Step 10 and the Big Fat Lie of Only Hurting Herself – Debbie D.

Hi everybody, I'm Debbie Davis and I'm an alcoholic. And thank you Colin, it has really been great to be here. Thank you Gordo for the invitation. It's been on the calendar for a while, hasn't it? And here we are. And I love, I know that Fellowship of the Spirit originally started in Denver, I believe was the first one or in Colorado many years ago and I've always loved that name fellowship of the spirit not of anything we've done but our spirit our spirit is here together in the spirit of sobriety the spirit of service the spirit connection with the power greater than ourselves the fellowship that we crave the fellowship of the spirit and this morning it was nice to wake up because every time i get to share on a morning i always remember how sick i used to be when i would come to and um i mean i used to have not just hangovers violent hangovers You can't think, you can't breathe, you're so sick, your head is in this vice. But I don't ever, ever recall saying, I'm never going to do that again. It had nothing to do with drinking, you know? um i i learned of course the morning drink but um i never blamed alcohol for any of the problems i had any ofthe trouble i got in so it's really nice to wake up sober and be with you this morning the panels then that you've put together have absolutely been great i missed a couple of them But I've loved the fact that there was two AAs and an Al-Anon on all of the panels. Even though a lot of the Al-Aons have also been members of AA, they came from the Al Anon perspective. And when I was listening to Chuck Friday night share his story, I didn't relate to him from the AL-Anone perspective as the parent with the alcoholic daughter. I related to the alcoholic daugher. and one of the great things for me to do is always to listen to the members of al-anon to learn and remind myself the big fat lie i used to tell myself i'm the only one i'm hurting and i couldn't have been more mistaken anybody who cares about us comes in contact with us gets infected as well as affected and i certainly told myself that big fat lie um not too long ago i had i i know you have a lot of clubs and fellowships and stuff like that around in this community and we do too in the bay area and usually they have like a maybe be a morning meeting, a noon, a 5.30 or 6, and then an evening meeting. And if you get locked into one of those time zones, you generally don't go flipping around time zones. You pretty much stick to your time. Well, I was sharing at this fellowship on Monday at a noon meeting, and just by happenstance, the next day at the 5. 30. So it's a pretty good chance you're not going to see anybody who was at the noon meeting I mean only got one story and so you know it's not going to change all that much in uh less than you know 36 hours so hopefully not anyway right I mean you can as we know but and so there's a guy there at the noon meeting he says hey aren't you talking tomorrow night at 5 30 I said yeah he says Well, next time, tell the racy stuff. And like, the rcy stuff? Okay, let's see. When I came in, what did I think was the ricy stuff? And I would hear you share that you'd lost your family because of drinking. Now, some of them came back. Some of them did not. Some of whom got new families. But I heard you lost your familia, and I thought, good. This is a good deal. I want to get rid of my family, you know? Good. Well, the reason I wanted to get rid of them was because they're always talking about my drinking. And I was asked to leave their home because of my drinking, and that was the part I kind of overlooked, is that while I thought that was a good idea where I really live, I knew I had been asked to live because of me. Because of my drink. They never knew what kind of a house they were coming into, what they were going to be coming home to, what mood or attitude or person I would be because I was that Jekyll and Hyde even I knew that in that last year that I was very much a Jekiell and Hyne except for me you know the Jekyl Dr. Jekll is the well-loved and happy guy and in but he's got this curiosity about that dark side and he creates a potion that transforms him to that. But he can always come back and he becomes this Mr. Hyde and he can do things he could not do as Dr. Jekyll. Well, pretty soon that dark side is the only one that is pronounced with or without the potion. Well, I'm in that in reverse. I'm Mr. Hyd, the dark negative person and you give me a bottle of whiskey and the potion changes me into that happy-go-lucky Dr. Jekyll. I don't know that Mr. Hyde for me is the words described in the doctor's opinion of restless and irritable and discontented. I don' t know that, but I do know what makes me feel better. I do now what makes the world come into technicolor, and that's that potion called whiskey. And so that was the first thing I thought, but that wasn't exactly a good thing but I looked at it as a good thing and I heard you talk about totaling out cars and I looked at that and I said you know I have never totaled out a car officially okay and what that meant to me is although I had a little drunk car that arrived to Alcoholics Anonymous the kind when you start off you buy them and they're rectangular right and then when you drink and drive like I do they get rounded out with the drunk bumps and things that got in your way. Things are missing, falling off. The driver's window had been shot out. And my gas cap was a mitten I had stuck in there, okay? I mean, I'm like driving a Molotov cocktail around basically, you know, but no big deal. and so that I dismiss that you had talked about your drunk driving charges the numerous ones and and I thought of course I drove under the influence varying degrees but I don't remember driving sober from the time I got a license but see I worked for the city judge towards the end and so I knew all the police on the force in this small town and so when they stopped me for drunk driving they took away my booze and told me to go home so I didn't have any of those drunk drivings you talked about losing jobs and I tried one time to be an entrepreneur I tried to be a drug dealer now can you see me as a drug dealer I don't think so but I had a great idea to make money and I bought a sheet of lard or acid but I was my only customer okay end of the career of being a drug dealer and and you know so I had a series of legitimate tax-paying jobs because I was losing a series tax paying little jobs and and when you talked about losing jobs it was like okay well maybe maybe I have lost a few and maybe I quit before I lost a fume but that last year for me I had acquired a very bad habit of quitting in blackouts okay this is the problem because you go to work the next day not knowing you have quit you know it is so awkward you know so I heard you talk about these things and then I heard the women the women talked about the years of prostitution I'm like you could charge for that you know my miss that opportunity so I I say this because I really was introduced to you with a clear definition of I am NOT bad enough to be an alcoholic. I looked at what I shared with you saying, and I made the comparisons of how I did that, and it was so teeny-weeny tiny. It doesn't count. So I've got