Self-Delusion as the Alcoholic’s First Defense Against Seeing the Problem – Addie H.

Addie H. from Sacramento. Whoa, I didn't know there were so many people here. I am Addie Hale, and I am an alcoholic. And what an enthusiastic group you have. That's wonderful, yeah. You know, it's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun. First of all, I want to thank Tim and Tim for inviting me. And this is, I have to be honest, speaking in front of a whole bunch of people isn't my favorite thing in the whole world. But it sure does help when you're around someone who enjoys and loves Alcoholics Anonymous as much as I do. Because it saved my life. I didn't get here because I had a little drinking problem. And the thing is, I'm not a drinker. The sad thing is, you know, I now realize that my thinking was delusional, totally delusional before I got here. Because I lived in a little town called Hollister, California. That's where I raised my brood. I have five children. And it was good because the schools were close. The town was so small that if they cut school, somebody always saw them and I found out. And it was what I. I considered to be a pretty good environment. But I remember, and the parties and stuff like that. But I remember very well one time going into my doctor's office for a checkup. And he asked me how much I was drinking. I mean, I was highly insulted. I wasn't drinking as much as they did. My husband and my drinking buddies. I mean, they had a problem. But I was. I was the one that drank, had the hollow leg, could pour it down and clean up the house, empty the ashtrays and all the good kind of stuff while they're passed out type thing. So I obviously didn't have a problem. And an interesting aside to that is some years ago, my husband Bill there and I were in Costa Rica. And they didn't have a speaker. And I'd been around a little while since March of 1982. And they had another lady they'd invited to speak. And she was that doctor's front office. And there we are of all places in manual San Antonio Beach in Costa Rica. And we're both talking at an AA meeting. Amazing, amazing coincidence that do occur as we make this journey. First of all, I do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous. I can only speak for myself. What my experience, strength and hope has been. And when I made that phone call, I woke up one morning and heard myself saying, God, help me. Because I knew I was crazy and there was no hope. I had seen those doctors often enough about once a year. I go see one and a shrink one place or another and tell him. All of my problems. I mean, you don't understand. Life was just not fair to me. And so I had to have a little something to ease the road. And they were always good to write a prescription. You know, the time came when I became very suicidal. And I knew that was not normal thinking because I had attempted suicide before long before I ever was into my alcohol, alcoholic drinking. And so I found that. So I found a shrink over in Monterey, went over there and for $200, I told him that it's not normal to contemplate suicide. And I was concerned. And he told me to get a hobby. Somehow I knew down deep that was not the answer to my problem. What I had was restless, irritable and discontent. I was born like that. Like so many of us here. I came by this just like most of us did. My mother was an alcoholic. She recovered in Alcoholics Anonymous. My uncle, her brother, and I adored my uncle, Tex. The whole that side of the family, my mother's side came from Texas and Tex had three boys. I was the only girl in the family. So my nickname was Baby. Texas boys were. Uh. Brother, Ronnie and Big Tex and Little Tex. And that's the way we identified people. And I was really put out when he finally had a girl and I wasn't baby anymore. I mean, that kind of hurt. But my mother found Alcoholics Anonymous in March of 1941. I was 10 years old. I had not lived with her when I was born. I was given to grandparents to raise because mama was colorful. I was a little bit of a boy. I was a little bit of a girl. I was a little bit colorful. And, uh. Apparently somebody decided that was not a good environment for a baby. So my grandmother, who was an invalid, raised me. And mostly I was just, I was never around other children. I was never out of the yard. And when I was six and my grandmother died, I went to live with a mother I didn't know and a stepdad I didn't know. And he was a little bit of a child. And he was a little bit of a girl. And he laid his deathbed before the war, and he took this family to Canada. And then he was moving to Lisbon. And then I had our child. He was trying to stew. Me too. He had four short children, and then he got a lot of death dips. And then we got a constantrias. And we had him, um, tiny. But heraus-s<|sq|> I was a� a baby. I was the first of my mom. a housekeeper, a nanny that did the cooking and cleaning and stuff. And my dad and I would go. He built houses. He did a lot of stuff like that. I was telling somebody out in the lobby, he was kind of a dreamer, and at one time he was reading the newspaper and the want ads, and there was a boxing and wrestling arena for sale, so he bought it. He didn't know the first thing about it, but Uncle Tex, who was kind of like a con artist, he became the fight promoter, and I did popcorn and peanuts. And so all in all, I can't say that growing up