Step 5 and the Only Fifth Step I Like Better Than Mine Is Yours – Carla R.

The Pacific Group is the open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. All members of the community are welcome to attend. The single most important aspect of the AA recovery, however, is the principle of one alcoholic relating to another alcoholic. Therefore, only alcoholics actually participate in our meetings. If your primary problem is other than alcoholism, we think it would also be helpful to you to contact an anonymous organization which more specifically deals with your addiction. In any case, we hope that what you learn here may be helpful to recover and or understand. Good evening. My name is William, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to Pacific Group Alcoholics Anonymous. The format of this meeting is two-minute speakers and a coffee break and a main speaker. Our first ten-minute speaker is Kenny S. Kenny Sutherland, alcoholic. Hey. Hello, fellas. um well i am glad to be here tonight i'm certainly glad to be sober um and i feel sorry for julie for the grief she's going to take for having me do 10 minutes but it's your grave um and thank you for the phone call anthony i was doing my parking commitment in the church parking lot and got a phone call so that's one I wish I'd let go to voicemail for sure so who's calling me um but I am grateful to be sober and uh I love um being sober um you know I'm uh I'm very nervous, and I don't know why. Self-obsessed, I guess. You know, I am very glad that I had a chance to get sober in my life. If I've been sober, I'll be 24 years on Friday. And, you know, that's a complete miracle for a young whippersnapper like me. Many of the old-timers know I had long hair and was all skinny and wild-eyed when I came in here and completely lost. And I had lots of energy, and luckily I was desperate enough to do what everybody asked me to do. You want to go do that? Yes, let's go do this, let'S do that. And, you know, I just hearken back. This is a weird time of the year for me because I am coming up on and, you know, every all the holidays and just after the new year seems to always get me into this mode where I'm just remembering all the years that have transpired when I was drinking and certainly so much of when I how long I've been sober and all the things that I've done over the last many years. So, you know, I came from a pretty unique, dysfunctional family. And it was kind of—it was a good life for me. I think about sometimes when I was young, I went through a lot of different changes, different schools. We had a transient sort of lifestyle and I always tease my friends about how I don't remember much of my childhood. And then, you know, Nathan tells me I need to because you if you just don't want to remember, you Know, but I do remember a lot of that. I remember moving, I remember, you know, a lot of chaos in the house. My mother and my father both drank quite a bit, and they were wild Texan alcoholics, and my mom had me when she was not quite 17 years old, and I have an older brother, so she got a consent somehow and got married and um my father was 21 and and um they had us and they had uh us packed in a car and and uh they were trying to make a life of themselves and you know alcoholism kind of followed my life all the way through i drank alcohol when i was four years old um i i you know i smoked cigarettes and you want to get high in the bathroom you know uh at five or six and i I got caught, of course, one time and they made me smoke like two cigarettes inhaling and I thought I was going to die, you know. And it was just the type of life where I look back on it and it was probably really, really bad. You know, very poor and very much a lot of abuse and all this. But I thought it was fine. I thought we were just, you find a way to be normal in any way you can. and, you know, make friends quickly in school and things like that. But I think when I started drinking, I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was after a baseball practice. You know, a couple of guys wanted to have a beer and smoke a little weed, and I said, that sounds like a great idea, you Know. And I did, and I remember having a couple, a few beers, couple of beers and um smoking a little and blowing blowing it all over everybody and um but i do remember the feeling i had that later that night on a hot summer night walking down the alley with uh my brothers and a few of my friends and i just you know i'm just getting chills thinking about it right now how great i felt in that little stroll down that alley back home, I felt perfect. I felt great. I felt just for those moments, like everything was just okay. It's just great. And I felt wonderful. And, uh, I, I didn't attribute it to alcohol. I had the fortunate or unfortunate, um, uh you know position to be in where my mother got sober, uh darn it, you know, and, uh yeah, and she got sober when i was young and i was still i was just starting my career you know and um checking it all out and my stepdad russ many of you know him he got sober also you know quickly thereafter and and um the truth is they used to come to this meeting and we would terrorize our house you know unsupervised young crazy guys and they would go to the meeting and we would just, we would have, we'd play just the wildest games, like full contact football in the living room, you know, and just turn the music on as loud as we could and just go nuts, you know? And hopefully have it all in order by the time we got back home, you know, without, you know, well, I don't know who broke that window. I, I'm not, I don't just, you know, uh, we played a game where we'd turn off all the lights, get totally blitzed completely dark the house drapes put curtain you know towels on the windows and we turn up the music as loud as you could and you'd crawl through the house commando you couldn't see anything and you would use shoes as our weapons and so if you heard anything down the hall you just throw something and it's Julie's fault, just so you know. It was a, you know, I felt like through a lot of work in AA that a lot what I did was escape. I stopped caring, really truly caring about um and i really have to watch a lot of that now in my sobriety about detaching and just not caring i don't really care about anything myself and my life and um certainly when i was drinking and even early in my sorority i would just i would act like i cared and i just wouldn't i could not uh seemingly connect to my my emotions my feelings i just couldn't i just didn't i didn't want to i i think that was um you know a defense mechanism certainly and drinking really helped me do that and uh but for me just for this alcoholic i felt like when i started really drinking I was already past the point of it working I feel pissed off, kind of that I never really got an opportunity to have drinking work for me It was seemingly always a necessity from the very, very beginning I needed to just check out I needed and this is also looking back on that but I did I never felt like all drinking was working for me because I never went to work I never could be responsible. I could not do it. I graduated high school with a 1.6 grade average. I mean, is that even possible nowadays? It's wild. And I tried to... One minute already. So I got sober. And a lot of things have happened in 24 years. You know, I have been very, very active in this group. I have done it the right way for many, many, many years, going to the yard, sponsoring people. I believe that I really felt at some point when I got in here people suggested things to me and I did them because I wanted to get sober because I thought if I could just do one thing right in my life, one time, just one time if I could just do something right for a consistent period of time and I gave AA that chance and luckily there was great people in here who said you know do it this way do it that way do you know let's do this right and I said okay and I did and I