years of drinking ahead of me and lots of quantity ahead of my life. We heard the destructive stories of alcoholism from Chuck, from Larry and they went down much, much farther than I did on their course. So I'm here to talk to the ones who don't think they've qualified yet. The ones who think I'm not that bad. I didn't sink to that level or this level. There is no identifier as to quantity or length of time that we ask you when you arrive here. we reach our own and nobody can get us there any sooner than we do our own inside bottom the outside bottom i'd hit and bounce and hit and bouncing hit and bounds maybe skid a while and everyone who cared about me hoped that was quote bottom for me it was simply a shrug things happen oh well better be careful next time but there was no no admission of a problem and when we see people come in regardless of age if they are done destroying their life and can't live that way anymore that's the only thing I need to know I don't need to know how long you've been drinking because page 33 in our big book took those two excuses away from me when it said it's not about paraphrasing, not about the quantity and not aboutthe length of time darn it, you know I was really planning on having a longer drinking run I don' t know if I would have made it the years that Chuck and Larry did we'll never know and I hope we never find out but I know that the day finally came when I did hit bottom and it was a Saturday and it was, I'd been introduced to you 10 months earlier I wasn't interested in being an alcoholic, I was I observed from a distance I was introduced through a treatment program and of course I'd sit in the back of the room alcoholic synonyms, it was earlier mentioned by one speakers that AA came into. I think Troy, all the facilities that he'd been in AA had come into there and this was my first introduction to the words Alcoholics Anonymous and alcoholism and sobriety. These are foreign words. These people seem really nice but they don't drink so we don't have anything in common here. I do not want what you have. So what happens is that I am introduced to you in 10 months later, finally after the end of a second relapse, I hit bottom. Now my second relapsed was about as exciting as, I mean it was just like a so, a no nothing. You know how when you blow up a balloon and you let the air out and it goes that was my second relapse okay really not a worth the mention except the fact that it was the very thing that kicked me off the fence of reservation and indecision the first time alcoholism got below my eyebrows first time alcoholism was felt not just thought and the two-foot drop we talk about when I finally like in chapter three says admitted to my innermost self that I'm an alcoholic and what that looked like for me is I don't want to live this way anymore. I'd heard you say when you're running your own life, you have an idiot at the helm. Check that off for right information because that's what I had been doing. I did not want to do anything here except get below the radar of everybody watching me so I can go back to doing what I'd been doing which was drinking every day. Not to be confused with what alcoholics do my case is different I just love to drink and I didn't understand that until that night that I was an alcoholic and what happened is that when I when I had that moment and it was just a moment it felt like a hot white light moment was that between this breath of I don't want to live this way anymore in the next breath a thought came into my mind and I know it was God that said those people in AA seemed to know what to do and I made a decision to make that one degree turn that I would re-seek them out now one degrees doesn't seem like very much at the beginning but you know whether you're driving or skiing or doing whatever you do one degree and you keep on that new path the degrees get wider from the original destructive journey I was on and the next day was a Sunday and I was sober all day long and I had stepped my meetings up from one a month to one a week so I was going to add all of one meeting a week ramped it up there And the way I did meetings, I walked in when it started, left when it was over, got her done, check off the AA, go to the AA meeting on your to-do list of the week. I was treating it like a checklist item. And I decided, well, I'm going to go early. I went 20 minutes early to the meeting. That felt like I was going the day before, you know? God, who goes that way? well, when you pull up in the parking lot of the home groups I've had, you're late 20 minutes before the meeting because there is a bunch of people there. The long-timers are there probably on their second cup of coffee so that goofy people like me can ask questions on how do you do this thing, can watch and observe they're there early to make sure they're available. and I did something else quite out of character and that was I asked a question. If I ask a question, that means I don't know the answer and even though I don' t know the answer, I don''t want you to know I don ''t know the answer and so my way to ask for help was simply asking these men and women, what do you do to stay sober? And they knew the kid meant business. They knew something. They'd been seeing me dancing around these rooms long enough, and as important as that question was because it was my way of kind of announcing my surrender, what was more important then and now was how I was going to listen to their answer. If I have no intention of doing anything they say, I have just wasted their time. But that was not the case that day. And so when I asked that question, they began to share with me, and I had to listen still today with certain thoughts. I cannot do the yeah buts. I have to eliminate, and I tell this to people I work with at our repeat relapsers, you have to eliminate the words, I know. If you know already, you will not change. You will not learn and you don't need me then. I needed to be willing to not know anything to have the new experience. I had to be willingness to listen without conditions, without negotiating it down because i dumb it down i don't add more meetings i cut them down and then i'll trim that down and so i had to listen fully open-minded with basically simply oh okay or yes or i will it could not be negotiated down to the nothingness that i want to do and yet expect all the benefits and so they began to tell me that and I believe this today that one day at a time we don't take the first drink and in my case any of those other things that affect me from the neck up we don' t take that first drink and we get a sobriety date being sober the program will make so much more sense just a thought putting it out there that spaghetti will stick as they say you know? And so I knew I was all in. And so I took that as my sobriety date, and it still is. And that was February the 8th, 1976, which means I've been walking with you for over 42 years. That means that I also got sober when I was young. You know, I love being 42 years sober and 39 years old, you know. Science has accomplished that you know no I uh I got sober when I was 18 years old I never intended to I've never to this moment had a legal drink of alcohol I hope I never do and um but I I took my first drink at 12 years old not