yes, I am one of them too. I must have this thing. Please don't get up and down during the meeting to minimize distractions while the speaker is sharing. Now I'm going to introduce the speaker, Brooksy. So everybody please welcome her. Hey everybody, I'm Brooksy. I'm a great recovering alcoholic. Hi Brooksy. Grateful to be here, grateful to be sober, grateful for everything I once took for granted. My sobriety date is October 4th, 1987. And through the grace of these rooms and my higher power, I haven't found it necessary to pick up a drink today and for that I'm truly grateful. So, I haven't told my story in a while, so this is kind of exciting. And I wore a Halloween shirt just because it's Halloween. I thought it was appropriate for me. Okay, anyway. So I'm old school AA. I came in, well first of all, I was born here in Atlanta. But I didn't grow up here. My father was in the Air Force. He was a lawyer in the Air Force and we traveled around the world. We were over in Africa when I was a little girl and then we ended up in the Washington DC area. And then we moved up to Boston and my father was a civil rights activist. He actually worked for Dr. King and we had this very colorful, very bohemian youth. And I started getting high when I was 12. I had an older sister and we had a theater company on the property and I started smoking pot when I was 12 years old. That was in the 60s, you know, when it was like back in the olden days. And it wasn't as strong as it is now apparently. So, but, and I wasn't much of a drinker. I did drink, but I was a cheap drunk, not an expensive drunk. So some of you women can relate to this. I don't know the men. I don't really know how to talk to them. So if y'all can just kind of listen in, like pretend it's a women's meeting, but if you know what I mean, okay. So anyway. The whole thing about it was that I was a cheap drunk, not an expensive drunk, just a little bit would mess me up. It didn't take a lot. I mean, I took drugs when I was young also as part of my story in college and all that sort of stuff. And I'd take a half a Quaalude and they'd be checking my breathing to see if I was still alive, you know, that kind of thing. So I was, I'm a musician. I got signed when I was 19 in New York by, of all people, Bobby Darin and I was a songwriter and all this. And I thought I was very cool and very groovy. And, you know, we did a lot of drugs, but we, you know, we drank, we partied. It was that kind of a scene. It was New York city. I was in Manhattan and it was getting worse. And a lot of it was for, I don't know, was my stomach. My stomach would get real messed up and I would end up like going to the hospital and they would give you something good, you know, and you could take it home and you'd feel better. Y'all know what that's like. You know, they feel better. Because I didn't want to feel the way I felt. I wanted to feel the way I was feeling and it was getting harder and harder. And I had had a first husband in New York. We call them a starter spouse. I had one of those and yeah, and that, that kind of ended because I ran off with the bass player in my band, like you do. And you ladies know what I'm talking about. So anyway, because that's what life was like. It was chaotic. It was crazy and it was a lot of fun, but it was also getting worse and it was getting worse. Quickly. So, and as a matter of fact, when I was 21 years old, I gave up hard liquor and drugs because I knew they were going to kill me. I was 21 years old. Guess what? Wine counts. I did not know that. This is the olden days. We didn't have, I didn't know what AA was. I'd never heard of it. This is 1985, 84, earlier than the seventies. I'd never heard of AA. I knew nothing about all that. All I knew that a drunk was, was my alcohol. Drunk. My uncle, Bernard, who would be under, you know, in the raincoat under the bridge. That's what I thought an alcoholic was. I didn't think women could be alcoholics. I just didn't know. You know, I never heard of it. And I also thought I was safe because I had given up drugs and I had to withdraw from them. I didn't know what withdrawal was. So I was home for the summer in college and I was feeling real bad. That was withdrawal. I didn't even know what it was, but that's what happened. So anyway, um, I was in college. I was in college. I was in college. I was in college. I was in college. I was in college. I was in college. I got where I was just getting crazier and crazier in Manhattan. And finally I was 29 years old and I called my parents and said, can you come and get me? They lived in Virginia. And they said, daddy said, can you get home on your own? I went, no. So they actually came and got me. I was 29 years old and I came back to my parents' house kind of in a basket and, you know, joined another band because I'm a musician and I joined a band. And ended up meeting my second husband, the father