Step 5 Was Like a Cosmic Toothbrush – Peggy M.

This was recorded at the 14th Annual South Plains AA Conference, which was held in Loveland, Texas on May 8th, 9th and 10th, 1992. The speaker this Saturday morning is Peggy M. from Alliance, Nebraska. Thank you. I got it. Good morning. I'm Peggy Martin, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Peggy. And through the grace of God and fellowship of people like you and sponsorship, I have been sober since February the 4th, 1964, and for that I'm very grateful. I would like to thank all of you for having me back to Texas. I love Texas. I went to high school here. I went into elementary school here, different places, but and I went to my first year of college here I drank an awful lot of Lone Star beer because I was not really a high class drinker but it got me where I wanted to be and I have always particularly, I want to say something to the people in Alcoholics Anonymous in Texas and that is that you are respected throughout the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous for having long-term sobriety and also for having the kind of program where we are not a glum lot. Because let me tell you something, I have been to some meetings where when they have read if you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, I would have said no thanks. because they are a glum lot and this is not a glom lot anytime I've ever been to Texas there's always been warmth and there's also always been friendship and there has always been a lot of people to give me encouragement and although I've been sober for 28 years plus I am an alcoholic who suffers from alcoholism and not alcohol-wasm so I always feel, even today when I am alone sometimes I get that little seed of doubt and I think that's my alcoholism that's saying to me, honey you haven't got it all made yet and you need to keep going to meetings and you needs to keep being sponsored and you keep sponsoring and giving back I read something the other day which is so true it says if you go on giving you go one having and I wish I could tell you it was in a really learned tone but it wasn't, it was in a fortune cookie laughter laughter laughter does that look like Chinese food too laughter so I thank you and I want to thank Teresa and Bubba and I think Pooley is with her daughter I think it's her daughter-in-law this morning and maybe she'll get here before I finish but thank all of you and Betty for making me feel so welcome and happy to be back in Texas we're a strange bunch aren't we? We really are a strange bunch and I'm glad because a lot of people's idea of excitement is like to go down and watch them unload the trucks at the Safeway or something and that just isn't enough for us you know we we I I had heard somebody say this one time and I think it's very true for me he said there are three kinds of people who drink in bars he said There's the kind of guy that comes in that just comes in maybe once a month or maybe every couple weeks and he has a couple drinks and yucks it up with the guys and then he just goes home I mean he just says oh no thank you I've had enough and then there's another guy who comes in and he comes in pretty much all the time and he kind of drinks until he feels good and then he gets maybe somebody else to take him home maybe he goes home himself but he just drinks until it feels good. And then there is the guy that comes in every night and he drank them till he's just drunk and he just wants everything and he's like a mad dog alcoholic well after we sober up you know we're sort of the same way you know there are some people who come into AA and they just do enough of it to make them feel good there's some people don't find necessary to come at all and then there are those people like me who are like mad dog alcoholics you know and I got to go all the time you know I gotta go to meetings and I gotta be sponsored and I've got to have a home group and I mean I'm a four meeting four to five meeting a week attendee. I am sponsored continuously sometimes my sponsor wishes I'd leave her alone a little bit I think but I'm sponsored continuously and I sponsor people continuously and part of it is because I want to do that but most of it is because I need to do, that's just me I am just like that. I'm not right it's It's like I'm a court low. I mean, have you ever been to or a bubble off a plum? You know how they got those things that measure level and everything? It's not like that. It's just like I am a bubble-off-a-plum. Is anybody else like that? I mean each sober I am bubble-of-a plumb. I don't think like other people. I mean I have creative thinking. Today I have creative thinking i think awful stuff sometimes and sometimes i think wonderful stuff which is nice too when you're married for over 25 years you've got to be creative but but you know i have these i have this i have have these terrible emotions you know I have these these sometimes you know I feel like a little I sometimes I wish that the adult in me would show up do you you know sometimes I go to work and think I wonder when I wonder when the grown-ups gonna get here you know cuz I feel like a kid and when I come to a convention where I don't think I know anybody you know I kind of I want to go in the corner you know it kind of cuz I'm sure I'm shy I mean I know it doesn't seem like I'm shy because I take actions against my thinking but it is anybody else get that little tiny fear inside like they're not you know you know they're gonna find out what you are and you know i'm uh I'm not a bit I don't mean I'm not a binge drinker anymore I'm a binge thinker and I get to thinking you know and I think about stuff, you know. I think, oh, they're going to discover that, you know, you really are ditzy. You know, something after 28 years, you should have more recovery than this. And this is my alcoholic man in my head. And when I get to binge thinking like that, sober, the thing is, I remember it all. You know? When I was drinking, it made the voices go away. You know. It quieted my mind. And now my mind is active. And of course it's not bad. It's not as bad as it used to be, and I don't have to act on those things. But that's why I need you. That's whyI love coming to things like this because it's like we all kind of group together, you know, and the initial thing that I got in Alcoholics Anonymous was identification. I identified with the people that were there. Even when I didn't want to, I identifiedwith the people there. even when I thought differently I identified with the people there and then once they had enfolded me in this wonderful warm cocoon of a fellowship where we can go for a week what privileged people we are what a privilege it is to be asked to come and talk somewhere nobody ever asked me to do anything I couldn't even take out the garbage. Nobody wanted me to do anything. And people have actually asked me to come and