So Busy in the Solution That When the Problem Left I Didn’t Notice It Go – Pat Y.

Hi everybody, my name is Pat Yeo and I'm an alcoholic. 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 want to thank the committee for asking me to... this is real distracting, I've got to get rid of this. Thank you. It's an honor to be asked. 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 I've been to Omaha before to meetings and I like it here for that reason. You know, you are enthusiastic, and that's the way it is where I come from. If it wasn't, if the people weren't having a good time, if I wasn't having a good time, at least a good portion of the time, I wouldn't have stayed. 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've 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 talking, I'm busy thinking about what I'm going to say when you pause, you know. So, I just, 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 drank 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 that moment forward. I got a little too comfortable as the evening wore on, but I really felt good there for a while. I could talk to people real comfortably, you know, I could, I said a couple of things that made people laugh, and I felt, it made me feel good. And I could dance, I don't know if I could dance, I felt like I could dance. And I got up and I danced, and I felt like I was doing real well, and I loved it, you know, I just loved it. Now, I also, that night, blacked out, passed out, and woke up the next morning in bed with a 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 day. I didn't know what the expense I got. I could not wait to drink again because it did something special for me, you know. 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 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 drunk. I really don't. I remember years later, I always like to tell this 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 had paid a lot of money. Oddly enough, it was in Beverly Hills. We paid a lot of money for these tickets. It was this private home in Beverly 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. And 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 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 glasses of champagne. And I thought, well, I'm going to go to the bar, and I'm going to have 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 a pot of 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 was living 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 started 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 old. 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, you know, 12 and a half, let's say, I was one person. I was a straight-A student. I went to church on Sundays. I went to 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 C's and D's in school. I had to quit going to church. I dropped out of that youth group. I was hanging around with this whole different crowd of kids. I was smoking and drinking, and my life had 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, you know. 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 and stuff. I was 13 years old, and I already knew deep in my heart it was never going to happen. I had already broken half the moral codes I'd set, most of the moral codes 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 married 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 hadn't, as I say, been aware that I had been worried about it, but evidently I had. Obviously, 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 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 I said yes. And so we embarked on our engagement, and we had planned this big church wedding. And I kind of knew as the day was getting closer that this was probably a mistake. But I was powerless to stop it. I literally was powerless. I remember walking down the aisle. I mean, we had this big church wedding with hundreds of people. And my dad walked me down the aisle, and I remember thinking, I should not do this. This isn't right. 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. 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 Newport, and we'd drink a couple of quart bottles of beer. We'd go into the, they did not serve at that time alcohol in the Rendezvous. So we'd go in, and you could get your hand stamps. You could go in and out. So we'd get our hand stamps. We'd 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 screaming, you can't possibly have a conversation with anybody. And then, of course, when we're in the parking lot, we're either, you know, making out or drinking. And so it seemed to me, I remember thinking, well, we do have a lot in common. I remember thinking that. And I didn't even know him. You know, I knew nothing about this man. And we got married, and, you know, 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. And I, 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. I mean, that's like, 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 were married that sort of made it easy for me to slip out the back door, you might say. 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. Okay. 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 not know what to do with the feelings that I had about this. This brother was, I just, he 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. But at the time, I just thought he was just wonderful. And he was killed in the service in sort of a tragic accident. And I, he was in Japan at the time, and I, he had been injured. And the 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 be sent back to the States for, you know, further recovery. And I was sending him letters and stuff during this time. It was about a month's period. And I, one day I sent him one of these funny cards, one of these studio cards, you know. On the front it said something like, I 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 he 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 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 had 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, you know. But I felt so bad about that. I never told anybody about that until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Twenty years later, whatever it was, when I was reading my inventory, my first inventory to my sponsor, I read that, and I cried. I cried. Because I felt so bad about it, you know. And I just never told him. 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. Anyway, so my brother has died, and I feel real bad, and I'm feeling this guilt because of this card. And I'm crying a lot, and my poor husband had no idea what to do with me. And he said to me one day, you know, 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. 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. You know. God's put him right here on my path. I'd better make this amend. And my very next thought was, no, I'm not sober long enough, and I'm 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, you know, almost 14 years sober now. And I haven't seen him from that day to this. And I've tried to find him a couple of times. And I don't know how to find him. And I really do regret that I let that opportunity pass by. So I always like to mention that, you know, if you're new or not so new. My theory is if, you know, if you bump into him, there's a reason for that. And you ought to just go ahead 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 and an apartment. And I felt incredibly grown up and sophisticated. Finally, I am 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 person I was meant to be was a day job. 