got I got um you know I got married and Kim and I are going to be having 20 years married this year and my daughter's 14 she's a freshman in high school, and she's a great kid. And I have a ton of friends. I have fantastic opportunity to help people in my own way. And I do wish that if you hear nothing else from me tonight that I believe in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I think the reason why I haven't drank or gone out or done something stupid is because I haven'T lost that feeling that AlcoholicsAnonymous works. It really does. And I hope I never lose that. Thank you very much. Our second 10-minute speaker is Carrie F. uh hi oh my name's uh carrie fisher and i'm an alcoholic um thank julie i think for asking me to do this i've been going to this meeting for 13 years and i've always thought why doesn't anyone ask me to do this when I get asked you asked me to one time read the the 12 steps or something anyway so now I've been asked okay my I have gone to this meeting I've been coming to the meeting for 13 years but have not stayed sober that whole time and it that is not that's because of me a a works and uh it was only in the last um since november 5th 2007 that i really started um doing what i was told and i was not brought up in an environment where I did it, where I, you know, did what I was told. Um, I was born here in Los Angeles. Uh, I have, um, thank you. Uh. I have um, and my parents are um, celebrities. And um, all I ever really wanted was to fit in. You know, and I think people would think, They would say, oh, she thinks she's so great because her mom is. And I didn't. I just wanted to fit in. And when I was young, I remember watching people drink, and this is what alcohol looked like to me. And basically how it ended up for me was... from very early on I started I tried drinking I used to say I was allergic to alcohol because it did make me sick but I started drinking and using when I was about 13 years old and I needed AA probably from the very beginning. Someone asked me to give them a cake when I was about 20 and people came up to me and said, I'm so glad you caught it so young. And I thought, why could they think that I have a problem? I don't have a problems. My father shot speed for 13 years. I was one of the few people that could say, Dad, show everyone your tracks. And he would. And I swore that I would never do any of this stuff, and I did. I was very uncomfortable in my skin. Alcohol did something for me that I could not do for myself. It made me all right to be me to an extent. I overdosed on pretty much everything. I mean, I took drugs alcoholically. If the drugs weren't there, the alcohol was anything, anywhere but here. That was my philosophy. And when I first started going to AA, one of the things I remember hearing was, you don't have to like it, you just have to go. And that was, I couldn't believe it. I thought I had to like everything I did. And that was amazing to me. And then I heard Clancy speak, and Clancy, who's my sponsor, Clancy scared me, and no one scared me. No one. And I went up to him and I said, I feel like you're smarter than I am, and please be my sponsor and tell me what to do. because I never listened to anybody and I decided to do what I was told and I think I definitely if I had not gone to AA, I started coming into these rooms when I was 28 I'm 55 but the last four years is finally when I have really participated and um i actually uh i do a show that is sort of like um well this but if it's it's i did hear early on you're only as sick as your secrets and one of the things that i found here was um community and i found other people that were like me and i did grow up thinking no one is like me unless there are other kids that have movie star parents um which was not true that this was my tribe and um i found that uh being of service and and consistently come having the structure to come to this meeting to know what i was going to do every wednesday night go with the same people and and and listen to clancy and call clancy and do what i was told and uh i lived a very privileged existence and it probably would have killed me if i hadn't come here and so you know if you're new you've come to the best meeting I think that there is in the world, and I've traveled quite a bit. But it works if you work it. And so even though I think over the years I would come in and out, but I would be dead if I had not been around AA at all. and uh so i it's really defined my life more and actually probably the the show that i do which is wishful drinking um which is basically about this and i'm not ashamed and and what it does is it it i find people i find my community out there and when you travel and you can go to other meetings But when you are here and you find the extraordinary thing of having all these people and having this thing in common that made you feel like you didn't belong to any group. And so this is a place that I am so glad that I have to come to because I think people always thought, people think that celebrity, that's like a great thing to be. And it makes you feel like you stick out, like you don't belong. And that was being able to come to a meeting and knowing that there are people here that feel like I do, that don't feel like they are comfortable in their skin. But what AA has done for me is AA does slow what drugs and alcohol did fast. and I'm very grateful that I've been in this meeting for this long I don't think I've done anything in my life for this Long so thank you Julie for asking me to share and thank you for keeping me in this room Clancy Our main speaker is Carla R. Hi, everybody. My name's Carla Rowland. I'm an alcoholic. That's a new last name, and I'm playing the newlywed card for another couple months. I think I get a year. And a lot of you were there to celebrate our wedding with us. Doug's here tonight. And, you know, I got to tell you, I'm so glad that I heard him say when I was new that if I came here for anything but sobriety, I might leave when I got it because I was 21 years sober and 51 years old when I met the love of my life. So if I'd been standing around tapping my foot, I would have been standing around tapping my foot for a long time. And not that there weren't moments, but and we have a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun in our marriage, in our home. It's a relationship I've never known before and it was Alcoholics Anonymous that readied me for it. Relationships I had before in the past, I mean, you know, we could be at a party with my daughter's father. I was at a party one time and we were uh you just never knew which one of us was going to explode at any given time and uh and one time i uh i jumped in the car that we had and and i tried to roll up the windows and he reached in i was on the driver's side and he preached in to grab my hair because that's the way we do it and and uh he had a he had point to make and uh rather than let him get too close i rolled the electric window up as fast as i could and i drug him down the street hanging off the side of the car. Sometimes you're the driver, sometimes you're the one that hangs on. So it's not like that in our house anymore. We just got a puppy. That's what old people do instead of have kids I guess. So we have this puppy and we were going over to visit my father which is another blessing of this program you know being able to make amends and and and let that relationship not only heal but to grow and uh and i called him and i said the puppy was new and dad can we bring the puppy over to uh with us when we come to see you she'll be good and and he said oh that's okay carly he says i'm not afraid of anything you bring home anymore so uh so life is good and if you're new i welcome you uh i hope you come in and you and you hang on and you find something that'll keep you here one midnight at a time and uh that's what i did i i used um something i heard in a meeting every night to take me into the next day and then uh but