gonna not gonna we've had wonderful explanations the disease of active alcoholism. I'm just going to share a little blip or two on mine in case there may be someone here who still doesn't identify. Maybe something will be of help that you are one of us and I unlike many of our speakers who shared over the weekend, I was not from a home of alcoholism my parents are social drinkers if they drink. My father enjoyed his whiskey highball type of drink my mother um she had a drink uh a glass of sherry at an thanksgiving dinner half of the glass of cherry and she's you know i got a headache she's flush i'm like oh man you never would have made this program you know and prior to that it had been decades since she'd had a drank i mean so she just no and these are nice people you know i had always wanted to be a southern bell god started me off in south dakota okay so i eventually get there but we start in south dakota a little town and and nice people hard work in midwest tax paying lawn mowing cookie bacon church going type of people nice people good work ethic they have one child it's me and I was a standard only child entitled in my mind the world revolves around me gimme gimme do for me do for мне and at 12 years old my world is really going to change a lot my parents will start the year off. They will separate and divorce. My father will eventually remarry. I have my first drink in April of that year. It's 1970, and like many of you, I remember that first night of drinking and drunk. And it was Monday when I was invited by the cool kids in school to go to this upcoming party. That is not alcoholic, that is simply a 12-year-old, normal 12- year-old wanting a group of friends to hang out with but I didn't belong with the athletes and I didn' t belong with the academics and I don' t know why I was drawn to these people. They were smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, skipping school and I was just drawn to them, you know? And that wasn't who I was, but this was interesting. This had the shiny on it. They invited me Monday for the upcoming party on Friday. Oh, this is my debut. I've got to make this good. And I woke up Friday morning and I have my good ideals as I awaken, you know be a good daughter obey the rules do the right thing stay out of trouble I mean that that is just who I am and then in spot number two right behind that so I'm gonna get drunk tonight I don't know how you do it and I somehow heard them talk about drinking I don'T know where I got the idea I've never seen anybody drunk prior to that night which would be myself um i made the decision to get drunk because that seemed to be the most assured way that i could get that stamp of approval and a part of that group and uh like i said like many of you i remember my first night of drinking and my drunk many of the people who were there where it was and so forth i don't know what i first drank because it was going around in a brown paper bag and I couldn't wait till it got to me. I don't know what's in it, it doesn't matter, I just know it's alcohol. That's all I need to know and when it came around to me, I did what I thought I saw them do and I went glug, glug and gave it to the next guy. Well let me tell you, I was not prepared for that was going to taste like. I mean it ripped out my throat and stomped on it you know i just oh my god but i'm trying to look cool on the outside everything's good and yet on the inside you know I've got this comic going on as cartoon and and as it's going down though there's this quiet little voice that comes back and says don't worry you can always get another throat just go for it just do what you're doing okay okay and it went down that first time and hit that bottom that innermost self bottom and while no parade went off my shoulders relaxed and I've got this warm glow two inches behind my belly button and I'm thinking you know I'm 12 years old and oatmeal has never done this for me you know. I don't know what's in there I want some more though and when it came back around I want some more of that feeling i do the glug glug give it to the next guy my throat's a little seasoned now so it's not quite as affected and when it went down the second time if there is a we talk about this invisible line we cross from social to alcoholic drinking if there is this line it i just pole vaulted over that thing and i went from drink number one please accept me to drink number two aren't you glad i'm here oh wow how do you get from there to their direct line was booze sign me up i am on board i will be your best customer i mean i just moved into a world i loved being in and that night would set a lot of patterns for me that don't necessarily make me an alcoholic I set the patterns up of drinking as much and as fast and whatever and whenever with whoever I would black out I passed out I had my first case of the dry heaves those were all night number one and what it said to me was because I'm seeing it through my eyes first experience y'all obviously have this happen too no wonder you're drinking but what i didn't know i was the only little kid that got drunk in that room that night but i'm looking at it and like okay this is the package okay check i got it i understand this is how this all works now this isthe pros and the cons but there are no bad things about it okay a little this little that but what i don't know is i have just activated two things the two symptoms i do understand that differentiate me from the non-alcoholic or the heavy drinker i've activated the mental obsession i woke up friday morning mentally obsessed with drinking and i've never even had a drink and saturday morning i told you friday money was good ideals in spot number one and drinking and number two, those are now in reverse. And I wake up thinking about drinking and everything that goes along with it. And the good ideals one by one fade in importance, effort, attention. And I don't know that because my alcoholic life has absolutely taken over as if I had been doing this a long time. the things I would do willingness to do were just invisible the transformation happened to me the other thing I activated was that allergy the phenomenon of craving that when you told me that when I first came here I didn't understand because I don't have any other allergies I did not know the abnormal reaction that for most people do not have and when I looked back at that I saw, that it was insatiable. I took that first drink and I felt I could not get enough. I drink water, I drink coffee, I drink soft drinks. I don't have that feeling of I cannot get enough but with alcohol I did and so that took me to the next night, Saturday night, I'm drinking at 12 years old drinking night number two alone in the garage that's my social drinking experience was the night before drink number one and I get caught because I'm a dumb alcoholic and um I don't know how to do this well yet and I gets caught and my thinking was you know you really are only 12 years old maybe you should wait till the year of legal age. No, that was not my answer. My answer was I'm going to have to learn how to lie better. That was my solution at 12 years old, night number two of drinking. My drinking progressed like many of yours and the only two things that got added to my drinking