say something, to be wrapped in this fellowship, to be safe from out there. Because I don't know how you feel, but it's kind of a scary world. It's a scary worldview. It's very weird for me. And coming in here and being enfolded in your arms and in the love and understanding and presence of God that is always at these things. Always. All I have to do is just recognize that presence and be aware of it and I was never aware of it out there. I was one of these kind of people when I was drinking who was never ever afraid when Iwas drinking afraid of what would kill me. I was never afraid to come to in some neighborhood where they have those bright lights, you know, those bad neighborhoods. I was ever afraid of that. I was always afraid of those things. I was just never afraid to just get in the car and say, hey honey, you want to go to Kansas City? And I didn't even know him. You know, I mean, I just, I was Never Afraid of that sort of thing. But what I was afraid of was somebody offering me help. I was Afraid Of The Help. Not of what was going to hurt me. I was Ever Afraid It Was Going To Kill Me. Gene said last night he was really looking for somebody to do that. Well, I wasn't exactly actively looking for it, but I was never afraid of it. I was afraid somebody would say, you have a drinking problem and you need help. That was what I was worried about, and I was scared to take it. Because if I took any help, I knew I was going to have to quit drinking. And I know any of you who drank and got to the place that I got But I could not feature life without alcohol. I could no feature it with it and I could not feature it without it. I was at the jumping off place when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I spent a lot of time growing up in Texas. My father was in the Air Force, he was a doctor and he finally was, when he retired he was Surgeon General of the Air force. And I'm very privileged to live in the same town with my parents now and be able to take care of them in their old age, although they don't seem to need too much taking care of. My father is shooting in the world championship skeet shoot in Atlanta, Georgia this weekend as a veteran champion in two guns. My mother is carrying his guns for him, so ... And he's 83 and she's 81, so you know. They do pretty good by themselves. Just last year my mother, we were hoping she would fail her driver's test but no, she didn't. She didn't and she's legal for another four years. She's the kind of driver that drives along and says, oh there's Mrs. So-and-so, you see them? You know just driving along not looking at the road. Anyway I am privileged to be in that town and to be able to help to take care of them when they should need it. And that's a benefit of Alcoholics Anonymous. But I always forget to do this and I always feel like when I sit down that I should do this, and that is that I went to high school here and then I went overseas and went to college in France and in Switzerland and came back and went the University of California where my drinking really got bad and I ended my college career, I didn't graduate until after I got sober but I went to Washington University in St. Louis and all of this was drinking and I got sober in Washington D.C. and I met and married a guy in A.A., we had to ask his sponsor because he hadn't been sober a year, I glommed onto a newcomer which is not really kosher but never mind I did it anyway we had to get permission and everything we only dated for two months but you know how you are when my sponsor almost had a fit night I wouldn't recommend it but it worked out for us since I've been we've been married now for nearly 26 years so that was good but it's only because of Alcoholics Anonymous and the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous that were still married today and believe me it is but he said he's my good friend and I love him and I respect him. I care about him, he's my best friend. He's my A buddy. And I love that. My son is an Alcoholics Anonymous member. He has been sober for three years and my daughter-in-law is an alcoholics anonymous member. She has been sober for seven and a half years so I literally am surrounded with Alcoholics Anonymous I live in a small town of Bellevue Nebraska which is I think it's it I don't know how many people are in level land not enough 30,000 people in Bellevues Nebraska which to me is a small town and the nice thing about living in the small town is that everybody knows everybody else and the bad thing about Living in a Small Town is that everybody knows everybody else but I'll tell you what it does for me it makes me practice a program of rigorous honesty because if I don't somebody's gonna snitch on me and that's good for me because being the sort of alcoholic that I am that's for me when I was growing up I really felt as though it was an odd thing and I don t know if any of you can relate to this, but I had the strangest feelings inside of me. On the one hand, I was absolutely convinced that I was the lowest of the low. There was something inherently wrong with me. Something was wrong with my. Something deep inside of said, you're just no good. You're no good! You're ugly, you're clumsy, you can't get along with people, you can't, you are not pretty, you know, you aren't smart. You're just lower and lower, lower than whale poop on the ocean floor. Just lower and low. And on the other hand I had this just as equally convincing feeling, just as strong as ever you could that I was smarter, beautiful, wittier, more graceful leadership presidential material. And when you've got lower than low whale poop on the ocean floor and higher than high it creates tension. Terrible tension because who are you today? I mean even Even today, I think, who am I today? You know, I have several different people that could show up any time, and I felt that. I felt the tension of that ugly president or whatever, and it was... I felt like, did anybody ever read Fearless Fosdick? Did you ever read Al Cap, Fearless Fozdick, Evelyn knows here. Hi Evelyn. Fearless Fosdick was this detective that was drawn by Al Cap, and he was a takeoff on Dick Tracy. And whenever he'd get shot, he'd these big holes blown completely through him. You know, just you could look through him and see the grass and trees on the other side of him, big holes. I related to Fearless Fozdick. I felt like there were big chunks of me missing. People were saying, there goes that girl with the holes in her arm. God, she's strange. That didn't make any difference. What I did, what I dressed in, what accomplishments I had, it never filled in the holes. I could wear anything. I Could do anything. I Could be anything, but it never filled in The holes. They were always there. There were always these big chunks of me Missing. And I always had to do more than everybody else in the whole world just to feel equal to. Not even to feel