was like the people next door. I did not bring kids home from school with me, particularly once Mama found Alcoholics Anonymous because they didn't have recovery houses. They only had one meeting in Los Angeles. That's where I was born. We lived there. And that one meeting was called the Mother Group in downtown L.A., and in fact, they got the big red book from Johnny Howe at the county hospital. A lady named Kay Millard brought it out. And when they had their very first meeting, there was a fellow named Mark Joseph, another one Frank Randall, and they had a couple of other people there that had graduated from Johnny Howe's drunk part of the county hospital. And he said, I don't know much about this, but there's a chapter in here. It says how it works, so why don't we read that? And he read it, and that's kind of how at meetings today, how it works is read when you start out. Well, that's the meeting my mother went to when she picked up the March 1941 article in Saturday Evening Post about Alcoholics Anonymous. And the first time she went there, she was sitting in the room in this hotel. I think it was a Cecil Hotel or something, and there was alcoholics. Maybe 10 or 12 men and some women. And very shortly, they said, pounded a gavel and said, well, the women leave the room. And my mother left and burst into tears. They took my stepdad, who never had a short beer in his life, inside and thought they had a new pigeon and 12-stepped him to death. And he staggered out after it was over. But you know how sensitive we are. That was rejection. So my mother went out and got drunk, and then she called New York because Ruth Hawk, Bill's secretary, had answered her letter and told her about the meeting and given her a phone number of a man named Cliff Walker, who became my mother's sponsor. They didn't have any women. And he said, oh, for heaven's sakes, come back next week. They had meetings once a week. Could you imagine trying to get sober with a once-a-week meeting and no other women? I mean, I don't know how she did it. I just don't know how she did it. At any rate, the man, when she called him the next day, he said, we've never had a lady lush before. You're welcome as the flowers in May. Come on back. And she did. And very shortly, letters started pouring in to New York. And my mother went to the meeting the next time. And Frank Randall was one of the leaders and Mark Joseph. She said, in two years. She never heard anybody talk of Frank and Mort. Frank and Mort. They thought that's the way you do it. But her next meeting, they gave her a stack of letters and said, go out and make 12-step calls. These women want help. But don't tell them anything because you don't know anything. Just say, I found this way to stay sober. Well, sometimes, my Uncle Tex was always in Lincoln Heights Jail. He was a bad drunk. He was a fighting drunk. He'd been there. He'd been there 89 times. And the last one was, he was quite violent. There was a lot of Indian background in the family. And we don't drink well, to say the least. And he was holding two of L.A.'s finest at bay in a produce warehouse with a shotgun. And so he was due for some serious charges. But in the meantime, waiting to be sentenced, my mother had gone to this second meeting. My uncle and mama were very close. They drank bootleg together, that sort of thing. Mama was a taxi dancer. Does anybody know what that is? Yeah, 10 cents a dance. That's how she met my stepdad. And they were dancing. He bought all the tickets and said, what's a nice lady like you doing in a place like this? And she said, well, my little girl and my mother. And he said, well, why don't you marry me and I'll take care of you? And she said, let's do. They got married. That's it. That's the truth. So anyway, my uncle Tex, I adored that man. He was a very, very dynamic personality, if he wasn't angry. And I sat in the car many times while my mother was visiting him in the prison, you know, taking in cigarettes or whatever he needed. But at any rate, he saw one of the pamphlets my mother had brought home about Alcoholics Anonymous. And he had this. It's a. Produce warehouse on Skid Row. It's the name. And where he had a bunch of winos. And my dad had a truck and he'd go get fruit and they'd all loaded up into these buckets. And the winos would go pedal it. And Tex took a look at it. And he says, you know, Seb, I think there's a money making deal here. If we can sober up these winos, we could make a few more bucks out of it. So he went to the next meeting with my mother at the mother group. And he said, well, I'm going to go to the next meeting with my mother. And he said, well, I'm going to go to the next meeting with my mother. Where most of the men wore suits and ties and they were from the movie industry and silk suit type people. Well, Tex showed up with a flatbed truck with 12 winos in the back. My mother was humiliated. She was sure he was going to louse it up for her. Well, as I said, he was very dynamic. So it didn't take long before he decided that they weren't doing the meeting right. And he knew a better way. So he went out to Huntington Park. And rented a place called the E-Bell Club in the basement. And it became the hole in the ground in Los Angeles. It was the second meeting in Southern California. And that's where I grew up. My surrogate family were the members of the hole in the ground. Now, with no recovery