Step 6 and the Goals of Recovery – Deb H.

My name is Deb, and I'm a real alcoholic. it is always an honor and a privilege when I'm asked to do anything for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous you know, I used to say when I would get up behind a podium to talk that this was my least favorite thing in AlcoholicsAnonymous to do was to stand up in front of a group of people and I like to report to you that that's no longer necessarily the case you know there's that thank the speaker line afterwards and I've had people come up to me and tell me that something that God relayed to them through me has changed their recovery or has changed the way they're going to live their life. And I thought, oh my gosh, what a huge honor to be the one that God uses. So I'm a little teary. I've been a little seary for a while now. And so I don't know what you're going get today. Luckily, the whole drinking part of my story, that's not changed. You know, that kind of stabilized about 20 years ago. And how Alcoholics Anonymous came into my life, that's a pretty stable part. So I think that, you know, we can move through that at a pretty reasonable clip. But what you're going to get in the recovery part, I don't know what that's going to be. I really don't. So here we go. My sobriety date is March 15th, 1987. That means that in, you knows, a couple of months, well, six weeks maybe, I'll be celebrating 20 years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm 35 years old. And I don't share that with you because it's more impressive than what your 20 years is. I share that v?i you because at 15 years old, when folks convinced me that I had alcoholism, And I said, but if I have alcoholism, that means I can't drink for the rest of my life. Do you know how long that's going to be? I mean, seriously, people, if I lived to 90, that's 75 years of not drinking. And they said, no, no. It's just today. And I say, no it's not. No it's, not I wasn't falling for it. I just wasn't fallen for it, I knew you guys were talking about the rest of my lives and I thought that was a tall order, you know. Oh my gosh, I can go through with it. And so what I said was, you know what, I think I'll do this thing for about 20 years. Because I figured if I gave it about 20 years, I could finish high school, get through college, establish myself somewhat in a reasonable lifestyle. By then, I'm certain alcohol will have lifted, or alcoholism would have lifted. And maybe I could, you now, then join normal society again. So I was going to give this thing about 20 ears. well I'm here to say that it's been 20 years and you're not getting rid of me you're absolutely not getting ride of me see in the beginning I thought that this was about not drinking and I realized that I had to stop drinking in order to get everything else you guys had to give me everything else and I also realized that the longer I'm sober and the further away I get from that drink the harder I have to work at Alcoholics Anonymous. The more people I need to sponsor every single day. I have to have new people in my life. When the answering service calls and says will you call this woman who needs Alcoholics Anonymous, I have to have somebody with under a year of sobriety that I can call and take with me because I don't look bad. I clean up okay and you've cleaned me up And I got sober at 15, and a lot of people can't necessarily relate to that at face value. And so I've got to have somebody fresh that I can take with me to talk to that woman who needs Alcoholics Anonymous. And so, I have to redouble my efforts the longer I'm sober. You know, I don't get to rest on my laurels. I don' t get to stop going to meetings. I don''t get to start sponsoring people. You know? I don ''t get go to only daytime meetings because newcomers go to night meetings. You know, there are some things in this program I don't get to do. And resting, I just can't do that. And I can't doing that not necessarily because today I'm scared that I'm going to pick up a drink. I've got to do that today because I've got a lifestyle that I love. And it is contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. And God talks to me through you guys. If I didn't come to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, how would I hear God? Where would I go? I go to church and you know what that helps a lot it helps a lot I reached a point in my recovery where I said you know what if I fail to enlarge upon my spiritual condition this thing will not be guaranteed to me and so at 18 years sober I decided to get over my problem with organized religion sometimes quickly sometimes slowly and i decided to seek some instruction in an organized religion and it has been wonderful it really has it's knocked me up onto the next level you know it's raised my standards it's raised my bar and my sponsor early in recovery when my sponsor would look at you and she would say you knew that you were going to go over there and your and your bar was going to get raised because that's what she did. She was going to explain to you how certain behaviors that you were participating in were not going to be very helpful to you or to the group, and she was goingto raise your standards of behavior. Oh, what a life, whata life. I am a blue-collar kid from the Midwest. I was born and raised in northeast Ohio where it's really cold, the sun doesn't shine. There's some form of precipitation about three-quarters of the days out of every year. and I grew up in a small town in northeast Ohio. It was a little town and the name of that town was Rittman and Rittmen was not very far from Akron at all and everybody there they were in a union they worked in a factory or they ran one of the farms on the outskirts of town everybody knew everybody else at least by name and reputation and everybody took great liberties at passing judgment on all those that they knew by name or reputation and you really couldn't get away with much You really couldn't get away with much. And my father is one of nine kids, and eight of the nine lived in this little town along with my grandma. And so you just really couldn�t go far at all without bumping into a relative, you know, because all of them had kids,and, you know, we were everywhere. We were everywhere, and most of them had the disease of alcoholism, and so we were crazy and everywhere, you know? We really were. My whole family, just absolutely insane. And my father brought the disease of alcoholism into our home. I don't know if he was alcoholic when he and my mom got married or not. I know that her picker's been broken a long time, so possibly she could have picked alcoholism and decided to hook up with that. I don' t know. But I know my father is alcoholic. My father has cirrhosis of the liver right now. He goes through really, really bad times so that he's got distended abdomen and rectal bleeding and all of that great stuff that goes with having cirrhosis of the liver. And some doctors, they told him a while back, a couple of years ago, if you continue to drink, you're going to die. And I don't know that that didn't matter to him. I don'T know what his thought process was. But he drinks. He drinks. And he's also a hermit. That's what alcoholism has done to my father now. My father is a hermet. The only person he talks to is my sister's 13-year-old son. and and we don't know why that is but that's who he is today and so there was you know there there's been a great loss for me a loss of that father and it's directly due to the disease of alcoholism and i tell you what i'm not an alcoholic because my dad's alcoholic i want to be really clear about this i want to be real clear about that i'm an alcoholic because i drank enough long enough to become addicted to alcohol my father's drinking I started drinking because I was curious I wanted to know what that stuff was in those dark little bottles that was so darned important in my house that's why I started drinking, I didn't even, I wasn't even looking for a solution, I Didn't Know I Needed a Solution, but the day that I started Drinking I Found One I Was Like Oh Yes Yes, Because Here's The Deal, I Was Terrified I Was A Terrified Child I really was. And I was outgoing. And when you're terrified and outgoing, guess what you are? We call them bullies. And I Was One of Those Bullies because I was terrified of everything. The sound of tires rolling down a gravel driveway would stand me dead in my tracks. Shadows, loud noises, people moving quickly towards me. I was absolutely terrified, but I didn't look terrified. I looked angry. I looked really angry, and I took it out on everybody I could find. I was the kid who chased other kids home from school. If there was a dance routine getting made up on the playground, I was choreographing, and I can't dance. If those of you who were here last night, you contested that. I can dance. But I was the one making up the steps on the playground, and you were going to follow my lead. And that's just the way I was. When I was nine years old, I spent the night with one of my girlfriends, and her parents had a bar in the basement, and her parents liked to drink a lot too. And I said, you know what? Let's try this alcohol stuff. Because my parents used to fight about alcohol. They would fight about alcoholic. My dad