better than, but just to get even. And it was such a chore getting even because it seems like you just get even and then it's like you have these buckets of sand or something You know, and you do balance in these buckets of sand and this was the good and this is the bad. And you just get them evened out and then somebody come along and poke a hole in your bucket and all this good stuff had run out. You know? Isn't it wonderful? Isn't that amazing that we always remember the bad stuff? We always seem to, I always seem concentrate on the bad stuff. I could never quite believe the good stuff about me. You know, I never thought about that. And that has been a struggle for me in Alcoholics Anonymous is to look for the good stuff, not only in me, but in you. And the odd irony of AlcoholicsAnonymous is that I have to look and see the good in you and then I recognize the good. In me. You are my teachers. No matter how long you've been sober, you're my teachers, and I thank you for that. But that's the way I was. And when I, when I was always, we were talking in the bathroom with, I was talking with Anna and I told her, you know, I never, I like sweaters like this because I have no waist and it makes me look like maybe there's a waste under here, you know, because it just kind of hangs down here. I have never had any ins and outs. I've never, I've always looked like a bored fence, you know. And sometimes I was a picket and sometimes I was a two-by-ten, you now. I mean, it just depended on how much I was eating and how much i was drinking. But I never had any waist and I never had any boobs and I've ever had any hips. I just look like a pickett. And when I would drink, I can remember, God, I just loved drinking. I did. I just made my mouth water every time. I could get through the longest day knowing there was that reward at the end. You know what I'm saying? Like getting through a 40-hour morning because you've got a soldier. You've got a hidden soldier, and you can go home. And I can remember popping the lid off. I love beer. I drank other stuff but I really loved beer and I'd pop that lid off and the first thing you smell is skunk and then you get it in and it fizzles in your nose and it rolls down your throat and it just hits bottom and it just radiates out what it did for me was it my waist nipped in and my hips flared out and my boobs grew and I was Marilyn and I just sing show tunes and I just changed I just changed. I wasn't a picket anymore I was Dolly Parton for heaven's sake I mean I was and that was just exteriorly you know I mean interiorly it made me feel something because I had I just I somebody said it last night in the night owl meeting I just didn't want to feel anything and I had closed off I had just closed off long time before because I didn't want to get hurt I somehow was so scared of life I was so scared of you. I was so scared of just people. People scared me to death. Just in my face, just standing there. I mean, I just was scared. But because I'm arrogant, you know, I got to act like you're not scaring me. And that interior, it did the same thing. It made me feel great it was just like it was like turning black and white tv into color you know it's just like boom yes yes that's the way it made me feel it made my feel like i didn't have any holes except the pre-rescued number of them or whatever but it made me feel like I didn't anything missing I don't know where that came from never mind anyway it made me feel like I was a whole person again you know and it you know it gave me the hips and it what it did was it put me in the back seat of cars in Fort Worth, Texas with people I wanted to throw up on the next day I lowered my standards if I had any to begin with But that's the way it did. It made me able to tolerate those situations, and this is God's truth. I mean, if we could stay drinking, if I could have stayed drinking, I'd have stayed drinkin', but you can't stay drinkin'. Sooner or later, you know, I had every intention in the world to drink around the clock, and I'd drink and I drink and drink at certain times, but then I would just, like, fall asleep right in the middle of everything. You know, it would just fall asleep, pass out. I slept in with my sister. You know I don't have a terrible story. I mean I don' t. I didn' t get arrested. I didn't get a lot. Men they say are ashamed of what they did and women are ashamed of what the became. Well I became something I hated. I lowered my standards. I became something I hated, and I did things I hated too, but I hated what I became because I became everything I didn't want to be. I became Everything My Mother Didn't Want Me To Be. I became every thing that I hated in other people, and so I ended up with a tremendous amount of self-hatred naturally because I did all of those things. And I lived with my sister and my sister had, we had these two little cherry wood beds. We had these 2 little dressers. We had this, her, my bed was never made because I was really into drinking by this time and I didn't want to make my bed and there were stuffed animals on hers, 99 stuffed animals looked like to me. She made her bed every day. She wore lots of dresses in Capizio flats. She had perfume, and I spent my money on Blatt's beer and Lone Star beer and whatever else I could get a hold of. I never had any clothes. And I professed to be an intellectual. I didn't believe in those things. And I had gotten to the place where when I was drinking that I drank an awful lot of beer. I'd drink a case of beer a day. I could easy drink acase of beer every day. And later on I had to switch to vodka because I couldn't carry around two cases of beer. I mean, it's tough to do. I switched to vodka. It was a simple matter of transport. It wasn't anything else. And because I need to have that much alcohol in my system, you know? To keep me... And beer made me kind of a dumb drunk. You remember it was like... Dull, kind of dumb drunk, but I didn't get in a lot of trouble in the sense that, you now, not wildness anyway, which vodka gave me later. But this, I was doing my beer a bit and the thing about beer is that when you drink an awful lot of beer you got, there has to be, you have to go to the bathroom. I mean it's just very simple. You have to have facilities. And one of my, there were two great prerequisites that I had for an evening of drinking. one was that because I drank a lot alone you know I wasn't a social drinker except if you were buying I drank with you but if I was buying I'd drank alone because I didn't want you to have any of mine so when I had to have a church key because we didn't have pop-top cans and secondly I had to find out where the bathroom was because I needed to engrave this in my memory when it struck me that I had to go so when but when you're struck drunk at night and I don't know if any of you can relate to being struck drunk but I'd be drinking along