houses or hospitals wouldn't take a drunk. When someone had come in, mom would bring them home. We had a great big 10-room house, lots of bedrooms and couches. And stuff. And so we just had a kind of a constant turnover of people. Well, one day it was raining. And my mother had me in the backseat of the car. She's making these 12-step calls. And one of them was made on a lady. It was raining. So she asked me to come inside. And it was just like a little one-room place. And this lady was on a bed on a cot. And her face was all puffed up and red. And she had kind of a turban around her hair. Her name was Irma Livoni. Now, Irma was real, real sick. And my mother brought her home. She lived with us for several months until she cleaned up and got a job. And they were going to the mother group. And very shortly at the mother group, they decided that this, see, there were no traditions. Irma wasn't doing it the way they thought it should be done. So they got together and formed a committee. And they wrote a letter. They wrote a letter to Irma. Okay? And it said, Dear Mrs. Livoni, at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Group of Alcoholics Anonymous held December 4, 1941, it was decided that your attendance at group meetings was no longer desired until certain explanations and plans for the future were made to the satisfaction of this committee. This action has been taken. And it was taken for reasons which should be most apparent to yourself. She cleaned up real good. Big, tall, long-legged redhead. Looked good. It was decided that should you so desire, you may appear before members of this committee and state your attitude. This opportunity will be afforded you between now and December 15, 1941. You may communicate with us at the above address by that date. And in case you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We shall consider the matter closed and that your membership is terminated. Now I had a sponsor who was really, oh, she's a tough old broad and thank God she came into my life when I was six years sober and I needed her. And at the time, I could not even read the traditions or Chapter 5 at a meeting. I'd go into these high anxiety attacks. There was an. The senior member of my little group in Hollister explained to me that she walked by me one time in a stage whisper. She said, selfie self-centeredness is the root of the problem, we think. Bitch. She just didn't know how hard life had been for me. I mean, I knew how to wallow good. I mean, if I had a long-term marriage, unfortunately, it doesn't run in the family, but it has something to do with being restless, irritable, and discontent. We tend to get married a bit. My mother would introduce herself as, she's this little tiny thing. I'm Sybil Doris Adams, Stratton Hart, Maxwell, Willis, Corwin, and I'm an alcoholic. My... My stepdad, Bob, suggested I do the same thing. I decided, no, I would not. But at any rate. When my uncle Tex found the e-bail club, this executive committee were going to incorporate Alcoholics Anonymous, and they excommunicated my uncle. And he looked at him and he laughed. He said, boys, this thing is bigger than all of us. You can't do it. This thing is bigger than all of us. He may have been a con man, but I'll tell you, he saw something here in Alcoholics Anonymous that changed him from what he was to what he became. He literally passed away at the hole in the ground in a hospital bed with a heart condition. I admired my uncle. I loved him dearly. Big, dynamic man. Told me I was going to hell in a handbasket and broke my heart. But he was right. I did. I did. I had my first drunk at 13. God knows there was never any alcohol around our house. I'll tell you that. And I kept hearing about it. All these people talking about this stuff. Girlfriend and I had a little tuna salad sandwich and some cheap port wine and got drunker and skunks and ran away from home and caught a bus to Whittier. That's from downtown L.A. I threw up in the 86 to soft the bus. I don't know how many times I've heard people say they had their first drunk at 13. Well, I didn't drink again until I was a little bit older. But I spent my life feeling as though I were totally fractured. Like my head would be saying one thing. My mouth would be saying another. And inside my gut it was hurting because I knew none of that was what was real. But I didn't know how to pull it all together. And what I found in this journey is a sense of unity. I came in an agnostic. I found a higher power today that sustains me daily. I trust completely. If I didn't, I wouldn't be up here talking to you because I'd be too much into myself and terrified. I always hope that there's somebody, one of you new people out there, that hears something that will keep me going. I hope that there's somebody that will keep me coming back. Because today I have a good life. I have a wonderful life. I had a long-term marriage. Had a lot of babies. Children are all grown now. He, too, was an alcoholic. And shortly a year after I got sober, we ended that marriage. There was nothing we could repair. God knows we tried long enough and hard enough. We used to say the persistence of the illusion was astonishing. We used to have reconciliations until even the kids were saying, Oh, Mom, not again. I'm very pleased to say he's remarried. He's sober. He lives in Modesto. And he has peace in his life today. And