Steps 1, 2 and 3 – Recovery Speakers — Workshop – Part 3 of 34 – 2012 – Polly P.

Hi everybody, my name is Polly Pistol and I'm an alcoholic. And by God's grace in a program called Alcoholics Anonymous I haven't had a drink since April the 11th of 1977 and for that I am eternally grateful. Thanks. And I am a Floridian now. I have been in Florida for a year and a half and I am absolutely delighted to be here so I wouldn't be able to be doing some of the things like this if I had to fly all the way from Birch Bay, Washington. So I really feel honored that I get to be here. Lon is with me today. My husband Dave is a little bit under the weather, so Lon came with me. And this is very, very special treat for me to have Lon. So I'm going to give you a little story about Lon. I met Lon in 1984 And Lon got sober with my son James And they got sober in Arlington, Texas And I've known Lon all those years And he and my son today They ran with a pack of kids A pack of sober kids And there was about what 22 of you guys or something like that And they had a great time. But of those 22, which here's the disease of alcoholism, James and Lon are the only two that are still sober. And they're sober 28 years. So this is an amazing thing. Anyway, about five years ago, Lon's mother died. And I loved Lon's father. and we have a similar story because his mother came into AA and he followed her and I came into AAA and my son followed me. So the stories are really similar. Well, when Betsy died, I want you guys to know that Lon is now my son. I adopted him. He is so precious to me and so this is something that's really, really fun because James and I get to do these kind of things together, and now I'm getting to do it with Lon. So this is really special for us. And so that's just kind of a little tee up, and Lon will tell you his thing himself. But what we're going to do to start off the morning, because of steps one, two, and three, I'm going to share a little bit of what happened to me in one, Two, and Three. And then Lon's going to share one two and three and how the steps worked in his life and then as we were going to kind of you know kind of share on each step thereafter okay but these these three steps we're going to just do a whole little kind of talk each on those and uh let me just tell you if any of you are thinking oh i can't do something like this i can'T do a workshop don't worry about it there's no planning really going on. Lon, I do this quite a bit. Lon says, well, what do we do? How do we do it? And I said, we just do it. You know, there's not much planning to it. So I said you just kind of listen to your heart so we're going to do the best we can to talk from our heart and to share with you our experience and our strength and our hope. And because really what the only thing I have to give to you is my experience that's it I can only that's all that's mine that I can give to you and one of the things I'd kind of like to know and I'm going to ask this later on during the day if more people come how many people are here this morning in your first year of sobriety Wow okay thank you thank you the reason I say that is because the reason i wanted to know that is I kind of want to know who is where in there you know kind of in their program and people who are in the first year are really still I'm one of these people well they're still in the beginning of their journey and Alcoholics Anonymous I am one of those people in a aid that believes in doing the steps quickly I mean come into the rooms I'm a dr. Bob kind of gal and it's not that I don't love both of our co-founders but dr. bob took more people through the steps than anybody we know of today he took more than 5,000 people through the steps so he took a lot of people through the steps through the small years that I think I'm right about that did I just overstep that I it's five thousand anyway it's a lot of people I think I'm after I said that I thought it might sound a little too much but anyway he took a lot of people through the steps and if you read Earl treat story in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and he talks about that he took me through the step in an afternoon now I am NOT a step a month kind of person I'm not a step a week I must sit down do the steps get on with it and if I have newcomers most of my newcomers are sponsoring and into making amends within 30 days if not quicker than that and there is absolutely no reason that a person cannot go through the steps in my estimation in a weekend there's no reason so I have a theory and you can do with this theory whatever you want to but I was just an Akron and what they call they had the first Akron homecoming in May and I have I was privileged to be a part of that and when we were back there and it was to honor their raise it was a fundraiser for dr. Bob's house because they're trying to get all the foundation and stuff like that finished so we can keep this home and that it can be a part of our legacy. And one of the things that was brought out during this Akron homecoming is one ofthe problems that we have so much relapse is because we don't do the steps fast enough. What we do is we don' t, you know, oh, you're not ready for that. You're not read for this. I don't see anywhere in this book says that you'renot ready. In fact, this book says when you do step three and it's like, well, you shouldn't do step four. You might get drunk. Well, I'm here to tell you if you don't do step four, you're guaranteed to get drunk, so it's not about doing them. It's not about being slow and fast enough. You can't do them too fast, but you can do them too slow, and the thing about I got a fly that just wants to irritate me. He wants to just buzz around me, but the thing about it is, is I believe, my personal belief is that you cannot do these steps too fast, but you can do them too slow. And what are we doing here? You're doing the steps too fast. Let me tell you, this is, we're going to do this for a lifetime. Believe me, don't worry about doing them too fast. You're going get to do them again and again and again. So don't worry about that. So anyway, I'm going to just talk about step one about me. And it says that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life is unmanageable. And there's a hyphen there. So that means that that's two separate thoughts. I'm powerless over alcohol. And alcohol has made my life unmanageable. Now, I'd like to start off by saying that I am living, breathing proof that you can be a real alcoholic as is described in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm going to read about that in a minute. And I do not come from the disease of alcoholism. Now I have a theory. I'll never know if that theory is right, because I was raised Southern Baptist. And if you're raised Southern Baptist, and I never have to explain that when I'm in the South, because everybody understands it. Now, you go other places and they don't get it. But if you were raised Southern Baptists in the south, you know what I'm talking about. And, if you are raised Southern Baptist 71 years ago when I was raised Southern Baptist you really know about it because I think they've lightened up. I think they're just Southern Baptist light now but it used to be a lot more than it is today. What happened was as