of my children. And I just, and he was of course 10 years younger than me because I'm me. And um, he was, uh, he was the drummer in a band and we were, you know, together and he said, you know, you're weird when you drink. He goes, cause the drinking, I was drinking wine and you know, and I would, music saved my life. I'm going to tell you guys this. Art will save you because I wouldn't drink when I was playing until the last set, which is why I no longer do fourth sets. Because that was when they would bring up these big schooners of wine, because when you're a girl and you're pretty and you're the lead singer in a band, you don't have to pay for anything. I mean, I didn't pay for stuff. They paid, you know, and I had what I told my sponsees, I had pretty girl syndrome. You know what that is? They let you get away with anything. They give you whatever you want and that's, you stay sick, you stay sick. So anyway, but I knew that I would end up where I shouldn't be. And again, I'm supposed to be careful what I say in this meeting and I will be careful, but you know what I mean, ladies, I would end up someplace where I shouldn't be. And I had met the man I wanted to marry. And I knew if I kept drinking, I would end up someplace that I couldn't get out of. Has that ever happened to you where you've ended up someplace that you just can't get out of it? So what do you do? My British friend goes, you lay back and think of Britain. That's what you do. You know? And then, you know, in the old days, they didn't call that the Me Too movement. They called it, oh, well, that's what they called it. So you know, I didn't want that to happen. And so a girlfriend of mine, who actually, I would come to meetings here in Atlanta with her later, but she got thin. This is terrible. Okay, she got thin. I'm like, how did she lose the weight? She's a big tall girl. She had a belly. She had a big belly. She said, I stopped drinking. So I'm interested now, you know, because, oh, really, huh, how'd you do that? And she looked at me and she said, the one thing that got me sober, she said, wouldn't it be nice not to have to think about it? Wouldn't it be nice not to have to plan your hangovers? You know what I'm saying? You know, plan your hangovers. I had to plan them because I knew they'd be bad. And when I played in a band, you know, we'd, they'd be bringing the drinks up at the third, you know, the last chance they bring it up. And I would just, you know, I'd be like, oh, my God. I would drive home with one hand over one eye. Have you ever done that? You know, you're driving home and you, and it wasn't far and, you know, I drove drunk. Of course I did. That's what we do. We drive drunk. So anyway, I thought, wouldn't it be nice not to have to think about it? And it was getting worse. And I had had a blackout, but I'm going to tell you all, I was what is known in the industry as a high bottom drunk because I didn't have a DUI. I didn't get arrested. None of that happened to me. That doesn't mean it shouldn't have happened to me. It just didn't. I got away with it. Okay. I got away with drinking and driving. I got away with all of that, but I, and I was not a blackout drunk from the beginning. So the blackout scared me. And now some of you, I, you know, I have friends that are like, oh, we use it as time travel. You know, they get, you know, that's a different, that's a different situation. But I did not use it as time travel. And when I had a blackout, I got really scared. Okay. And I said, this can't be normal. So I'm going to tell you, um, what we're supposed to do is tell you what it was like, what happened and what we're like now. That's kind of the deal. And I'm actually going to go through the steps if I have time, because I think it's real important to do that. Um, so I went to my first meeting and I was, I had a moment of clarity right before that because I had called AA drunk. Have you ever done that? You know, back in the day you had a phone and then you call, we didn't have cell phones, but we had a cell phone. We had cell phones and everything. So you actually call the AA and, um, I had done that already. So I knew about AA and my girlfriend had told me about, wouldn't it be nice not to have to think about it? And I went down to this bar with my guitar player where I used to play every Tuesday night in Old Town, Alexandria, and I forgot my purse. And so Bobby said, well, I'll buy you something. You know, I said, okay, I'll have a glass of white wine. And he said, okay. I thought you quit drinking. And I went, I'll just have one. Okay. So they bring me a glass of white wine. It's one of those little six ounce things, you know, those little teeny ones, the little white. And I'm thinking, and I drank it. And guess what I started to do? I started to look around the bar to see who I could hit on to get another drink. Because I couldn't ask Bobby because he's, I