i certainly like carrie you know i never did anything for 24 years in a row on purpose it was of any value before i got to alcoholics anonymous and by the way my sobriety date september 25th 1987 and and uh you know I uh lynette's here tonight. She's pretty new. She'll take her six-month chip in a couple of days, and sometimes she looks at me like I got here 24 years sober, you know, and that's how it gets, you know. Sometimes new people are more able to help new people because they're just closer to it, and I hope I never forget, though. I hope i never forget the reason that I'm here. Alcoholics Anonymous works so good sometimes, you know. It feels like you don't need another meeting, and And I have to remember that even if I never needed another meeting and if it worked so well, I never need another meeting for the rest of my life, I owe you so much. I could be here every day for the last two years or the rest Of my life and never pay back what you've given me. And when I got here, it was very important for me to try to figure out why I'm an alcoholic. Was it my crazy, dark, dramatic, violent, perverted family? And if you had my family, you'd drink too. And now I found out that that'll give you an inventory, but it didn't make me alcoholic. And, you know, I know people who lived charm childhoods who are as alcoholic as I am, and so that didn't do it. And we moved around a lot for the rent. My parents each were married three times, and so there was a lot of activity. We moved around. We moved round a lot. And I found it just now, looking back, I think it was just a... You know, I feel kind of well-adjusted. But I certainly didn't feel that way before. So I was always a new kid on the block at school, and I'd find my way in by, you know, I'm type A. I want to, I want to get involved. I mean, it wasn't all just, just to, for people to like me, but I wanted to do things and I wanted to be the first woman major league baseball player. I wanted to be the first women president. I needed to be the best and the first and the most. I mean, that's what happens when I get involved is I just can't, you know, I mean, I can't walk next to you on the sidewalk and not want to get ahead. You know, I just, um, but God, by the time I was, sixth grade was over, I was tired and I needed a drink. You You know, I just, you know, when you're trying to run the world and you're 10, it's a big job. And I got my first social resentment behind a game of spin the bottle. And I know they don't even play that game these days. They just get right down to business. And we played it back then. And this is just a setup. You know what? I mean, my thinking was sort of gelled a long time ago in my drinking. But I was at my friend Leonard's house. It was right before seventh grade. And I was about 11 years old, and we were playing spin the bottle. There were a few boys and a few girls there, and we Were passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey. And now those weren't the first drinks I ever took, but they were the ones where I started to make the connection that alcohol would do something for me that I couldn't do for myself. It really, I really started to like it. And so we spun the bottle, and the bottle landed on me, and I went off into the bedroom with one of the boys, and we Were both doing the same thing as far as I could tell. But when we came back out of that bedroom, they called him a player and me a slut, and I did not think that was fair. And I still don't think it's fair if you want to know the truth, but every sponsor I've ever had has told me the fair is in Pomona, and it lasts two weeks. That's all you get, so so much for fair. And that's just my mindset. You know, healthy people will have an idea, they'll bump into the wall, and they'll turn left, and that's Just What They Do. And I will beat my head against the wall until it's bleeding and can't figure out why you won't move the wall. And it's just how I go. I'm just going to make it work. And after a while, I got a reputation I didn't understand in junior high and nor could I take responsibility for. I just didn't get it. And I started to, I fight for a while and then I start to back away. And I start hanging out in the bathroom more than I did in the classroom with the other girls who were backing away from their lives and bringing stuff from our mother's medicine cabinets and their liquor cabinets and hanging out. And after a while school just wasn't working anymore either. And I just started to find my hope out on the open road and I loved that. It felt like hope was just around the corner, just over the hill, just up the road. And it felt like the bottle in the glove compartment really. Like, you know, I didn't even have to have a drink To know it was going to be okay And consequently I started spending a little time In the Southern California hot spots Because I'd get picked up I was very young and out on the road And I'd be found on the on-ramps Of the 10 freeway going east Or the 101 going north And I loved that feeling So I ended up in like Indio Jail And Riverside Juvenile Hall And L.A. Central Juvenale Hall And spent a little bit of time there And going home to mom and home to dad And we did that whole thing And I became a ward of the court after a while and the courts took over um when i was 14 i found myself in a place called north beach i just we got a long ride from santa barbara all the way up to san francisco and dropped off right in the middle of town there and a couple of guys offered my friend and i money for sex and we said yes and did the next indicated thing and boom a whole new career path opened up for us and and i started living a day at a time in a way i've not had to live in a very very long time and now sometimes uh i don't want to really put down the profession you know i mean some people do very well that way. You know, I'm not making big judgments there. It's just that, you know, there was a Mayflower madam who was a big New York madam and she was kind of like the Bergdorf Goodman of the profession, you know? She just high-end everything. And I was just more like the 99 cent store. So I don't know, maybe I'm just jealous. But, you know it was a it's certainly a life i hope i never have to go back to um i uh after a while i i was admitted to a mental hospital in that and uh i was in uh for a couple of weeks observation i ended up being there for a year i just sort of moved in and made myself at home and they weren't talking to me a lot about alcoholism they were talking to be about disorders i was a very disordered looking child by then i was alternately violent and withdrawn and living with the level of frustration down oh my god i couldn't even i couldn' t even talk about when i got to aa i heard it being described as like being a scream without a mouth. And I so got that. I so felt that. But I didn't know back then, and I just did it my own way. And they were giving me daily nutritional supplements, athorazine, melaril, valium, downing sleepers. I suppose they were concerned I wouldn't sleep. And, and, and so on and so forth. And so on. And I became intimately familiar with five-point restraints. And that's what I look like at 15 years old. And to tell you the truth, the only reason that I know I'm an alcoholic all these years later, all these years later at 29 years old, when I was finally, finally washed up on the shores of Alcoholics Anonymous, just tired enough, out of ideas enough to do it your way. I found out that when I apply the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous to my life, I get better, and that's just how I know. I just had used everything up. Dr. Paul used to say I'd given up my or used up my right to chemical peace of mind, but I was willing by the time I got here. If you don't want to go crazy in the nuthouse, you've got to get busy. One of my favorite ways to be busy was boys i've already told you that i loved all the boys but my favorites were those sexy smoldering types you