and I just get struck drunk I mean it's white all of a sudden and I pass out in bed and I would forget my normal routine and one time I I got up in the night, and I don't remember this because, but you know, my sister's a real good Al-Anon material. She's good at telling you what you did after you did it, you know. Just really driving the knife in, you now. And she told me, she said, you got up last night, you went over to the closet and opened the door and went in there and peed in your shoes. It was a good thing it was my shoes than not her damn Capizio flats. That's all I got to say. So, and I said, oh, I did not. She said, yes, you did. And I kind of knew I did, but, you know, I didn't want to admit it. And my sister used to, she used to roll her hair up in those curlers that have brushes through them, you know those things that have, they have these little pink stabber things that you stab through, which is why my hair is all straight. I couldn't stand that stuff. God, it would drive me crazy. but she used to roll her hair up every night and it would pull the skin of her face back like this and so she'd look at me kind of funny she had them Al-Anon eyes you know those squinty little things where I'm looking at her guilt, guilt, guilty well at least at the time I was carrying this purse that was in style It was a basket thing, like a fisherman's thing with the wood lid. Do you remember those things? And lots of times they had fruit and junk on the front of them and stuff, you know, that kind with flowers. I was carrying that thing, and I got up this morning, and I went over, and boy, it looked bad. It really looked bad, it was... It looked like it had a nervous breakdown. It was real flat, you know? and everything, and I opened up the lid and I went, oh my God, and my sister said I believe you peed in your purse and I had to, I had but I dried out the money and spent it anyway at the time I was on Thunderbird wine, and I was a wine aunt. And it's floating, well, it's floating around Southern California someplace soon. And that's the kind of stuff I did. I mean, I didn't, it was terrible, I mean I had, what are you going to say? I mean I went to, I was at the egghead branch of the University of California. I was carrying an A-B average at the University Of California at riverside and i had one friend there who wore a black hat and a cape and he smoked dope and i called him zoro one friend and he used to we used to sit at lunch together and i'd drink vodka out of my thermos and he'd smoke dope and recite poetry to me and i thought i had died and gone to heaven because i that was my idea of intellectual thought you know and i'm just stoned I mean, that's all I am. What am I going to do? Even with Zorro, am I gonna go the next day to school and say to him, hey, guess what I did last night? I peed in my purse. No! I mean if I'd done that last night, I'm not gonna tell you today. I mean I thought it was nuts. And you know, we get so fancy. We got all these fancy words for stuff anymore. it's you know they could say well you were dysfunctional yeah yeah right what it was was I was drunk I mean I was just drunk that's this functional I mean my bladder was this fun they talk about you know they have you make all these lists nowadays can you come in you know they make these lists. How was your life unmanageable? No secret to me. I couldn't even decide where to pee. I could not even predict where I was going to. Now maybe that offends some little old lady, but I am sorry, that is my story. And when I got sober in Washington D.C., I did not have any trouble believing that my life was unmanagable. I did I didn't have a whit of trouble, and I didn�t have any trouble understanding either that I couldn't talk about it because people don't want to sit next to you when you're peeing things outside of what you're supposed to. They don't wanna have anything to do with you. You might give them a disease or something, you know, you don't know, and honestly, how were you when got sober? Were you a genius? I couldn't even think. I mean, I just... I wandered around meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for two years going... I mean... I was not clear thinking. I was... I was weird. I mean I just couldn't... My neurons weren't connected. I mean i was not thinking right so when I got sober the reason I ended up getting thrown in treatment which was years and years ago and it was not a treatment center like we know them today it was basically kind of a booby hatch you know, and they kind of threw me in there to get me off the streets and they kept me there for 30 days to sober me up and in that place I got sober and they took me to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but the reason i got in that place was because the last, did you ever try to have like straighten up? You know every once in a while I'd say you gotta straighten up. You know I'd stay to myself you've got to straighten up, you've gotta get your act together you gotta, you know, you're really messing up here so I'd straighten up and I'd get up in the morning and I resolved you're gonna put on makeup today and you're going to get dressed. You're not going to wear that shaggy old sweater. I kept that sweater. I had my drinking uniform. It was a pair of gray stretch pants that went from a size 12 to a size 16 and a blue turtleneck sweater that was no size at all. And I have that. I kept it up on my shelf. It's up there to remind me what it was like. Whenever I want to know, I just look up there. I wish I had that purse, but I didn't. I threw it away. they probably would have wrought it anyway but you know those I would straighten up and I'd make it until about afternoon and then I just I was so physically addicted to alcohol I had to get a drink I just had to and I did whatever I could I stole from my folks I took pop bottles back to the supermarket to get the pennies back for them I saved those things up I drank stuff out of their liquor cabinet I got a key made to their liquor cabinet and got into it anytime I could I did whatever, I was a thief I was an animal, I had become an animal and I'd start drinking in the afternoon and then the next day I'd say I've got to shape up I've gotta get myself together so I put on makeup again but I never took off the makeup I had on the day before so I would end up with the for about three weeks I did this before I got sober I had these massive they looked like two big tarantulas just sitting right there on my face these two eyes just like, and they were so caked that when I'd close them they'd like, you know eyes like that, big black circles around because you know when you wear mascara at night it kind of gets under your eyes so I look like a raccoon so I looked in the mirror and this was my moment of truth I wish that I could tell you that I took this thing that I had this moment of proof and this was stained glass