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 the 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, you know, have something to put on your resume. But then I think you should move on. I don't really, you know, 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 started drinking daily. And I drank in these bars where these truck drivers drank. And I loved those bars. And I was a little bit of a drunk. Of all the places I've drank in over the years, I think I like those truck driver bars the best. They were just, you know, they were truck driver bars. 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 in that bar for years and never once saw a woman in there. That's why I liked it there. You know, I got a lot of attention. And I liked it there just fine. And there were about four or five of these bars that we sort of rotated amongst. And my days were all like, I'd get up in the morning. I'd go to work. I'm young. You know, I think I was probably 20 at that time. I had 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. And I'd get up, 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 we'd go back to work. And get off at 5 and we'd go to one of these bars. Once a week, we'd go to the bowling alley where they were in a league. And I drank and kept score. Wherever we were at the end of the night, I'd take one of those truck drivers home with me. You know, and I'd get up in the morning and 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, it stopped doing that down the road. What happened to me there at that time, though, was that I started having what I've come to know as little moments of clarity about my life. And I didn't much care for that. You know, you can't stay drunk 24 hours a day. You know, you can't stay drunk 24 hours a day. You know, you're sober up there in the daytime. And I remember the first time that, at least that I remember, I was sitting at work at this trucking company one day. I was, it was about 10 o'clock in the morning and I was, my desk was like here and 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 was 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 them 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 I just wanted to die. I thought, just please don't let me cry here. I was so humiliated. And I went out that noon to the bar with the guys and had five drinks and a hamburger. And I went out 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. 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. We didn't, in fact, speak. I hardly ever talked about this. My real father and I didn't speak for a good number of years from that time, from the time I was there. 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 butting in my life and it was none of his business. Who asked for your opinion? Get out of here. I'm not talking to you about this. 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. I left that job and went to another job. I could stay on a job about a year. Eventually I behaved so badly that I got to leave. Eventually I embarrassed myself to the point that I simply cannot face you in the morning at work again. I once quit a job after an office Christmas party and never even went back to clean 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. I... Here's the kind of drunk I... 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 were bar hopping 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. I started a... I quit the day job and then 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 a 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'd be real quiet because I was not getting a lot of sleep. And so I didn't have a lot to say during the day. And I'd just sit at my desk and do my work. And just sort of this demure person, you know. And I'd get off work at 5 o'clock and I'd drive downtown to whatever bar I was working at. There 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 at the zenith of go-go dancing. And there were at that time some very nice bars in Los Angeles that had go-go dancers. I did not work in them. I worked out in Chinatown in two main places, Nick's and Joe's. And I'd get off work at 5. I'd drive down to Nick's or Joe's, wherever I was working at the time. And I'd go in the back room to put my costume on. And I'd have a few drinks, of course, because I can't... 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've got to do something to... And then... Now I've worked from whatever it was, 6 to 2. And that's a lot of hours to try to maintain that... You know, the right level of being drunk. Drunk enough to do it and not so drunk that you're passed out. Obviously, it's almost impossible. Often I passed out. Sometimes on stage. 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. I'll tell you, it was great. You know, if you came to later... They'd put you in their little back room, their little dressing room. If you came to, you could come back out. They'd give you thunderous applause, you know, that you were back. It was 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 just... I went through my mariachi phase. You know, 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 away, 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 were all probably 50. And none of them spoke English. And I thought they were wonderful. I mean, I really was like their groupie. I would drive to every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. During the week when I got off work, I would drive down in rush hour traffic these 70 miles to go to this bar to be there. 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 put 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 would sit there and drink. And I would 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 add it to the bar. And he'd 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, you know, were looking at me thinking I must be somebody because I knew these guys. I knew them. All right. I mean, I knew them all. And 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. And I did that every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. I loved it. It was a long time, months and months. A couple of years ago, or maybe a year ago, I had to go down and talk at a meeting in that area. And I got down. 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, like, 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 over again. You know? I got married again to a man that I met in one of these bars where I was working. That's the only place I ever went to meet anybody, you know. And he drank quite a bit. I would not have married him if he didn't. It turned out he didn't drink quite as much as I did, though. And my drinking was pretty bad. 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, you know, when I wouldn't 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, I 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. And the first time I got arrested, it 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 I started to call. It was a Thanksgiving night. And he was at some sort of a dinner at his boss's house. And I remembered that. And so I called the boss's house. The boss's wife answered. And I identified myself and said, I'm down here at jail. I wonder if you could, you know. It never occurred to me that maybe this might cause him some trouble. You know, 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 myself. 