it said thou shall not drink and my parents didn't but I have a theory that had my dad drank I believe he would have been an alcoholic because as I look back and I see kind of what I was told to do when I did the inventory step and I'll talk about this a little more in step 4 but my AA sponsor says before you tell me your story tell me you're parent's story isn't it amazing if we know what happened to our parents how much more forgiving we can be because they you know they did the best they can a lot of a lot of our parents had horrible things happen to them and in doing so I got to see I got to look at my parents and my dad had all the behavior I had he was restless irritable and discontent and he was full of rage and I believe had he taken a drink of alcohol because I understand because you see I was that person too. I was restless, irritable, and discontent. Full of rage. I needed a drink a long time before I took a drink. I was 18 years old when I first took a Drink of Alcohol. I'm an only child. I come from tons of love. I've never been abused. I've ever been hit by my parents. I've never had any of those kind of things happen and I promise you I ended up doing all those things because of a disease called alcoholism. I am powerless over alcohol and I took a drink, I married a military, I married an air force officer and I went to an air luncheon an Air Force wives luncheon and I took a drink of alcohol it was a really wussy drink it was sherry and it was in one of those little fountains you know that you just put your glass up under and it was shery and I put my glass up wonder and I took a drank of alcohol nothing big deal happened but what I do remember is that one of the things that happened is it felt like for the first time in 18 years i could just breathe i just felt like i could take a breath it just seemed like i had been just tight for 18 years and i don't know if any of you have ever had the opportunity to hear clancy talk but i think clancy talks about the disease of alcoholism just about better than anybody i know And he talks about that spring that's just, you know, that just gets tighter and tighter and how your chest is all tightened up and then you take a drink of alcohol and it just sort of, just kind of relaxes all that out. And that's what happened. Now I don't think at that moment I became an alcoholic, but whatever's inside of me, because the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that I am mentally and bodily different from my fellows. And so when somebody comes into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they said, you know, they say, I'm so different. I'm not like others. And we can say, we know. We know. Because I'm Not. I have a different reaction to life just about than other people. You ever watched a non-alcoholic thought process? And here I am at 35 years of sobriety, and I could see a non alcoholic friend process something, and I'll still shake my head and say, wonder how they did that? Wonder how they did that. Because Bill over and over and over in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about our twisted thinking. I just don't think I am bodily and mentally different from my fellows so whatever was in me that was not in them happened that day. It happened that magic worked the first time. Now I didn't get drunk, I didn' t set up a phenomenon of craving all I knew is, is this relaxed me and it felt really good. The other thing is, is that I don't know if I said this, I'm an only child. So I've been loved. I've been cherished, not abused. So I don' t know if that's criteria for being an alcoholic. Most of the women I sponsor do not have my story. But I can tell you, you don't have to have that to become a real alcoholic the other thing is I know nobody in the Air Force while we were in the Air Force that is an alcoholic besides me that I knew and I've not run into anybody in AA so nobody I knew was alcoholic, nobody is in AA, nobody needs AA so I'm just telling you it was, I didn't even know what all this was. I really didn't even know how to say the F word until I came to AA. I mean that's, you know, this is just kind of I learned all this. So none of this was in my life. Now I want you to know that is not an unusual thing. So I haven't got one of these childhood stories to tell you. What I do know is, is that I have always been restless, irritable, and discontent. And today, I know what's wrong with me. Thanks to this work that we do in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I know What's Wrong With Me. I am suffering from a spiritual malady. That's what's right. That's What's wrong With Me, where only a spiritual solution can solve. And it's the 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous is the spiritual prescription, if you will, that I need in order to treat a spiritual malady. But what's wrong with me is I am cut off, as Bill also says, from the sunshine of the Spirit. I am caught off. And I need these steps in order to begin to heal from a spiritual Malady. so what happens if you're suffering from a spiritual malady the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that nothing is enough you can't love me enough you cant give me enough you can do enough there simply is not enough for a person that is suffering from a spiritual malady so what was with me my basic personality was I was rageful when I did not get things I wanted I was a child who had a lot of temper fits I was an adult who had a lot of temper bits just like my dad I was a person who felt like I had such an ego that I felt like that you needed to be able to read my mind somebody would say Polly what's wrong moody people always act like something is wrong and make other people uncomfortable. You ever notice that? And somebody would say, Polly, what's wrong? Nothing. You know, we puff up in Texas. I grew up in Kansas. We puff up. We puffed up in the Texas. But the reality was that you were supposed to find out what was wrong with me, and if you didn't make me happy, you didn' t love me. Clancy says it in a way that I love, And he says that we're people who have to be treated special just to feel average. And if you don't treat us special, then we feel rejected. You ever work with a newcomer? Anybody who's out working with alcoholics and you give them time, you talk on the phone, you do all this, and you miss one time you haven't called them back or something. You never call me back. You don't like, you know, it's just all of a sudden you have committed the biggest sin ever because you just slipped up one time. That's perfectly normal. That is normal alcoholic behavior to feel that way. The absolute feeling is that they feel rejected. So what happened for me is that is who and what I was when I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. What happened was, is I ended up having two little boys, had no idea how to take care of these two little bois, and I ended going, I was just, I was having a nervous breakdown. We ended up being in Loring Air Force Base, Maine. I'm married to a SOC pilot. This man is gonna be gone, he's gonna be for years at a time, and I have been placed with the responsibility of my two little sons. And what happens is, is it's 50 below zero. I can't let them outside. These kids are driving me crazy. I'm having a nervous