know the kind they just sit back there and simmer until they blow and uh i found them very interesting back then and today i know that feeling is fear but uh but uh you know but guys like that eventually blow you know i uh and and they get hauled off to ya so i was always having to say goodbye to guys likethat you know it's very sad and romantic and tragic you know um like my first boyfriend he blew and he threw a chair through the window and my next boyfriend he blue and he drew a nurse through the windows so that was progressive too and um and i don't know about you but i've always thought i should have a soundtrack to my life you know music playing in the background of all all this drama just some of the saddest songs you ever heard to jackson brown bob dylan just and uh and sometimes we play those romantic jailhouse songs too you know in the nuthouse like um oh when will i see you again and um you know we'd press our little faces up against the bay window and look out and long for what we couldn't have and just you know just the pulling just the yearning and um you know we're 15. and i remember one afternoon i had to say goodbye to my boyfriend terry he's uh he's he blew and he threw that chair through the window and and i was sitting outside on the smoke break bench watching him watch him being cuffed and escorted off by security and it was just tragic and i was smoking those tragic cigarettes and taking it in and channeling greta garbo and just watching and the drama of it all and there he goes and just inside the girls unit i could hear diana ross singing at top decibel touch me in the morning then just walk away you know and it just hurts so good it just hurt so good and And I was always looking for the wrong thing. I was looking out there for what I thought it would fix me, and I was about half a bubble off what it was I thought I was looking at anyway. I'd mistake arrogance for confidence. I'd mistaken sex for love. I'd mistaked brute strength for strength of character. And I'd get it up in my life and I just turned to dust. It just wasn't it. And I had to come to AA to learn that it's when I'm thinking of you. It's when I'm given from the inside that gaping hole in my soul gets smaller. It's never going to come from out there, but I had take a long walk to get here. And I went from the mental hospital over the wall. I never went out the front door of any of these places. I spent all my adolescence in one lockup or another, you know, over the Wall, under the gate, out the door, you know, whatever, in and out of Juvenile Hall. And my dad used to say, they're just trying to buy you some time, Carla. And that they did. You know, maybe they did, and I didn't believe them at the time, though, and all those lockups, I really felt more like a political prisoner. You know? You just wait till I get out there. They're just afraid of me, and they were, but not for the reasons I thought. And so I got out, and I ended up in a girl's home in Pasadena. And, you know, let me tell you that I always believed in God. I never denied the existence of some power greater than ourselves. I felt the presence of God long before I ever took a drink. When I was a child, I felt that presence. I knew there was something, some kind of power that runs in and around and through us. I knew it was there, but I just never could—I couldn't feel it all the time. And so I thought it would go away and, and I didn't understand. So I, you know, I tried a lot of things to try to keep that though. And I was born into a Southern Baptist home and, um, and that worked well for my mom. It worked real well for her. I just, I didn'T get it after a while. Um, and we'd drink the Annie Green Springs and, uh, uh some of the other wines out in the alley behind the church though that is so church didn't work. AndI tried being a Catholic for a couple of weeks in fourth grade you know I love the ceremony of it all I thought that that might do something and then I burned black candles for a couple of years and prayed to the other guy for a while just trying to hedge my bets really I just you know you just want to be on the side that's winning I that's that's it so I got to this girl's home with this idea of finally finally had gelled you know what I what I brought was um the idea of the spirit of the 60s you know I was 12 in 1969 so the 60's were over by the time I got out in the world but but I but I loved what I thought they might have been you know there was free love and peace and flowers and they marched they said no and uh I mean it and there was a Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills and Nash and just this beautiful music that they had and and uh and then there was Kung Fu you know with David carotene and and uh and i you know i had this he gave me the idea of you know strength and serenity i just thought you know I mean this guy walked the wild west in bare feet some of you guys know that you know uh he played a character named cane he was a shaolin priest who walked the wild west and bare feet you know and when people would mess with him he'd either just drop pearls of wisdom you know just buddhist pearls of wisdom and they would just change and they'd want to do good for the rest of their lives and and uh or you know he'd kick their ass and um so i i you know i wanted what he had so so i get to the girls home and my roommate is on the same page and um we're talking to our friends and all our friends said man those people went to oregon you got to go to oregon where god might be and we i went out the second story window that girl's home and down the tree and into randy's truck and off to oregon and and my drinking didn't change you know i was 17 years old by the time we got up there and and uh two things happened that i could only see looking back i certainly couldn't see it when it was happening and one was we couldn't always drink the way i needed to drink and when i when i have no booze and i've got no steps or fellowship or god am i understanding i'm restless irritable and discontent and very hard to get along with and when I could drink theway I needed todrink I was always overshooting the mark and that was happening again and still at 17 my friends had asked me to leave and i was asked to leave a lot of places and i ended up back in my father's house against his better judgment where he had to ask me to live just a few months later right before my 18th birthday he had asked me to believe i know that was the hardest thing he ever had to do he said i'm not going to watch you die and i'm going to help you do it and so i left and all i could remember was that one of the counselors at the rehab told me i was a great actress and i know today I must have misunderstood but I ended up on Hollywood Boulevard and you know, there's not a lot of auditioning going on out there But so I spent another year out there getting out in and out of strange cars with strange people doing strange things And and and it just seemed like the next thing to do and our big book talks about our alcoholic life seeming to be The only normal one in full flight from reality and there was not a hope about it getting any different I was 18 years old starting my days off with a pint of pop-off vodka and I would go wherever the day took me. And some days it was a party, and some days it was just surviving. A few months into that, I met a man walking down Hollywood Boulevard and I saw the light in his eyes and I didn't realize it was orange sunshine, but we hit it off and I moved in with him that night and I, I didn' t even know his last name and six weeks later he's asking me to leave and I still don't know his last names but I like to bring him up because years later he was on my eight step list. He was someone who came to mind very quickly and clearly that I owed him amends. He'd been nothing but kind to me and I'd been that proverbial tornado that went through his life materially physically spiritually in every way i could and um and so i knew i