window and music in a chapel somewhere. But I didn't. I took it in front of my mirror, looking in my eyes. And nobody was home. Even I knew nobody was at home. And then it was like, do you ever, when your folks, when you were growing up, did your folks ever say to you like oh Mary Jane she's my smart girl or Betty she's my pretty girl or Teresa she's my mischievous girl or doesn't Barbara have pretty teeth? Doesn't Suzanne have lovely eyes? With me it was my eyelashes. My mother said look at those eyelashes. Aren't those beautiful eyelashes? Well here I was gone I just saw them raining down on my face I thought they were falling out I had hair falling out. I mean I know it had to be the DTs because I had several bouts of those never though with this and I just I mean that's stupid it's stupid but I just fell on the floor and I started crying. And I just cried, and I cried, and cried. And my mother, who'd been going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous on the sly, heard this sound. And if you've ever heard anybody crying like that, you know it's like crying from hell. I've heard people like that. She said it was the most misery, tormented kind of crying out she'd ever hurt and she came up and my dad's a doctor he slipped me two capsules of prozine in a glass of vodka and I got real relaxed and they folded me in half stuck me in the back of their Porsche car and took me off to the country where I sobered up. And when I was in that place, it was called Melwood Farm and it was kind of a, it's really just a jitter joint you know it was just a bunch of us just shook around you know we had a guy that had wine sores and we had another guy who used to pop out in hives and you know every day we'd go where you got them today? Where you got him today? I mean we were real brilliant people you know and they threw me in this place and I and I they put me on a mattress on the floor because I kept falling off the bed because I was that drunk and I was in in the room with the wife of the Speaker of the House and thanks Teresa then there was another old gal named Mary B and Mary B's 91 years old now and Mary B ran the place and she said to me because I I was no rocket scientist I mean you know I described I just was I couldn't understand the basic things and the first thing she told me was honey you got to make your bed I I had you I I hadn't made my bed in years. I was in it most of the time, but I mean, I hadn'T made my bed in the years. So I made the bed and she said, now honey, she just called me honey, which is why I think I call everybody honey. She said, honey, you got to serve the eggs this morning because she said when I was drinking, I used to have a boilermaker, which is a shot and a beer in order to fry my husband's eggs. And I fried him sunny side up eggs every morning. But I had to have a boilermacher to do it. She said, I can't look at sunny side ups eggs. And so she, I got to serve the sunny side up eggs. And boy that was something. You know they're slippery. and they didn't we didn't come off of stuff in those days nice we came off of it jittery and I mean I'd get that spatula under there and I and they don't cheer you know they go Come on, honey, you can do it! You can do it! And I'd get that thing out of there and I'd fucking go Yay! We just nothing. Didn't take much to amuse us, you know But that was my first job I had a job It was only like two or three days a week, but it didn't matter It was a job Somebody trusted me to do something, and I hadn't been trusted to do anything for years and gave me a little dignity. I prize my dignity today because I had become an animal, worse than an animal because I'm an animal lover. Worse than an animal because I have no love in me. And I would run around when I was young and I would say nobody loves me you don't understand me give me any time the actual fact of it was that I didn't love anybody because I had frozen off cut off that part of me frozen it off from everybody and what happens is in my mind anyway I think that we are the kind of people who are scared to love because we love so much which is why I think AA works because AA is a loving and giving program and it doesn't have anything to do with psychology you know people tried to fix this psychologically for years and it didn't work and there's lots of movements that are psychological movements today and they don't work but this is a spiritual movement and it works because God comes into us and he releases the love in us he makes me unafraid to give a little love, I believe and I started out by tossing eggs and then this lady came out to one of the meetings that we had and I was just terrified of her because she'd been sober like a really long time like five or six years or something I mean it was a long time to me and she had this marcelled hair do you know what remember what marcell hair was they had these machines that had these electric strings that hung out of them and they had this crimper things on the ends of those wires and these women would sit under those things you remember those things and they crack their head up like this i mean they just must have had wrinkles in their scalp or something but they had these oh they had these these crimps in their scout i mean in their hair and she had this silver hair with these crimson she looked like she lowered her head she could just ram me you know with these crimps in her head, just lay me out flat. And I was scared of her. You know, I was fascinated with this iron hair. It just, I used to look at it like that. She walked up to me at one of the meetings and she said to me, you look like you could use a sponsor and I'm it. And I love it today when these people come around and say, well, I'm interviewing you for sponsorship. I never had the option of being interviewing anybody. Somebody just walked up and said, you look sick, and I'm in. You know, and that's the way it was. And I, you know, the miracle of it was that I did what she told me? That's the miracle is that I'd never done anything anybody told me before, but I did wat she told m. Now, I didn't like it, and I wasn't graceful about it a lot of the time, and a lot o f the time I didn' want to do it, but I di d it. And that was the miracle in my case. And she said to me, I want you to go to a meeting every night for six weeks. I want to see you at three meetings a week. And of course, many of the things that she asked me to do is the way that I sponsor today because that's my experience. And it was like Jean said last night. I don't know what it's going to take for you, but I can't change my experience and you know we again we get so fancy about the stuff that we do but you know what if i just remember to the way that it was in the beginning if i remember to do what i did in the beginning i don't have to worry about taking a drink i just have to go to meetings and sponsor people and be sponsored and