thought you quit drinking and I'll just have one. I already paid for it. And there was a movie out, I am going to have to, I won't say it, but I've got close, called The Boys in the Band that was out at that time. And it was this very flaming guy who came out and said, who do you have to, you know what, get a drink around here? What's the line? You know the line. And all of a sudden I went, I might as well be doing that. I might as well be prostituting myself because that's how bad I wanted to drink. That was my last drink. My last drink was one drink. Not weird. I mean, that's not usually the way it happens, but that was mine. And I went to a meeting the next day and it was a speaker's meeting, just like this. It was in Maryland of all places. And I went, oh my God, this is what's wrong with me. Because I'll tell you, I didn't know what was wrong with me. I had no idea. I didn't know that this was an illness. I didn't know. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, it's alcoholism. And I'm going to tell you. Unlike many people, I wasn't mad about it. I was thrilled to find out what was wrong with me because I just thought I was crazy, you know, and just acting silly and didn't know. And I couldn't stop it. And I didn't know that there was like the doctor's opinion. I didn't understand the phenomenon of craving. I didn't know what that meant. Everyone in this room knows what the phenomenon of craving means, don't you? Right? Well, guess what? It's not a phenomenon anymore. It's not a phenomenon anymore. A phenomenon means they don't know what causes it. Well, my son, he's got four years sober and he was in a rehab in Los Angeles. Now, I never went to rehab, so I didn't know. And apparently there's some chemical thing that happens in your brain when you become an addict that moves the way you look at, you know, alcohol out of desire into survival. And your brain honestly thinks that you need alcohol to survive. Addiction is, that's what it's about. And they can show you pictures of it now. That won't help you get sober. Don't even think that, but it's, um, after you're sober, it can be really helpful to know that you get that, that they know what causes it. That phenomenon of craving is no longer a phenomenon. They know what causes it, but we get it. And our brain tells us, you know, if you had my life, you'd drink too. So if you had my life, you'd drink too. So if you had my life, you'd drink too. So if you had my life, you'd drink too. If my life's not crazy enough, I'm going to make it crazier. That's what I'm going to do, just so that I can get crazy enough so that you'll go, of course, honey, here, have a cocktail. Right? That's what we do. Our brains do that to us. And I didn't know what that was. So I finally learned about it and began to get an idea of what was happening. And I'm a first-nighter. I came in and I never left. Now, some people get mad at me about that. They're like, oh, well, you must not have had it very bad or, you know, whatever. And I'm going to tell you the story of my mother. My mother was a minister's wife, because when my father left the law, he became a Unitarian minister. He was a minister, and my mother was 4'10", and she was a minister's wife. And by the time she got sober at age 70, she was up to 18 shots of bourbon a day to get straight. She had to get up in the middle of the night to have a drink because she couldn't get through the whole night. She had the shakes real bad. At age 60, she started trying to get sober. And I was already sober a long time, and I used to drive her to rehab going, better you than me, Ma. I've got kids at home. Because by this time, I'd had children. Because I had my children in recovery, by the way. My son's 32, and he's never seen his mother drink. That's a miracle. Just for any of you moms, just know that. But anyway, so I watched my mother get sicker and sicker. From age 60 to age 70 when she... Because she was an alcoholic who didn't really develop into alcoholism until she was a little bit older. In her mid-40s was when it started to really kick in. And then by 60, my daddy died, and Mother just fell off. You know, she just went deep down. And she, you know, thought that a sweet little white southern lady couldn't be an alcoholic. She just didn't believe she could be one. She thought it was willpower. And she thought if she just behaved well enough, she would be a woman. But she couldn't. could stop drinking and so four rehabs later she's dying at age 70 in the hospital this always makes me cry and this guy who I knew in the AA he you know he's like Brooksie you're just going to have to accept that your mother's going to die you know I mean this is bad because she has you know could have stroked out you know how you do when you're older you get neuropathy do you all know about neuropathy it's where it's that your nerves go in your hands and feet you younger