breakdown every 20 minutes. I end up going to an Air Force doctor and he says, take these. And from 1962 until 1977, I took Librium, Valium, Seconal, Nimutol and drank alcohol. and i assure you that if you take those kind of drugs and drink alcohol you are not an active alcoholic and what i did is i did my dying on my living room sofa so the disease of alcoholism is a family disease and anybody who lives with a practicing alcoholic is affected by the disease of alcoholism. My sons, I am a woman who never ever should have had been allowed to keep her children because I am child abuser. I have abused my children physically, emotionally, spiritually and most of all by blatant neglect because I was powerless over alcohol. I had two little boys, one was an athlete, one was a musician and I would promise I'll be at your game, I'll be at your concert. I'll be there, and I'd take a drink of alcohol. The kids would come home. They'd find me passed out on the sofa, and they look at me with those little faces, and they say, Mom, you promised. You promised, and I would say, can't you see I'm sick? You know, you don't have any respect for your parents. You know the insanity of berating these children and making it their fault. And that's what my children grew up with. I physically abused my children. I just, they, I would just get out of control, rageful, hit my children, my youngest son who got sober with Lon had this head full of curly hair, he doesn't have any hair anymore, but a head full or curly hair and I would grab a hold of that hair just kind of like mine is and I'd grab a hold of that hair and I'd pull it. And he says, I pulled him bald. It says that's why he's bald. But this is how I treated my sons. That's alcoholism. Did I love my sons with all my heart? I loved my children. I loved My children. And the guilt, the only thing that kept me from after the guilt of what I would do to those kids and I would know when I'm sober, the only thing that would fix that was another drink because I could not stand who and what I was. My life was unmanageable. I could no longer live my life. I could never take care of my children. I'm going to tell you two quick stories. One of the stories is James was about 10 years old. I no longer can put my children to bed. I can no longer get them up in the morning. They have to get themselves to bed, and they have to get up inthe morning. James had gotten up that morning to fix his breakfast. I was passed out on the kitchen floor with a drink spilled. James stepped over me, got his cereal, his milk, the bowl, all of that, stepped back over me, couldn't have been further from me than this gentleman right here sat down at the kitchen table and ate his breakfast and felt nothing. That's the disease of alcoholism. That's what happens to children who grow up in this disease. My oldest son, if you take drugs and you drink alcohol, we don't breathe too good. And many a time have I come to with him shaking me, Mom, wake up, wakeup, are you dead? And me see the fear in his eyes. None of that's happened in the past 35 years. And I've totally been blessed. What happened to me is that I ended up having a car wreck in Irving, Texas. And I was taken to the Irving police station. And I got to see that look in the non-alcoholic's eyes that just doesn't understand why we do what we do. And this policeman looked at my husband and said, Why don't you just take her home and sober her up? And I entered treatment for the first time. Now, while I was in that treatment center, Dr. Teabolt says an AA comes of age that there's two characteristics found in every alcoholic grandiosity and defiant individuality and I sat there in that treatment center and said people like me don't become alcoholic and Dave says only an alcoholic can lay in the gutter feeling superior to those looking down on him here i was you know people like me don't become alcoholic and i ended up having a jitterhouse romance in the treatment center and we went off and stayed sober for 58 days i was 12 step brought back into that treatment center and i knew the problem was sobriety i can't live inside of my own skin sober i can'T live with who and what i am i can't do it so i set that seven days out and what i did is i went and i got up when that seven days was over i got a bottle of scotch and i got a model of alley and i checked into a motel and i don't believe that there's anybody in this room that doesn't have an angel in your life someone who leads us here and this lady knew nothing about aa knew nothing About alcoholism but she loved me and she said something came over her and she had to go find me. That's God working in my life through her, and she found me in this hotel room, and I hadn't latched the door. It had just shut, and on April the 8th of 1977, I was pronounced dead on arrival in a hospital in Bedford, Texas. To make a long story short, I got court committed to a, I put on a 72-hour hold, which gave my husband enough time to obtain a court order to have me court-committed to treatment, and I entered a treatment center in Dallas, Texas on April the 11th of 1977. My surrender, I didn't go begging, hollering, somebody help me. I'm just really glad that we still help people who don't ask for help, like Dr. Bob, you know, Bill looked Dr. Bob up. You know, I'm truly glad that Bill didn't wait for Bob to call because we'd all still be, you know, we'd also be out there drunk. But my husband huge intervention I was court committed to treatment and in that treatment center I reached a surrender and I reached a surrender in that treatment center I remember looking up at God and said if you will just keep me sober get me sober and keep me sober I will never say no to an AA request I will do anything I'm asked to do in this program and for 35 years I've been able to uphold that I have I am so grateful that I have had that surrender. And all I ask, all I pray for is everybody in this room has got the gift of desperation. I pray that you have the gift of desperation because this is such, this disease is so cunning, baffling and powerful that if the desperation is not there, sometimes we just talk our way right out of it. I am så grateful I have the guilt of desperation i knew god i had grown up as far as step two goes i knew God i was raised southern baptist i was in church sunday morning sunday night wednesday night i was inchurch and man i knew got and God would stand you know that preacher would tell me about God he'd tell me i was born a sinner and he'd tell me you're gonna burn in hell and i mean to tell you his God was plenty scary And he used to say things, if you've thought it, you've done it. My God, I was nine years old. I was an alcoholic in the making, didn't know that. I thought a lot. So, I mean, it was just like I just couldn't. This God was going to get me. He was goingto get me, and by the time I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I felt like I had done, I was so horrible that God, I mean, what I had done to my children, what I Had Done to My Husband, all of it, the thoughts I had, everything that was going on. I mean my husband, there was a war going on there and he was going back and forth to that war and all I was worried about was me. What do you mean you're going to war? And you know, all of this stuff. What