loved and drank a lot of it. My mom hated it and griped a lot about it. And the two of them were always fighting. My Dad was, you know, I remember him trying to join animal clubs. You know, the moose, the elks, all those clubs. And I remember when those letters of acceptance would come in the mail, you know, my mom would get the mail before my dad got home. And, ooh, it was on. It was on, and she would say things to him like, I don't like you drinking that crap, but if you're going to drink it, you're gonna drink it right here in this house. And my sister and I are like, man, let him go, you know, let them go, but she required him to do all of his drinking at home. And that was not great for us. It was absolutely not great for us, you know? There are happy drunks and there are peaceful drunks, and there are crazy drunks. We all take on different personalities and that changes the longer we drink I've come to understand. And my dad was at that point in his alcoholism where he was a violent drunk, you know? And it just was not fun. It absolutely was not fun. And I wanted to know what that stuff was. And so I slept in her house and we slept downstairs in that basement. And I'll tell you what, I wanted to know what that stuff was and why it was so important. And then I found out that night. We picked our bottles, what we were going to swig off of by the way the bottle looked. Because we didn't know what was what. We had absolutely no idea. At nine, how could I? And so we started picking bottles off the shelf based on how they looked. And one of the first ones I picked was Christian Brothers because they had people in little outfits that looked kind of Amish or something on the front of the bottle. And, you know, and the Amish were right there, you know, in the area of the state where I lived. And so I decided Christian Brothers was the, oh my gosh, that's nasty stuff. It's really, really hard. And so we took a sip off that and then we would go and we would take the next bottle and the next bottle. And I'll tell you what, I don't know how many bottles it was, but I don' t think it was very many. And I call it my warm, safe, fuzzy feeling. Because that alcohol, like, I was able to choke down enough of it and get it into my system. And all of a sudden, I was okay. I wasn't even angry anymore. I really wasn't. I didn't want to hit anybody. I didn' t want to scream. I was Okay. You know, my fists that had been balled up like this my entire life, they relaxed. And I thought to myself, No wonder he likes this stuff. I mean, this stuff rocks. You know, and I could not understand why my mom had such a problem with it. And then I realized she didn't drink it. If she drank it, surely she would understand. You know? It was just she was operating under ignorance because I tried it and I got it. I understood why this stuff was so great. And I made a decision from that point forward that I was going to drink as much of this stuff as often as I could. Now, being 10 had some limitations. And 11 and 12. Really, I wasn't able to get into the real swing of things until about 13. But Tammy became my best friend. She's the one that I had my first drinking with. She and I, we became very, very good friends, and I spent a good long time at her house almost every weekend. And sometimes Friday and Saturday night. And summer, whoo-hoo, summer, because I could stay there many, many days in a row. And my mom and her mom became friends, which completely suited us. Because, you know, we were able to sleep in the bar every single night. And we wereable to drink every time I was there. And it was absolutely wonderful. It was wonderful. I looked forward to it. There was nothing in my life that I anticipated more than getting to go and spend the night at her house and drink. Because, You know what? When I wasn't drinking, my hands were like this. And when I was drinking, they were like this. And I needed that relief. I needed it. I didn't know I needed that relief, I mean I was nine for goodness sakes, I got no cognitive ability at nine but man I understood that feeling, I understood immediately what it did for me. And when I got into middle school I have an older sister, she's two years older than I and I shared with her the joys of drinking and she immediately discovered that I was absolutely accurate it. And so she and I, we were drinking together, and she was a couple years older, which helped out a little bit in the access issue, you know? Because, I mean, really, you can't just, you know, go to the drive-thru, get your 12 pack, and go kick back in front of the TV and watch the evening news when you're 12. You know? I mean there really are some limitations. You know, you've got to learn how to lie, cheat, and steal real early, and wow, you have got to be good at it. You really have to be great at it, because, you know, in my life I was doing something that nobody else my age was doing. I didn't match anybody. And so I learned how to lie, cheat and steal. And I learned how to, I mean, I ran scams and I stole from people and I hid things and I was just, it was a full-time job. It was a full- time job. You know, not only was I completely mentally obsessed with how I was going to get it, where I was going to pay for it, what price I was going to be paid for it later on, but I was mentally obsessed with it. And then physically, and in my environment, I had to make big changes so that I could get enough of it. And I'll tell you what. I believe that there's a physiological basis, but I don't, you know, I'm no doctor. But when you start drinking really young and you're drinking all the way through puberty when your body is going through all those chemical changes anyway, it becomes addicted like that. I mean fast. Fast. And by the time I was 14 and 15 years old and I was a freshman into my sophomore year of high school, there was that last six to nine months where I didn't draw a sober breath. I absolutely did not draw a sore breath. When I wasn't consuming alcohol, I was sick. When I was not consuming alcohol I would shake. When I didn' t consume alcohol my stomach was unsettled and I didn''t know how long I could sit in one spot. So getting through classes was really, really tough. Making it all the way through volleyball games became almost impossible. I was really in bad shape. And for six to nine months, I mean, it was just constant. It was constant. And, you know, I had to find extra booze during the day so that I could stash it in the bushes so thatI could take a little something on my way to school and knock the edge off. And I'll tell you, my parents got divorced, and that was very helpful to my drinking. It really was. It was wildly helpful because my father, he decided that my mother wasn't getting out of this. And so he decided, even though he hated her, he decide that he was going to fight it. And so for four years, we have the � my parents have the longest divorce case in the county's history. They do. And I mean, and they went to court 13 times. And my sister and I got to go to court, I don't know, six or seven or eight of those. And so what that did for me was it created a level of chaos in our house that diverted my mother's attention. she didn't have the time or energy or resources to necessarily devote to what I was doing or not doing. And it was really a beautiful thing because I needed to drink a lot. And if she was paying too close attention, she was going to pick up on that. And my sister, well, my sister was a bit of a train wreck. You know, she, my Sister didn't like drinking very much, but boy, oh, she loved, loved, love smoking pot and doing some of those other things that go along with that. And so she was not able to make very good decisions when she was drinking. I could go out drinking, and I could get home by my 10 o'clock curfew, stumble in the door, steady myself enough to get past my mom, go upstairs to my room. As soon as my mom went to bed, I'd shimmy down the side of the house and go get my bottle and finish it. But I was there, and she wasn't worried because she knew I was upstairs in bed. My sister, however, she couldn't pull that off. She would go out and she'd start partying. And she'd come home like two days later, you know? And I'm, you know, 14, 15. You know, she's 16, 17 years old. That doesn't go over very well. And so my mom's in the middle of this divorce case that's consuming her. And She's working two jobs to try to pay our bills because when we left my father, we fell into poverty. Poverty. And then my sister was doing this running away thing, although it was kind of unintentional running away. She would just forget how to get home, you know? And so every, you know, so she was in and out of juvie jail all the time, you know, because when they pick you up after unintentionally running away and you've been doing drugs and stuff, they put you in juvie jail. And so she's in and outer juvie jail, and the divorce is going on, and my mom's working two jobs, and I'm still getting straight A's, and I're still playing volleyball, and I'm president of my class, and I'm president of Pep Club, and I'm not peppy. But, you know, when you're drinking like I'm drinking, you've got to be president of Pep Club too. And everything that there is to be involved in, I've got a role. And I'm keeping all