people it doesn't get better it gets much worse but for some reason my little sister is also a minister my little sister and I were there with mama and we're like mom and she's in the hospital and we're like mom you're not bad you're just sick you're not bad you're just sick light went on my mother picked up her 18 year chip three days before she died at 89 and she was helping a get a new liver. That day, she was helping a lady get a new liver. It was in her 50s. You know, she was helping some lady get a new liver. Because that's what AA can do for you. So it's never too late for the miracle. It's also never too early. I always yell at the young people. Because you are, if you can get sober young, it's a superpower. It's the most incredible thing. I wasn't that. I was 35 when I got sober. Now, I'm going to say one other thing, too. I'm 70 years old. Just give it up how good I look. I mean, come on. Right? Right? Do it for vanity, if for no other reason. Okay? I don't care. You know, all the other stuff, just if you're vain. And what I do now, I get my nails done and my hair and everything, and I go, I call that my bar tab. That's my bar tab. Why? Because I want to look good, and I want to feel good. And in the old days, there was this wonderful woman in Dorfiello. She's passed on, so I say her last name in AA. She used to come to meetings always dressed just beautifully. She always looked so good. I'm like, why do you do that? She said, I may be the only big book anybody ever sees. And she was right. I may be the only big book that somebody in this room has ever seen before. I'm a living example of what recovery can give to you, if you choose it. It's your choice. One day at a time, it's your choice. So, you know, step one, we come. Step two, you come to. And step three, you come to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. And I did not get a God in here for ten years. Okay? But I kept coming to meetings. This woman one time, this other friend of mine, young minister friend of mine, she said, well, if you don't have a God, just make God bigger. And that worked for me. If you make God big enough, God can be everything, and then you're fine. You don't have to worry about it. It just stops being a problem. And it stopped being a problem for me, but it took a long time, because I came from a group, you know, people that were very scientific, and very, you know, my son has a PhD, and my sisters, everybody's got doctorates, and all that kind of crap. I do have a BA, but that's it. But I'm a musician, so I'm allowed. So, anyway, but, you know, everyone was like, and then my brother-in-law kept trying to get me to go to rational recovery. Have you all heard of that? It was a thing back in, you know, 20 years ago, where, you know, you didn't need a God to get sober. And good luck with all that. And I kept saying, but I'm sober. You know, this is working for me. Why do you want me to do something different? You know, this is where I want to be. So, anyway, let's get back to the steps, because are you all with me so far? Okay, so you saw what it was like, what it used to be like, what happened, and what I'm like now. And so I got a sponsor. I had my same sponsor for 32 years, so she died. I've had local sponsors, too. So, and I do have a sponsor now. I got a new sponsor to help me with business. Because I'm a musician, and I'm an artist, and I do different things, and I'm not good with business. So I had to do a fourth step on this. Really. I hated it. But I did it, because you're supposed to do as you're told here in AA. And I did it. So, anyway, I came. I came to, and I came to believe that a power greater than myself would restore me to sanity. And you were the power greater than myself. The people in the rooms. And in the old days, the little old ladies would take a chair and put it in the middle of the room, and say, that's the dead guy. That's the dead guy. And then they would come and hand you $20 and say, and if you're not going to take this seriously, don't waste my time. And I needed that. Because, you know, if you're feeling sorry for yourself, nothing personal, but I don't care how you feel. Isn't that awful? To say to people, oh, no, I don't care how you feel. Because you don't get to drink no matter how you feel. You don't get to do that anymore. So the only question you have to ask yourself after step three is, what am I going to do instead? That's the only question in AA you ever have to ask yourself. If I can't drink, if I can't drug, what am I going to do? Step four. Make a searching and fearless moral inquiry of ourselves. Why? How many of you, when you were drinking, paid much attention to how you felt about anything? The reason you drank, one of the reasons we all drink is because we don't have to feel anything. No, I'm out. You have a black hole right here, right? And it's just, and you need to know that you can