Step 12 and the Message of Being a Recovering Woman – Mary R.

Thank you, John. Good evening, my name is Mary and I'm a very nervous alcoholic. And I was talking to some of my newfound family about my nervousness, and they assured me that they love me. And all I can say is you oughta feel it from this side. Before I forget, I would like to thank Dave and the committee for asking me to carry the message. And when I say carry the message, I have to remember the precise words of the twelfth step which says we tried to carry the message, and failing that I want you to remember that I am the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of my story has already been told by the previous speakers including one Al-Anon, and I took exception to a thing that Joni said today so I might as well get that out of the way right now. You know she said, some of you alcoholics aren't the greatest. Well, Joanie I'll tell you, I may not be the greatest but I'm the greatest I've ever been. But then so is everybody else. in watching the activity in the last couple of days in this hotel it reminded me of a story that happened in just such a hotel during an AA conference and an outsider one of those ordinary people came to check in and got up to the desk and looked around at all the swirling humanity and said to the desk clerk, what's going on? And the desk clerk said, this is an AA conference. So he looked around again and he said, tell me, does this AA really work? And the desk clerk says, we better damn well pray that it does. I, um, told a new gal tonight that I'm going to talk right to her because you know where came from to where I am, there's no way to get here at all. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I noticed that this is the customer on here to give your sobriety date. Come March 29th I will be entering my tenth year. You know I didn't say I completed my ninth. I will be entering my 10th year and from my first meeting it hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink or a tranquilizer or a sedative or a barbiturate or any of those going away pills that I used to indulge in. I have to be truthful and say I have engaged in other forms of transportation however before I knew what I was doing. But I will make a statement to that new girl and any new woman who has entered into this fabulous fellowship, into the splendor that is AA. And that statement is that I am very proud to be a recovering woman alcoholic. this you may find very hard to believe but I am very proud to be a recovering woman alcoholic and the reason it is possible for me to feel that way is because of women and you all have counterparts where I got my sobriety. There is in my area a Millie, a Sue and whoever you are who have taught me to walk with my head up and to make me very proud of my recovery. Now, if you, Betty, have come to this fellowship hating women, let me assure you that that's one of the requirements. Right, Millie? That's one of the requirements. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I hated women with a passion. I didn't like the men very much, but I hated the women. And I had a homicidal hatred toward almost everything. I don't have to hate anymore, nor do I have to get even anymore. Nor do have to resent because you know if I resent you you own me and I don't like that I started drinking at a very early age right after I got out of high school I will have to say that unlike Jack this afternoon they were all a little bit different I suppose I feel that I was wired for alcoholism from the time I was born, because I had all the ingredients that go into making up the alcoholic. As I look back I remember that as a child and all through my life those ingredients were obsession with self, hypersensitivity, idealism, and when I speak of hypersensitivity I was always quick to tell you how easily I was hurt by pain but it was weakness I thought to tell you that I was also sensitive to beauty beauty that brought me pain and I understood so well what Jack was talking about this afternoon when he was talking about dreaming when he saw the moon and afraid to tell anybody how you felt inside at seeing that kind of beauty that the beauty that that hurt it was so beautiful also I was born scared but I think the thing the thread that wove all through my life most of all was the fact that I felt different, that I didn't fit in and most of them they didn't understand. Nobody understood and I felt like I was on the outside of the world banging on the window asking and pleading to get in. I had some talent as a child and I always knew I was going to be a dancer. And I pursued that career after I got out of high school. I left home. I hated my mother. She and I didn't get along at all. I loved my dad, but I hated my mother and I left high school, I left, uh, home as soon as I finished high school and I was barely 16 years old and went on a road show. And it was while I was on this road show that I was introduced to the elixir and it was slow gin and you know that kind of ages me but I know a lot of people didn't make it this far. I damn near didn't myself. And you know I immediately loved what it did for me. I drank alcoholically from that first drink because I drank as much as I could threw up and passed out and I thought that was part of the deal. I just you know figured that way. Because, you know, even though I've been sober the length of time that