call people and help people and do for others and get into service work and have a home group and make it the best damn home group in the world. All those things, if I just do those things I don't have to worry about taking a drink because I will be so surrounded by Alcoholics Anonymous that I won't have too. And you know what I really came to AlcoholicsAnonymous with? I really come with no brain, very little heart but a lot of desperation. And if I had anything to wish anyone who was brand new in AA Hey, I wouldn't wish you to get well right away. I wouldn' t wish you to have a lot of money or to have little money. And I wouldn''t wish you to have wife or not a wife. And I would'nt wish you to have job or not job. I would just wish you desperation. Just to be desperate enough to take the actions that you don''t believe in to have someone else be able to impose their intellect over your emotions so that you can get better and that's what happened to me and when I was drinking, I used to like to think I was graceful and I would get I had a Duncan Fife mirror and I Would Get Naked and I'd leap drunk, leap around in front of this mirror because I always wanted to be a ballerina and I've always been a klutz and I just looked like a stick jumping it reminded me of those walking sticks you know but i thought i was graceful well i still had the duncan fife mirror and my sponsor walked up to me she said i want you to be a greeter and i said okay but in my head i thought now i don't want to be greater i don'T i DON'T WANT TO BE A GREETER YOU OLD BAG YOU KNOW I DON'T WANT To BE A i'M A REBEL AND I'M A COWARD SEE SO I I DONT SAY ANYTHING BUT I THINK IT YOU KNOW SO And about two days later, I'm always two days late, I said, hey Jane, I don't want to be a greeter. And she looked at me and she said, I don'T really recall asking you anything about wanting to. I said okay, I'll just be a greeter. And so I went home and I practiced greeting. I mean, I'm not a rocket scientist. I don't know. I mean I haven't made social conversation in years. You know, give me a drink. That's about my social conversation. So I would go home and I would say, welcome to the friendship group. Welcome to the, that was my group, was the friendship room. Welcome to you. Welcome to your friend to the friendship group." And so I stood at the door and I went to greet people and I was looking at the floor most of the time and gradually as I greeted people, I got better at it and I got more unafraid and I'd look in their eyes and by the time my greeting time was up which was like about 3 months I was greeting people welcome to the friendship group have a piece of literature I was giving away literature to people 30 years sober I didn't care we've got a speaker tonight You know, just wah-wah-wah. And that was my first job in AA. And what that taught me was you wouldn't hurt me. You really wanted the best for me. You really want me to succeed. And then they came along and said, somebody else is going to be greeter, you're going to on ashtrays. Oh, that was like a demotion. I thought, this is terrible. but what I got to do was I decided to wash the ashtrays and me and Crazy Frank would go in the back and wash the ash trays and I was afraid of Crazy Frank because he was crazy. I mean it was his name Crazy Frank and he was big like 6'4 and he Was a painter and I thought that was nice because then he wouldn't have to use a ladder to paint the ceilings or anything and he could just Paint them like this. We talked about painting and ashtrays and stuff. And I've got to be a little more social. How wise she was. How wonderful she was, and she was one of my heroes. She died about two years ago in a diner in Minnesota, and for the last five years of her life I got to ride her. I'm so grateful to the people. I mean, it's not like I'm not grateful for you guys, because I am. But those people saved my life. Anyway, I have a little story. I mean I went, she took me through the steps. We didn't read the book. I have to say that, because at the time that I got sober, they were de-emphasizing the book, and it is to the everlasting credit of the people in Texas and the people in Oklahoma which is something you may not be aware of that the book was put back in its proper place because the people in Texas and the People in Oklahoma said to GSO to the conference if you don't stop that see they said Bill was making money off the book if you do if you don't stop that we won't send you any more money and since texas and oklahoma sent a lot of money to new york in those days they said oops and so it was put back in but it was about three or four years before i actually got into the book of alcoholics and moms but we did do the steps we took the steps of alcohol and my experience with the steps is is something that i'd like to illustrate to you again in a simple story and that was there was a father who was babysitting his kid and he was trying to get some task done and his kid kept bothering him. And so the father said to the kid, he went to and got a magazine and he tore this map of the world out of the centerfold of the magazine thing. And he cut it up into big pieces, puzzle type pieces and he mixed them all up and he gave them to the kid and he said to the kids go put this map of the world together and when the map of world is together then we'll go to McDonald's and have a hamburger. So he thought he had at least 15-20 minutes to get his task done and by God that kid was back in two, three minutes. And he had the whole map of the world together. And he said, son, how did you do this so fast? And the kid said, well dad, there was a picture of a man on the other side. I put the man together and the world came together. That's what the steps of Alcoholics Nones have done for me when we get the man together the world is better I can handle the world they get the man together I met and married my husband as I said I robbed the cradle and he taught me how to laugh had I don't know how you guys are but if I had a wonderful sense of humor and I it had totally drowned it was just totally drowned when I got when I was drinking nothing was funny everything was serious and it was I mean you know you've heard the old story about the guy who felt impending doom and his sponsor said that the reason you feel impending doing is the doom is impending and that's exactly I mean it It wasn't funny, nothing was funny. Doom was impending and then I got sober and old Dick first Christmas we were married we didn't have any money and we never had any money but we didn''t have any money and he said we agreed not to get any Christmas presents for each other. So we were gonna go the Alcathon and give of self altruistic BS but we were going to go to the Alcathon. That's the actions that I take or the things that, you know, you judge me by my actions, not mine by thinking, thank God. But he came home. He said, I've got