was a year later. I'm 13. I drink whiskey out of a bottle. I chase it with beer and I find that I blackout too quickly so I need to find something to help keep me alert and I found things like speed and acid will do that and they will really they will they'll help you get wherever you're going quicker and in color you know and I loved that I mean that was a great program for me and then when i was 16 i don't know the day or anything but it just i kind of morphed into having a little just a little something in the morning it could be alcohol tablets smokable liquid solid form it didn't matter but i just kind of morphed that in the morning it always fixed the hangovers it always made me feel better But I wasn't checking that out with other friends. Do you have a beer before you go to school? I'm not checking that out with anybody. So at 17 and a half years old, towards the end of my senior year of high school, I have now been expelled for the third and final time because of my drinking. In 1975, nice girls in small towns, that usually doesn't happen. And my father had tried the B of the ABCs, that no human power could have relieved my alcoholism. Boy, if a human power would have, he would have. And he tried really everything he could possibly think of and did not know. That's why I was so identified with a check on the other end and got to see my father in Chuck, him desperately trying to cure, save, maneuver his 15-year-old daughter. And my father finally sought professional advice and they knew what he was dealing with. And so they said, whilst you still have the legal custody to do so, you need to commit her to a treatment program. So when I showed up looking for money one more time, they had other plans. And I one more time found myself in the back of a police car, but for a different reason. I was escorted to this little town called Grand Forks, North Dakota, for treatment. And I get there in May of 1975, and it was a Friday. And Fridays have always been such a great—I love Fridays, no matter what, drunk or sober, they're still my favorite day of the week. And I first drink on a Friday, and I'm introduced to you on a Saturday. And I'm more mad about it being on a Friday. I would have been much more negotiable on Monday, you know. But they knew I wouldn't have been found on Monday. And so I was in this place. I was introduced to you for the very first time. It was a four-week program. I was there seven weeks. We would have meetings brought into us. And again, as I shared with you before, I would listen to your stories and I'd find all the differences. Not one time during these next 10 months did I ever, ever hear anyone say to me I was too young to be an alcoholic. I was the only one saying that. I wasthe one who kept me different from you. You never did anything but reach out a hand of welcome, how can we help, and I just pushed that away because I'm too youngto quit drinking, for God's sakes. and I first rebelled because I think you should at least be of legal age to buy alcohol before you start calling people alcoholics that was a petition I tried to get going to no success and because I know that alcoholism doesn't care who you are, what you are where you came from, whatyouknow, whatyoudontknow whatyouhave, whatydon'thave because it'll be happy to take it all, little by little. And we're happy to give it up for the illusion and the delusion of what we're going to get. So I was in this program. I did the first five steps half-heartedly just out of rote to get out of there. I was, in June of that year, sent to an all-women's halfway house in Minneapolis. there i was to uh do um one at least one aa meeting a month and not drink or do any other things because people are trying to put their life together grantedly so and i understood that and i i thought well i can do one aa meaning a month i'm not i'm gonna go to two like join aa no i don't think so um so i was there for seven months i did one aa reading a month I knew, but I don't know if I could have told you. But I knew I wasn't going to tell you that I will drink again. I just don't Know the When or the Why or the How. And seven months went by. I went to visit my mother in California for a two-and-a-half-week holiday. She lived in San Jose. The first week I'm hanging out with the people I used to drink with and the last week-and a half drunk and loaded with them. No surprise. But there was a surprise. The no surprise was that I had done absolutely nothing to protect my sobriety. I hadn't given it no value, no effort, no desire. Finally, the opportunity easily presented itself and I took full advantage of it. The surprise, however, was for seven months, I have thought of it much differently. I couldn't wait to get back to the lights, the party, the dancing going on, the laughter, the gaiety and all that. That was not even remotely what happened. My memory recalls a couple of drinks and into a blackout I went and that next week and a half is a blur. I do not remember anything about that. The next conscious memory I really have is on a flight home to Minneapolis. And a little bit of feeling bad, I wouldn't even say remorse, just a little bit of feeling bad I've let some people down I've learned my lesson it never once again got below my eyebrows and the only thing I changed is I went from one meeting a month to one a week and so for five weeks I went to meetings once a week that Sunday meeting and on a Friday I get another Friday I Get a Letter in the Mail from these friends in California that had one joint in it and I decided to keep it because I thought you know you just never know when you're gonna when you gonna need this you know I was so shocked it was I needed it the next day it's just wow the timing was phenomenal you know uh-huh I opened up that letter and boy you know i start plotting and planning and I'm I'm not going to tell anybody. I don't want you messing up my mission, and that next day was a Saturday, and I had it all scoped out. I maneuvered and manipulated the time, and I smoked that one joint, and the conflict within me was so tremendous. It was only going to be one. I wasn't going to go out searching for more, so it was going to Be Secret. It's none of your business anyway was my attitude. That's the attitude of defense. and yet it was the very thing that would kick me off the fence. I was altered enough to no longer be in reality, but not anywhere where I didn't care anymore. It was just the off bubble that it gave me that was so uncomfortable. And that, I call it my driest martini because I'm an alcoholic to the core. Anything I did non-liquid was just to accelerate and lengthen the drinking, delay the blackout. But I am an alcoholic to the core. And that would be the last day to this, that I would take something to change the way that I feel and think by my own hand. And I did not know that. And so everybody gets a sobriety date. Everybody gets sober, whether you're in AA or not. It's how do I stay that way? How do I live a different way than just, because I thought it was you put the plug in the jug and you go to meetings. I was greatly mistaken. Those are two of the physical things I needed to do in order to have the rest of the things they shared with me come alive. Because I could do and had the not drinking. Didn't