owed him a manzi and i spent the last part of my first year of sobriety looking for him and i went everywhere i knew to look and of course i had no luck and my sponsor finally said you're gonna have to set that down for a while you got to leave it alone if you're supposed to find that guy you'll find him but in god's time not yours so leave it alone and uh you're it's unproductive right now do something that you have some power over and And she said, you know, in the meantime, you can change your behavior. There are some things you can do right now. You know, like try being a friend to a man in a vertical fashion. Why don't you start there? And, you Know, those ideas never sound right, quite right, coming at you the first time. But it worked, you Now, and it was a good start. And all these years later, all these Years later, I love that feeling of self-respect. I can walk into any room, and I can look you in the eye. and I can see the looks on the men's faces and I don't have that look of pity or disdain you know I walk with my eyes open and my head up right underneath that feeling of being useful is that feelingof self-respect and I hope I never trade that away I've come close in sobriety but I hopeInever do anyway I uh I right before let me see last time I think I left you hanging with the guy and um so I want to tell you four years later or something that um right before my 13th a birthday I had to go give a talk on the other side of town and it was a hot Sunday afternoon and I didn't feel like going and thank god you guys have taught me it's not how I feel it's what I do that matters and I went out and I gave that talk and of course I felt better and you know showing up. Integrity, character were never words that you could use to describe me before. And, you know, I used to think I could blow off a dinner for two and not be missed really. And I went out and I gave that talk and I felt better. And when the thank you line came through, this man stopped and he said, where were you in 1976? And it was a guy from Hollywood Boulevard standing in front of me with eight and a half years of sobriety and I was almost 13. Now to me only a very well-organized loving God could have made that happen when I, in all my efforts to get it done, just couldn't get it done and um so i got to make those direct amends to him and he said oh my god carla that's long forgiven long forgotten i just can't believe you're still alive and uh and he's right you know if we're in this room tonight we're the lucky ones somehow some way we've managed to slip through that window of grace long enough to come in here and sit together and recharge and regroup so we can go see what we can go out there and pack into the stream of life you know we're not supposed to be sequestered in here all the time we come in hier and we recharge and we go out here and we give. And we come back and we talk about that. Life is big. AA gave me a big life and it includes AA. You know, when I see, I get sad when I See some people starting to schedule that. I guess I'm getting on a soapbox is what it's called. But you know, I can't schedule AA in like an aerobics class. You Know, it just, it has to be part of my life. It's my way of life. And on top of it is a big life it it uh you know and it's not with that been without its troubles but it's just um it's a life i never would have known and i certainly and i haven't had to have a drink about it um anyway um that was a long time to come and i i told you a little bit about my relationships and and i had a little girl i hooked up with another guy and we you know we slept by the side of the road we sleep under the freeway and we uh pitched a tent we lived there for a while and we lived in moved into a we found an old burnout log cabin not the log cabin like you see you know oh live in this high-end log cabin it was a old mining claim that we found and we threw a plastic tarp over the top and called it a skylight and then this baby we had and we're drinking moonshine because it's organic and we'RE THINKING YOU KNOW MAYBE IT'S BETTER FOR YOU AND WE HAVE THE BABY AND WE'RE I'M THINKing YOU KNOW maybe this is going to do it it's going to be baby and alcohol and everything else and we all know that alcoholism doesn't care who you love It just doesn't, and it became alcohol and baby. And she got in the way of one of our fights when she was about 10 months old, and I had to take her up the road because that's where the hope is. And so we left him and went up to Idaho, and we, you know, just traveled the map. And I got jobs tending bar and cocktail waitressing, and it never occurred to me not to drink on the job. Why else would you have those jobs? And they sustained us for a while. And my kid was one of those kids that you see in her T-shirt and underwear and yesterday's lunch going on the front of it because her mom's not paying attention. And that's the way we lived. And I made good money, I just didn't bring it home. I drank it. And we ended up back down in Covina renting a room from my aunt and I got a job at Hollywood Tending Bar and every afternoon I'd kiss my girl goodbye who was almost about four years old by then and I'd take off for the bar in Hollywood and I'D stop at the halfway point which is a bar in Arcadia called The First Cabin and Iíd stop in there every afternoon like clockwork and have shots of Coral Gold and Bud Backs and then Iíd get up off the barstool and go do my job in Hollywood and crawl back home and start over and do it again. And one afternoon, I kissed my girl goodbye and I took off for that same bar in Hollywood to work and I stopped at that same place and had those same shots of gold and same Bud Bax, you know, my driving brake. And, you know... To this day, I don't know what was different on that day from the day before except for 24 hours because I didn't hate that job in Hollywood and I didn' t love my daughter any less on that date than I love her today. But I couldn' t stop drinking that afternoon. I couldn't suspend my drinking long enough to get up and go take care of business in either direction. So I sat on that barstool, and I lost them both in one fell swoop. The kid and the job were gone. And after that, I lived off the kindness of strangers and went from pillar to post and thought maybe getting married might do it. Maybe if I made my life look like I thought yours was, that would do it, and we just became an active household. We got married about the time we should have split up. I met a guy, you know, and we settled our arguments with a shotgun, and that's what we did. We pulled it out. I just tried to get to it first, and my first exposure to AA was after one of those fights. We were at the bar where we drank and we were fighting over whether or not I should get off the bar stool and I lost that fight and ended up with some black eyes and broken ribs and no one feeling sorry for me in that bar, just glad I was leaving and my husband had to pick me up and take me to the hospital and I got fixed up and he brought me home and he left for work that weekend and he set me up with a giant ice chest full of beer and a bottle of Beefeater gin chilling on top because now I'm drinking gin because tequila had been making me really mean and I'm drinking and dialing the phone and I ended up calling a battered woman's shelter because that's what I thought I was and I asked her for help and she asked me if I'd ever been to an AA meeting and I don't know how she made that leap but she did and I found an AA meaning very nice AA meeting it was there then, it's still there and the one thing I didn't go with though was readiness I wasn't ready and that's something you can't give to me you can make me ready and I can't even make myself ready and I went in there and I heard a woman talk that night and I heard her say that somewhere during her drinking career she switched to beer so I did and it really allowed me to last another couple of years drinking and I had stopped everything else