that stuff going while my sister's in and out of juvie jail and my mom's in and outer court and she's working two jobs and I am focused. I am drinking round the clock and I are checking my boxes. I'm checking every box. And it is, I don't have any idea how when I went to treatment after not drawing a sober breath for, and I can't remember, I say six to nine months because the whole thing is just really fuzzy. Most of you understand that. You know, that last year of drinking, you know, I then said last night, you Know, we know one thing about you if you're new, last year was not a good year. You know? And that last Year for me, I was just fuzzy. I mean, so it was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. And here's the deal. I could not go buy my own booze. It was a small town. Everybody knows everybody else. I Could Not Go Buy My Own Booze. And so I had to cross the tracks and go over to this neighborhood that scared me and hang out with these people who were unsafe, and I had spend a lot of time with them. and they had to get the booze for me and I had to pay for it and we were really poor and I was too young to work and what I paid for the boozed on a daily basis was a far greater price than I'm willing to pay for anything in my life today it's a far bigger price and for that last 6-9 months my choice as to whether or not I was going to drink was removed I had alcohol to put into my body and so that price got paid daily And you know what I would do is I would walk into that dark house on the wrong side of the tracks and there was always a bottle waiting on me which tells you the kind of people I was drinking with because it's a small town and everybody knows everybody else and so they know what they're doing, they know who they're buying it for. I walk in and it was vodka most of the time and I was glad it was Vodka. And I would take that bottle of Vodka and I would unscrew the cap and throw the cap away and I Would go to this corner in the back of the house and I'd put my back on the wall and I Would slide down and I would have my knees bent and I'd sit there and I could drink and I watched the things that were going on in that house and I closed my eyes and I said please God not me today and I did it day after day after day after day and sometimes it wasn't me but sometimes it was and what that did to me was every single time I came to in the morning not only was I physically sick but I was under oh my gosh what I did remember was horrible. And I didn't have anywhere to put that stuff. And not only did I not have anywhere to put it, I didn' t know how to deal with it. I didn''t know how get through it or any of that stuff, but I knew I was going to have to go do it again. And that's the cycle I had gotten into. You know? And I'm class president and I'm getting straight A's. And OSU is coming to watch me play volleyball. And I am putting my back against the wall and I am sliding down and I am hugging my knees and I closing my eyes and I consuming and alcohol just so that I can be okay. And there was a man who was 42 years sober. I was speaking at the Louisiana State Convention a while ago, a couple of years ago. And he came up to me in that thank-the-speaker line. Now, the people that come up to you in the thank-to-speeker line, there's a general understanding that they're probably going to be nice to you. Really. Not always, but we bank on the fact that you guys are going tobe nice to us when you come up to thank us for coming and sharing, or whatever it is you're going to share. So I'm functioning under that general understanding that people are going to be nice to me. And so this guy comes up, and he's old, and He's got white hair, and He've got 42 years of sobriety. Very similar to my friend up front here. And he gets up to me, and she says, You know, when you started talking, I did the math, and I figured out you got sober at 15, and I quit listening. And I'm thinking to myself, you're supposed to be nice to me. Why are you in the thank-the-speaker line? You know, there should be another one where if you disagree with me or if you don't believe I'm an alcoholic, please stay to the right. I'll get with you in a minute. And I said, so he tells me that, you know, well, I don't think you're an alcoholic so I quit listening. And I've said, there are no words for that. There really aren't. There really are. And so I just looked at him and he said, but God opened my ears. And you're a real alcoholic. And I said, yes, sir, I am. And he said. Well, I'm going to have to go home and quit ignoring those young people who are coming in and out of my home group. And I says, really? He said, yeah, I'll pick me out one and sponsor him. So right now there's some 16-year-old kid in Lafayette, Louisiana going, wait until I find her. Ooh, wait until i find her! Yeah, it's not going to be... I've got to speak in La Fayette in September. So we'll see. I'll recognize him. And he'll be the guy with the young kid in tow going, what's going on with my life? Why can't I shake the 70-year old? And when he's 35 with 20 years of sobriety, he's going to tell stories about that 70-year-old and how he saved his life. And so you know what I was like when I came to you? It wasn't pretty. It wasn' t pretty. It absolutely wasn' te. And I'll tell you how I got here. I wasn' T particularly interested in not drinking because, you see, when I wasn't drinking, I had to deal with the things that were going on in my head. And I wasn'T particularly interested in dealing with those things. I didn't know how and all I wanted to do was when I started remembering that stuff I just wanted to drink some more so that I wouldn't have to think about them and my mom had gotten herself a boyfriend and we were very happy for her because he was very nice to her in the beginning alcoholics always are they can pour it on early they're sprinters not marathon runners And so he's treating her nicely, and he's going to take her out of town for the weekend. And they're going to go someplace nice, and she's goingto get to eat meals without looking at the prices on the menus, and she'S going to get to sleep in a hotel where she doesn't have to make her bed or clean up after her ungrateful brats. You know, those kinds of things were going to happen for her. And she said, you know, Deb, you're goingto go stay at such-and-so's, and Diane, who's my sister, you'RE goingtogo stay atsuch-andso's house. I've got it all arranged. And we said, yes, ma'am. Okay. Well, I never said ma' am. I was raised in the north. I said, okay, yeah. And so my mom goes out of town and my sister and I were thinking, well, you know, I'm not staying there and I'm nicht staying there because, wow, I mean these people are really square, you now? And we can't stay there. I mean I've Got to drink and, you Now, my sister's got to go do her thing and so we know that we can follow the path that's laid out for us. And so we had to run a couple of scams on some adults and that wasn't new. and we stayed home. And here's my thought process. Now, okay, the mind of an alcoholic, man, we come up with some stuff. We really do. And when we're trying to come up with a scheme that's going to work, it's even scarier, you know? And then, gosh, you take away our booze and you call us a newcomer and wow, the stuff that goes on in there. But I'll get to that in a minute. So my sister and I were going to stay at home and my thinking is this. If I have those people who buy me my booze every day, If we invite them to come to our house, rather than going to their house, surely we'll be much safer here. I thought that was a good idea, and it was a wild miscalculation, but we did it. And so we invited these people that we used to party with every single day of our lives. We invited them to comes to our houses because our mom was out of town. And I figured at least when it was all over, I wouldn't have to walk home because walking home after that kind of stuff was really tough. so I figured at least I won't have to walk home if it goes badly and so they come over and they then they bring the stuff that we need and they bring my bottle and for some reason it's Jack Daniels and not vodka and see and they thought that it was great that I was so young and that I could drink the way I could drank they just thought that was wild because I could out drink most of them and see tolerance builds really fast too when you start real young I mean I mean it just goes and um and so I had a fifth of Jack Daniels And boy, I hate Jack Daniels. And that's some bad stuff. But that's what they brought me. And beggars aren't choosers. And so I took that bottle of Jack Daniel's. And somebody says, I bet you can't drink that whole thing. Well, I mean, I've got as much pride as anybody, full grown or not. And so, I take that bottle and I drink the entire thing in about two hours. They got there around 7. And by 9 o'clock, I was in a drunken stupor. I mean, have you all ever been in that place where you can't physically move your body? Nor can you necessarily move your eyes very fast. But you're aware of what's going on around you. But you can do anything about it. That was my state for hours that night. My mom came in at 1.16 a.m. And I know it's 1. 16 a. m. Because there's a red digital clock sitting right there. And it said 1. 