about me and carrying on? I mean I'm sure he went to Vietnam a nervous wreck worried about me and his two sons he had to leave behind insanity but I knew this God I knew this God and now I and sober I can see who I am I can see that what that God's not going what that got and and I think we get the blessings we need in a yet my first a a sponsor had been a monsignor priest he had been a captain in the Navy and he was an only child I believe that God sends us exactly what we need and what happened was is Frank was able I mean if you're a Southern Baptist in Texas when I was a little girl growing up the Baptist hated the Catholics and the Catholics hated the Baptist now what am I going to do my first day a spell sponsor is not only a Catholic he is a a catholic priest and i mean i just think god has the greatest sense of humor and what happened was is frank began to tell me holly i am i well he wasn't a priest at the time i was a priest and i found god in aa and what i want you to do is just believe that i believe And all through our history in Alcoholics Anonymous, it says when they started off in the Oxford group, people believed like in a group of drunks, you know, such as that. And what I did is I believed that he believed. And in doing that, I became to come to believe in a power that I could trust in. And what happened was is Frank looked at me and he says, and we're going to do the third step. And I said, but I don't know how to turn my will and my life over to God. And he says, Polly, you're not going to do it right now. You're just going to make a decision to do It. And He says, it's like going to college. You're going to Make a Decision to Go to College, and then you spend the next four years doing It. He says we're going To Make a decision to turn our will and our life over, and we're Going to spend the Next nine steps doing It, And that's what we're going to do. Do you make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him? And we got down on our knees and we prayed that day. And I'm so grateful. I just felt like something magical happened that day I just feel like I just fell like something happened to me that day that this alcoholic who had abused her children who was of no support to a man who was going to war, a child who argued and treated their parents terribly, that this person absolutely did have some hope. There was some hope that I could get better because what happened was is he believed in me and I am so grateful for that And we went through those steps that day quickly. I mean, we did, I had been in treatment 28 days and he believed that we were going to do the steps as they're laid out in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and he brought me back to his house and we did those three steps that Day. And I was to point out the places that I was powerless. I was powerless to take a drink as much as I loved my children. I was powerless to do anything but yell and scream at a man who went to war, even though I loved him and was terrified he would die. I loved my parents, and I couldn't stop being rageful. Here was a person who absolutely, I was incapable of being emotionally in control or physically of who and what I was. I was powerless. and my life was unmanageable and so was the two children that were put in my care I could not care for those kids and the surrender was made and a God was put in my life until I could learn through this program to have a God of my own understanding and I gave that surrender and asked God to please help me turn my life, my will and my life over to the care, huge word, to the Care of God. And I'm so grateful this morning that it's there. My life is in the Care Of God. Lon. Hi everybody, I'm an alcoholic. My name is Lon. and it is by God's grace the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I have not found it necessary to harm myself or anyone else but taking a drink of alcohol since October the 8th of 1984 and I am extremely grateful for that. I wasn't real excited when I got here about that I gotta tell you I'm real excited to be here with Polly like she said I'm gonna give you your book I gotta say I got a book that I got when I sobered up and as you go through the book over the years, pages start falling out. But you've got a lot of great stuff highlighted. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to get me a new book. And so I got me a New Book to come here and I shared with Polly just this morning. I said, you know, thumbing through my book, I don't have anything highlighted. I've got this new book with nothing highlighted. Um, and I'm not one big on quoting the book. I always realize why I quote it. It's written down. Um. But there's a lot of great points in there that I have highlighted over the years. And I'm grateful to be here with Polly. Like she said, we met a long time ago. You know, I became James was my running buddy. He was my best friend in Alcoholics Anonymous. And there used to be a group of us that used to follow. She used to speak at a lot conferences way back then even. A lot of young people's conferences. And we'd get a group 20-30 people and we'd go to Louisiana Conference of Young People's and we'd go to the Arkansas Conference of young people's and would go to that Oklahoma conference of young people's on the text Texas conference of Young Peoples and and and we were kind of lucky because me and James used to always get to sleep in Polly's room because when you're young and a yeah you don't have any money and everybody else all the other 19 had to get one room so so weird might be why they didn't stay sober you know in Alcoholics Anonymous we we don't medically treat an illness what we offer is the recovery from and the acceptance of an incurable illness and we do that through mental and spiritual growth by adhering to the principles that are outlined in the steps and and along with those recoveries a book we call it the big book and and in this book it has a a doctor's opinion, 11 chapters and many short stories. But it's in this book when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and they gave me one my sponsor told me this is what's going to show me how to live. Show me the way I need to live in order to stay sober. I'm not like Polly being born, I mean I was born in a I came to this world in a normal family. Both of my parents were alcoholics i was the youngest of three kids uh my four kids i'm sorry i had three older sisters one of them died when i was uh five and she was six died in a car accident um but but my parents were alcoholic my and they didn't start out alcoholic when i was little my dad was a 20-year marine so he was kind of always traveling first thing I can recall of really kind of feeling different is probably four or five years old and we're all going to church and I got my three sisters, my mom, my dad's in Vietnam so we're both in the church so we were all going into church and my sisters always got to dress up in these nice pretty little dresses and my mom was in a nice dress and all of them got to carry purses and I used to cry on the way to church because I didn't have a purse and everybody else had a purse very disturbing and you got to understand in the early 60s it really wasn't as popular back then as it is today for the guys to carry purses so my mom wouldn't let me