I've told you, there are some things that I just can't let go of. And that is some of my attitudes. One, being strictly alcoholic, is that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. And I've never been able to shed that, you now. I'm gung-ho all the way. And I also at this time, I want to assure you that I never, never was a social drinker. I don't understand social drinking, nor do I care to. It frustrates the hell out of me. You know, last Christmas before last, my brother, who is a non-alcoholic, and his wife, both social drinkers, invited me and an A.A. buddy over to their home. They were having a little get-together, about eight or ten people. and I went over there and there I really knew for sure that despite the fact that chapter 3 says it is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker that somehow someday he will control and enjoy his drinking as far as I'm concerned that's a big lie because I'll tell you I'll describe that scene that scene we knocked on the door and the first person I saw there was a little old lady and she had one of those tall anemic drinks in her hand full of mix and, you know, pale and she was sipping on it. And she was tiddly and giggly, you now. I wanted to belt her in the mouth. And then we got in there and her son was in there and he was one of those trying to be drunker than he was individuals and they're sickening you know that and you know my AA friend and I got very uneasy and uh you know we were trying to figure out a nice easy way to sort of get out of there because this scene is too much you know and you know I saw a fella I hate to say it because it happened in my brother's house it's kind of embarrassing to me but I saw a fella put his drink down on the coffee table and leave it unattended for about ten minutes. God, you know, that makes my hands sweat yet. And so I went into the kitchen where my sister-in-law was cooking something on the stove and lo and behold there was the supply. Now there were about eight people drinking and on the table there's a pint with the lid on it. and you know to add insult to injury there was a jigger there how does that grab you newcomers and see this is I don't understand any of that and she really put the frosting on the cake when my brother came in and he said Connie would you like to have another drink and you knew what she said she said no thanks I'm beginning to feel mine isn't that revolting well needless to say that eliminated me from any social or even trying or thinking about social drinking I'm very happy that I never even tried any of that because as I say it frustrates the hell out of me I don't even understand why they bother you know I don' t understand and they don' T understand me either but that's the way it is so back to showbiz and I traveled with this troupe and I can't say that I got drunk every day right from the beginning but I liked what this booze did for me it untied that not here and it made me communicate with other people and it just made me loose you know and made me fit in and made all those things that uh and it made me unafraid most of all maybe all those things that i dreamed that i could be and i could dance better and i was scintillating and oh god it was just fabulous so you know alcohol wasn't my problem it was my answer which only goes to prove that i had a problem to begin with otherwise i wouldn't have needed an answer so i pursued this and i went along with this road show, and I wound up in the nightclubs of San Francisco. And that's where I got really my basic training. I was known up there as the Belle of Bush Street. And for an alcoholic like me, this was absolutely paradise. Now you've got to remember this is about 25, 30 years ago. I I was 25, 30 years younger and 20 pounds lighter. And I was known as the Belle of Bush Street and I had all the attention of all the guys. And I would say, when I was doing two shows a night, the orchestra was playing the music the way I wanted it played. I had no responsibilities. I was wearing nice clothes. I had a fancy pad. I had everything that should have made me happy. And every once in a while, I'd stop between my drinking and think why God why am I not happy I got all these things but my answer was always in the future when I got him or when I went there or when thus and such change then everything would be all right and these things would come to pass and I always came up empty. And so I never knew quite what this hunger, this longing was. I tried everything. And at that time I felt that once Hollywood discovered me, that was really my answer. That would be my answer because I had so much talent to share with this world. and the day came when I was asked to go to Hollywood to take a screen test and I'll tell you I went down there with the attitude that Betty Davis had better start saving her money you know that was on the outside on the inside I was scared to death of course and I went down there and I took this screen test and it was rotten how can you act when you're already acting but I didn't know that I didn' t know that but they did sign me to a stock contract and I became one of the herd now I came from being the belle of Bush Street down to Hollywood to be you know just a very small frog in a great big pond and I didn''t like that at all I couldn''t stand that and I was very unhappy but you know of course I immediately got caught up with the drinking