16 a., when my mom walked in that back door. She and her boyfriend had gotten into a fight. And she came home early, and she found me curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the sofa, sitting in all of my bodily fluids at this point. I had been unable to move for a number of hours, and I had straws dried to my lip because when I was unable to move, those people that I spent most of my time with, they'd put straws together and put one end in a beer can on the floor and one end in my mouth so that I could sit there and have a little something to drink. They didn't understand why I wasn't playing like I normally did, and they almost killed me that night. And I came to the next day, and my sister had run away again. This one was intentional. She was trying to run away to avoid consequences of the little party that we got caught in the middle of. You know, because when my mom walked in, there were people passed out all over the house, and there's stuff going on, and beer, you know, party, just one of those. And that's what she walked into the middle of. And I'll tell you what, I was able to convince my mom that I was not drinking and that this was not my fault at all. I just, you know, I poured it on. And it was something like, you Know, well, that place that you made me go stay there, parents got in a fight, and it reminded me of how you and Pop used to fight before we left, and it was overwhelming to me. So I called Diane, and she came home. We figured we'd be okay staying here by ourselves. But then these people called, and, well I told her not to answer the phone, She answered the phone, and then they came over, and they brought the stuff with them. I mean, it was just a layer of crap. And my mom had been living with alcoholism so long that she wanted a story to believe. Oh, my gosh, she wanted a story for herself. She wanted a history to believe, you know. She didn't have anywhere in her head to put the fact that this is what her kid was doing. Facts like that, where do you put those as a parent? She didn'T have any free space left. She was tapped out. And so I made up this story, and I fed it to her, and she bought it. But she did ground me for two weeks, which was completely unacceptable. Because in grounding me for 2 weeks, and she grounded me for 3 weeks because I didn't get a hold of her to let her know that things had fallen through, okay? Not for the, you know, 3 years she should have grounded me for what I was doing, but for 2 week. But that's unacceptable because I've got to get out of that house. If I don't get outof that house, I don' t get my booze. And if I don''t get my boos, I shake apart. so i don't have any choice but to get out of that house and so i got out of that house i picked a fight with that woman i said things to her that nobody should ever ever ever in a million years say to a parent no matter what they've done to you and i made her i reduced her to this fast and she was used to that she was just absolutely squashing her and i was just another one on her list and i Was never going to do that to her because i'd watched my dad do it i was never going to treat her like that. And I did. And I walked out of that house and I got something to drink and I went to school the next day and my mom had called the cops. Maybe she wasn't squished all the way. Because she picked up the phone and she called the cops and the cops called the school and everything, everything that I was doing was coming to light. Everything I wasdoing was coming to light and I knew the way out of that. I said well you all know that my dad's alcoholic. And it's been very, very difficult. And because of his alcoholism, well, I've been drinking a little bit the last couple of months and maybe I should go be evaluated. My deal was I got to get out of town. I mean, these people that had brought us that stuff, the gig was up. The police had their names too. I had to get out of the town. Everybody I knew was mad at me. Everybody I knew is mad at me. I didn't have a safe place to go. I couldn't meet a smile on the street anywhere I went, and I had to get out of town. And so I thought being sent away for an evaluation for alcoholism was probably a good idea because I knew that would take at least 10 days. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew that. And they made arrangements for me to go to treatment in Glen Bay Hospital in downtown Cleveland. And I couldn't go in right then, you see. I had affairs to get in order. And so I requested. I'm not sure what affairs a 15-year-old has to get in order, but I had some and it was a list. And so I convinced them to please wait until at least after the Thanksgiving holiday. I mean, don't take that away from my mom too. Look at all that she's lost. And so it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I was due to check into Glen Bay Hospital and I'll tell you what was going on in my head. I finally realized, see, I'm making the deal just to get out of town and to go to someplace safe. It does not necessarily register with me, although I'm a fairly intelligent person. It does not register to me that when I'm in there for evaluation that I'm not going to be able to get out and drink. For some reason, that piece of the equation just had not occurred to me yet. And on Thanksgiving Day, I'm sitting there and I thought, oh my gosh, when I go into that place, they're not going to let me drink anymore. And that just wasn't an option for me. It wasn't an option because physically I couldn't handle it and mentally I couldn'T handle it. Mentally I was just, I was destroyed when I was sober. And so I decided I was going to commit suicide. But we didn't have a garage and the car didn't run particularly well, so that wasn't overly reliable. We didn't own any firearms. You know, cutting myself, I could never, I mean, that's painful. Who in the world is going to do that? So I didn't do that. And I couldn't really come up with a reasonable alternative. Andso I went and I visited with those people on the other side of the tracks and I told them what was going on. And they knew that They were reasonably certain that if I went to treatment and got honest, they were done. And so I explained to them that, you know, I would just like to end my life and I would Just Like to Drink Myself to Death. And I told them, I said, I'm pretty sure that I'm Pretty Close to Death Every Day Anyway because, I mean, I black out and pass out and it's ugly. I said so if you guys could just keep me from passing out, give me some of those other pills or whatever that you guys are taking care of here, give me Some of Those to Keep Me from Passing Out so I can drink a little bit more and just pass, just go. And so they did. And they gave me a little handful of pills, and they were a different color, and I had a little prescription on how I was supposed to take them. Well, you know, I drank a little too much, and I got a little fuzzy, and I couldn't remember which ones went first, second, or third, you know which color went before which color. And so I just took them all at the same time. And I came to some time the Friday after Thanksgiving. I was suppose to go to treatment the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so I crawled back to that house on the wrong side of the tracks and told them it didn't work, and could we please try it again? and so they gave me another little handful of stuff and it was just two guys I mean it wasn't everybody that I drank with was willing to kill me but there were a couple of guys I mean they had a lot of warrants and it Was a big deal and so they gave Me this cocktail again and I tried it again and I got fuzzy again and I took them all at once and I came to Glen Bay Hospital in downtown Cleveland and I had been there for three days and needless to say I had Been in a blackout and needlessly I was really sick And I was in that room with everything bolted down to the floor. And there were no strings on my pajamas. I don't know what they thought. I was, you know, the strings are really skinny. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with those. But they take them away from you. And so I'm in this state. And they don't believe that adolescents are sick enough to require detoxification at that time. There was no medication given to us. You know, they basically tied us down, kept us hydrated, and let us rock and roll. and I was in and out of a blackout and I didn't really come to until the third day and I'm really grateful for that I don't remember which speaker it was but they said I'm a black out drinker and I remember enough and so I didn' t remember a whole lot and I'll tell you what I got through that I had been honest on my evaluation paperwork because I was going to tell them that I drank enough to make some bad choices and, you know, let's do some patient education and get me out of here. I had no intention of letting them know what I was really up to. But I was honest on that paperwork and off I went to treatment. The full thing. My dad had good insurance. You know, so 10 days of evaluation. Downstairs I went for 30 days and I was there for 30 d�as. And I'll tell you what, on that 10th day, I went downstairs to the treatment phase and my sister, they tricked her into coming in. You know? They called a code and the counselors were rolling up their sleeves and loosening their ties and they're running up to the evaluator. And I'm, you know, I'm in the hallway and I'm like, what's going on? And they're like, your sister's here. You know, because while I was honest on my own paperwork, I was also wildly honest about what she was up to. And so they called home and they said, you have another one. And so, wow, that wasn't really great news because they tricked her. They said, do you want to go visit your sister? And she said, well, yeah. And so off they go to visit my sister. You know, they get her out to the evaluation phase where I am no longer. And the door closes and locks behind her, and they give her her pajamas and said, you're staying. And whoo, she was unhappy. She was unhappy, and I wasn't real sure if she was unhappy with me, and then ten days later she came downstairs and she was very unhappy withme. She was. She encouraged me to not sleep. And the nurses thought it was great because we were sisters, so they could put us in adjoining rooms that shared a bathroom, and so she could get to me any time of the day or night. And she was so wildly angry, and I was so wildly responsible for that. So anyway, I didn't sleep during treatment at all, and I paid very little attention because I wasn't really interested in getting sober. See, because I still had all this stuff going on in my head, andI wasn't going to talk to anybody about that. Are you kidding? Why would I talk to anyone about that? I'm just going to bide my time here. I'm going to get out and drink. I had absolutely zero interest in getting sober. So it was my last day of treatment, and I'm getting out, and it's January 6th of 1987. And my sister catches me, and this is the first civil conversation we've had, and it went like this. You don't relapse until I get out of here. You go find our people and you get our stuff, but you sit on it. If I hear you've been drinking while I've been in this place because of you, it's over. And I said, okay, all right. And so, you know, for 10 days. I white-knuckled it. I went and I got our stuff, and I had, you know, there's a floorboard in our house that you could lift and you could stash all your stuff and put the floorboard back down. My dad used to store his booze there when he lived there, so we knew where it was. And so I had our stash and the floorboards, and my sister gets out of treatment 10 days later. I'm like, oh, I mean, you know. Staying sober for 10 days when you have every intention of drinking, it's very difficult. It's just very difficult, so my sister gets out a treatment, and she's had a spiritual experience and wants to try meetings. And I'm thinking, you have got to be kidding me. I got this stuff. I got it. We're ready to roll. And she said, no, I really think that we ought to try this AA thing. There might be something to it. And I said, you're not even alcoholic. And she says, well, they told me to go to AA anyway. And so off we are going to AA meetings. And here's how we went to meetings. We'd get there late. We'd walk in the front anyway. Right in front of the speaker, didn't matter. We would go get a cup of coffee, even if the coffee was in the meeting room, so it was fairly disruptive. We'd go get an empty glass of coffee. We'd get a couple of cups of coffee and then we'd sit in the back and we wouldn't quietly lift up our chairs and pull them out so that we could quietly slide into them without being a further disruption. We'd take the chairs and we'd scoot them across the floor and everybody would be looking at us and the old timers would be sneering and we just staring them down and acting like, you know, and that's how we went and then we would leave early we were not going to stay for the Lord's Prayer and it's not because I had anything particularly against prayer, I wasn't either for or against it because I wasn'T raised in church so why did it matter to me? But I wasn' t staying for the Lords Prayer because I didn't know the words and you weren't going to pump me out like that and so I'd get out of there before you prayed and we did that for two months in late, lots of noise, coffee disrespectful, sitting in the back writing notes you know, there are men in AA who think that brand new adolescent girls are cute. Full-grown men who will date you. Ooh, sickness. Lots of sickness. And so we would write notes and we would get dates. And, you know it was just, it was complete mayhem. And they had a meeting about us and we didn't know it. And Max Shadburn who lived in that little town. I'm sorry, he lived in the next biggest town which is Worcester. He came up to me after a meeting, and he said, you know what? We are sick and tired of you. Are you an alcoholic? And I said, no. Now, people had been telling me I was alcoholic. Everybody was telling me that. Everybody was saying to me I'm an alcoholic. You know, there's lots of opportunities for people to look at you and say you're an alcoholic, but nobody had said do you think that you're in alcohol? And I had no answer for him. And he said can you stop drinking once you start? Can you control your drinking? And I said, I don't know. And I really didn't. I really didn't, I'd get the bottle and throw the cap away and it was mine. Who knew? And he said, well here's five bucks, go find out. He said, but here's the deal go drink and try to stop if you're successful you're not an alcoholic and I never want to see you again If it doesn't work, come back but get ready to do something different and so i went and i found my sister in that room and i'm like he's giving away money go get your five bucks we are so out of here and i tell you what though some of the things that you people had said i had gotten through goodness knows how but it had gotten true and so I went out and we relapsed my sister and I did we relapse together I was going to have three shots and two beers because I thought that three shots and deux beers would get me right where I needed to be and then I was gonna stop and stay right there. And I was going to have that warm, safe, fuzzy feeling that I had that first time that alcohol had given me relief. I was gonna stop right there and I was gonna ride it out. And, I had three shots and two beers and it came on me and it felt good and I had the buzz going and I thought, huh, it's not bad. It feels pretty good. Nothing bad happening to me. I'm not doing anything bad to anybody else. Maybe I stopped a little short, though. I wonder what one more shot would do. Just one more. I'm not going to go into oblivion or go over the edge or don't give me the bottle. Maybe just a little bit more. And I got that in my system and it settled in and I thought, not bad. I'm good with this. You know, I'm feeling pretty good. I wonder which is a little more beer would do? I got this taste in my mouth. I gotta have a little something to wash that down. you know and then one more shot and one more beer and guess where I ended up on the wrong side of the tracks in that dark house with those people who scared me for good reason and you know what I hadn't been over to that side of town since I had stopped drinking I hadn'T been over to that site of town at all if I wasn't consuming alcohol I had no reason to go over there but the moment that I consumed alcohol I had a reason to do it I had to go back over there again and I came to the next morning and Max Shadburn was in my head saying if it doesn't work get back here but are you ready to do something different and I thought oh my I'm young, I'm healthy I could live like this for a long time I wasn't scared of dying dying would have been a relief I was scared of living like that and I walked back into Alcoholics Anonymous on March 15th 1987 and I have not found it necessary to leave since and my sister did not go back with me. Everybody asked me in that thank the speaker line, so how's your sister? My sister did not goback with me and we look like two people who grew up in the exact same environment doing the exact samethings with the exact same opportunities and made different choices. Our lives look like that and I'm not going to tell her story but she didn't come back. I walked back into Alcoholics Anonymous and I got there on time. I sat in the middle. I stayed for the Lord's Prayer, but I still had a lot of hair and I had a little bit of hair. And I had to have a lot more hair then and I bent my head down so that the hair would kind of cover my face so that you didn't know that I wasn't saying the words. And I tried to get out of there as soon as I could and Max Shadburn stood at that door. You see, and to me back then he was like six foot five with shoulders out to here and he was mean and snarly and he stood in front of that door and he said, did you get a sponsor? and see I was still really confused about this whole sponsorship thing you know, John was talking yesterday morning about the exchange of money that's the only thing I knew about sponsorship and I thought well if I've got to pay for this thing I'm in trouble because I'm really poor and if they're going to pay me well that's not a bad deal maybe I ought to find one of those but I was really confused about this entire thing this whole deal and anyway by the time I had relapsed and come back I had understood that