we never gave each other a minute's rest. I committed myself to not getting married again once I got sober and looked around. And I wanted to be self-supporting in my own contributions. I wanted to be self-supporting in my own contributions. So, but I had a home group in Citrus Heights. And I moved to Sacramento when I was six years sober because of a sponsor. That my Uncle Tex had sponsored a lady named Vivian Hinton. And when I was six years sober, I was still in Hollister going to the two or three meetings a week that they had. And my daughter, Holly, had a baby that was born with ectoplasm. And she had congenital disease and a very terminal prognosis. So, I lived with my daughter and nursed Callen until she passed away. And after that, it was like a year went by and I was numb. And I told Holly, you know, if I don't find a sponsor, someone who will really give me firm direction, I might drink again. In the meantime, the meetings I was going to was in San Juan Bautista. And there was a gal there named Bronco Barb. Now, we had nicknames over there. I was poor little lad because I sniveled so much. And this gal was Bronco Barb. Somebody ran into her just the other day and told me they met Bronco Barb after they'd heard me talk. That's great. You know, that's great. But at any rate, she kept telling me, my sponsor knows your mother. Big deal. Everybody knew my mother. She spoke all over the United States and Canada. And she said, and she'd really like to see you. So. One day, Vivian was speaking in Vacaville and we drove up there and I heard her talk. And it turns out she'd visited my home when I was a kid. She remembered me from my growing up years in AA. And I thought, you know, that's the lady I need for a sponsor because I need some direction. I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. And the next week, I went back to the meeting and I was telling Bronco Barb about it. And she said, oh, Addie, Vivian died. She had congestive heart failure. I said, oh, my God. The next week, I go to the Sunday meeting and someone, she says, you'll never believe this. The doctor signed the death certificate, went out to the parking lot and Vivian came back to life. True story. She sat up in bed and she said, give me a cigarette and get me the hell out of here. True, absolute true story. And I. And she said, then I knew that was the sponsor I had to have. No doubt about it. So I called her on the phone. I wanted to catch her quick between dying. We sat up all night long talking and eating Colonel Sanders chicken. Now, you've got to understand, this is a lady who had congestive heart failure in a wheelchair with the thing in her nose with the oxygen. And she'd pull it out, throw it back and light a cigarette. Amazing woman. At any rate, we talked all night. And she needed a chore provider. Someone I had worked in aerospace all my life. Aircraft, aerospace, ordinance manufacturing. I've been a production and program planner before the last two years of my drinking. You know, things kind of go downhill real quick that last two years, like non-functioning. And I thought I'd better quit my job before they fire me. And I did. And that gave me two years to get down to some serious drinking. And that's what got me to AA. Thank you. Thank God. But at any rate, I went to Vacaville, talked to Vivian. I was unemployable. I had truly just fried my brain so much that it took me a year before I could put string of thought together. Thank God for the slogans. That much I could hang on to. Now, this is for someone who'd grown up in AA. I knew nothing about it. I thought I did. But now I've learned that you've got to really be in. The program. You don't just read about it. You don't get it by osmosis. And Vivian taught me that. Boy, she was tough, too. And she did practice the principles of the program in all of her affairs. So I became her chore provider. That meant I cooked her meals, gave her baths, pushed her wheelchair around. We went to meetings five to seven nights a week, and she made me talk. Oh, God, that was awful. People would call on her right away. She'd say, no, but I'm not going to talk. But I think my baby Addie will talk. And so I'd have to say something, you know, mumble. And I'd go into my self-centered self-pity and sweat a lot and want to be wonderful. But I didn't have anything to say. And so at any rate, she kept pounding it into me that I had to talk about traditions. She said, you know, there's not going to be anybody left who was around when there weren't any. And you know what it was like when there weren't any? It was chaos. It was chaos in Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, I brought a CD tape or CD to our taper here of a talk my mother gave in the 80s about what it was like and what she called the horse and buggy days of AA that tells all of the crazy things they did in Southern California, like excommunicating my uncle. At the hole in the ground, these were the down and outers that couldn't get sober anywhere else, and some of them were illiterate. So text. And my mom put together a 12-step play. And they had, oh, one of my stepdads would play Bill Wilson. My mother was always Ruth Hawkville's secretary. And some guy named Hug Hugland, he would be Jimmy Burwell. And one time Burwell was actually in town. He was the, he's the atheist in the big book. But he always stopped and stayed at our house. And