take a day off. The problem with AA is you never get a day off again. You have to learn how to love living on the planet. That's tough for a lot of people because, you know, you've had rough lives. My life wasn't, all that rough. I'm going to be frank about that. I had, we had issues, you know, my father had issues, my mother was an alcoholic. I mean, it's not like I didn't have stuff. But, I'm basically an optimistic person, and I know it's hard for people with depression. I know how hard it is because my daughter has depression. So, you know, I get it if you're having trouble with this, but you don't get to drink anymore. So, what are you going to do instead? Do the inventory. And if you can't make yourself do it, just get a piece of paper, write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and get started. And then you've started it. You're at least doing it. And then step 5. Share it. You know, have one of those I kill somebody stories. I mean, I had enough, but I didn't have a kill somebody story. A lot of the stuff that happened to me sort of happened to me, which is true for a lot of women. You know what I'm talking about. That, you know, stuff happens to you. And figuring out what is your part in that. What is your, how to get your side of the street clean. And that is what steps 6 and 7 are all about. 6 and 7 separates the men from the boys, but it's also the ladies. You know, it brings you into spiritual adulthood. Why? 6 and 7. It's the most important. We're entirely ready to have God remove all the defects of character. How are you going to do that? First, you've got to find out what they are. I didn't know that I, you know, was selfish. I thought I was just noisy. You know, I didn't know. I didn't know how I had hurt people. Because I never paid any attention. I just barraged through life. Now, other people have, you know, are victims. God bless them. I'm not a victim. I've never been a victim. And I'm not codependent. A lot of people in this room are. Good luck with all that. But, you know, the deal is, I know, it's rough. I mean, I get it. Everybody has their own stuff. That's what I'm saying. We're not all alike in here. We all have alcoholism. And the only cure is, what am I going to do instead? So, if you need therapy, if you need help, get it. But first, you need to, what I tell my girls who I sponsor, and I have sponsors that I've had for 30 years. I also have brand new ones. You know, a lot of them drop away. And you can't get anybody sober. My mother, I took her to her first rehab thinking that she was 60. And a rainbow came out and I thought, oh, look what I did for my mom. She's throwing the big books away and correcting the grammar. That's my mother. Okay, she corrected the grammar and the big books because she was an English teacher. She didn't get sober until she was 70. That was 10 years. Four rehabs. That was my mom. It took her a while because she couldn't believe it. But what you have to do is, six and seven, that's what you're supposed to be doing, is that you humbly ask them to remove your shortcomings. But you've got to find out what they are first. And a lot of us can't take clear, can't see ourselves very well. It just takes a while. So, once but work with somebody that you like. Work with somebody who you respect. Work with somebody who you feel like that you want what they have. That's what we used to say in the meeting. If you want what I have, you've got to do what I do. It's real simple. You know, if you don't want what I have, then don't pick me. Get somebody where you see what, you know, you want what they have. And I want what I have today. And what I want today is very different than what I wanted 35 years ago when I was 35 years old. And what I wanted back then was children. And I got them. Took me four tries. And I remember one day, I was pregnant. And my husband, he was 10 years younger than me, I told you. And he had had a back surgery. And he was in the hospital, laid out. And my father had gone in the hospital the same day with cancer. And I get the call that my father was inoperable. You know, and I'm newly serviced my first year. And my husband's in there. So the two main people in my life are just like, and I go to the nurse's desk. He goes, is there a meeting here? Because in the old days, they were in hospitals a lot. They said, yeah, there's a meeting in the basement. So now it's Andrew Hospital. I went down. And there was some kid. He was like 15. He'd lost his brother. And he was sharing. And I kept thinking, well, if he can do it, I can do it. You know, that was all I could think about. So there, this also always makes me cry. I had my son. Because I, my first baby, I lost. At 13 weeks. So that was real tough. Because I was older, and I didn't know if I'd be able to do it. I didn't know if I'd be able to have children after that. But I ended up, I had to go to bed for four and