stay that way, didn't want to stay that way. Now I want to. But I know it's got to take more than just information and willpower. I knew even young, dumb, and goofy at 18 years old that I have to get into some action. And so the remainder of the things is how I've been able to keep this sobriety date. God, without a doubt, has been the foundation of all of this. But the actions they told me was, number one, we go to a lot of meetings and we get a home group. So I have always gone to a lots of meetings. I've lived in four different parts of the country. Therefore, I've had four different home groups because I've moved out of the area. It doesn't mean that I haven't wanted to change home groups but I learned early on they said well if you move from one group because of a personality I assure you there'll be a personality in the next one and the next 1a you're the common denominator B you'll run out of groups so so it was just easier to stay because I don't know about you but I know in my home group everyone I've had there's always been a couple of people that I just feel would be happier in another home group. I know these things, right? I never tell them that, but I know these things and yet I'm the one who gets to learn and to change. A home group, so I've had four different home groups, four different cities, and when I moved up to Concord this 18 years ago, I realized I've also had four different last names so each home group had a different last name to it you know just kind of how that worked out a home group taught me you know they say you learn everything you need to in kindergarten i have no recall of kindergarten but i know that a home group has taught me everything and life's lessons i needed to know because of the learning how to interact with people, learning how to be in business meetings, disagree with you and yet we walk out giving each other a hug. Learning how to be accountable, responsible, how to grow up. Oh my god I was such a juvenile and delinquent and emotionally three-year-old for so many years it was finally you showed me and gave me the opportunity to finally grow up because I was sick of being a child all the time inside. You've shown me about the love of service, the importance of rotation, the importance of allowing other people to have the really fun jobs too. You've just shown me again how to place principles before personalities. In my third home group when I lived in Southern California, I was a member of the Bellflower Big Book Group, Larry's current home group as well and my husband and I would, my first husband and we would separate and end our marriage after five years and nine months. And we were all, you know, me and the soon-to-be ex he and the brand new she, we were always together. We were all members of the same home group, okay? So nobody got custody of the home group. And so we have to learn how to live to be a grown up people and behave well. And it was very, very, very important to me many things. I know some people have been in that situation and were boy meets girl on AA campus, but they also break up on AA campus. And the importance of placing principles before personalities, the reminder that while we might meet each other here, that's not the purpose that I attend AA meetings. It's for myself and my own spiritual growth, but for the service before and after the meeting, to work the room, to be available to, I should say, work the Room even more so of those unfamiliar faces. And not just do a drive-by, hi, how are you? Hi, how're you? That's kind of pointless. But to have an eyeball conversation, because see, I think hi how are you is actually a question it's not most people fine as they're you know going by so it's it's one of those dismissive things I have a pet thing on but anyway um to actually engage you know and chat with that person and if they're I don't know if they're new still drunk or 100 years sober I'm gonna find out because I need to be in service to let that new face be as comfortable in that room as I am, to have that warm welcome. And so this home group, it was important to me that when I pulled up in the parking lot, whatever was going on personally was left in the car, that I got one job and one job only in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that is to be of service, to look for those folks who can I be useful to, not chat with my buddies, but to who can i be of service to and my goal was if i knew where they are what they're doing i'm not doing my job good enough i am not doing it thoroughly enough and so this gave me that extra push and edge as to how to be a member one among many in that home group um they talked to me about sponsorship um i have had two sponsors uh they've both gone to the big meeting. They were 45 and 53 years sober, both had sponsors when they died. My current sponsor, Dave knows a woman named Millie G. She is 96 years old, 49 years sober and still is in five meetings a week with commitments in all of them. And to add to that, she wears a skirt and high heels, okay, so high heels to her home group, not flats. She wears high heels at 96 years of age. I mean she rocks it. She lives the three legacies. All of my sponsors have lived the example of what the three Legacies in your life looks like because I believe very strongly in three Legacy sponsorship because I feel if I only give them the steps, I'm cheating them of the great value I got learning how to do the traditions and the concepts and service work in my life. And so sponsorship, getting passed on to me is great, but the glow won't stay until I pass it on. And the people I sponsor are expected to sponsor, and if nothing else, find your area of service. But you cannot be a taker and be in my sponsorship group. I will not sponsor takers. don't have time to convince you why it's a good idea if my own life is not demonstration enough. You don't Have To, but then you don't need me. I'm here to take people and help them go to that next level if they want to, to reactivate. And my message more today is for those who might be feeling a little on that bored side that they've been here doing this long enough and they may have gotten the thought of let the newcomers do it. Maybe their enthusiasms waned a little bit. Maybe it's been a while since they've been to a meeting and they decided to come to FOTS just for the heck of it. I hope that when you leave this weekend, not just because of something I said, but that you leave reinvigorated, that maybe there's some long-timers in your community you haven't seen in a while. Maybe they need a ride. Maybe they can't drive at night. Maybe something's going on. Reach out to them. Bring them back into the life of the fellowship, the fellowship of the spirit. Bring them in because we lose too many because I get assumptions that they're okay and maybe they're not. So the 12th step isn't just for the brand new drunk coming off of a drunk. It is for all of us, all of me, to remind myself to reach out to that person who I haven't maybe seen in a while. Wonder why. Are they alright? So sponsorship and service, they taught me about the traditions. They said, yes, the traditions are for the group, but you are a member of a group. You need to understand what the traditions Are about so you can apply them and be