sponsorship wasn't about that I wasn't real sure what it was about but it wasn't About That But I knew people talked about their sponsors and held them up on pedestals and these kinds of things. And he said, did you get a sponsor yet? And I said, no. And he says, you'll get a sponsored before you leave this room. And I went to every woman who was in that room after that meeting and I said will you sponsor me? And every woman in that rooms said, No. No. It wasn't no, I can't. No, I have too many. No,I have a new baby so I don't have time. And no, I, you know, none of the normal excuses that you're going to get out of ladies when you're looking for a sponsor who are, you Know, they're too busy. They're too overextended. None of those reasons were given to me. It was just the flat no. And so I went to leave that meeting and Max said, did you get a sponsor yet? And I said, no one will sponsor me. And he said, that's a lie. And I'm not asking her. He said, oh yes you will. And I walked up to Jane. She was 73 years old. She had snow white hair. It was always pulled back into a very fashionable bun. She smoked cigarettes on long extended things. She was not overly mobile and so newcomer men would go out and get a high back chair and put her in it and carry her into the meeting as if she were the Pope. And they would set her down at the meeting always in the front And then they would fetch coffee for her. And she would just do this. And then Mac would sit in the back, the guy who threw me out of AA. He would sit on the back and when somebody said something that they didn't agree with or that wasn't in the book, they'd yell across the room about it. That's not in the books. Yes, it is. It's on 7th. No, it's not the book. It's in the middle of the page. and so that was mac and jane mac threw me out now jane's my sponsor you've got to be kidding me so i asked her i said jane will you sponsor me and she said why should i when you treat something that people love with complete and utter disrespect and disdain for a number of months you must expect that you're going to get treated as if you've done that And I had treated Alcoholics Anonymous, which had saved the lives of everyone in that room, with complete disrespect and disdain. And resentment runs deep, even though we have the tools to deal with it. And so she said, why should I? And you know, there have been a lot of times in my life where the things that I intended to say did not come out of my mouth at all, but something replaced them. And I really don't know how this happens. I attribute it to God, and I'm sure that that's probably it. But at the time, I had no earthly idea because I was going to tell her what to do with her sponsorship. And I was gonna explain to her just why I was fine without her. And I don't know who she thought she was. And I had a long, I mean, she was gonna get it all because I Was Like This Again. She was gonna Get It All. And instead, what came out of my mouth was, because I can't live like this, I've got to get sober and I don' t know how. who said that that was not what i had i man i was ready for you know because when you walk around with your hands like this you're ready just i mean it doesn't take any time at all and i was ready for and i and i said something like that and she said well all right well here's what you're going to do and she gave me my list do you guys get lists from your sponsors you know you're going to call me every day you're gonna be easy every day but you know i'm not going to be able to you know so many pages in the big book and you got to see me every thursday at two you know all that stuff, and so she gave me my list. And instead of telling her to shove her list, I took it and said, yes ma'am. I already told you, I was raised in the north, and we don't save ma'ams. At least not those of us with poor manners. And I said, yes ma'm. And I left that meeting, and I thought, oh what have I gotten myself into now? What have I gotten myself into now. And I'll tell you what they did. While they were trying to figure out what to do with my sister and I, they had a meeting. And not only did they decide that Mac was going to throw us out, but they also decided what they were going to do if we should happen to come back, which they were all hoping we wouldn't. But they decided that if we came back, Jane was going to sponsor us. And there was a list of old-timers who lived within 20 miles of our house, and they all had a Deb day. It was their day to be in my driveway at 7 p.m. and take this ungrateful brat to a meeting. And not only did they take me to the meeting, but then they had to take me to The Doughnut Shop. And they couldn't just take me to The Donut Shop and leave me to fend for myself, but they took me to The Doughtnut Shop and they bought me a cup of coffee, which I didn't like at all. That stuff was really nasty. They'd buy me a cup of cofee and they would buy me A doughnut. And they never asked for any money because they knew how poor we were. And every night at 7 o'clock there was an old timer in some enormous boat of a car sitting in my driveway and they were smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and there was always a couple of them. They were telling jokes and listening to country music and they're just having a big time. And you know what I'm doing? I'm standing on my front porch like this and I'm thinking, I shouldn't have to get in that car. I went to a meeting yesterday. I don't know how many meetings you have to go to. I'm not getting anything out of them anyway. I don'T even understand what those people are talking about but oh, there they are again just waiting for me to get into the car. Why should I just get into the car? Oh my gosh, the newcomer brain. Woo, is it scary? I'm telling you. You know, I'm so happy that conversations can happen in private. Because if this stuff got out, nobody would have anything to do with me. Particularly matched with my behavior of the day. And so I would stand there on that porch and I would stare at them and I Would have this whole thing going on in my head. And at some point, my head would say, oh, just get in the flipping car. They're not leaving. And they wouldn't. They would sit there and they would wait me out. One night I thought I was going to be really slick. I knew that we were going to go to an 8 o'clock meeting in this town called Barberton, which is right outside of Ack. I knew That's where we were headed. It was 8 o'. And we had to get on the road by 730 in order to get to that 8 o�clock meeting. And so I decided if I stood there long enough that I'd get the night off. That they would leave. And you know what? They sat there. And at 735, I'm still standing on the porch. And they're still sitting out there with the motor running, laughing, talking, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. And I walk up to the window, and I'm like, well, fellas, it looks like it's a little late to get to that 8 o'clock meeting. And they said, get in the car. There's an 830 in Cleveland. And so I'd get in that stupid car, and they would take me to meetings, and then they would talk to me about it. They would take us to the donut shop, and I wasn't allowed to talk at meetings. My sponsor was really clear with me. She said, until you've worked the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, you don't know anything about the solution, And I'm not going to have you spreading your disease in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's where we get together to talk about the solution, which is the steps. And if you haven't done them, you don't have it. And so shut up. And so I wasn't allowed to talk. And, of course, the old-timers who were assigned to me, they had their marching orders. I think they were as scared of Jane as I was. And so they'd take me to meetings and I would sit there quietly and I'd roll my eyes and I wouldn't listen because I really didn't understand what was going on in there. I mean, recovery is its own language. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous is its own language sometimes. And you know what? And then they would take me to the donut shop. And I was allowed to ask questions, but I was not allowed to make comments. And at the donut show, eventually I started writing down things that I didn't understand or I started cataloging them in my head when it was working right, which wasn't very often. And I would take those questions to the doughnut shop and I would say, what did they mean when they said this? Well, why is the third step really the most important step in getting a relationship with God? And what in the world does that mean? and I would ask those questions and those old guys, they would light up and they would answer my questions and they'd battle it out right there in front of me and one of them would say well go get the book out of the car when they couldn't agree on the answer go get it out of your car and what they did by not allowing me to talk was they made me listen and they made form questions in my head And then those old timers, they cared for me. They cared for me and they answered my questions. And they never asked for a penny. They didn't ask for gas money. They Didn't Ask For Donut Money. They Didn'T Ask For Coffee Money. When I was 16 years old and I got a permit to learn how to drive a car. Bill Long who had the Ford LTD. That car was enormous. It floated down the road. He would go to turn into my driveway and he'd have to turn the wheel for a long time. And it would slowly kind of, you know, come around and then it would get in there and it would do this thing. You guys own some of those cars, I'm sure of it. You know, and the only way to drive that car is to line up the center of the hood with the side line on the road because it was so big, there's no way you could see in front of that thing. I mean, you don't have to help smaller cars because they're not in my line of sight. And Bill Long, he took that big car and he pitched me the keys. He said, you got your permit with you? And I said, yes sir, I do. And he says, well, let's drive. So I'm driving this big car. I mean, and I just talk about scared. I'm scared and I'm diving down the road and I, you know, and going kind of into some ditches and bouncing back up. You know, I hit some small animals unintentionally. You know, it was really quite a wild ride. And I would say, oh Bill, I'm so sorry. Oh, did that leave a mark? And he would say, what'd you destroy? God will replace. You see, and he really believed that he was doing the work of God. He really believed that he was a servant of God and that saving my life was on his list of things he had to do before he passed. He believed that, as did all those old timers. You know, they weren't going to have me sitting around polluting their meetings. They were going to grab hold of me and they were going to give me the solution that they had found. And there were a lot of them who didn't believe I was alcoholic for a long time. And a lot of that was because they wouldn't let me talk. I mean, I could have convinced him I was. But a lot of them, they didn't believe, you know, to the bottom of their soul that I was alcoholic. And you know what? It didn't matter. They just did what it took to pass on the message of Alcoholics Anonymous anyway. You know, one of them told me years later, he said, it wasn't up to me to decide if you were an alcoholic, it was up to me to give you the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because you had a desire to not drink. And that was the foundation. And those people, they showed me great care and great love. And they didn't know me and I treated them badly. I was very surly. Isn't that a nice word? I was sehrly for a long time. And I was surly for a long because I had all that stuff going on in my head and I had to live with it because I didn't take care of it yet. You know, I was sober for a couple of months and I told Jane, I said, I got to get started on these steps. And she said, why do you think you have to get them started on these step? And I said because they said if you don't work steps you're going to drink again. You know I was hearing what you guys were saying in meetings and she said you're not ready for the steps and I said what do you mean I'm not ready for the step? You see I also knew that until I worked the 12 steps I couldn't talk. And so I really needed to work the steps and she says no, no, no she said you go find out what the four absolutes are first. you go find out what four absolutes are first and that's not conference approved literature but the four absolutes were left over from the Oxford groups and it's absolute love, honesty, purity and unselfishness and you know in Akron they were a little slow to depart from the Oxford group so they still had those placards up on the wall you know hope is found here first things first and they were the four absolues and she said you go figure out what those things are and I said yes ma'am and I ran and I got a dictionary and I looked them all up and I went back and I says okay love is to care for and I gave her the definition of the dictionary and she says that's not what I mean. Keep looking. And so I would go and I would ask these old timers, I'd be like, tell me about the four absolutes. And you know, when you open the door like that to old timERS who have a lot to say, your answer is probably in there somewhere. But you really got to hang with them at every turn in order to figure out what that answer is. My head wasn't working real well yet. Thinking in a straight line was not a strength when I got here. And I was following them in circles and it wasn't working. And so I kept, I kept going and I, and then I would call him and I would ask to go to extra meetings because I needed to get to these discussion meetings and I need to get there early so I could get to the chairperson because I was a lot of talking to me. So I had to get into the chair person to say, well, you bring up the four absolutes as a topic for me, you know? And so we did that a little bit and wow, you know, there's just a lot information, you know, because that's discussion meetings. Everybody gives you their take on something or their experience on something. And, um, and finally after looking and going to extra meetings and all this stuff you know, Max Shadburn who had not talked to me yet he needed a little work on his resentments. But Mac who had not talked to him yet, he grabbed me after a meeting and said, little one get over here. Are you still looking for the four absolutes? And I said, yes I am. And he said, well what have you found out so far? So I briefed him. Well such and such said so and so. So I gave him my whole rundown and he said, oh these alcoholics could complicate anything. And I said, I know. And he said, the four absolutes are the goals of recovery, sweetness. He said, those are the things that you're going to put in place of your character defects. He said, and you're gonna work real hard at that. He says, so you're gunna work hard at being honest and loving and having pure motives. Well, how simple is that? And so I went back to Jane and I said, Jane, I got it figured out. The four absolues, those were the goals of recovery. When I give up my character defects in step six and seven, I'm gunna pick those up and use them. She said, that damn Mac I knew he'd tell you. Well now that I had the answer she had no choice. So I was launched on a vigorous course of action. And I'll tell you what, by the time I had nine months sobriety I was finished making the amends I knew that I had to make. I mean they wasted absolutely no time pushing me through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and here was the deal. She knew that working the steps one time fast, real, you know, just running through them one time. She knew that that was not going to keep me sober for a lifetime, but she knew that I was going to knock the top off so that I could sleep at night. She new that I'm going to be able to start to repair the damage to relationships. She know that I am going to able to fit into my skin just a little bit better although it wasn't going to fit right. And she knew we could take some of that stuff that was going on in my head and we could clear the air a little and get some of the garbage out of there so that there was room for God in my life. She knew that we had to make room for God and I didn't have room for God. My head was too full and I was so full of fear and anger and she knew that we needed to knock the top off that stuff and that's what we did. We moved through those 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous at a rapid rate and I knocked the top off and it was enough to sit here without committing suicide. It was enough to stay with you people a little bit longer. Jane died when I was a year and a half sober and Matt died about two months later. They both died of lung cancer, and we used to laugh and say that, you know, Mac died of a broken heart once Jane was gone. Who was he supposed to fight with? And, you know, Jane used to say to me, you Know, I'm going to turn you into a young lady if it's the last thing I do. And, You Know, there was a memorial service for her, and she was not particularly religious, and I showed up, and, You know, I had a shirt that came all the way up to here and a skirt that came down to there, and my hair pulled back so you could see my face. and I sat and I crossed my legs when I sat down and I didn't say anything mean to anybody that day and one of the other women that she sponsored, she said, you remember Jane used to say if she was going to make a young lady out of you it was the last thing that she did and I said, I know and she said well, it was the last things she did and thank God and then Mac died and then I graduated from high school and then it was time to move and I moved and I went down to Columbus, Ohio and I got into this college and I found a home group, and I picked a home group because the second time I went to that meeting somebody remembered my name. I wasn't exactly looking for high or low quality. I was looking to belong somewhere. Because belonging somewhere is the most important thing we do for each other in the fellowship piece of Alcoholics Anonymous. It really is. You know, Jenna who read the steps for us this morning, you know, she's 17 years old and she's been sober for seven months. And she, you know, the first time I met her, she said, you Know, when I got sober, I didn't have a lunch table where I fit anymore. And I was like, I totally get that. You