a half months. It was like being a hostage. It was a nightmare. But I had my son in Alexandria Hospital. And I went down there and thanked that meeting. You know? I wouldn't thank them. I wouldn't have made it without them. You know? I mean, I wouldn't thank them. And then I had my daughter do the same thing again. Because, you know, I wouldn't have survived to be a mom at 37. And then I got a birthday card when I was 40 from my mother going, it's not so bad being 40. You could be 40 and pregnant. And I was. Yeah, moms can be like that. And so I had my daughter. She's 29, and she's an environmental engineer. And is doing very well. So that's been very cool. So anyway, 8 and 9. Let's just move on. Let's get through the steps and then I'll just tell you a little bit about what my life's like today. Because my life's amazing. Anyway. It's very important that you do step 9 with a sponsor, in my opinion. This is all my opinion, by the way. I speak in declarative sentences, but they're just suggestions. Okay? So do this. Get a sponsor because you're going to think you owe amends to people that you don't owe amends to. And you're going to owe amends to people that you don't think you owe amends to. You're going to get confused about that stuff because your ego gets in the way. And that's just normal. And don't worry about it. It's normal, but it is what happens. So if you have somebody to work with on that, but making the list of persons you have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all is really a good thing to do. And really cool amends can happen. I'll just tell you one example for me. There was this girl that I worked with. Well, before I had my kids, when we were still drinking, she was a lot younger than me. And she tried to sleep with my husband. Funny expression, but she did. She tried to get me fired from my job. She was just horrible. You know, all around kind of a pain in the butt person. Years later, my ex-husband ran into her in the Safeway grocery store and I realized I owed her an amends. You know what I owed her amends for? I had not been a very good role model. I was almost 10 years older than she was and I was acting just as bad as she was. And so I wrote her a letter and I said, I'm really sorry that I didn't behave better. You know what I mean? And we're friends now. It was kind of cool because it's those kinds of things where you can patch stuff up that you don't even realize because what is your part? Sometimes you don't have a part. And that's even harder because then you know what you have to do? Acceptance. And acceptance is hard. You know, that you didn't have any part in it. People did bad things to you and you didn't deserve it and you had no part in it. And how do you deal with that? Well, you can either carry it or you can let it go. And we call it dropping the rocks. Just drop the rocks. Because the only person it's hurting is you. It's not hurting anybody else. It doesn't hurt anybody else. Just you. So anyway, now, continue to take personal inventory when we're wrong, promptly admitted it. Step 10 is great. Use it. Use it as often. Use it every day. Just take five minutes. Take four deep breaths before you go to sleep and go, what did I do? How was it? And say the good stuff too. Say the good stuff. So it's real important. And then step 11, software prayer meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God, pray and only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Well, I developed a spiritual program for myself. It is not a traditional Christian program, although I have some of that from my childhood and left over, whatever, but it's more of a nature-based thing. I am more about being of spirit. That's just me. But whatever God works for you is God you need to be having a chat with on a daily basis so that you can, you know, check in. And one of the things I learned is sometimes it feels like nobody's listening. But that's okay. Because the answers come in God's time, not in my time. Or in my higher power's time. And sometimes, and the answers, like for example, I was signed when I was 19 years old by Bobby Darin, who was a very famous like part of the Frank Sinatra and all those guys. And guess what? He died six months after I was signed. So I didn't get the career I was supposed to get. I didn't get that big, you know, they wanted to make me Stevie Nicks and all that kind of stuff. I didn't get that. But guess what? I wouldn't have had my kids. I wouldn't have had my kids. My son is an environment, he's does robotics for agriculture. He's helping save the planet. My daughter's an environmental engineer. And also, I'm a musician now. I've had three top ten records in my 60s. That's incredible. As a folk artist. Why? Because God said it's okay for me to ask for help and to do music now, when it's not about being hot and all that, you know, stuff, the young girl stuff. It's about