a present for you. Well, my first reaction was anger because I hadn't gotten one for him and then guilt because I had thought of it first. And he went in the bathroom, closed the door. It was the only door in the whole place where you could go be by yourself. I used to go in there and pray. Isn't that silly? we go in there get on our knees and like god's looking or something you know i don't know but within a couple minutes he comes leaping out of the bathroom stark naked except he had a big red bow tied you know where and he's singing here come santa claus and I laughed oh it was fun that was the best Christmas present because when I sobered up you know I was one of these people that was sex what? noise what? I'm just very blue lipped about the whole thing whereas when i was drinking you know you know like that and we had dogs and i got sobered up and oh no and he just made it so much fun i couldn't help myself you know i just got carried away and i laughed and do you remember the first time you laughed do you remember that i just it was like i hadn't been used to laughing and all my muscles were rigid and i'd sit there like this and me with my foot crossed like this in my little Foot going like this. I always laugh when I see people doing that today. This is foot going like it Here he was football. I guess you know and and I'd reach out, and I Overreacted you know because my neurons were burnt and I just like this you know Like that and when I remember hearing Evelyn T And she said I'm from the city the city of brotherly love and when i was drinking and I some kind of love them brothers, you know. And I laughed, and I go... It was just like a rigor mortis. I don't know. It was like an earthquake of the face or something. You know, it was just weird. And my hair would shake, you Know, and it was Just hot, and I remember, but I think that's I don' t think there's It's almost like laughter for me is like a cosmic toothbrush. It's like we have these God zippers on us, you And we don't let them down much, except for our sponsors and God. It's like when I laugh, it's like, you know, it just unzips. And then he goes, like, it feels great. I feel clean inside. And have you ever noticed that when you're really, really laughing, you can't feel anything else? It's Like You Can't Feel Sorry For Yourself. you can do it the next minute but you can't feel anything but joy when you're really belly laughing and when i laughed in aa it was like god was cleaning me out with a toothbrush like a cosmic toothbrush the fifth step was like that too but it wasn't funny but it was the same thing it's God cleans us with this cosmic toothbrush but I have to go where he is I have to say here I am God and when I walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous what I am saying is I can't, God can, I think I'll let him but if I don't walk in the door for me I'm in charge and there's a lot of people get drunk after many years of sobriety because they forget the simple action of walking in the door it's like Gene said last night I don't even have to know where the wagon is going I just got to load it I don' t have to even care where it's going I just gotta load it I gotta load the wagon I got to do what mine to do so dick and I we moved we moved to Bellevue Nebraska 17 years ago and started meetings we had started a meeting called with foxhall group in Washington DC and we had you know all of those things that we do in Alcoholics Anonymous and it's been a wonderful life it's been a one it I am way way way overpaid if I had been asked what I would have been what I wanted when I got sober I would have never ever even wished for myself the things that I have today a son who is sober and alcoholic synopsis I have an Al-Anon joke too sorry but it's beyond me it's I'm compelled to to tell it. It's not much of one, but see these things up here? See these? You think they're wrinkles, don't you? They're Venetian blind marks. There's a whole bunch of Al-Anons over there in the corner. When my son was drinking, I would lean up against...I had my window, I had my Venetians blinds, I made my deals with God, I bargained with Him if he comes it's a third car I'll tell you I'll go to church for six weeks in a row I promise you if it's the third car well now if it the fourth car I don't get home I'll cook dinner every night this week I'll be a good mommy I never felt like it was a good Mommy you know I just wanted them out of diapers and into the army you know because I'm not Mother Earth you know I had a friend who used to praise her child for pooping outside and I really thought that was way too much so and I want to be a good wife and I want to a good mother and I won't be a good mother-in-law and I am now I am better and that's because you have allowed me to be that you have given me the tools that are necessary for me like you know oven by myself I'm nothing I think it says that in the big book the big big book somewhere it says oven by myself or of myself I am nothing and oven by myself I'm nothing and by that what I mean is you know you have given me the tools and the strength to do things that I never thought I'd be able to do and I found God through you I did not find you through God I just didn't I couldn't I And it was not, I'm so great. But I had these tools to do. I had things to, I could be a good wife. I could a good mother. I could A.A. member. I could worker. I work. I can be a artist. I'm a water colorist. And one of the girls that I sponsor had a show for me just recently and I had 32 paintings in there which was quite a production for me because I love watercolor. It teaches me about people because it's happening and you can't force watercolor, you can make it be something that isn't. It's water and paper and color and God, and a little talent. And if you work too hard on it, it just turns muddy. And I learned a lot about sponsorship from being a watercolorist. Anyway, I had these 32 paintings and 16 of them sold the first night, and I couldn't believe it. I just like, I'm an artiste. I am sold. And she was one of the girls that I sponsored who stayed out there one month too long because on March 17th. She just drank a month too long and she was sober four years and she got sick this March. She went in the hospital on Friday, she died on Monday because she was out there a month too long and her liver quit and their kidneys quit and her everything quit but her heart. And isn't that the way it is? Everything quits but our heart and I know you're up there listening to me and I had more work for you to do. She'd only it's over four years but I miss her because the little piece of me goes into those people like a little piece to her it'll always be in me and I gotta shut up here cuz I'm going on too long but there's there's a couple things I want relating and I'll say, this is a wonderful life. AA has made me the best person I can possibly be and