crowd. I immediately got caughtup with those people that stayed comfortable. And so I endured this terrible thing hoping that some young enterprising producer, or knowing rather, that certainly some young enteprising producer was going to discover me and then everything would be alright. But as I say I endured thiis thing for a couple of years and I was losing any enthusiasm and really I became a playgirl with no real direction, no real ambition toward those lines because I really didn't know what I wanted to do or be or who I was. But still searching for some kind of an answer. And so I was saved from this terrible fate by a man from the USO office who came and offered me an opportunity to go overseas and entertain the soldiers. the world war was on if world war ii was on at the time and you know i jumped at this chance because the first thing that came to my mind was all those guys over there see i like the guys as much as you like the gals i immediately i thought of all those guys over there and all the attention i was going to get and how much fun i was gonna have but of course i had to wear that cloak of patriotism didn't i And so I sailed overseas in this show with a very big movie star, two big movie stars and a comedian. And I got caught up. Now, if any of you fellows out there still are harboring a resentment against USO girls because most of them fraternized only with the officers, maybe I can remove a little bit of that resentment because I was very democratic with my drinking. I drank with Yardbirds, Generals didn't make any difference what? didn't make any difference at all I just said you know where is it let's go I always was attracted to the guys with the booze for some I had a built in radar it seemed but I always wound up with them and you know I'm talking about like 25 years ago before I had a problem yep yet how come how come then I found it necessary to defend my right to drink 25 years ago I came too high in the hills of the Himalayan mountains in China unable to move paralyzed after drinking grapefruit juice and something with the guys I met before and I was paralyzed and the only thing that was moving about me was my eyelids and my roommate noticed that I was in bad shape so she went and got the medics and the medcs came in and they gave me oxygen and shots and pills and coffee and they walked me and they worked on me for two hours just to get me functioning again and you know I blamed the altitude i had myself so sold that i couldn't drink in heights that i wouldn't even drink in denver after that that's how i had my self-conned so i came back from that tour totally exhausted just absolutely and totally exhausted and felt very put upon because after all nobody told me that i was expected to entertain the soldiers between shows and i felt very foot upon well actually nobody did what drove me to that was this desperate need for approval and for love and for acceptance and so i had to be the swinger the play girl and go along with anything and when i was offered the opportunity to go to the european theater here's where chapter three comes into my life because when I apply chapter three not to only to my drinking but to the way I lived it fits like a glove because I sailed away to Europe saying to myself this time it's going to be different. This time that whole beautiful world out there that I'm privileged to maybe see is not going to be a big gray blur. This time I'm going to take care of business and look at the beautiful sights and some of the ugly sights, but I'm not going to get caught up in that again. And this time it was different. It was worse because I didn't know how not to get got up in there. And over there in Europe there were more guys and more booze and more action and more everything and I had to be you know, I always had to be where the action was I always Had to be there where the music was the loudest and the jokes were the roughest and you know where the Action was that's where I had to be and another thing I was always madly in love or recovering from love and I don't know which I enjoyed the most you know when you're recovering from love you put on those records now Joni mentioned a couple and some songs have been mentioned here but I'll tell you I got a lot of juice out of that Frank Sinatra singing all or nothing at all but the one that was my favorite God-rester was Judy Garland singing The Man Who Got Away. God, you know, with her there was no hope at all. That's why I loved her. And I really got the juice out of that one too. And you know you're looking at probably the only USO girl that was up for court-martial. and I have to tell you how that happened I was, you know, madly in love with some guy that I'd met back there a few towns back and after the show they gave us some kind of little party and everybody was drinking and, you now, I'm very dramatic with my love affairs you know why be in love if you can't be dramatic and I was trying desperately to reach this great love of my life by field telephone now for you ladies who don't know what that is you have to crank it up and you go through relays and sometimes it takes 15 minutes to reach the whoever you're trying to reach and here I was in the middle of this swinging party everybody drinking trying to read the love of his life and I said I'm going to reach the love on this field telephone and this captain was standing over me asking me to go