thinking that that's got to be the problem and beer was really, it gave me the illusion I was controlling my drinking it allowed me to last a little further into my day without falling over and I got a few more things done and it was more soothing to my body And it culminated on the other side of town in Pasadena. My husband, I had gotten the kid back for better or worse now. She's almost 10 years old and we're in this little apartment in Pasadaena and the cops are in the driveway one more time. Neighbors are peeking out the window wondering what's going on in Carla and Charlie's house one more times. And my first sponsor told me if I wanted to affect a conscious contact with a power greater than myself that I could start by counting the coincidences that happened in my life. and one of the first ones I could count was that I had moved in next door to a woman who had five years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous and she had seen and heard that whole mess go down that day and a few days later, she came over and knocked on my door and she brought me a big book and a 12 and 12 and she sat on my couch and she told me her story and she was just a woman properly armed with the facts about herself. She just talked about herself and in her story, I heard me. I could hear that she used to drink like me and I had seen with my own eyes over the last year that she wasn't drinking anymore And what impressed me more about her was it didn't seem to bother her that she wasn't drinking And that got my attention because I don't know how you do that untreated I feel like you've stripped the coating off my wires, you know I feel oversensitive and underloved and I don' t know what you meant by that or why you looked at me that way And you know my head closes in on me from there and sooner or later Even though I know that that alcohol is going to cause that trouble And even though I now that window of relief gets smaller and smaller and small I'm going to have to take that drink when I've got nothing standing in between So I don't know if her 12 little thinly-veiled Sunday school sentences are going to have any effect on me in the grand scheme of things, you know. It seemed like I'd heard it all before. And it was about a week and a half later, I just didn't go back and buy any more booze. And I stayed, and I shook it out in my apartment. And my daughter must have been at her father's house. I'm not sure where she was, but she was gone. And I shookit out for a few days, and then I went back to my neighbor and asked her what to do instead of going to the store and getting a bottle. And she sent me up to a meeting in Sierra Madre, and that became my first home group. And I got a sponsor up there, and I went in there. That first meeting that night, I heard hope. And the hope I heard came in the form of small talk. And I don't know why it was. It just seemed to me that people seemed to care about each other. You know, they were asking about each another. How's the wife? How are the kids? How's a job? Do you have a sponsor? Do you Have a big book? You know how you doing? How many days do you have now? And how's the lawn? The lawn. You know I thought could I ever have that simple or normal or healthy life? And I started to stay, and I was going to two and three meetings a day after a while. I just wanted to immerse myself in AA. If I could have, I would have crawled in and just stayed in the rooms. I got a sponsor, and the joke for me today is that she was a couple years younger than I am now. And I thought at the time, I thought, what the heck else has she got to do? Her life is over. So the joke's on me. busier than i've ever been but um but i started to take the steps she took me through the steps the first time and i started make those amends to my family those were the people i owed the most and the mo and needed to be the most consistent with had broken their hearts year after year after year after a year and and it was going to require a lot of follow-up and i really to tell you the truth the obsession to drink did not leave me until i was about nine months sober when i started making the amends and um and you know none of us really knew how long or if this was going going to work you know and to this day i don't have one member of my family who'll stand in the doorway and say no please don't go to the meeting you know none of them do that never and um you know i uh other women started to ask me to sponsor them and and i got to tell you that the only fifth step i like better than mine is yours you know because uh because in your eyes i see forgivability and i see lovability and I see redemption and i can't always see it in mine you know um my friend earl dumbler says uh you know a lot of us say we have to give it away to keep it but uh but really i've had to give away to get it because every time the light comes on in your eyes it comes on in me again and uh um i hope you stay long enough to have that experience because there's something very special that goes on with two alcoholics talking at that intimate level um i'd been here for a couple of years and i was busy being wonderful and alcoholics anonymous commitments and all of those kind of things which were great but i was going to two and three meetings a day and I was going to work and coming home. And I was really kind of scared of my kid. You know, she was 12 years old and, you know, not scared like I couldn't take her, but I mean, scared like, scared, like I didn't have the answers. I didn'T know what to do, you know? And I knew I had messed up. And so a day at a time, I learned how to be a mom. You know, as she was starting to come home at all hours of the night at 12 years, old beat up and bloody, she'd been jumped into a gang and starting to find their sense of family and camaraderie out in the street where I used to, and I was getting worried about her. And so I had to take some actions and put her in a treatment center for a little while. And then it was for me to show up there or go to work, go to one meeting a day. Right up front in our book, I didn't even see it, but on page 19, it says a more important demonstration of our principles happens in our homes, occupations, and affairs. And if I'm only doing it in these rooms, I'm only half doing it. And I had learn that. And, um, and, uh, and i'm not saying not to go to meetings please oh lord i'm just saying i could you know i needed to the reason i'm going to meetings is so i could be a mom so i can go home and take care of business and um she got out and you know that's where i learned that we live we learn to live with life's unresolved problems i um you guys taught me mountains are moved a spoonful at a time and i just every day i get up and give my best spoonful that's it and um I, you know, sometimes we get the idea that we come in here and we're working 12 golden steps. I know I certainly did. I know when I came in here, I told you about all the disjointed ideas about God I had. And when I got here, a lady named Susan said, why don't you just call him God and let him get as big as he needs to be in your life? And that worked well for me in the beginning. You know, I mean, I came here with the trouble God. I had the trouble, God, and had lots of trouble. And then I got the parking space, God. And I liked him. you know he's a lot like santa claus except that i had to learn to take no for an answer with the parking space god if i want to park here get here early that's what i learned and and um you know that uh that i have a responsibility god will do for me what i can't do for myself but i'm fully expected to do what i kan do for my self and then somewhere along the line our book says you know god is everything or he's nothing and if god's everything then i'm part of that and um and then it got it's gotten closer since then and um but about five years of sobriety i was raped by an intruder in my own room, in my own apartment. I was working 12 golden steps. I had made my