carry a purse my dad being off of Vietnam he served a couple of tours and when he came back he kicked me out of my mom's bed which I slept in all the time so that kind of started my first resentment with my father. My sisters, as we grew older, my sisters kind of became these Jesus freaks. I had alcoholic parents and two Jesus freak sisters that were, I had like everything right there at the house. Pretty well-rounded growing up. And one thing nice about that though is when you have that, when I was around my sisters, I was this God-loving guy and when I was around my parents I would open my dad's beer and take a couple sips and I don't think any of those things really made me an alcoholic even the life of growing up in an alcoholic family I don' t think made me an alcoholic and I've done a lot of inventories and I' ve come to believe that drinking alcohol had a lot to do with me becoming an alcoholic but there were a lot of things that happened growing up when I took my first drink of alcohol it became a solution for all my problems. Like Polly said, she could breathe. It just, it was a solution. I was always growing up. I always felt, you know, I was always kind of in the in crowd, but I always felt outside of the in crowd. You know, talking to people at a 30-year high school reunion, talking to people. They never viewed me as kind of being on the outside, but that's how I always felt. My mother and father got divorced when And I was probably, or were in the process of getting divorced when I was 12 or 13. And that's really when my mom started drinking really bad. My dad had moved away and it was just me and my mom at the house. And if you live in an alcoholic family, you learn early on, you don't bring your friends home. You don't brings them home because you don' t know if mom is going to be passed out in the mashed potatoes at the kitchen table. Or you don''t know if she''s going to passed out in the front yard. And you always got to kind of go in first and check to make sure everything''s all right before you bring anybody home. and I used to get so furious at her drinking, and she used to drink vodka because you can't smell it. She would drink, I remember, vodka and Diet Rite Cola. And I used pour it out in the sink, and then I'd fill it up with water, and she would come home from work, and she'd drink like four drinks, and she's pissed because nothing's happening. After a while, I realized it's kind of silly that he poured that down the drain, and so I started pouring to a little flask of my own and filling it up with water. I'd keep the flask in my closet and I'd have friends over and we'd kind of drink some with Diet Rye Cola. You know, I got to tell you the first thing I did I'm not going to get into all kinds of weird stuff but the first time I did really wasn't drinking alcohol I had a mini bike and I started working on this mini bike and I liked the smell of gasoline and I found out if you smell that a lot It can take you to places you've never been before. And I was going to a lot of places for a long time right there in the garage. Doggone minibike never worked, never ran right. I was always working on that thing. But then that gas crunch came in the early 70s, odd even days. So I kind of had to move on to stealing my mom's liquor. It was a lot easier to do. So I started drinking. And throughout high school, junior high and high school I started drinkin'. And, you know, I'm a blackout drinker. Starting out, I was a black... I think I had blackouts when they first come out. I was in junior high and high school, and I had Blackouts. Now, I didn't know they were blackouts. I didn' t know what a black-out was. I didn''t know really what one was until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. But I knew that I would come to in the morning, and I didn ''t remember a lot what happened that night. But I thought that I just kind of passed out or fell asleep, and I came to, and that's kind of all that happened is I drank and I passed out but then if you have friends like I have friends they would tell you these things that happened that you thought you were sleeping through and a very lot of unusual behaviors things that they would tells you and you really don't want to act surprised you want to pretend like you knew but it's real important you get the information of the facts that happened the night before also and so you're intently listening I'm intently listen to find out what happened you know I got through high school and I don't know how I got through high School and I know that when I got out of high school I remember thinking you know, I gotta do something with my life. I got to be something and my dad was a 20-year Marine and I figured I'd go down and talk to the recruiter and I went down and made this really cool video they show you and man is like 45 minutes long and I'm thinking that's what I want to be, and I signed up. And if you're young and you're thinking about the service, it's not really quite what those videos are like. I'm just saying. I got into boot camp, and they were like a lot of yelling going on, screaming at you, cussing at you. I am thinking everything is like home, you know. But that was probably the longest period of time that I had been without drinking. I got out of boot camp they give you I think I had like seven or eight hundred dollars and when I got that seven or nine hundred dollars I I think the first night I don't think I really did anything the next night I blew that whole seven hundred dollars I went to a blackout with some friends don't know what happened and evidently they give me that money that's supposed to help get you to the next duty station and I didn't have the money to get to the next duty but my mom loaned me the money to get you to the next duty station. I really enjoyed the service. I enjoyed the Marine Corps. I'm big on geographical cures because they work, let's face it. You know, the Marine Corp, they moved me around a lot and they worked for about two weeks. And about the time the sergeant major, the CO kind of starts knowing your name, you got to order somewhere else. I mean, I went to schools and I saw I was going to different places. But I remember I got out of boot camp. I was home for 10 days and I went to Tennessee. And I thought, that's what I've got to do. I've got to get out of Florida. Florida's causing me all these problems. I know if I get out Florida, things will be all right. Now, I get to Tennessee and about the time I finished school, things start heating up and I thought man, I've gotta get out to Tennessee and I get orders to Jacksonville, North Carolina. Now I don't know if you've been to Jacksonville North Carolina but it's kind of like 50,000 Marines in the war. And so there was just kind of a lot of drinking and a lot of fighting going on. So I got to Jacksonville, North Carolina. I went through more schooling. And next thing you know, I got orders to California. That's what I've got to do. It's the East Coast that's causing me all these problems. I know if I can kind of go further west, things will be better there. And I really believe that. I really believed that every time I went somewhere, it would be better. Unfortunately, what I did is the same thing that got me to Alcoholics Anonymous. I continued to drink and really