drink with him or play with him or whatever and I just, you know very dramatically said to him I'm calling my great love and you know that guy took his thumb and disconnected me just about the time I was ready to make the connection and I said Captain, if you do that once more I'm going to hit you and you don't know he didn't believe me so I just about got through again and this captain who was awful drunk he disconnected it again and i took the phone and hit him on the ear as hard as i could and you know he was so stoned he didn't even know what happened i don't think until he saw that look of horror that came on must have come on my face and that look came from seeing his blood gush out his ear and down his white trench coat so when he saw that he ran across the streets of the mps and you wrote out all kinds of papers charged me with all this stuff And they came tearing over, you know, like I was the Gestapo or something. And they asked me to appear the next day in front of them, in front of the court. And so, you Know, now the keen mind of the alcoholic goes to work. You don't hear anything about the keen mind of The Alcoholic out there. You only hear it in AA meetings. But the keen mind of The Alcoholics went to work and I'm thinking now there's 14 girls on this show and I got to make an appearance at 10 o'clock in the morning so I took two of the girls that most resembled me with me and that poor guy couldn't identify me and you know I always tell this story because I'm like the big director in the book I've got the whole scene set, the dialogue and everything. Because when I look back and think about his behavior and all these things, I am reasonably certain that he also was an alcoholic. And of course, of course I hope he found his way to AA. And God, I don't know, he might even be here tonight. He might be, you know. Stranger things have happened. And you know what the end of my big dream is, don't you? After the meeting, this fellow's going to walk forward with his hand outstretched to me and he's going to say, Mary, I'm that captain that you hit on the ear. And I'm going to let him make his amends to me. That's one of the greatest gifts I got from AA, the knowledge that we weren't always wrong. By God, I came here thinking I was dead wrong in everything. And I look back and i wasn't always that wrong and neither were you but i came back from that tour and oh my whole attitude had changed needless to say i was so hostile and everything had a great cast to it and everything was useless the futility that that just hung on me like a shroud and the only thing I could think of was going back to San Francisco where I had so much fun God how much fun can you endure I went back there you know with this great hope that everything was going to be like it was but you know you can return but you can never go back and when I got there everything there seemed to have changed even my best drinking buddies I don't know, something sour about them. And I couldn't find, you know, I tried to drink back that feeling I used to get. And i tried to manufacture it in here. And I did everything I could and I knew I was lost. I knew i was lost and in all my searching I thought hell, I'm probably over the hill. It's time for me to settle down and get married. that'll be my answer right Johnny and I looked around and carefully selected a victim happened to be a bartender I couldn't stand couldn't understand but you know he wasn't a drinker either he didn't drink at all that's one of the reasons I couldn'T stand him but Arbutus and some of the wonderful women of Al-Anon have come to know that every pot goes out and finds a lid that fits it. He did not drink, but he had another sickness. He was a compulsive gambler. And to give you a clue as to what kind of marriage this was, he gambled my drinking money and I drank his gambling money. Oh, these are the things on which resentments are filled, you know, built. And you know he gambled exactly the way I drank and for the same reasons but neither one of us understood each other. It was all right on New Year's Steve. I kind of liked him if he had a couple of drinks, and he kind of like me when I'd go to Las Vegas with him, but gambling bored me to death, and drinking bored him, and yet here we were, you know, satisfying the sick need that each one of us had. It really wasn't a marriage, it was more like a suicide pact, to tell you the truth. And you know we had the same attitudes too we both knew that yeah it was no goal really but i couldn't admit failure i couldn t admit i was drunk i couldn d admit any of those things so i had to do what any self-respecting alcoholic does i had prove this to be the marriage of a century half measures availed as nothing and so we tried we both gave it our best shot and we took the geographic for each other from San Francisco down to Los Angeles and I was thinking if I can just get him away from those bookies and I'm sure he was thinking if I could just get her away from those drinking buddies and we settled down in suburbia and I found a drinking buddy right across the street and he found a bookie right up on the corner and the race was on again and this thing was just falling apart by the minute you know we each had our reasons why we were doing what we were going to do we had our valid reasons in our own heads and so I knew that this thing was slipping away and slipping away and you