an informed member, not just a visitor, not just attend your meeting, but be a member of a Group. While you're at it, why don't you try and apply those traditions in your personal relationships never thought of that because when it when you're an only child it's very easy to think all about me and i and i know this is silly but it was like i had this mirror always in front of my face that i'm the only person i saw and then the traditions helped me bring that down and it's like oh there's people out there okay ah and And it becomes this, well, common welfare and singleness of purpose and self-support and group conscience and respecting autonomy, respecting outside opinions, anonymity, nonprofessionalism. I mean, all of this, wow, okay. And I began to have and continue to have different relationships with people based on applying the traditions in that personal level. They talked to me about taking the steps. and for me so my sponsors have all been of that old school they were of the school that you were handed the book and said okay read this and we'll talk about it they have not sat down with me knee to knee pen and paper and highlighter and kleenex and dictionaries and all that which I love doing but at the time that I got sober this was not a common practice and so I bumbled and fumbled and tumbled through the steps best as I could. I wrote that inventory, I looked at those defects and I made the amends best I could and was in 10, 11, and 12 and trying to keep my day clean and so on and so forth and I was in a meeting of AA or in service every single night my first four years and just shy of my fourth birthday I moved to Atlanta so I finally got to the south and uh I got a home group locked in a sponsor locked in and I um took a four-year cake and all of a sudden there's this like you know you're four years sober you know something now I have no idea what I knew but I knew I knew it and I made some decisions that number one seven meetings a week. A lot of meetings. I think I'm going to, I'm hearing this balance tossed around in the rooms. I'm gonna get me some of that like you go to the store to get some or something. I mean it get me sum of that balance. Now in a new community a meeting a day and visiting different places is the perfect thing to do but I did the exact opposite. And I went from seven to two to three meetings a week which quickly became two and I'm going to get me some balance now even a first grader knows the math of two nights with you and five with me is not balanced and it's not like I had elder care or child care or going to school or any no it was television I mean I'm sitting there watching television and of which I haven't watched in years other than a little news usually on the daily basis so I'm watching television what's now happening is my meeting participation is shrinking on both sides instead I get to my meeting an hour beforehand okay it doesn't start too late I get there at seven and I'm usually the only one for about five or seven minutes. But here, I'm getting there now. Now it's getting closer and closer to where I'm. Getting there five minutes before the meeting, walking up to my coffee and sit down because that's what I got time for. I am the last person to leave because I locked the gates. And so, but here it's gets shorter and shorter and shorter to the point where now we say the prayer, amen, shake, shake and you're looking at my taillights already out the driveway. This has gotten back to got her done, check it off the AA box, got AA done for the week on the to-do list. And I have gone in two years from four to six years sober, I felt like I'd been in the sunlight of the spirit because I was active and in the middle of you, and I put myself in the corner of a dark alley and wonder why I'm so restless, irritable, and discontented. I take a six-year cake, and I came up with a plan. People, places, and things are going to make me happy. Now, the real wording's called men, money, and mansions are goingto make me happen, okay? So I'm on a mission. And three weeks later, I meet a little fellow. By gosh, he's got all the things I'm looking for. I'll follow them up with him I'm sure eventually but right now let's get the priorities straight and he's got all the things I'm looking for. Hey, he'd even been sober 13 years. Hadn't been to a meeting in three but no problem. I've got a plan and I'll get him back into AA and this wonderful AA couple and we were in this whirlwind romance for three months and I was the only one involved thank you and finally this guy went off and married somebody else so I let him go and I turned just all right start over and um up pops another little fella all the qualifications are met we do this dance of delusion for three months in he goes down the aisle with somebody else. I tell you, I have married off more men. I should be the dating site, you know? So six years and nine months of sobriety I came crashing back in mentally, emotionally and spiritually back into Alcoholics Anonymous with an urge! And physically I had never left you. Physically I had stayed sober but this is my first again real reminder that while I could be physically sober that is not the same as recovery. Recovery is our first legacy this is what we go to get relieved of the obsession is the steps of recovery not just put that plug in the jug and that's what I'd gotten down to was plugging the jug and showing up in meetings and I had another major surrender it's like the first one in February 76 was to the substances and yes my life did change here at 6.9 years I'm surrendering to the illness of alcoholism and I took those steps again as if I'd never seen him before. And I really felt like I had started off facing that direction and by the time I got to the 12th step, I was in a new direction. I felt a new connection with a higher power, with you, with a sense of purpose. And it says, as they beautifully described, it doesn't say for me, start over and do more step work and more inventory work on yourself. It says go out and help someone who doesn't know. And by doing so, I am reliving, resharing, growing with, and walking through the steps again, but not on just this only for me kind of basis, which just felt so selfish. I'm doing more me, me, my work when I need to do help you, you, your work. And yet it does all come around, and so I got busy. I remember being about a year later I'm about eight years sober and I was sitting in my home group and I've got just this teeny twinge of restless irritable and discontent and again because I'm regular in my home group and everything I heard the speaker that night talk about being many years sober feeling that way and he said I realized I was trying to live today which we've identified many times that this is the important day for me that I was trying to live today on last year's program and that's all I heard that man say and it took a huge shift in my life that this IS the day that counts and what I found I'd been doing as I was getting a little pat on the back aren't you doing such a good job, aren't your wonderful retaking those steps finally making that last amend like I shared about yesterday and I realized that I hadn't been getting in this day in staying and living here that I was still patting myself on the back