Surrendering the Need for a Perfect Answer – Mary R.

Good evening, my name is Mary and I'm an alcoholic. And this has just been fabulous. I really want to express my gratitude to those of you on the committee who had a very good taste to ask me out here. It's always a pleasure for me to go to various places and in a sense I suppose that's one of the ways that I can show my gratitude for the joy that I have found in this program. The speakers on this convention have just been fantastic, and I have traveled emotionally with them every step of the way starting last night and of course Vinnie this morning emotionally I mean she described every feeling every attitude I ever had and Virginia of course I traveled through her Al-Anonism with every step of the way too and I certainly hope that perhaps what I have to say tonight may reach somebody here that it will be meaningful to them, too. I belong to two groups in Tustin. I belong the Sunday night speakers meeting group and the 7.30 a.m. Tustine discussion group. I think down here in Texas you either have to tell them what your sobriety date is or you don't have one. Is that right? It has not been necessary for me to take a drink or smoke any of those funny cigarettes or take any of the going-away pills since March 29, 1961. Well, it's been necessary, but I've been allowed to stay sober, let's put it that way. So I better get into my drinking. I suppose I could wrap up my whole drinking story by quoting what the cat said when he got through making love to the skunk. He said, I didn't get all I wanted but I got all I could stand. From what I've heard, that happened to you too. I started off in show business when I was a very young girl. I left home when I Was not quite 16 years old and joined a road show. And it was on that road show that I was introduced to slow gin. And I know that I'm dating myself when I talk about slow gin because that really is not the end drink these days. Speaking of dating myself, I've been thinking very seriously about getting a facelift. Some of the ladies are getting a face lift. Then on sober reflection, what's the use of getting a face lift when everything else is sagging two inches below where it used to? It's really a sad day when you find yourself trying on one of those cross your knees bras. When I get dressed in the morning, I bend way over. But anyway, getting back to the slow gin, a bottle was being passed around and I drank alcoholically from the very beginning because I drank as much as I could through up and passed out And I just figured that was part of the deal. I can't say that I became a daily drunk immediately, but it seems to me that each time I started to drink, I overshot the field. I liked the effect of drinking, and I liked what it did for me. And so it continued, and after this roadshow, I wound up in the nightclubs of San Francisco where an alcoholic woman it's paradise because I you know I was a featured dancer and I was being written up in the columns and getting a lot of attention from the men and I had the spotlight on me and the orchestra was playing exactly the way I wanted them to and I wearing fancy clothes and and living in a fancy pad and had all these things going for me and I I was table-hopping every night, giving everybody a break, you understand. And everything seemed to be going my way. But that was on the outside. To the outside observer, they probably thought I really had it all together. But even then, there always seemed to be something unfulfilled in here. And I'd walk around and kind of ask myself why I wasn't happy with all this. And I never knew that it was an unfulfilled longing for an answer. And I didn't even know what the question was. But I continued to drink, and my big dream in those days was to become a big star in Hollywood. And I knew that someday I would get the opportunity to have a screen test. Now, I was totally unprepared for anything, but in my idealism and in my imaginations, I just knew that that would be the answer to everything. And one day, I was offered the opportunity to go down and take a screen test, and I went down south with the attitude that Betty Davis had better start saving her money because I just new that I was going to set the world on fire. Now, what I forgot to mention to you was that I wasn't going to do it. I was born scared, and I didn't even know it until my sponsor told me I was. But I went downtown Hollywood, and I took a screen test and it was rotten the reason being that how can you act when you're already acting I didn't know that I was already acting but they did sign me to a stock contract and there there lies a very sad tale because you know you're just part of the herd when you in a stock-contract and I was used to a lot of attention now I was used to publicity and I wasn't getting any of those things. I immediately though got caught up with the alcoholics, the drinkers and I made all the nightclubs on Sunset Boulevard up and down San Vicente in La Cienega and returned to my role as a playgirl and I kept wondering when this wonderful thing was going to happen to me and of course it there was no chance that it would because my drinking was more important than doing anything like going to acting school or any of those things you know the one thing that you can depend on that you can get without effort is failure and I'm a prime example of that but anyway I was going you know I hear people new people say what am I going to tell my friends because they all drink Because I gravitated toward drinkers all the time. And for you new people who are wondering what you're going to tell your friends, I don't know what you're gonna tell them, but they'll probably say the same thing they said to me. Thank God you're in AA. Anyway, toward the end of that second year, I was really starting to worry because I knew that nothing was happening in my career. And about that time, a man came from the USO office and offered me an opportunity to go overseas and entertain the soldiers. The World War II was on at the time. And I really jumped at that chance because the first thing that came to my mind was all those men over there and all the attention I would be getting. And so I gladly accepted. And, you know, I sailed over there with this, you know, nobility, this bravado, this wonderful thing that I was showing the public that I had, you know, to go over and entertain the soldiers. And I went over there, and I got into a lot of trouble. I didn't know anything about alcoholism, but it seems to me in looking back that I displayed one of the very first signs of alcoholism when I found it necessary to defend my right to drink. Now, I didn't know any of this while it was all going on. On this trip we went to China, Burma, and India. And if there's anyone here tonight, any fellows that were