believing in my head that the East Coast was the problem or this duty station or this Sergeant Major. So, I get on the West Coast and I start drinking. About the time the Sergeant Major starts knowing my name and the CO starts knowing my name, I got ordered to Japan. That's what I do. The United States is causing me all these problems. I know if I can get out of the United States, things will be a lot better. So I went to Japan, Okinawa, Japan, and I was stationed there and you know when you're halfway across the world and of course growing up in that tight knit family I had, I was missing my family and being depressed. You drink a lot when you are depressed and when you drink a depressant you get really really depressed so I was a really really oppressed drunk and I continued to have the blackouts one particular time I thought it would be a good idea when I was riding in one of the cabs to jump out of the cab as it was going like 60 miles an hour and it really wasn't that great of an idea I ended up in the hospital is in a coma for three days I came to I didn't get in a lot of trouble but as I was in the in the Marine Corps my my service record my service record was actually good it was my medical record that kept getting thicker and thicker and thicker from all these alcohol-related incidences and I didnít know but evidently they kind of monitor how much you go to the hospital and stuff when you're in the service um and i was sickly all the time um so it kept getting thicker and thicker and i ended up going to uh going to the philippines korea i mean i got to see a lot of places i was in koreA and we went to the Philippines that had a 96 hour pass in the Philippines me and a buddy of mine went drinking and and if you're alcoholic like i'm alcoholic Like, when you drink alcohol, I try to drink with people that drink like I drink. Now, it's unfortunate if you pick people that Drink Like You Drink that go into blackouts like when you go into Blackouts because both of us went into a blackout, and we came to, and we couldn't figure out where we were. And the Philippines are pretty distinct-looking people, and the people we were seeing weren't really Filipino. and so we're trying to determine without letting anybody know we didn't know where we were where we came up and we asked some guy where are we and he said Richardson and in a strange accent I said yeah my buddy says Richardson what and he says Richardson Australia I can't explain to you the fear that overwhelms your body when you hear that. Now I had never taken a military hop anywhere with a 96 hour pass so we had no idea how to take a military hop. Evidently we did but we still didn't have any idea and so we asked where the base was they told us where the nearest base was it was an Air Force base And we asked them, we said, well, we've got to get a military hop back to the Philippines because we needed to get back before this 96-hour pass was up. And it's a long air flight. And they said, oh, just go through the same procedure you did and get in here. I looked at him. I said, man, if we start drinking, there ain't no telling where we're going to end up. But, you know, we got back to The Philippines. We never got caught. Didn't get into a lot of trouble. Went back to Okinawa. the same kind of stuff started happening. One particular day, I was a Lance Corporal, so I was a non-NCO and I was drinking in a Staff Sergeant's room. And that's kind of frowned upon, a non NCO drinking with an NCO. But I was drinking and I only had about a six pack of beer and I got on this ledge. He lived on a second deck and I caught on this balcony and this rail around the balcony and I'm overlooking the flight line and I've got to tell you, I only have about four or five beers and I'm just dying inside. I am just dying inside and I don't know what it is. And I'm looking over here and I am depressed. And there was this bicycle behind me and I this bicycle had this bungee cord wrapped around it and so I I wanted to die. And so I took the bungee chord off of this bicycle and it had this rail and I hooked one end around the rail and I hooked the other end around my neck. And when I first got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I told people that I jumped off. but I'm here to tell you today that's not quite how it happened because I figured if I jumped off and that thing broke, I could hurt myself and I wanted to die. I didn't want to hurt so I kind of eased myself down I guess kind of like rappelling except it's around the neck but I got all the way, you know, you can stretch a bungee cord so tight and it just doesn't stretch anymore and that's how this thing was stretched and I got all the way to the bottom and my tiptoes were on the bottom. I've got to tell you, this thing was just pinching the crud out of my neck and I had got this overwhelming desire inside that hey, I want to live. Things aren't so bad. But you know, I couldn't pull enough slack to get this hook off and it was just like really... So I had to kind of jump up and down try to go with the swing of it to try to get enough slack to get these hooks off of my head neck. And when I was doing that, a staff sergeant walked out of the bottom deck and he asked me what I was doing. Just hanging around. But they kind of unhooked me and the Marine Corps this time decided I probably have a problem with alcohol. I thought they were overreacting. But they sent me to treatment. Back then, they put your name in a computer wherever it came up. That's where you went to treatment I came up in Long Beach, California. So I went to treatment, Naval Regional Medical Center in Long beach, California I got there the one thing I heard was fake it till you make it I mean I knew in my head I was 20 years old, I wasn't even drinking age California is 21, I wouldn't even drink in age and they were telling me I'm an alcoholic but I heard fake it till you made it and so I went through their treatment program. Now during this time my mom was sobering up in Jacksonville Florida and she was just sobering up at that time and I'd call her up first things first one day at a time we'd kind of hang up it was just a little AA chat over the phone I got out of treatment and I couldn't believe they sent me back to my problem which was Japan I got ordered back to Japan and I didn't drink for six weeks because I realized maybe I've got a problem with alcohol plus it was an incentive I had to go in front of the gunny every morning and he stuck a pill. Antabuse, had to take anantabuse every morning. So that's kind of incentive not to drink. They told me to go to meetings. I went to meetings out in town where they spoke all Japanese. I didn't speak Japanese. Wasn't real helpful. Went to some meetings. Over six months, I probably went to five or six meetings. But I knew I wasn't alcoholic. I just had to do it because they were after me. And you guys know who they were because they're probably after you too. one particular the gunny finally after a period of months it handed me the anti-abuse he said just continue to take them every day and i said no problem um but one day i said you know what i don't think i'm an alcoholic i'm gonna i'm going to i think i're gonna go get a 12 pack and i'm Gonna go back by the seawall and i'm gonna drink so that morning i didn't