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 I was still getting drunk. And it seemed like no matter how much I drank, I couldn't turn my head off. You know, I was still afraid and lonely. And 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 know, you just kind of sit there drinking until you pass out every night. And I thought I had my drinking problem under control. I remember thinking that very thoughtfully. You know, I would sit there every night and I'd play those, 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. I just, oh, I'd cry. It would make me feel so, so good and so bad, you know. And I'd call people on the phone. You know, I never meant to wake you up. I really didn't. I just kind of always assumed if I was up, you were up. You know. By the time I got sober, the only person who was, everybody I knew, if they heard, you know, if they answered the phone and it was me, they would say, not tonight, Pat, and hang up, except my mother. You know, she loved me to the end. I'll tell you, if I never got anything else out of Alcoholics Anonymous except the fact that I no longer torment my mother like that, I am grateful. You know, I'm overpaid if that's, even if that's all I ever got. So, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that. 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 I'd get up the next day and I'd do it over again. And I knew that nothing was ever going to change. I had no hope that it was ever going to change. 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 drinking. I was wearing that purple flannel bathrobe and about 110, the 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 was drunk up there watching them from my apartment. And I was sitting there and I was thinking, I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work. And I was sitting there and I was laughing and I was drunk up 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? And I didn't know. I just didn't know. 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 Alcoholics Anonymous had anything for me. If you're an alcoholic, you're not going to drink too much. You're going to drink too much. You're going to drink too much. You're going to drink too much. I remember thinking, if you're 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'm not bouncing back quite so fast in the morning. I'm feeling bad. So it's 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 I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. I'm going to drink. So it's 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 I go off to work with this strong resolve. I am not going to drink anymore. And the morning would wear down and I'd think, I'm going to join a gym, take some physical exercise and really get in shape. In the afternoon, I'd say, I want to go back to college and finish my education. It's going to be a whole new life. And I'd get off work at 5 o'clock and go home and there would be maybe a half a fifth of scotch sitting on the couch. 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'd 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, you know, and what I'd have the next day, that would be more or less a half a fifth of scotch. And I didn't do that once or twice. I did it a whole bunch of times and I meant it every time. Tomorrow when there's nothing here, I'll quit. I never seemed to hit it right on the, you know, where there was nothing there. The day 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 time and just not a minute before or after. But anyway, I called Alcoholics Anonymous 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. And he talked to me a long time that night, told 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, you know, and I was grateful for that. And I remember he wanted to send some women, some women over to my house. I said, oh, no, no, no, no. I don't think I'm that bad. And 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 OK. You don't have to do that. He said, do you think you could not take it? 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 that's 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 remembered bits and pieces. And I found that little piece of paper. And I said, oh, my God, I'm going to newspaper. And now 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. You know, it's just sort of there in the back of my mind. And I found myself saying to my husband at the dinner table that night, I'm going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous tonight. He was kind of underwhelmed, I think. You know, he didn't care much. We had not been getting along in a long, long time. We fought all the time. He was gone. He was a gambler. It's kind of 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 we were when our paths did cross, we fought all the time. 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. But 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, you know. That's just the way that was my experience anyway. Anyhow, I remember I dressed with some care. 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, you know. And I wanted to kind of strike the right note. I didn't I want to be overdressed. I didn't want to be underdressed. And I, you know, if 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, you know. I guess comfort was maybe what I was going for. I don't know. 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 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 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'll make this real, I will go to the thrifty drugstore. In fact, I will buy something just so, you know, I come out with a bag. And so I've got this whole script in my head. You know, I get out of the car and I'm walking past that church to go to the thrifty drugstore. And somehow, 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 was, now 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 I'm shaking and sweat is pouring off of me. I'm in these terrible clothes. I'm 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, right to me. And I acknowledged that I was. 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 them 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 and the meeting started. A man by the name of Norm A. talked that night. And this guy made me laugh. I felt, well, I got hope is what I got. I felt kind of good when he was talking. And he even drank in the rendezvous ballroom, which 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 he was 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 I 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. And 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'm half drunk. And I said, how did that happen? I'm in AA. And of course, you know, you can't stop. So I finished that one out and I went back to AA. It was Saturday night and I raised my hand for being a newcomer again. 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 was drunk when I called. And she said, 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. I wanted to get off on the right foot with this woman. So I said, okay, you know, and I went down there and we met. She said, do you have a big book of alcoholics on us? 