he's why we have God as we understand him. Thank God for that. Because I'll tell you, I couldn't have stayed. I couldn't have stayed if I had to say, yeah, I, you know, this is, I had it confused with religion. Today, I know the difference, the difference that this is a spiritual journey. And thanks to that spiritual journey today, I have a sense of unity inside of me. That what I'm saying, what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, it's all the same. It's one thing. As a directory. And I think that's the result. Of trudging the road to happy destiny for 22 years. And for finding that there is a higher power that has sustained me. Without which I would not be here. But at any rate, Vivian was wonderful. She did a 10th step every night of the week. And I'd sit there and watch her write it out. So I got my tablet and write it out. And then she'd read the book. I read the book. And she gave back to me everything that my Uncle Tex had given her. She said, It was bread cast on the waters. Ultimately, she suggested that maybe I should put out some resumes. And get a job that paid enough money to support myself. And I did. A year later, I was hired, rehired by Aerojet General in Sacramento. I'd worked there back in the olden days when they were building Titan One. And 35 years later, they rehired me. Now, I was not a young woman. That was, you know, God's will, I guess. I don't know. Amazing to go back at that age. And so I, at that time, my daughter, Holly, had had a business. And after losing the baby, we had a little five-year-old. But she got really nuts. She was going to, her marriage dissolved. And both sets of grandparents had divorced. And here's little Erin at five. And I told her, Holly wanted to run off to Los Angeles and be a dancer. And I said, you know, maybe we should try to give Erin a little stability. So why don't you come on up here and we'll get rent an apartment together. And as it turned out, we got a condo in Citrus Heights, which leads me to the meeting that I found was the McClellan meeting. And so Holly did and my granddaughter did. And I started going to this Citrus Heights group called the McClellan Big Book Group, McClellan Group. And it was Air Force. These were, most of them were World War II men who had many, many, many years in Alcoholics Anonymous. And going there to a meeting was like a feast because you had all of this wisdom around you. And I was there one day when this big, tall, white-haired man walked in. A real crazy nutcase. Oh, my God. That man needs help. So I, he was so filled with anger. He'd sit there and he'd bawl and he'd pound the table and all of that. Well, my stepdad had, stepdad number three, Corwin, had given me his copy of Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox. And in the olden days, everybody that came to the meeting at the hole in the ground, they were told to get a copy of Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox. My stepdad gave it to me and said, it has exact, very, very exact directions on how to get rid of your anger. I was a little bit angry at my ex-husband. There were times that I would consider a little cyanide in his coffee and nobody would know. Now, this is in sobriety. Yeah. Yeah. I did not get well and wonderful overnight. Believe me. My gratitude list was very short at that time. I'd ride it out, but I couldn't get very far on it because I was so filled with this, what I perceived to be rage, you know, if it hadn't been for him. Da, da, da, da, da. I have come to find out that it was my actions that took me where I went and caused me the problems that I had. But I had spent my life blaming first my mother. I mean, if you've got a mother who, you know, is colorful, that's good for her resentment. And Mama, bless her heart, she'd tell me she loved me. But, you know, I never felt that love. I've been going through letters that my mother had written me. She passed away five or six years ago. And in these letters, my mother expressed her love for me in no uncertain terms. And today I know that she meant that from the bottom of her heart. But I couldn't feel it. It was not my mother's not loving me. It was my inability to feel love. I've been so blessed. I met, as I said, I knew Bill over there needed help. And so, tall, good looking lawyer. And what he needed was a copy of the Sermon on the Mount. So I got one, had it sent to his office with an inscription. And when he got three, he said, I'm going to write you a letter. And I said, I'm going to write you a letter. And he said, I'm going to write you a letter. And I said, I'm going to write you a letter. And I gave him my three-year chip so he wouldn't forget me. And this kind of stuff went on for a long, long time. I've got to tell you. There was no way I was getting involved with a newcomer. And I think, yeah, we considered, he'd call me at work and meet me for lunch. And we'd gaze at each other. You know the stuff that you do. I thank you very much. But still, I'm going to write you a letter. Well, in all, he was at the time with another lady. And he was only three years sober. I didn't want to mess it up. But when neither one of us were involved and he was six years sober, I'd sent him several books by that time. I thought it was time to reel him in, so I did. We've been married for 10 years now. And when I say my life is good, what I mean is I can love unconditionally. I