know I didn't realize until I was six years sober how overly dependent I was I always considered myself a very independent person but i was too dependent to dissolve this thing and so i thought well maybe if i have a baby then everything will be all right because i was looking truly for an identity and so i decided when i got pregnant and i got pregnant immediately that i was now going to be like my neighbors i was going to be that woman i was going to hang my laundry on mondays i was gonna do by the numbers you know do the yard work on sunday wear pink curlers to the market you know and do all those things that my neighbors were doing and above all i wasn't going to drink and i went on the wagon and you know that chokes me up when use that expression i went on the wagon like jack was saying jesus the most miserable year i put in my life was that month no i didn't i stayed on the way wagon longer than that and you know i was not on and off the wagon many times and for me at that stage drinking was better because i couldn't stand sobriety i went on the wagon and i tried desperately to be to get my fulfillment as a total woman tried everything i knew how by copying and emulating those people who seemed to be so content and trying their recipes you know and playing the part and manufacturing what i didn't have And it wasn't working, but I had this child I was going to bear. And when I stopped drinking, I became a compulsive housekeeper. Now there's always one or two of you in the audience. I used to clean the corners with pins. And I had a toothbrush that I cleaned the lettering on the appliances with. I know there's a couple of you nodding back there. And you know, if the old man got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the can, his bed was made before he got back. That, you know you think that's funny, I was talking in San Francisco one time and a girl came up to me afterwards, now that's a little bit exaggerated, you that's alcoholic exaggeration but this gal came up to me afterwards and she was laughing and she said my god i did all those things but you didn't do something that i did and i said what's that and she said i used to blow the dust out of the keyhole see it's those things that make me know i belong here because these are the very things that i used to hide even from myself and i went on this way you know this was stark terror living this way and i was terrified that when that baby was born that something was going to happen and the world was going to contaminate it and it would be taken away from me the whole thing was you know operating under terrible terrible fear and the baby wasborn you know it's a wonder i didn't boil him because by that time i was cleaning the walls with hexol every day, and it was just crazy. It was just sick, sick and insane. And this went along for a few months until I found that I was pregnant the second time, and I hadn't planned that one. And you know how that goes. I hadn'T planned it because, you see, this first son, I had his whole future mapped out, the kind of friends he was going to have, the schools he was going to what he was going to be when he grew up and all these things I had all planned out and here comes this intruder and I resented him almost from the moment of conception and so with that I had to go back to drinking much to the relief of my family and friends I might add Because they liked me half-gassed rather than that sick. But it wasn't long before the disease of alcoholism, the progression caught up with me, and I was stumbling around that neighborhood worse than I had before I got pregnant. And I really didn't care. I really did not care very much. I still had that cloak of arrogance that I used to wear on the way up to the market on the run, that I wore for those neighbors who were so nosy. They were very nosy, they were just minding their own business and taking care of their own homes. Very nosy! But it was necessary, it was a necessary thing for me. even with that cloak of arrogance, I had that terrible, humiliating shame. And yet they didn't understand. They didn't understand. And finally, I said to myself, if I explain to my neighbor Elaine why it's necessary for me to drink, she'll probably understand because she was a wonderful woman. and so I told her what a rotten guy I was married to and how he blew all the money on the races and the kids didn't have shoes and all these things and by the time I got through embroidering that story she looked at me and shook her head and she said my God if I were married to a man like that I'd probably be drinking too so you see I already had the reason and she gave me permission which is what I wanted and I continued I continued because at that moment, at that time, there was no other answer for me. And I was drunk half the time that I was pregnant with that second child. And I don't say that with any pride, nor do I have to be ashamed of it anymore. And these are the things it took to get me to Alcoholics Anonymous. I lived the way I had to live and I did what I had to do, and I broke my own heart. But I don't have to live that way anymore and be that and do those things. I don' t have to walk the face of the earth with my eyes downcast anymore. And after that second baby was born, my drinking buddy and I crossed streets, pursued our drinking careers, and the only place I really felt comfortable was in the bars with guys. Like