amends. Everything was cool and there's this thing happening. You know, there's a man standing over my bed with a knife to my neck, his hand over my mouth and he says, don't say a word or cut your head off. And he tied me up and he raped me that night and he stayed for a few hours and then he left. And I didn't know what was going to happen that night but he ended up leaving out the same window he came in and it turned out that I knew him. I'd actually watched him get sober 30 days before I did and I watched him get his life, his wife, his kids and everything back. And then I watched him join the church and leave AA behind. And when he went out, he went out like that. And you know, what I choose to learn from that is while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right, this is where I learned the terms and conditions of my disease. This is where i learned that i'm not one of those people who can go home after a sunday sermon and have a glass of wine. I remember that here and then i can go anywhere i want to in worship and or nowhere. This has been a lot for me. My sponsor told me I was going to have to forgive him, and I didn't know how that was going to happen because I was so afraid. I'd gone to that place again where I'm afraid. I'm standing on the sidewalk. A car door slams, and I jump, and I get pissed all over again. And I don't know what I'm going to do. I don' t know how I'm gonna let go. If I let go of this anger, I'm gonna be that hole in the doughnut. What am I gonna look like on the other side of this? If I Let Go, you're gonna walk all over me. You're gonna be able to hurt me. And that seven-step prayer was what did it. It became my mantra. And there was a court trial that followed. And you know, the thing that started to happen right away that I didn't see till of course the hoopla was over but but that I knew when he was gone that it was okay for me to find a little piece of telephone cord and hook that into the wall and call the police and ask for help. I knew that they would listen to me and they did and anyway there was a court trial that followed and I'm looking for this forgiveness and as part of the defense they had a lot of the guys I'd known years before get up and testify as to who I used to be and a lot things they said were true and some weren't and And that included my ex-husband, who, you know, he was more inclined to testify on behalf of a rapist than he was for me. And that's the mark I left on him. He's never been interested in any of my amends. And so then we had to get a character witness for me, and by that time I was working at a big financial firm in Los Angeles. And it's a place I never even would have walked in the front doors of years before. And the department head volunteered to go and testify on my behalf. And he went, and they told him everything. They told him all about who I used to be. And he said, yeah, but she shows up early and she stays late. And she was where she said she was. See, that's alcoholic synonymous speaking for itself. He didn't have to be coached. He just got up and told the truth as he'd experienced it through me. And then it was my turn to testify. And I got up in that witness stand and I looked out and I saw him sitting at that table. And it's a place where I've sat before and I could sit again. I knew in that moment if I took a drink, I could be sitting in his very seat. Maybe not for rape, but something equally as destructive. And it occurred to me, like it talks about in our book, that he was a sick person like me. And though I didn't like the way his symptoms manifest, you know, he needed spiritual help too. And so just like a crack of light under the door, that hope started to come in. And over about 18 months, it took about 18 minutes to be able to finally relinquish that fear. He was sentenced to 20 years and he did 17 and he's not been able to stay out of prison. But I know it works in prison. and I've sat in meetings inside those prison walls that are as fine as any meeting I've ever sat in outside. Those guys, some of them are never getting out, and yet they found a way to make Alcoholics Anonymous work. They've shared it with each other, and they walk as free spiritually as you and I do inside those walls, and so I know it works. The detective who worked that case came to me, and he said, I don't know who you were back then. I'm not even sure I want to know, but whatever it is you're doing now, keep doing it because it seems to be working, and that's AlcoholicsAnonymous speaking for itself. And, you know, I'm going to let you know that that kid of mine came home to live with me again after a couple of years. She had gone to live avec her dad, and she and her boyfriend sat down in front of me, and I had to tell them they were pregnant because they just couldn't get the words out. And I got to be there for her through the—I got to tell her I'll be there für you no matter what you decide. And today, you now, she's 33 years old. She's working on her master's, and I have two beautiful grandsons. They're 12 and 16, and I sat with them a couple of years ago and watched their mother graduate from Cal Poly Pomona with a bachelor's degree. She wanted to be a probation officer at the time, and I guess she's changed her mind. My father doesn't have to sit up nights anymore watching the news to make sure his daughter's name isn't on a list of the victims of the serial killers of the day. He sleeps well, and he knows why. My mom died a couple years ago of end-stage liver disease. She was someone who really loved the doctors and the medications they provided, and I watched her die a long, slow death over the years. But before she did, we were clean and clear. We were good. A couple of years before I got sober, my baby sister committed suicide at the age of 17, and it took her all weekend to die. And while she lay on life support in a West Covina hospital, we were all, the family was in the waiting room. And I'd leave the waitingroom every now and then. I'd go out to the van where I had the booze, you know, and then I'd drink. And I'd come back into that waiting room, and I'd just rake my mother across the coals. And I talked to her in a way a daughter should never talk to her mother, especially when her baby lay dying in the next room. And I don't know how you make amends for that except that I started by calling her once a week and trying to find out how I might add to her life instead of take for a change. And over time, we became very close. It required listening and being quiet and not judging and just trying to figure out how to make amending my way in. It wasn't easy all the time because I've got a big self, you know, and I get in my own way a lot. But over time we were closer. And about 10 years ago my baby brother died of this disease. He was 30 years old, 6'10", 160 pounds when he lay on life support in a Spokane hospital, little pinholes in his heart from doing crank and he wasn't going to stop drinking immersively when he died. I got to go up and be the kind of a daughter my mother needed while she buried dad's second child. and I don't know what kind of pain that is for a parent really but I know that this time because of Alcoholics Anonymous I got to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem Howard P. always says wherever you see God, mark that spot and go sit in that window again and I found some passions over the years in my sobriety and I've found them through physical just physical things like rollerblading or going to the gym You know, it's also kind of a meditative exercise for me. And when I was 47 years old and 17 years sober, I found dance. Now, I was not one who wanted to learn to dance in sobriety. It reminded me of Juvenile Hall when they put us in our burlap nighties and then take us over to the Crips Inn training and make us dance with them, and that just wasn't the same. So I wasn't sure that wasn't what we were going to do here. So, you know, I took a long time, And I found ballroom