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 in 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 sobriety date up to this date. The next thing she did was worse. She took a copy of the LA meeting directory with all the meetings in the area, you know, 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 a crazy. I can't go to a meeting every night. She said, well, maybe you could do this on less, but I can't be your sponsor if you're going to go to less. She said, I will never ask you to do anything in alcoholics synonymous that I have not done. Sponsor, I 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 said, it doesn't matter also that she doesn't matter if you believe that these 12 steps will work. It doesn't matter if you do them with a good attitude. It doesn't matter if you want to do them. It just matters that you do them. And that seemed pretty stupid to me. But I started going to meetings every night and I was right. This husband didn't like it at all. We started fighting about alcoholics synonymous. And I understand it today. You know, for years he knew right where I was. I was sitting in a purple flannel bathrobe and 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 now I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone. 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 of them are crazy, and some of them are going through, I mean, you know, job problems, marriage problems, illnesses, life. You know, and I'm thinking about this one or that one, or how can I help her? What should I say to her? And I'm 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, you know. It absolutely works. What my sponsor said is true. It doesn't matter how you feel about doing this, just that you do it. But anyhow, I kept coming back. You know, I'm in this terrible marriage, and I just thought, you know, if I were married to somebody in AA, I wouldn't have any problems. And so I was about 10 months sober, and I spotted him, you know, 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, you know. I leaped across about 12 rows of chairs to introduce myself to this fellow, and myself. 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 woman. I said, fine, I'll get divorced. That's what I want anyway. And she said, 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, you know. 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. And 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 him 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. 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 ten 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 was afraid that I wouldn't 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, that they had joined some bizarre church in the hopes that, you know, 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. 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 always felt bad that I maybe hurt that fellow's chances to get sober and alcoholic. I don't know what happened to him. I've had the opportunity in later years to be a better example, you know, around people that I've worked with. In fact, a couple of husbands of women that I've 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 how... If we're going to tell people that we're sober and alcoholic synonymous, I think we have an obligation to stop and think about how we're behaving and how we're looking. Anyhow. I, 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. Four and five, eight, and nine were actually the ones that I did. I don't think I had any particular interest. But my sponsor seemed keen on me starting an inventory. So I said, okay. And see, I knew that she wanted my secrets there. And I did have a couple. And I just didn't... 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. You know, I just knew I couldn't. Of course, that's not doing the fourth step. That's imagining the fifth step, you know. And it wasn't helping me at all. I finally decided, you know, okay, I'm never going to do a fifth step. But I'm going to 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 at 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... I remember 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. And Allison... And it finally occurred to me, you know, she doesn't know about these secrets. She doesn't know that those... 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. There's a... Believe me, there's enough other bad stuff in there. She will assume that I've told her everything. And so I drove over to her house with the intention of just not reading those first two little paragraphs 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... 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. I read the whole... 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 good. Well, I felt kind of conflicting emotions. I was afraid. I remember thinking, what if she gets drunk? She knows a lot about me. It turned out she did get drunk. She's now sober over ten years, but she did get drunk. You know, 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 anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous that's ever come back to hurt them in any way. And 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 Alcoholics Anonymous. I really... I knew that night driving away from her 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. 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 woman was sober a long 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 I was guilty. I mean, I really was guilty. I told you, I cheated on him a lot. And he didn't know about most of it, but I did. You know, 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 loving wife. It's that simple. That was my motivation. This woman taught me so much and other women. 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 seemed like they were doing it happily and I tried to act like they were 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, 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 ten minutes and I literally went in the first day and checked my wife's 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 ten minutes were up I left the room. But I felt a little better. You know, I did. You know, I didn't understand. Now we had a fight that night. I remember that day. We had a fight that 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 solution and I always feel better when I do that. Always. It works every time. Time passed, you know, 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 knees and say, Dear God, please help me stay sober today. Amen. And at night I would get 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 knees and say this prayer. I did not feel like there was anybody listening but I did it. This particular night I was on my knees saying that prayer, Dear God, thank you for keeping 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 I was comfortably happy 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 missed when it went away. You know? Obviously, the reason I know today, the reason I missed it is because I was so busy in the solution I'd kind of forgotten about the problem and I still can hardly believe that today. You know, 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, you know, 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 got up and went about my business and not so 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, he's going to probably die. How is it going to affect me? And I felt bad for feeling, 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 just kept going home and acting like a kind and loving wife. He was sick for a year and a half and, and it was a hard time. He, 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. I just have to take my word for it. I've certainly