what I have to tell people. I write songs about recovery. It's part of my recovery. And it's been incredible. And I've toured in Europe and everything. I mean, and I'm 70! See, that's the thing AA gives you, is a third act. It gives you a gift life. And I'm going to just finish up this with 12. Having had the spiritual awakening as the result, you carry the message. Now, I'm going to say something. The responsibility statement. Do you guys know the responsibility statement? When anyone anywhere reaches out for the hand of AA, I'm always supposed to be there, right? You know that? It's not always your hand. The hand of AA is all of this. So don't forget that, because sometimes you know, you'll think you're helping when you're really not. Learn to let go, because if there's somebody else to use your help. If somebody's not working out and you're sponsoring and, you know, they're not that interested, let them go. Help somebody else. Because that's the thing. There's always plenty of us out there, isn't there? You know, there's a whole lot of us out here. So anyway, that's a little run through the 12 steps. Was that useful for y'all? Okay. So, what's my life like today? I was just starting to tell y'all. First of all, I'm really healthy. Which is the benefit of early sobriety, when you get sober young. This may not be true for some of you who are getting sober older. It took my mother. But my mother got healthy. She went to be 89 and she didn't get sober until she was 70. So miracles do happen. I have friends whose livers have regenerated. Miracles happen in here. But if you're kind of youngish, you know, in your 20s and 30s, and you're thinking, well, I can drink a little bit longer. You know, I've got another drunk in me. You may not have another recovery. Because a lot of people get killed in car accidents and stuff. You know, and also, you know, I've had friends who've died on the operating table at 40 of liver and kidney. One of the things that's really hard for me, having been sober this long, is I've been to too many funerals. And I do have trouble with people giving me a load of horse shit. Nothing personal. But I get really frustrated with it because I just want to shake you and go, can you hear yourself? You know, you're gonna die. And a lot of people have died. One of the reasons I come to NABA, I go to the 930 meeting almost every day here, is there's a lot of recovery there. A lot of people with long-term recovery. And they help me remember why I keep coming back. If you had to take dialysis, you wouldn't care who you were sitting next to. You would get dialysis, right? Meetings are medicine. They actually have done studies 12 minutes in, you're endorphins. Did you know that? Your endorphins have kicked in. It took a while. First you're sort of shaken and you weren't sure. But you're here now. You're with me. Why? Because that's what happens. It's our medicine and we need to keep taking it the rest of your life. So that's what I do. I go to five or six meetings a week because I can. When my kids are little, I can only make one or two meetings a week because you can't bring toddlers to meetings. It's too much trouble. But you have a sponsor and you stay connected with the meetings. It really does. Help. And it'll keep you sober. And all I can say for me is that what AA has done for me is given me what I call my gift life. And it's been 35 years of gifts. I have two beautiful children who've never seen me drink. One of whom was an alcoholic and who now, but he knew what to do when the time came. And he didn't die. He was on fentanyl. He didn't die. He got sober. Because he knew where to go. He knew what to do. That had nothing to do with me. When he came to me and said he was going in, I said I can't help you. I said I'm going to go help these women over here. I'm going to go help her. Because you can't trust your own family. I mean it's just too hard. And then, you know, you guys have to help each other. But I can help these women. I can. I can help you and you can help me by keeping it, you know, we stay sober. And he's managed to stay sober, which is the biggest miracle of my life. And my mother and I used to go to meetings together. She died a few years ago. And I just was up at her meeting. One of her meetings, I picked up my chip off there. And one of her meetings of people that she helped. Because she was in for 18 years and she, you know, would come in and she was shorter than me. And just, you know, would tell her story. And people would just, and she helped a lot of folks. So that's the kind of thing I want to say. It's a family disease. It will kill you. If you let it. But you can, we do recover. We do recover. It doesn't say we might recover. It doesn't say we kind of recover. It says we do recover. If there's only one caveat. If you have the capacity to be honest. That's it. How it works. We do recover if we have the