take any anti-buse because i figured i'm Going to drink that night. I didn't know that it really takes longer than like one day I'm not taking anti- abuse for this stuff to get out of your system it really takes like two weeks uh i just thought if i didn't take it that morning i'd be okay i i um i started drinking oh my gosh man i started breaking out in these red blotches i'm looking my arms are like red the guy i'm drinking with he's like dude you know and i was like i was feeling bad and i started throwing up and i I mean, I'm thinking everything's back to normal because that's the kind of way I drank. But I got really, really sick that night and I realized I probably need to give this some time to get out of my system. And so I gave it some time and I had started drinking again. Nothing major happened when I started drinking again. But I was drinking at a place called The Beer Gardens and the doctor that sent me through treatment walked by and he saw me drinking and he called me in his office that next Monday and he said, we're putting you in for administrative discharge, alcohol abuse. That's what I've got to do. I've Got to get out of the Marine Corps. It's the Marine Corp that's causing me all these problems. They kicked me out of the Marine corp for alcohol abuse, I go back to Florida and it's very humiliating to go back when your friends all know you signed up for a four year stint and two years you're out but I tried to convince them well it was kind of agreement we had that we didn't like working with each other but I go back to Florida my mom's sober in AA and she's asking me if I want to go to these meetings thinking my god no I don't want to go to those meetings but I didn't I wasn't drinking though I realized alcohol there was probably a problem so I didn't drink but I was smoking a lot of non hammock for marijuana during that time my dad finally calls me in Texas after about six months and he said they said lawn we I got a job here if you want it I thought that's what gotta do I've got to get out of Jacksonville Florida so I moved to Texas and I knew that everything was gonna be different in Texas and ever if you've ever lived in Texas it's a lot different there I really enjoyed it I started working for a factory where we made beer bottle caps well I had to start drinking for job security so I started drinking bottled beer you know the blackouts continued me and my dad's relationship just got worse and worse through a series of events there's this place in the Dallas Fort North Metroplex called Grand Prairie, Texas. Little city. There's like 90 cities in the Metroplex. There is one place called Grand Prairie. Grand Praerie is kind of like the armpit of the Metropex. And there was this place called The Strip in Grand Praire. And I used to like to drink at The Strap. Now you know the insanity from the disease in which I suffer is pretty well described in my following statement. I would go there every Friday night and I probably got put in jail at the same bar every Friday night over the next couple years about 35 times, 35, 40 times. They would always call last call. I would order two drinks. Then they'd want to push me out before I got to finish my drink. I got in a fight with a bouncer, started yelling at the cop. He'd put me in jail, put me on cuffs and take me to jail for public intoxication. But my solution was to never stop going to the strip. It never occurred to me not to go there. I had a good time up until closing time. But in Grand Prairie, the fine for a public intoxication is $28.50. So before I went drinking, I always remembered to stash $30 in the back of my wallet. And I knew I had one over on them. I knew i had one over on it. And you know, after getting an Alcoholics Anonymous, I realized that is the insanity, you know. And the insanity that Bill talks about in the book is that insanity of that thinking of this time it's going to be different when I drink alcohol. But that same kind of insanity was in all areas of my life. And, you Know, I continued to drink. I continued To get put in jail. You know, and I hit a point that any alcoholic that comes to Alcoholic Anonymous has got a hit. And I knew it was a point of that, I just can't do this anymore. I cannot do it anymore. I had destroyed my relationship with my father. I didn't call my sisters a lot. I didn' like calling my mom a lot Back then we didn't have the cell phones and I was dying inside and I knew that I needed to do something. It was pouring down rain. I called my mom from a pay phone. And pouring down rainforest, pouring down the rain, I called her collect and I'm crying. And I'm 22 years old and I call her up and I said, Mom, I just can't live like this. I don't know what to do. And she said, Lon, she said I'm sorry I can't help you. If you want help you need to call AA and she hung up. now she was three years sober at the time and I got to tell you she had told me later there was a lot of Al-Anon meetings she went to before she said you need to call AA and hung up I mean she was always sending me these little pamphlets in the mail but you know what I did is I called Alcoholics Anonymous and I called and I talked to Alcoholics Anonymous and I looked around and I thought, my God, life is over. It was like a bunch of old people. They're like my age now. But these bunch of older people were kind of sitting at these tables and I got into my meeting and I'm looking around and I remember thinking, this is it. Oh my God. They told me to get a sponsor. and if you're new and you're not really sure what a sponsor is, a sponsor's kind of the guy that comes in after the war's over to bayonet the wounded. My sponsor wasn't nice to me. He didn't pat me on the head, but I got some guy that had been sober for a period of time, and I asked him would he be my sponsor, and I've got to tell you, coming into Alcoholics Anonymous and after being sober a while, I do not sponsor people the way he sponsored me because he was a come in, give me a call. You know, I do. The newcomers I sponsor, I call them. I call him. I don't wait for him to call me. I know how hard it was for me when I was first over to call him Of course, you know, we hear those things. Oh, if they want what we have, then they'll call. Well, you Know What? I need them. I need those newcomers to keep what I got. And I do call them. Today, I call them, but I joined a men's step study after, I think I had about 90 days, and it was a group of about 12 men that we worked through the steps. And I got to tell you, it was the most amazing thing with all the, and me from having 90 days up to this guy, Pappy, had 25 years. I remember going through and talking about the first step. And I got to tell you, I wasn't real excited about hearing God. My two sisters, you know, I believe that God works in their lives. I really do. I always felt like that when I needed God, He was like off catching sparrows or something. I mean, He just had something more important to do. And I just didn't believe that He really cared that much about me. You know, so you come into Alcoholics Anonymous and they say, okay, you got a choice. You got that alcoholic death or spiritual way of life. I'm thinking, man, how bad at death are we talking? You know, are we that quick? Because dying didn't scare me. What scared me