know, and it might not have been a school lunch table for you all, but you all had those tables where you didn't have a seat there anymore. And I had a seat in Alcoholics Anonymous and I had a baseline understanding of what this program had to offer me. And Jane was not a woman who had, well she wasn't religious at all and she didn't talk about God very much. When we got to the God step, she said God is good orderly direction. You don't have any, you need some and I'm going to be providing that. And she said, now you're going to practice praying and this is how you're going to pray. And she gave me, she opened up the pages in the big book, you know, the daily drill 86 through 88, and she showed me where the prayers were and she said you're gonna start with these. And I said, well, I don't know if I believe in God. She said, I'm not gonna do that. I said I don' t care. You're gonna do it anyway. And so she launched me on a spiritual path. And I tell you, once I had finished the steps and I had reached that point where I really, really, really needed to have a relationship with God that I could believe in, And I went to Jane, and we were having that conversation. And she said, I'm not the best one for you on that, but I'll tell you who it is. And she sent me over to another old-timer that she used to argue with. She said, You go over there, and you sit with him. She said � and you talk to him about God, and you tell him you want to hear everything he's got to say. And if he gives you direction, you do it. And that's the way Jane sponsored me. She was 73 years old. She did not know what a 15-year-old needed. You know, she was drunk when she was raising her own kids. But she knew how to sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, and she knew that it was her job to save my life because God had given me to her. And so in those areas where she had limited experience, she turned me over to someone who had greater knowledge in that area than she. And so, you know, Jane saved my life, and John gave me a God of my understanding. And, you Know, I had to get down on my knees, and I had to fire the concept of God that I brought into Alcoholics Anonymous with me because even though I didn't go to church, there was enough chatter here and there where I thought God was punishing. And a lot of that came from my own self-hatred. And I had to hire a God that I thought I could believe in. And so I had a list of adjectives about, you know, if I'm going to have a God, this is what I want God to be. And so I started praying to something that would have those qualities and characteristics. And that's how I got started on my relationship with God. And, you know, I came, I come to, and then I came to believe. And I watched God work in your life. I couldn't see how God was working in my life because my life felt really tragic for a long time. But I watched Gott work in Your life. You know, I watched people get jobs who were unemployable. I watched People get homes that were homeless. I watched Peoples be restored to sanity all around me. And all of them, when you would ask them, How did that happen for you? God was part of that equation. And so I kept praying to this God that I had a complete misunderstanding of. And then I started to ferret out an understanding that I could live with. And I'll tell you what, my journey with God has been an amazing journey. You know, my priest, he was doing a workshop for nuns several months ago. And there was a nun. She was 98 years old and she had entered convent at 18 and she'd stayed. So she was celebrating 80 years as a nun. And he told this story. He said, you know, I was getting on the elevator and she was sitting in a chair beside the elevator waiting on the elevator to come. She was 98 and couldn't stand that well. He says, so I sat down beside her and I said, sister, congratulations on your 80 years. It's amazing to me that you've been so faithful to God for 80 years and she said, oh no father, it is he who has been faithful to I. and you know I look at my own life and I say absolutely absolutely if there was ever one person who even in sobriety things would happen and I would turn my back on God and I'd quit praying and I�d march the other way and because of the foundation I had in Alcoholics Anonymous I did not drink long enough to realize how stupid I was and then I would turn around and Iwould march right back you know and today I have turned over my will and my life to the care of God, and I understand what that means. And that word care is wildly important. When God cares for something, you better look out because your life is going to be amazing. It's going tobe amazing. I mean, I think about how I care for people who come into my life. I thinkabout how I would give up everything I have to watch them have everything they want. And I'm not related to it. I'm just a sponsor or I'm just a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous and I would give and give and give so that you could get. And I think I am so wildly limited by being very, very human. And God is not at all. God is God and he's bigger than I know that he is. And when he cares for something, you better get ready for things to get good. You better get read for things to get challenging. You bette r get ready for things t grow if your experience is anything like my experience. There's a difference to me between getting spiritual principles, acquiring spiritual principles which is what step work and those early days in AA are about and then applying spiritual principles which is of what my life is about right now. It doesn't mean that there aren't times when I need to go back and get some more but those basic spiritual principles the acquisition is far different than the application and today I am applying those spiritual principles to my life. You know, my husband is a major in the Marine Corps. He's an infantry officer, and currently he's embedded with the Iraq Army in Fallujah. He's sleeping. There's a group of houses in downtown Fallujah that were bombed out, and they've got chicken wire running around them. And I was talking to him on the phone last weekend, and I heard gunshots. And he laid the phone down, and he came back ten minutes later, and he said, I've got to go. And I said, what happened? And he said one of the Iraqi police officers that patrols our perimeter so that we can rest has been shot by a sniper and we're going out on patrol to find him. There's a difference between acquiring faith and using it. And in this time in my life, I get to see how far God and I have come together. And I get the opportunity to do that. I get a chance to practice that faith on a daily basis. I know that he's got me. And I know he's gotten my husband. And I don't know what my life is supposed to look like a year from now. How could I know? I'm but a human. I don't know what his life is supposed to look like a year from now, but I know that we are in the care of God, both of us. You know, we both went and we both joined that church together before we got married because for once in my life I wanted to do things in the right order, what I thought was the right border, and it has been for us. And so we share a faith, which is very, very important. When we talk to one another on the phone, he says, you know, will you tell me what the daily readings are? We became Catholic. You know, and they have the Bible, and it's divided up into daily portions. And so I'll read him the daily readings over the phone, and we'll get to talk just a little bit about the spiritual world that God's created for us to live in and what our role is supposed to be in at that day. You know? And I talk to him about how important it is. You know?, I remind him. Yeah, I try to prop him up and support him. And I say, honey, remember, you know, we've got to pray every single morning because I'm going to, you now, I, out in this world, in this safe, peaceful world where I live right now, I'm interacting with you. And I have got to be ready. If God wants to use me to save you, I must be fit for that duty. And I can't do that if I've not prayed. If I've nicht connected with the God of my understanding, I can' t do that. And he's a leader of Marines. And he must connect with a power greater than him. He must pray to that God so that God can use him to lead. God must use me to lead he uses each of us to lead because here's the deal I may not ever be uniquely qualified to do much but I am uniquely qualified to save the life of another alcoholic because I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous I have worked the program of Alcoholic Anonymous I have done those amends that allow me to walk up straight and to look you in the eye i do daily prayer and meditation so that i'm on track with god so that i can trust that the things in my life that day are the things that are intended to be there i limit the screw-ups that i do through my own self-will by interacting with you i walk tall today nobody's going to tell me that i am not doing the things i need to do I'm a member in good standing I'm uniquely qualified to save the lives of alcoholics and at the end of my life if God comes up and he says well done my good and faithful servant then I will have done my job thank you applause music music music thanks for listening