capacity to be honest. And that's really about being honest with yourself. Quit pretending that you've got this. Because you don't. Nobody does. And that's okay. Just be honest and say try that with diarrhea and see how it works. Right? And also, if you catch cancer early, everybody's so happy. So the cancer patient, the heart patient, and the alcoholic all have incurable diseases. The cancer patient, they say we're going to have to give you chemo or, you know, they go, where do I go? Where do I sign? The heart patient, we have to cut you open, you know, and you get vein out of your leg and all this. And they go, where do I sign? Alcohol. You have to go to these meetings. Alcohol goes, how many meetings did you say I have to go to? That's what it's like. So I like to laugh in AA. We are not a glum lot. I am, you know, happy, joyous, and free. And what I want to do, I've recommitted to AA on my 70th birthday and my 35th anniversary and because of my mother because she didn't even get sober until she was 70. So I'm recommitting to AA to be of service, which is why I said I would speak here tonight, because I'm recommitting to being of service because it does work if you work it. And it'll work you even if you don't know, so that's also true. But give yourself a chance to do as you're told. Because that was the hardest thing for me. I don't like anybody telling me what to do. But I finally did as I was told. And I'll just tell you one more thing for health. I was pre-diabetic. And I went to the doctor and they said, well, we're sending you to a nutritionist and you're going to do some things. And so I did it. And they said, wow, your numbers are normal now. That's incredible. What did you do? And I said, I did what you told me to do. And they burst out laughing. They were like, nobody does what we tell them to do. So that's the thing about being honest. Be honest with yourself. And if you ask your higher power to relieve you of the bondage of self, that you may do as well. Life gets a lot easier. So I want to thank y'all for asking me to speak. And I wanted to just tell y'all that I love every single one of you because you're amazing. It's been really fun talking with y'all. So thanks for letting me share. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. Okay, we have asked a friend to come give out the chips. Deanna. We offer the white chip for a new way of life. And we offer the silver chip for 30 days. The gold for 60. The red for 9 months. Okay, 6 months. Okay. Green one for a month. And one year. Our multiples. This is my big brother, Frank W. And Frank is a fixture in the Nava Club. His picture's up in the lobby four times. It's not a warning book poster. He was a frightening guy when I first got here. I carried like three big book and collections. Carried six books. Six books. I mean, I was like, you know, freshman at Nava. And I was down in the stand-in line at the cafeteria downstairs. He walks up to me. My books are stacked up on the tray. And he said, you know, those books will work a lot better for you if you read them. And that was the first thing he'd ever said to me. I was offended. But I talked to my sponsor, Tim, and he explained that maybe he had a point. So anyway, thank you, Frank. Thank you. You made a big difference in my life. I'm Frank Waters and I'm a recovered alcoholic. And as the lady alluded to, if you look at the third page of the big book, it says how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism. I did this by failing at everything I tried. My sponsors gave me and they weren't really suggestions back then. They just told you what to do. They didn't say, oh, you know, you really should try this. Nobody said that. They said either do this or get the fuck on. And maybe I didn't do that at NAVA, but I did at Biscayne. So finally, after everything I wanted to do or I thought would be helpful didn't work, I had to admit that, you know, I kept trying to keep a different company. I started doing things that I'm supposed to do. And I don't fall into that BS about I've got 30 days or two or three days, you've already got a better pass than what you came here with. Right. Don't forget what keeps you sober. And that's action. Action keeps you sober. Inaction keeps you depressed. That's all I have to say. Thank you. And we offer the white chip one more time. Because it's the most important one. Congratulations. Thank you one and all for joining the Blue Chip Speakers meeting tonight. Thank you. You're invited too. You should come participate, and I'll be here with you tonight. This poll will neverND I'll be some kind of a chore. Jane has gotten closer to a mile. Jane's doing something she just is. I can't believe she's still out there. She's still there, but congratulations, our next guest is and help those who are defenseless maybe free us from the fence that we can do our part and help those who may be just from