mean, the love of my life. And I know we were not meant to be together before that because we were both too crazy. We both had a lot to learn. And that's what this program is about. It's about growing and learning on a daily basis. I'm given an, I can start my day over any time I want to. And it doesn't mean I've done everything right. But what's happening is the process of the 12 steps in my life, by continuing the process, I learn more about me. By going to meetings where we all share, I learn more about me. Bill is a student of the books of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he has a dictionary. Every morning he gets up and he reads the various books. A comes of age. Language of the heart. All of this wonderful literature that we have. And I've watched him grow. And I have to keep running to stay ahead of him. Or at least stay equal, you know? And it's been an interesting journey because it's taught me a lot about myself and about my character defects that I've had to change. And I didn't know how you change something like that. I mean, once I recognize it, I've got it. Now what do I do? There is a. Fellow in Modesto named Model T George gave wonderful talks. And he said things. He made it so simple. He said, if you're a liar, just quit telling those lies, you know. But I've wrestled with my reactions for so many years, those that caused me problems in relationships. And for me, I found that I have to ask my higher power to remove them from me. Once I know what they are, I've got to get rid of them. And it's up to me. Nobody's going to do it. I've got to do it for me. And strangely enough, if I meditate long enough, I have a sense of peace inside of me. And I don't have to repeat that behavior. And what a blessing that is because I managed to screw up my life pretty good by the time I came to AA. I didn't get here on a winning streak. I'm not sure that any of us did. You wouldn't be sitting here now if things were swell out there. I've got to tell you one thing. I've learned by experience. They don't get. They don't get better when you go back. I've been to too many funerals, too many memorial services for people that thought, hey, I'm young. That won't hurt. I can go back. I've got another one in me. It doesn't work. At any rate, so I've had this journey, this God-given journey. Holly and I had this condo in Citrus Heights. And it wasn't very long before my youngest daughter, Cammie, she'd married a little cowboy. And that wasn't quite going too well. And so her sister went over, picked her up, and brought her over with us. So then there's the three of us there, plus Erin, who was five. And my oldest daughter was a child of the 60s. She left when she was 16 or 17. She hit the road and found the concerts and did the acid and whatever drugs were, the drugs du jour. And she was incarcerated one more time for dealing. And so my little granddaughter, Allison, who was also five, CPS sent her over to us. So now there were five of us there. I'll tell you, we had a time and a half. Two little five-year-old girls and the three of us. And life was good. And what we did, the very first thing when we had a problem is, what step do we take? What is the action step? Because life wasn't always smooth. You know, I mean, it was, there were babysitting problems. There were who used whose clothes. Holly went to Sac State. She finally figured out that being a dancer in L.A. wasn't going to be her thing. And she found what she absolutely loved to do. And she entered the nursing program for her RNBS in at Sac State and pursued that. And in her last year, she had the opportunity to join a flight club. And I've been traveling a lot. I'm going to Cabo San Lucas for a weekend. So I got to add a message on my answering machine at work. Hey mom, you know, you can't come over for dinner. I'm going to Cabo San Lucas. And the airplane crashed and my daughter was killed. Now I don't say that to impress upon you the loss that I've had in my life, because life is life. It happens to all of us. But I do know this, that as long as my spiritual connection is intact, that I'm okay. There is absolutely nothing that can happen on this journey that would cause me to go out and drink again. I have absolutely, it's not those big things, it's the little stuff. But it's last weekend out in the boat with Bill and his son, Bill Jr., who's bigger than his dad, and his wife. We spent, it's Fourth of July is Bill's birthday, so we were up at Lake Berryessa. Now, I'm sober 22 years, right? The kids, later, they did all of the right stuff and made sandwiches and things and ran into some water ski friends of theirs. And they left for a while to go out and party. Which is fine. And the next morning when I got up in this bucket where I had bottles of water, there was this fifth or whatever you call them, liter something or other, of half empty of tequila with lime. I looked at that and my mouth watered. I thought, oh my God. You know, that broadside of me. There was absolutely nothing, no big tragedy, no nothing. It's just that it's always there. And I had to go immediately. My stepdad, Bob, told me and it really impressed me with the fact I have to go immediately to that last drunk I was on and that sense of absolute desperation. As long as I can go there real quick. Man, I'm, you know, I mean, that's the last thing I want to do. I wouldn't blow this 22 years