some days it's not too good but some days it's okay and it's okay with me because I discovered in the actions of the step that I am not enough for me it's not that I'm not enough for you, it's that I am not enough for me and I have to take actions that raise my self esteem and that make me feel spiritually fit. And like going to meetings and sponsoring people and everything. But, you know, just because we're sober doesn't mean we have problems. I had a child die, married and in AA for many years, and this baby died, and I grieved. But I sponsored, andI went to meetings, and I cried in meetings, and I've had two dogs die since and I know that doesn't seem like it should be even in the same paragraph but I love my folks I love animals I feed everything I feed squirrels, I feed birds I feed raccoons, I eat foxes I feed dick I feed the dogs I feed I feed every thing you know it's just I feed everthing and I love them I love but just because I'm sober doesn't mean that there isn't stuff that goes on. You know, life is life and life is only livable. It's not solvable. And things happen. But we have God. We have a chance. We have a chance. And sometimes you know just when you think you don't have a character defect anymore it just like pops right back up again and we have to work on it and we the month we have two practicing the asset that is opposite the fear so that we can get stronger in the asset and that kind of thing I was on my way to Arkansas to a convention and we were supposed to land in Fayetteville took out for Kansas City and one of these little things that look like a silver tube with wings little tiny thing and there were they The lady came onto the ground, and she said, we need to balance this aircraft. And I thought, oh, this is bad. Oh, man. You know, I don't mind flying. I just don't want to crash and burn. That's what I'm scared of. So we're balancing this thing, and they offer a ticket to some guy to get off. And he gets off and takes a free ticket. And there's a raggedy curtain in between me and the pilot who is looking strange. He looks like he's been on coke or something. like that we get out it's rough as hell and we get close to fayetteville we start to land and he changes his mind we're down close to the runway i see the runway and there's ice and snow and everything on the runway and he takes back off and this stall alarm goes off in the airplane because i've been And I've been in lots of airplanes. I know what that is. Wham, wham, whomp, like that. I'm thinking, oh my God, we're going to go down on our tail, you know. And then he gets back up in the clouds. But in the meantime, I hear some rattling behind me. And I turn around and there's this woman and she's got this big bag. And she reaches in that bag and she pulls out a bottle of Smirnoff's vodka. because she takes the top off that thing, and she takes a big slug out of it, and I felt better. Now, God sent me that woman with that bottle of vodka. And if I think God did, he did. Because I could have been mad as all get-out because she got to drink and I couldn't. But I just felt great. and I didn't get there until Friday night really late and I had to speak on Saturday instead but it didn't make any difference I was there on terra firma so I understood that God sent me that woman with a bottle of vodka I was out in California speaking to this I thought that the things up in Northern California were small I didn' t think they were very big and they kept announcing the registration I knew the ones in Southern California were big, but I didn't think the Northern. 4,000 people, 5,000 people in the San Jose Civic Center. That's 10,000 eyeballs. And I'm sitting at this, they had this little play on the outside in an amphitheater and I had on my yellow silk speaking dress and I'm sittin' out there and my committee is in full cry. Yeah, well you're just a little girl from Nebraska, what you to do get up there you'll think dead away five thousand people like fool yourself you may even wet the stage you don't know you just back just on and on nobody ever answers you know they just talk and talk and talk it's almost like hmm i couldn't even all of a sudden i'm out in this beautiful amphitheater and something wet hits my hand i looked i looked up first i thought it's raining you know. Hell, it doesn't rain in California. Well, it does now, but it didn't then. I look up, no clouds. I looked down, it's white. It's big. And this girl sitting next to me goes, a bird has pooped on your back. And there was this big, big dookie on my back. Big, white sick stuff that bird had been eating something bad it was just big this big around and a little bit of it splashed on my head all of a sudden everything was just fine all i had to do was go up there and be me god had sent me a bird for some people they sing For me, they're crap. See? I could have been mad. I could think my yellow silk speaking dress is ruined. I could've thought a lot of things, but what I did was I laughed. I laughed! All I'm supposed to do is carry the message. So I went and I didn't even wash it off. I mean, I got the bits off, you know? I got them washed off. But I left the stuff. And afterwards, I don't know what I said, But afterwards, after I got down off the stage, they didn't care what I said. They said, let me see your bird poop. It was almost like a sort of a stigmata or something, you know? I felt blessed, blessed because he removed my fear. He came in and I was ready. You understand? It's not the real complicated stuff. It's no reading all this stuff. It's not, it's just taking action. It's continuing to give so I can continue to have. It's taking the action of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I'm like, really, I're like a canary. I always thought I was like a sparrow. Just let me fly. I just want to be free. Leave me alone. I want to feel good. I want me to be happy. and that's an oxymoron but I'm really like a canary within the gilded cage of the steps and traditions of alcoholics and non-alcoholics and I just sing I just sing there's a man walking on the beach and he saw there's been a storm the night before, and in the distance he saw somebody picking up something and throwing it back in the ocean. And as he got closer, he noticed that the storm had washed all of these starfish up on the beach. And the man who was walking said to the man who was throwing, what are you doing? And the men who was throwin' said, I'm throwin these starfish back in the ocean, because they can't live up here on the beach. They'll die up on the Beach. And the man who was walking said to the man he was throwing, what possible difference can it make? There's thousands of them. And then the man who was walking, the man that was throwing said to the man whose walking, it makes all the difference in the world to this one. You've made all the difference in the world to this wonder. Thanks. applause