I said, I didn't like the women. I didn t even like my drinking buddy, but she usually had more booze than I did. She lived across the street. I used to go and borrow a cup of bourbon every once in a while, I guess. I did And I pursued it, and you know, my husband took a dim view of my activities and he left and then he came back and then he left and came back and always for the sake of the children which was the big excuse not the reason but the excuse in those days and I've come to know that I think even in my cups I knew that this emotional climate that was created there by our sicknesses when I didn't know they were sicknesses but the emotional climate that existed in my house at that time was far worse for those children than a complete and total separation I knew that even in my cups and as the result of one of these joyous reunions again I got pregnant the third time and I was outraged womanhood and it was his fault and now I really had a lot of fuel on that fire that fire of hatred and resentment and everything else you name it I had it in abundance and I had every reason to drink and I was drunk all the time I was carrying this baby you know Betty I know it's difficult it was very difficult for me when coming to AA to get with the women because I hated what I was And I knew, I knew that once they found out where I had been and what I had done, they too would reject me. But let me assure you, Betty, I don't care what you've done or where you've been, it's been done in spades here, and probably by me. And it's all right. It's all right because the most valuable thing i possess today is my experience because when you or someone like you tells me these things that you have hidden that you are ashamed of that you finally had get the courage to open up and tell me i can look you in the eye with the compassion that was forced on me and say Betty I did it too and it's all right but you know I understand coming in the way we felt because we've strayed so far from the path of wifehood and motherhood and womanhood the alcoholic woman is indeed the low man on the totem pole and i think i went one step farther down by being a pregnant alcoholic practicing alcohol i don't regret a moment of it i don t regret a moment of because i had to do what i had to do to learn what i had to learn in my own way and in my own time and knowing this gives me the freedom to let you learn what you have to learn. In your own way in your own time because i have learned through a magnificent sponsor that nothing will separate me from god faster than self-righteousness my husband after the third child was born left for what proved to be the last time and now i was free to live the way i wanted he got off my back finally and it seemed that my the terminal stages of my alcoholism was like jumping off a cliff I really had no control over anything none whatsoever nor did I care to I didn't care about anything my children ran around unfed while their mother was up at the bars cadging drinks and telling jokes to the guys and trying to be that popular showgirl playgirl I couldn't care about them because I couldn' t care about myself it's as simple as that because nothing mattered tomorrow, what was the use of tomorrow because tomorrow was going to be like today because today was just like yesterday and what's the use and they don't understand nobody understands nobody understands this terrible pain I'm living with and now all the things started to happen to me that happened to most alcoholic women all the degradation all the shame all the humiliation I remember how it felt to be thrown out of bars where I was once welcomed because I had become violent and I didn't really want to be that way I remember how it felt one Sunday morning lurching down a main thoroughfare in our town hitting the buildings with my side stumbling my knees buckling under me and my biting back my own tears and cursing myself and wishing to God I could walk straight so they wouldn't look at me the way they did. I remember drinking a quart of vanilla one election morning and the thing about it was that it didn't strike me as particularly odd that I should be drinking a quarter of vanilla. All I know is that it said alcohol 35% then, and it didn't strike me as particularly odd. I remember how it felt to come to in an alley one cold gray dawn, sick and shaking and scared, feeling like that I had been discarded on the scrap heap of life, as indeed I had, and wondering what had become of the great Bell of Bush Street. And these are the things that forced me to drink in my own home behind closed curtains and closed doors. And this started my merry-go-round, my last merry- go-round that started nine years ago in November and ended March the 29th. I was drinking around the clock, my neighbor took care of my children. Every once in a while I hear people in meetings talk about those Normsies, you know rather disdainfully. I'd like to say that if it wasn't for one of those Normsies, I wouldn't be here. I owe her a great deal. And so it was that I was to spend those months in total insanity, homicidal insanity because my one desire, my one my one object was to kill my husband I was by this time totally possessed with this idea and I remember one middle of the night or maybe it was middle of a day I didn't make any difference they all ran together anyway something came through to me that told me I desperately needed