dancing. You know, a lot of you know that. And I, and I, and I found my heart. I found the moment again. I found that where I see my God is in that moment. You know? I'm not, when I'm not worried about the step I'm about to take and I'm no worried about the steps I just took and I stay right here right in the moment and I allow myself to be led. I never know what pattern I'm executing until it's over. And that reminds me that that's the way my life is. My friend Don Newcomb who we know and love here not the baseball player he said to me one day. He said, I was a little worried about that dancing thing. I thought it might take you away from AA. You might love it so much. And he said, but now I see that what had to happen was the little girl who went to North Beach had to step aside so the lady who dances could come out. I want to thank you all. I wantto thank Julie. Thank you so much for the invitation tonight. And if you're new, I hope that you'll find what we found here in Alcoholics Anonymous. Keep coming back. Thank you. We celebrate AA birthdays at this meeting. For every 365 days of continuous sobriety, we give a cake with the appropriate number of candles on it. We define sobrietry as freedom from alcohol, pills, pot, or anything which affects you from the neck up. If you're a regular attender to this meeting and would like to take a cake with us, please see me at the door before the meeting. We have several birthdays tonight, so let's sing briskly and speak briefly birthday people don't forget to pick up your candles from the cake table as you exit the podium our first birthday tonight is for lindsey k with two years i'm lindsay and i'm an alcoholic i'd like to thank god my wonderful sponsor hilda sharon clancy kitty aapg and my girlfriends. Thank you. Happy birthday, Lindsay. Our next birthday is for Sean B., with five years. Sean Alphaholic. I'd like to thank God, Clancy, my sponsor Michael Chasteen, my father Michael Blanc, my fiance Alicia Kopin, class of 2007, and all of you. Thank happy birthday sean our next birthday is also for five years for jody n hi jody alcoholic i'd like to thank god lydia and clancy happy birthday jody our next birth anniversary is for six years for paula v Hi, Paula Alcolic. Hi. I want to thank you, God, my beautiful sponsor, Claire, Clancy for the group, my A.A. sister, and all of you. Happy birthday, Paula. Our next birthday is for six years for Brian B. Brian Unger, alcoholic. I wantto thank my sponsor, Bill, for another year of great sponsorship. my former sponsor Jim Jackson, Clancy for the structure of the group all of you, the Friday Night Men Stag and I want to thank my friend Michael Fuller who showed me a lot before he passed on this year Thank you Happy birthday Brian. Our next birthday is for nine years for Kelly C Kelly Alcoholic I'd like to thank my sponsor Hilda for taking back my case my great, my grand sponsor Sharon, my great grand Clancy my sober sisters class of 03 and all of you. Thank you. Happy birthday Kelly our next birthday is for 10 years for Ronnie G. My name is Ronnie Green I'm an alcoholic I want to thank my sponsor John Graff Clancy and all of you Happy birthday, Ronnie. Our next birthday is for 11 years for Libby B. I'm Libby. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank God. I want to thank my sponsor, Teresa, AA as a whole, and Class of 2001, and all of you. Happy birthday Libby! Our next birthdays also for 11 years for Ken L. Hi, my name is Ken Lloyd and I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank my sponsor, Bill Conaway. I'd also like to thank my previous sponsors, John G., Jim J., Norman L. I think that's it. And I'd like to thank my wife. She's incredible for sticking through with me. And I'd love to thank you all for being here today. I'd really like to thank Pacific Group and Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Happy birthday, Ken. Our next birthdays also for 11 years for pat l my name is pat i'm alcoholic i want to thank god for this gift of sobriety my sponsor theresa m for her love and support my previous sponsor hilda f my grand sponsor sharon c clancy uh my family in poland uh the class of 2001 and all of you who supported me for the past two years in every way possible. Thank you. Happy birthday, Pat. Our next birthday is for 13 years for Charles M. Charles Mandel, alcoholic. I'd like to thank God for my sobriety. Tom for the cake. Bob A. for bringing me to the group. Clancy for the group, my AA brothers, and all of you. Happy birthday, Charles. Our next birthday is for 14 years for Dave C. Hi, my name's Dave. I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to thank my sponsor, Daryl, for giving me that cake. I'd also like to say happy birthday to my wife, I'd love to thank God, Clancy for the structure of the group, Clancy and Charlotte for the yard, and Pacific Group, and All of You. Thank you. happy birthday dave our next birthday is for 16 years for kim w i'm kim i'm an alcoholic i'd like to thank god clancy alcoholics anonymous millie laura darlene and my fabulous sponsor maryland thank you happy birthday kim our next birthdays for 20 years for bob t Bob Toley, alcoholic I'm very grateful for the blessed life that I have today For that I thank God, my sponsor Tom Friday Night Men Stag Class of 92 And all of you Thank you Happy birthday Bob Our next birthday is for 26 years For Jeff E Howdy, I'm Jeff I'm an alcoholic I'd like to thank my sponsor Clancy for giving me my cake tonight and for being the inspiration in my life and always having the answer when he keeps me on the straight and narrow. I'd also like to thank my mother for her unconditional love and all her support that I get from her. I'd like to say thank you and I'd always like to think my home group, the Pacific Group and I like to Thank God as I understand him and who the hymn that presides over us all. Thank you. Happy birthday, Jeff. Our next birthday is for 27 years for Teresa M. My name's Teresa Munoz and I'm an alcoholic. First of all, I want to thank Surency for sponsoring me and giving me that cake. It's been a difficult year, but I'm still impressed with her example and her inspiration. I want the best of luck to everyone and I want thank the women I sponsor, my AA sisters, Clancy for the structure of the group, the class of 85. um and for this wonderful gift of sobriety i thank you god happy birthday theresa our next birthday is for 31 years for john d my name is john david i'm an alcoholic i'd like to thank clancy for that cake for being my sponsor for the past 31 years i really don't believe i'd be sober today but for his wise counsel. I want to thank my wife Beth for allowing me to be part of her life and for being a part of mine. I'd be remiss in not thanking a little pony named Pokita for for being such a big part of my sobriety. I I want to thank the money counters, every individual on that. I'll thank the group collectively, and I'll thank you individually at the end of the month. And I want to thank God for getting me here and keeping me here one day at a time. Thank you. Happy birthday, John. Our last birthday is for a former secretary, Frank J., with 31 years of sobriety. Frank Jones, alcoholic. I want to thank God. I want to thank Clancy for sponsoring me, and his example speaks louder than anything that he could say. I wanna thank the guys that I sponsor. I wanna thank The Pacific Group. In my opinion, it's the apex of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wanna think my friends here. I wanna thank my wife and family, and I wanna thank the Class of 1935. happy birthday frank that's a total of 18 birthdays totaling 254 years for an average of 14 years per birthday we have a custom at the pacific group of donating one dollar for each candle on our birthday cakes at the end of this year this candle money is our contribution to aa organizations worldwide if you wish to participate in this custom please see my assistants at the door when you sign up to take your cake.