for yesterdays. That again was a nugget that changed the course of my path and so this has been my beautiful experience with the steps and continues to be. They talked to me about service um or i and um you know service they said was very clearly the stuff you do outside of meetings outside of your home group having a commitment in your home Group wasn't an option it was part of what being a member of a home group is and that's why in my community it saddens me because we have uh a number of groups but we have got a gajillion meetings and meetings are fine, but we have way more many of them than we have committed groups with a lot of commitments and things like that in it. I have visited an AA group, and I was so jazzed by all the commitments and the service and the enthusiasm was just out the roof. That's the kind of group I need to be a part of because I know me. I'll dwindle it down, dumb it down. make it bare bones again spending five nights with tv and two with you you know i can't afford to do that and so with service even if they said to me you know what deb we are full up on commitments i'd say well that's fine i will make one up um i'll be the de-greeter so when people are leaving i'll say thank you for coming um i will be the parking lot pre-greeder You know, I need the commitment because I will move into entitlement and take her in a heartbeat. I need The Commitment way more than the group needs me to have one. And I need to keep that service as part of what I do today. the one story I like to tell on myself because it really tells me a lot of messages was some years ago I was invited to share in my community at a 6 30 a.m meeting now for some of you that may not be a big deal but I might as well stay up all night in order to make a 6 30 a.m meeting you know i don't wear baseball caps and flip-flops to my meetings and i certainly don't do it for speaking and i don'T wake up and look like this okay i mean this takes planning and time and focus and you know you've got to have a coffee on board you know before you start putting the package together so you know this just doesn't go out the door and so I check my calendar yes I'm available I hang up and I think does he have any idea what he's just asked I mean this is like going beyond any lengths you know when he's asking me to do this and so for the next while I go back and forth I'm down to two voices now I go back and forth with, I don't, that's so early. I know maybe you'll get sick the day before. But you have, you know, a back and fourth and back and fourth of how am I going to get out of this? And yet I know I'm not going to gets out of it right. I'm expressing this to anybody. I just all the chatters inside. And finally, it's like the day goes, okay, hold it. Stop. let me make sure i got this right all right you you've been invited to share your story with whoever wants to listen about your journey and experience strength and open alcoholics synonymous you say you love aa you love the life you give love is an action word it's not something you just sit around and say love love love and you do nothing about it so you say that and you're saying that 6 30 a.m on this friday is inconvenient yes okay let's flip that coin over and what if they said to you that at 6 30 am on this Friday was where the booze and the boys were going to be would that have been inconvenient god no god right I'd have been there at six o'clock they're late They're late. Where are they? I know they said 630, but come on. And it made me realize how many times that I would recall a situation. I never gave a pause. And it's too early. It's too late. I got to go to school. I gotto go to work. I gotta save money. I gotta do something. For the drinking and dying, there was never a pause there was always an enthusiastic you bet yeah let's go I'll do there I'll be there I'll drive you know I mean whatever right I mean I remember going driving an hour and a half on a rumor there was a party somewhere not a problem and I never gave that a pause a look back or a second thought And yet, to share the amazing life that I've been given in Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll internally, I won't do it externally, but I'll internally grumble about it. Of course I do the commitment and you know how it is when you leave, we're walking on air, you're just floating really good, you've met somebody and blah blah. And so service, service. I can't do with an expectation that I am going to get anything out of it My purpose is to, what can I bring to this? You know, who am I talking to? Am I talking To high schoolers? Or am I Talking to seniors? Am I Talking To all women? Or a mixed group? Am I Talking in a detox? Or am i In a treatment facility? Where am i sharing my story? Be mindful of Who i'm sharing it with. And the other thing they said Was carry the message. And every one of us In this room Just like Lori was told at 19 days, go give her your phone number. You've got 11 days more than she does. Every one of us has a story. Today just happens to be you get to listen to my story. But you had speakers last year, last night, this weekend. You'll have them next year. Is that my cutoff? That's the train, not my ending time. Okay. Everybody else got two hours. I'm going for it, too. No. Don't worry. Don't worry. I mean, sometimes I wonder if anybody else hears what I hear. You know what I mean? So I have lived in four different communities and grateful for every move because i have learned that there isn't just one way there's different experiences and that it's not wrong it's just different and to seek the fellowship that i crave to i have been married i've been divorced i've being single most of most of my life but i met a um a man here an alcoholic synonymous i he and i got married he just turned 30 years sober in case you forgot I'm 42 he's 30 I'm 12 years more longer than him spiritually advanced and I only use that when I need to but some of the people here know Kent and know what an awesome man that he is and one of the great members of Alcoholics Dumbest. I know he's been a tremendous love and inspiration to me. And so we're married a year, got married in 2001 in April. And in 2002, on our year anniversary, we were back in Atlanta. And this is the last, the important people, places and stuff in my life that I wanted to show him. And so, we're back there. I'm 26 years sober at this time. and so we go to my old home group on the friday night it was fun exciting and all that saturday we have our morning going on and we have uh we're scheduled to be at a lunch with a mixed group of people these aren't a people it's a mixed groups of people and and so we sit down for lunch and there's pre-poured wine on the table now as i said in 26 i've been around alcohol i don't hang out in bars or anything but i've been around many functions where alcohol's offered, served at dinner, so on and so forth. I know how to say no, turn the glass over. I don't have to repeat chapter three or anything like that, you know. I just, you know, most people don't care but this is pre-poured and I confirmed the beverage and I just knee-jerk reaction just moved it out of my reach and during the rest of that lunch I just had this very odd sort of awareness. I don't recall really looking at and watching