had better years since. But, but it was, I felt, I felt good a lot of the time. And I, it was certainly the best year of our marriage. We were married 11 years and it was absolutely, hands down, the best year of our marriage 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, 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, 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, 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, and I did need them. You know, and I, I realized that day sitting in that chapel of 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, 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. I don't, my guess is we probably wouldn't have stayed married but I don't know. It's immaterial. You know, 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 a 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 be a wife. I learned 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 have 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. Vince was my friend for, I mean, I met him when I got sober. He was 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, you know, I liked this man. I mean, if he had said to me when I was new, well, here's what's going to happen. See, your husband's going to die and then you and Vince are going to, I would say, don't be silly, that's Vince, he's my friend. You know, 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 died and Vince and I started dating, 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. I never knew that I could feel that way about somebody. I always kind of secretly knew 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 can tell you it wasn't missing, it's there, you know, and I really love this man a lot 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, 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 wouldn't have each other. We'd have nothing. You know, it's all a direct result of Alcoholics Anonymous. Every bit of it, every bit of it, whatever that's good in our lives comes directly 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 married 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 and I hated this man a lot with real good reason and I never, of course, ever, ever talked to anybody about it and I just hated him and I didn't see it as a real problem and yet 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 it was one of my secrets and I wrote about that and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought, okay, I've told my secret and 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, was that resentments kill alcoholics, particularly justifiable 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 I was sober over a year before I really became willing to even think about this much and so it seemed like every meeting I went to I was having to think about it because, you know, people were talking about these resentments and I was just crazy and I talked to my sponsor and 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 mean, 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. You know, 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 and more uncomfortable and I finally became willing to consider there might be something I needed to do. And making amends to him is clearly not the answer but I'm willing to do something. I don't want to drink over it. It was pointed out to me that I had by now a long time ago made amends to my mother 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. 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 make amends to him for those. I didn't really want to do it. See, I love my mother and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry I did that to my mother. I hate this man. What do I care if he was a little worried? But I didn't want to drink. I did not want to drink. So I said, okay, I'll do it. Now I'm ready to rush out there. Now she's holding me back. She says, you better pray about this a little bit. You know, it's real clear in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the 12 and 12 it talks about what I think of as difficult amends where they're like bad guys too. You know, it's real clear that we have to stick to the subject which is our amends. That we don't, 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 was driving back into town and I was thinking well it doesn't work because 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. 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 going to have to act like a kind and loving daughter to this man. I really didn't think I could do it but I didn't have any better idea and I didn't want to drink and so I became willing to try. Eventually, not that day but, eventually, became willing to try. 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 talk to 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 you know and I'd just think God, please let me let mom answer. And of course she never did. 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 dial 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 know nothing to do with me. If I'd seen a movie that week that was a perfect topic. You know current events world events those were good. And he'd answer and 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 respond and I'd talk about my second topic and he'd respond. Then I'd go can I talk to mom? You know 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 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 going to 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 that 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 help and then get up and 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 to this mall I don't like to shop either and I said but I went down to my husband thinks I'm the perfect wife actually I don't like to shop I went down to this shopping mall and I went into a needlepoint shop and there was a needlepoint thing to needlepoint frame and hang on the wall a little saying about fathers and daughters a sickening little saying about fathers and daughters as long and as short of it as 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 know it I did my nicest work I never felt the thing I got it from I never felt the thing I wrapped it up I took it over there on Christmas and there was a moment that Christmas when 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 in that instant that if I kept doing what I was doing if I kept 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 to be but I just 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 the visiting hours were over I got up to leave and I bent over and I 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 night time 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 you know just my mind kind of blank and I got out to the 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 and I don't know how that happened and I stood there by the car with my key in the trying to get my key in the door and I couldn't and I couldn't believe it and it's you know 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 you know 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 Alcoholics Anonymous I'd go home and I'd leaf through that sucker and I couldn't find the answers you know I couldn't 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 there 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 you stay long enough to find the answers to all of your life's problems in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous thank you very much