for anything in the world. But it's always right there. I have to maintain a fit spiritual condition at all times. I have to deal with life exactly as it comes down. Good and the bad. And with God's help, I can. Just, I will always be an alcoholic. I might be, I'm in recovery. I am recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. But without that. That connection, I would be lost without the examples in my life of people like Bob over there with 50. How many years, Bob? Fifty. Fifty three years. My God. You know, that's a long journey. He's been trudging a long time doing it right. For sure. He's an inspiration for all of us. So. I'm thinking I continued working at Aerojet. Does he? traveled too far wasn't because the she just knows so much about 80. Chadda Orwood-Marcusi. Woman will later that for you. Two young men. since she was 19, been in and out of recovery houses. She's God's kid just like I am. She's God's kid. God, if I could give it to her, I want to shake her and say this is the way. Bill tried to get her to go to meetings when she got out of the last recovery one. And she went to one, and he went over to get her the next day, or he was going to take her to a meeting a day. But she suddenly didn't feel well. She had this horrible headache, you know, so she couldn't quite make it. And that's the way it's been ever since. And I have to just know that I am powerless. If that doesn't, we are powerless over alcohol. And all I can do is hope that someday she will see that there is a different way to live. My other children, my youngest, Cammie, who moved in with us, she met a young man at United Technologies, and they were married. And he was kind of like an executive type thing. And she put herself through UC Santa Cruz. Now, she was going to be a competitive gymnast. They were grooming her for the 84 Olympics when she had an accident. So she went to UC Santa Cruz as a computer scientist and graduated as such and was picked up by Hewlett-Packard. So. When I turned 70, she said, where do you want to go, Mom? I have frequent flyer miles. So I went to London and Paris. She has taken me to Grenada on another vacation. She took Bill and I to Fiji to an island called Kandavu, where we did snorkeling while they did diving. I've been given things that I never thought would be possible. I've been given things that I never thought would be possible. I've been given things that I never thought would be possible. I've been given things that I never thought would be possible. I mean, this is just not possible. But I've had the opportunity to go to AA meetings around the world. I was in Australia, and a little Aborigine man knew I was away from home, and he 12-stepped me after the meeting. He was so worried about me. Another young man had just heard a tape of my mother's and was just, oh, this can't be. And so he had one of those, like a skateboard scooter thing. He followed me all over. He was everywhere with that scooter, wanting to be sure I got to the meetings, and he'd show me where they were and stuff like that. The world of Alcoholics Anonymous is absolutely amazing, because no matter where you go, we're there. The tribal customs may be different, but the book is the same, and that feeling is the same. The expressions may be a little different. In London, there was a gal who got up, and she had an, she had an anger problem, and she'd been just really upset all day long. She was mad at work and just so angry, my face looked like an upturned bum, and I sat there and wondered about it for a long time, what that meant, until it hit me. So the expressions may be different, but the meaning's the same. Now, my daughter now lives in Orange County, where she still telecommutes from home for Hewlett-Packard, and my son-in-law... My son-in-law is an executive down there. They're doing very nicely. My son, Kurt, is in Hollister still. He married a little girl that they've known each other since the fourth grade, and he's practicing his serious drinking. He still works hard and plugs away. I mean, he's got a high-stress position, so he has to relax when he gets home, and that's exactly the way I drank for a long time, because as long as you have the right stuff in the right glass, it looks good. It looks okay. That's what I thought. It looks okay. So I'm hoping that someday he'll find us, if his drinking gets to that point. But I do know this. You've got to be done before you get here. I was done. I mean, that was the last port of call for me. I just didn't know it at the time. My other son, Danny, he's the one that... Whenever there's a group of family pictures, he's the one in the back jumping up and down, waving his arms, rode the motorcycle, always living life right on the edge, taking it to the limit. He was the one that we water skied together, we snow skied together. He's the one that would... And especially if there was some gal around for him to impress, he could cut so close to the water, his shoulder was almost touching. Just the show-off of the family, the one that made every occasion really exciting. And he'll turn 50 in September. It doesn't seem possible to me. But last March I got a phone call from my son Danny. He said, Mom, I've been to the doctor and I had this thing in my neck. I've got cancer. And my world changed one more time. And indeed he did. He has throat cancer. And because... My husband knows... My husband