how people drink, but this particular lunch I did. And I would be going from watching them. There was like 10 of us at lunch, and they had two bottles of wine on the table. Clearly there is not problem drinking going on at this table. Two bottles for 10 people, and two of us, of course, are not going to be drinking they don't even finish the bottles none most of them don't finish their drinks their sippers and then they talk talk talk and eat eat eat a little sip and so forth and I would have this out-of-body vision of me uh-huh pow you know and how differently the visual was showing me how differently they and I would drink. This particular event, however, little did I know would affect within me for the next six months like a chemical imbalance and a craving for drunkenness. Now I say that specifically like that because number one, I don't know any other way to describe what the feeling was it wasn't a mental obsession um if there was a mental obsession with stay safe stay ever vigilant stay ever alert ever aware almost on higher alert but it was like a chemical imbalance i know some of the gals will relate to this like when you have a craving for chocolate okay lemon will not take that away okay and if you don't get that chocolate fairly soon the intensity is like this give me the chocolate and nobody gets hurt you know and and when we get that chocolate we're ah that's exactly how this felt but the need was drunkenness and I'm not talking having a beer or a glass of champagne. I'm talking blotto, cannot walk talk, get off the floor kind of drunk the kind I had been and I don't know where this is coming from. This is scaring me because it's now lasting a few days and it's moving into weeks and I've never heard anybody share about this kind thing and I'm thinking, I'm scared. Do I not have a very good program? What's going on? I fragnantly speak it to my sponsor and my husband because I don't even know how to describe it. I thought well let me take a look at what has taken people out in the past because what I've generally seen is about two years before the drink the physical liquid drink something started a couple years ago the drink was taken a while ago it started maybe with a resentment or a new relationship or maybe moving or somehow I start taking everybody's inventory and this gets unwet and then now I'm starting to not be as involved and basically I start whittling down and whittled down and looking at all of wrongs you're doing, losing that connection with God. And so I started looking at, well, are you lying, stealing, cheating anybody, keeping secrets, doing inappropriate behavior? No. Are you active in your home group with sponsoring, sponsor, sharing with God and service work? Yes. well then how could that get in there this thing hovered like a buzzard just circling and I, again I just didn't even know how to talk about it to people and finally it's about six months of this has gone on and I was at a meeting one morning and I usually don't go to morning meetings but I happened to this day, and I felt fine, and I leave the meeting, and I'm on my way home, and I'm gripped with the terror that I would like go into a brownout and drink against my will. Almost like going to like a Stepford trance, you know? And get some alcohol, and next thing I know, I'm drunk, and the car is smashed, and all this kind of stuff. And I am terrified of this, again, this visual out-of-body. and um i call my sponsor i mean one of the many many times at this particular day god knew i needed her more than anybody else on the planet at that time and i dial my sponsor and my husband still longhand i don't speed dial them because i need to always make sure that my brain will kick into their phone number i can't do the dog ate the phone or anything like that or ran out and so I called her I was so afraid I was crying and she simply said honey what we have is alcoholism not alcohol-wasm now that's not new, I've heard that, I know that I believe that but for some reason hearing that at that moment allowed me to start to exhale that I'm not defective I do believe, in Chapter 3 it talks about that we are in the grip of a progressive illness, that over any considerable period of time, it gets worse, never better. And I believe that just because I put that plug in the jug years ago, that alcoholism is alive and well. and if I believe that then I had better be in the action of a progressive recovery that it's more than just not drinking and showing up in meetings it's about the service it's the continued relationship with a higher power it's continuing self-examination righting those wrongs staying as clean today as possible about doing my best today i better be in the because you never coast uphill and i've seen what happens even to me when you start getting complacent lazy lose your enthusiasm i'm just grateful that i did not ever pick up that drink but it wasn't far off the horizon the other thing that i thought about when i heard that is that in step 10 it says that what we have is a daily reprieve now i love looking up words like has been mentioned before and when that one i happen to recall reprieved and then i think we kind of know what that is but it would it the dictionary says it's a delay of the death sentence well that kind of makes it a little colorful, you know. If I use that definition, what I have is a daily delay of the death sentence, okay? But it's not because we're cute. It says it's based on the condition and the maintenance of my spiritual condition. And because I had been active in Alcoholics Anonymous for many, many years when the time this hit, and a relationship with a God and a grounding in my group. That spirit had been there, that maintenance, that spiritual condition had been strong and in place. It wasn't like, well you better start going to meetings again or you better start praying again. That had been well long grounded and established but what happened is it just began. I felt at times that force field between me and moving forward to just stay where you are. Alcoholism is a powerful illness. Many people can describe it far better than I. What's really important is I know I have it, that the treatment for my alcoholism is the three legacies, the taking of the steps, the living in the traditions as best as I can, the relationships about me, the service work of the concepts and the tools I'm given there, and to do the best I can just for today. This morning I woke up, and a gentleman early in the program had mentioned his number of days, and I count my days too. Today was 15,583. And I write those down in my daily reflections because I like to be reminded I wokeup, not came to, wokeup this morning physically sober. But what I do the rest of the day is part of that spiritual sobriety to help me get one more day and wake up again sober tomorrow. I ask God, I say my prayers every morning. I love and need and want to make that initial connection with that higher power each day. And tonight when I go home, I'll reflect on my time here in Park City with you at the Fellowship of the Spirit. the new friends I've met, the people from my area. And I just will be one more day. Thanks God for letting me be of service however it was supposed to be. Thanks for letting us share with you. That's it.