help by now my mother and father had turned their backs on me, and this is the greatest thing they ever did for me in their lives. And I didn't know what this was because by now the booze wasn't working and the pills weren't working, nor was the combination working. It was as though my body was drunk and my head was sober and I couldn't stand it. I couldn'T stand it! And this thing came through me that i desperately needed help and so i called a policeman friend of mine screaming like a maniac and telling to come over and please put me in jail because i was going to kill this guy and he came over and listened to me rant and rave and when i got through he got up to leave and i said where are you going kelly and he said i'm going to church to pray for you and I can't describe to you the feeling of desolation I had at that moment and this thing that came up in me and said you don't understand I'm really going to do this and I don't believe in God and church and all that please try to understand and he left but I have come to know that once we sincerely ask for help, that it's on its way long before we know it. Because the next thing I knew, this neighbor friend of mine, at my request, drove me up to an Episcopal church and I stood there and ranted and raved at the priest begging him to stop me from what I was about to do and he said come in and pray with me and I said but father I don't want to pray I don' believe in it and you don't understand he somehow convinced me to go in and listen to him pray which I did and while he was praying I remember saying to myself if there is such a thing as a God then this thing that is chewing me up inside will be removed before I get home and I got home and it wasn't it was mounting and the panic was mounting and my insanity was now totally out of control and that's when the real miracle happened I picked up the phone and called Alcoholics Anonymous now I was sober for two years before I remember where I had heard any kind of message about Alcoholics Anonymous and then I recalled that I had been at a drunken brawl across the street and there was a red-haired girl there. I've never seen her since. There was a read-haird girl there drinking a Coke. And she said something to me because I probably went up in my snotty way and said, why the hell aren't you drinking or something? And she says, she said, something to mean like I found a better way to live than that. And that's all I can remember. And this reminds me, when I get so eager about my 12-step call, that mine is not the responsibility of seeing that the seeds sprout. Mine is the responsibility to see that the seed sprouts. The seeds are scattered because it says we tried. And here the seed that she had scattered my way came into bloom six years later. And I have to remember that. And so I called the A.A. Clubhouse, and a young fellow answered the phone. Now in our neighborhood, I don't know about here, but in our neighbourhood it's a no-no for a man to call on a woman, especially a drunk one. but God in his infinite wisdom knew that I was in no condition to find to have two well-groomed clean spiritual women calling on me you know I hadn't had a bath in months I'd been inhabiting this dirty moo-moo for about four months I weighed 185 pounds, a gray blob. And I say that God knew exactly the person to send. He was a young man to remember that. And so I called the AA clubhouse, and a young fellow answered the phone. Now in our neighborhood, I don't know about here, but in our neighborhood it's a no-no for a man to call on a woman especially a drunk one but God in his infinite wisdom knew that I was in no condition to have two well-groomed clean spiritual women calling on me you know I hadn't had a bath in months I'd been inhabiting this dirty moo-moo for about four months I weighed 185 pounds a gray blob and I say that God knew exactly the person to send he was a young enthusiastic gay heir and I'll say this too that if his motives had been ulterior on the way out there he sure as hell changed his mind when he saw me First thing he did was open the window You know, it's a fabulous thing though that happened immediately when he walked in He brought with him my first shred of hope, the very thing that I was totally out of. And he started to talk to me and I had established communication with the first human being I'd ever really been able to understand. And I was drunk and I was drinking and I was arrogant and I had the vodka you'll forgive me Jack I had the vodka right there and drinking and as he was talking I said but aren't you going to stop me from drinking? He said no go ahead first person that ever told me that and I thought that was a little odd and so we he talked and I don't remember I was you know I was in this state insanity i don't know how long he was there and i don t really remember what he said all i remember was this communication that i had and he talked me into going to a meeting that night he convinced me that i should go and see what it was about and you know as drunk as i was i was scared and so i got myself uh scraped off and um i'll tell you i went to that uh i went to that meeting that night i'll tell you what my costume was and the reason i always get all jazzed up like this is because i just make a comparison of where i came from to where i am and you know there's no way to get here like i told you before because i had on a pair of torn