knows the importance of sharing time with people you love. He said, You've got to go down there and help take care of him. So ever since the end of March, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I'd go to Modesto and drive him to his radiation and his doctor's appointments, his chemo. His father was there for the days that I wasn't there. He made an amends to me. He said, You know, we've been able to be there and be civil and take care of our son because we're members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and today we know what's important and what isn't. He has a feeding tube in his abdomen and he's gotten pretty skinny. But he's through with the radiation. We'll know in about six or eight weeks what's going on. But at any rate, And I talk to him every day on the phone that I haven't been there now that he's through with it. He said, Mom, you don't have to come back. I'm doing fine. And now he's got his voice back just like it was. He's walking his dogs. He said he takes them on a 45-minute walk at night. Two weeks ago, he couldn't get up off the couch. He was just totally wiped out. So he's coming back. And he's beginning to learn the importance of this moment because this is all we've got. And that's how I live. That's what I've told him. I said, we've got to stay in the moment. I have no guarantees for another five years or ten years. I'm amazed at 22 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, sober, because when I came in, it was my alternative to suicide. I did not want to feel beyond this earth one more day. I didn't think there was anything redeeming about life. Today, I've had the opportunity. I've had the opportunity to share with my children, my adult children, to play with them. They took care of me for the 12 years I was single. I kind of feel bad. I didn't realize I was such a responsibility that they kept inviting me to go places with them, you know. Yeah, but they took care of their mom. So I have been so blessed on this journey to have seen Alcoholics Anonymous before traditions and realized what it would be like without them. And I think I started to say, I think I started to say, if they were my mother and my mom they were my mother and they were in a car with the actors, they get to the edge of Bakersfield and there's billboards pounded on a telephone poles with famous Hollywood actors and actresses, giving the beginnings of Alcoholics Anonymous and it named their names admission two dollars. Yeah. Yeah. She says, Oh, half of her cast said we can't do this. They're charging. And she said, Well, well, Because the traditions were very slow to catch on. But we don't charge for alcoholics and all of this. If we did, there would be so many people wouldn't have a nickel in their pocket when they got here. But once we get here, we ought to honor the traditions and donate when we can. They're important. That's how we support the central office. That's how we support GSO. That's how we get this message carried around the world. And it ties us all together. Aha. I heard a little what? That's good. Good. I need that. I didn't want to talk anymore anyway. I'll tell you what I'm going to close with. I wish I had one of those. I'm going to close with a letter that Bill Wilson wrote my mother when my Uncle Tex died. Because they were so close. And my mother was so devastated. And this is what has seen me through loss. This is what has given me courage and strength. And I made copies, and they're here on the table, of each one of the letters, in case you're interested. But this one was written to my mother November 6, 1952, from Bill Wilson. It said, My dear Sybil, thanks for your letter of October 21st. It was just about the most stirring thing I've read in many a day. The real test of our way of life. Is how it works when the chips are down. Though I've sometimes seen AAs make rather a mess of living. I've never seen a sober one make a bad job of dying. But the account you give me of Texas' last days is something I shall treasure always. I hope I can do half as well when my own time comes. I'm one who believes that in my father's house there are many mansions. If that were not so, there couldn't be any justice. I can only hope that I can do half as well. I can almost see Tex sitting on the front porch of one right now, talking in the sunlight with others of God's ladies and gentlemen who've gone on before. I certainly agree with you that little was left in Tex's grave. All he had was left behind in the hearts of the rest of us. And he carried just that same amount forward to where he is now. If you like what I've said, please read it to the Huntington Park group. In any case, congratulate them for me. I had the privilege of knowing a guy like Tex. As for you, my dear, there's no need to give you advice. How well you understand that the demonstration is the thing after all. It isn't so much a question of whether we have a good time or a bad time. The only thing that will be asked is what we do with the experience that we have. That you're doing well with your tough lot is something for which I and many others are bound to be grateful. This is but a long time. I know you'll keep on learning and passing on what you have learned. What more does one person need to know about another? Affectionately, yours, Bill. I thank you all and God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.