was I was continuing to live the way I was living. I mean, dying did not scare me You know when I got prior to getting to AA and in Alcoholics Anonymous I was suicidal for a long time. I was suicidal many, many times. Up until I was five years sober. I mean, I was so suicidal that I was playing Russian roulette with a .357. I just wanted it to end. But these group of guys, when I was 90 days sober, we had worked through the 12 steps. And I got to tell you the feeling I got when I Was able to sit down with these group of guys and we all held hands and we said the third step prayer. I didn't know the third step prayer I had to have my book open because I didn' t really know the lines like a lot of these guys and I remember I'm reading these lines as everybody else is praying and I started feeling this feeling inside and I thought wow this is really cool well I got feeling that feeling inside and I lost my place in the book and I tried to find the place inthe book and Ilost the feeling and Iremember talking to my sponsor after it you know and what I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is you know steps one two and three as important as they are it's really kind of getting ready to start to commence to begin you really haven't done anything not a not not any any type of action but that first step and looking at that first step you know the twelve and twelve it talks it's the only stuff we got to take 100% and by not drinking that's how I continue to take that step because I got to tell you, there's still times I think today I came in a little bit young you see some people I see people coming in, Alcoholics Anonymous today and I see some of them in bad shape and I have those thoughts that go through my mind but what I've learned is not to have a party for those thoughts you know, and when I get down to really thinking the way I used to drink I realize that I'm an alcoholic that when I drink alcohol the first thought that comes to my mind whenever i take that first drink is more you know my sisters my sisters are not alcoholic i mean my sisters they my sister will drink this this they got some really frou-frou stuff out now and and she would drink this thing i i think it was i think it was a hard lemonade or someone kind of those lemonade things that's got alcohol in it and she She's only like about, she's only drank about this much out of this bottle. And she said, oh, I just don't like that stuff. She said, you know, I start to drink a couple drinks and I start to get that tipsy, out-of-control feeling. A what? I told her, I said, you know if you just slam down five of those things, you get right into fun. You know? It's because you're stopping too soon. But she doesn't like alcohol. That's what it does to her. But see, when I drink alcohol, I feel in control. I don't feel out of control. I feel In Control. And the more In Control I feel, the more out of Control I really am. The more In Controll I feel the more Out of Control I become. And I drink to the excesses to where I know that I have blackouts. I know that stuff goes on in those blackouts and I don't really know what happens. And I know sometimes I wake up in different places, different countries. And I think to myself, and I know it's not good for me to drink alcohol because that kind of stuff can happen. But that insanity that I have tells me, no, this time it's nicht going to happen. This time things will be different. But they never were. You know, when I got into Alcoholics Anonymous, and was sober for a few years. And as I've worked guys through the steps, I have learned to do it rather quickly. Probably my first five or six years, seven years, and maybe even longer than that, I sponsored people like I was sponsored. And that was, oh, let's not rush it. Let's not brush it. But you know, like Polly was sharing, the people that come into Alcoholics Anonymous and don't stay today is astronomically high you know when I got into the rooms in 1984 there are very very packed rooms in Alcoholics Anonymous but when you ask people to raise their hand in a meeting if you've been sober 27 years there's not many people who have been sober 27 years and i often think where do they where have they gone where'd they go and one of the reasons i was so excited when polly asked me if i would come here and share on on these steps because the things i'm going to share with you are the are the ways that i have worked through the steps over the last 27 years and i'm gonna share some of the things that i've the way i've worked through the steps my first my first couple years but then i'm also going to to share with you the way I've worked the steps as I've learned more and grow more. You know, the book says, it talks about how we know only a little. That more will be revealed. And it's real important that I had to become open-minded on a lot of different things. One of the things I read many years ago but it was another book and it's not a conference approved book but when I read it I thought that is so me and it states oh God that man would put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brain and that he may rejoice, pleasure, revel and applaud as we transform ourselves into beasts see that's what alcohol did to me it did, it transformed me into this beast inside and when I drank alcohol and the way I lived my life had no regards for you but only regards for me you know when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I really didn't think well of myself but I thought a lot of myself or I thought of myself a lot I thought about myself all the time but I didn't think well at myself and you know I'm excited with the rest of the morning and hearing Polly I gotta tell you Polly was living in California when I met her she had just moved from Texas to California and when me and James had sobered up and I got to go out, I think I was about four years sober when me and James went out we spent like ten days in California and Polly's is one of those people you can't not love she has just got like love oozing out of like every pore and when you get around her this love just kind of oozes all over the place and just over the years I would see her at conferences. I mean, I was eight years sober when I moved from Texas to Jacksonville, Florida and Polly would kind of show up at conferences that I would go to and actually there was a conference in Jacksonville when I first moved there that we had started out at the beach and we invited Polly to come so I got to see her there. Well then, thanks to now Polly's making all these trips to Jacksonvale I got involved with the 2004 Florida State Convention and the 2009 Florida State convention and saw Polly. She was a speaker at those conventions. But what's really neat to me is that a year and a half ago when she called up and she said, Lon, we're going to be moving from Birch Bay, Washington. And she said I think we're gonna be moving to Jacksonville, Florida. Now the impact she had on my life when I was very, very new in sobriety at 22 years old I never knew then that both of us would move to Jacksonvale, Florida and have the same home group 27 years later. You know, you never think of those things. I'm really blessed to be here. I'm blessed to Be Here with Polly, and I want to thank you guys for this time. Thanks. applause