shoes an old raincoat and a diaper over my head and a pair of capris with torn knees and wet in the feet that was my and he pushed me in the door but before we left I poured another drink and I said you sure you aren't gonna stop me from drinking he said no go ahead so I poured another one and it's my great joy to tell you that's the last drink I poured because I didn't drink it I said the hell with you and we went to that meeting and he paced me up and down the highway because I was too scared to go in I peeked in the window and I saw all these uh you know PTA type people and I thought god almighty am I in the wrong spot here he said no no no so anyway he pushed me in the door he really pushed me in the dark literally and he turned me over to the woman who was to become my sponsor I always get emotional about her because this woman washed my face and she combed my hair and she spoon-fed my soul. And the whole group took me in and rocked me to sleep. I don't remember the first meeting. All I remember was somebody there saying something about pills because he recognized that I had been indulging in that but it isn't what they said anyway, it was what they were and what I felt and I was afraid to believe it and I wasn't afraid not to believe it. And thank God for this sponsor i hated her you know she was soft-spoken spiritual well-groomed and all those rotten things you know i couldn't stand her i was terrified of her i were terrified of exposing myself to her but honest to god she was you know I have such a tremendous tremendous respect for the old timers and especially the women old-timers because that's where it really is for me. You know, these old-timers have got everything sifted down into very, very simple terms. And you know, I was too stupid and too rum-dumb to have ever complicated this program, let me assure you. You know there's an old-timer in our neighborhood that after everybody gets up, you know giving the message to the new person and telling them how to stay sober and how to work the steps, we got this one old-timer that gets up there and he says, well, all I can say is when all else fails, keep drinking. You know, that'll make a believer out of you. But, you know, I was so very fortunate in being placed in this very small problem discussion group that night because it consisted of five old-timers and this sponsor of mine who just celebrated her 21st year and a few others. And they are my real, real close family. You know, we love everybody. We love everybody in AA because that's one of the rules, you know. We love everyone. but really in all truth i have special people and maybe you do too there are some that are so very special that you know it breaks me up to even talk about them and these guys these guys are are some people like that that i choke up when i even talk about them they were so damn mean to me god i tell you they didn't understand you know what an intellect i was and they didn't understand my problem really and they kept telling me to do a lot of these things had nothing to do with my problem at all nothing they were against my intellect in my better judgment in fact one of the fellas not long ago said you know we had to tie mary to a tree in the backyard to get the message to her and they used to frighten me and i get mad at them and i used to fight and my sponsor would keep telling me simple things and i kept thinking when are they going to get on with this problem of uh this thing i'm in and uh little by little by a little i didn't believe the word they said but really i think that when you have no choice this program becomes very easy when you have no choice I got into the program gung-ho I fell in love with the people of Alcoholics Anonymous then and I've been carrying on shamelessly in this love affair ever since ever since I yet didn't understand the steps I didn't understand anything at all and they they forced sobriety on me they forced me to to do the things that were against my judgment and against my intellect and they saved my life and i've come to know that the people that hurt me the most were the ones that helped me the most because you see they cared about me when i couldn't care about myself and i went to 10 meetings a week and you know what that rotten sponsor mind did that cunning baffling powerful sponsor minded second meeting she picked me up and took me to a woman's stag i thought i was gonna die i thought she's out of her mind she didn't i couldn't tell her how i felt about women but i went to this woman's tag and i saw this beautiful girl up there with long blonde hair and a black beautiful dress on and leading this meeting and I looked at her and I thought boy if that isn't the closet drinker she hasn't been off the block this one and you know she started to talk about herself and my jaw fell open I knew I was in but I was afraid to believe I was and I was scared not to Now, in the meantime, this rage against my husband had not subsided, but I was trying desperately hard to either make it go away or do what I was supposed to do. But I was still hell-bent on this. It was all his fault. And I went to all these meetings trying to grasp something, something. And he found out that I joined AA and he became enraged, and threatened to kill me, and threaten to take the children, and threatening all of these things that kept me up on an emotional level. I was up so tight I was ready to explode.