in that war that have a resentment against USO girls fraternizing only with the officers, I'm here to tell you that I drank very democratically. I drank with the Yardbirds generals. It didn't make any difference to me. I just said, where is it? And let's go. That's the only thing I knew how to do really, be a playgirl. But anyway, in this particular incident, I had been drinking. We were in China someplace way up in the Himalayan mountains. And I had them drinking grapefruit juice and something whatever they drank uh who cared the night before and i came to and i was totally paralyzed i couldn't move then my eyes were fluttering a little bit i guess and my roommate noticed that i was in bad trouble so she ran and got the medics and they came trooping in and they gave me oxygen and shots and i have i don't know they worked on me for a couple of hours just to keep me on my feet and functioning again and you know i blame the altitude i didn't even drink in denver after that i just knew i couldn't drink in the see that's defending your right to drink and i came back from that tour feeling very put upon very resentful at the military for because they hadn't told us they expected us to entertain and to drink between shows and all that well actually they hadn't demanded that of us at all what happened was i hadn't put a lot of demands upon myself because i was one of those people who desperately needed approval and i couldn't say no to anything so therefore i get kept getting caught up in all these uh drinking and parties and and all this stuff and you know one thing that I've one of the great freedoms I found in Alcoholics Anonymous is that I don't have to play all those parts to get approval because in doing so what I'm doing is throwing away my own approval and that's the one I needed the most and so after being home for a little while I was offered the opportunity to go to the European theater and I said to myself you know they read, they wrote chapter three for me because I said to myself this time it's going to be different. This time I'm not gonna drink so much and I'm gonna get involved in all these parties and I am not gonna let everything go by me in a big gray haze and you know all those things. And this time it was different it was worse because I got into more trouble and in ETO I was always madly in love either that or recovering from love and I don't know which I enjoy the most you know I was on a for about three years before I knew the difference between being in love and in heat but i was always madly in love recovering from love i used to like most i guess because you know when you're recovering you can turn on that poor me music and get the jug out and cry those bittersweet tears god i used to love you know i i loved songs that had no hope in them whatsoever Like the man who got away, you know, that kind. I used to love that bittersweet agony and put myself through it. Anyway, I'm probably the only USO girl that was up for court-martial. I was a bad drunk. I know you don't believe it by looking at me. I was an old woman. I was bad drunk, that's all there is to it. Anyway, what I'm going to tell you about is how that happened. I had fallen madly in love with this lieutenant in a little village in germany and then the show moved on and uh down the road a piece and we were some towns away and again i was involved in one of these drinking parties and i suddenly decided i needed to talk to this man this great love of my life and i got on a field telephone which goes in relays you know and it takes about five or ten minutes sometimes to make a connection and And I just about got through with a connection when this captain, who was also drinking, was leaning over me asking me to go play or drink or whatever. And he disconnected the phone. And I became highly indignant and I said, if you do that once more, Captain, I'm going to hit you. And, you know, he didn't believe me because I just About got through again. He disconnected the foam and I had it in my hand. So I hit him on the ear as hard as I could, inadvertently, I like to say. And so he was either so shocked or so drunk that he didn't realize that the blood was gushing out of his ear and down his white trench coat. And I must have had some startled look on my face because when he saw it, he screamed like a banshee and ran across the street to where the MPs were hostile and signed the complaint. And they all came trooping over, and he pointed at me, and I was ordered to appear the next morning at 10 o'clock. So what do you do? The rest of the night you spend trying to figure out how you're going to get out of this one now. And so the best thing I could come up with was if I took two of the other girls, and there were 14 girls on the show, if I take two of them, two of these other girls who were brunettes with me, there was an outside chance this guy was so loaded he wouldn't be able to identify me so we showed up the next morning and that poor captain was there and he had a hangover that came over in waves you know one of those with poached eyes and everything and he could not identify me and i tell that story every time i talk because i still have this dream see I I'm wondering if by any chance he somehow found our program and my dream is that someday or some evening I will be telling this portion of my story and he will be in the audience it might even be tonight and of course when the meeting is over he will come up to me with his hand extended and say Mary I'm the captain that you hit on the ear in Germany and I'm going to let him make his amends to me we weren't always wrong you know even the clock that stopped is right twice a day you know but But I think I didn't even realize that my alcoholism had long since started to erode my spirit, because I was always on a bummer. I was always depressed, and alcohol really was not giving me any joy or any happiness. I pretended a lot. I laughed a lot from the mouth out. I just couldn't. Everything started to turn gray in my world, as though somebody was turning the lights all over the world. And I couldn't see any. Of course, I blamed it on to man's inhumanity to man and in the terrible things I had seen over in Germany, you know, the ovens, and they were getting all the evidence ready for the Nuremberg trials, and I'd seen all that. And I just blamed that. It had nothing to do with the booze. And when I came back to the United States, I knew that the only place I had any fun was in San Francisco and those nightclubs. And so I headed back to san francisco and everything there seemed to have changed even my drinking buddies they they were different uh they they seemed to change too and i didn't know it was all inside me and i tried to drink back the old times and i tried the manufacturer then i tried every way i could to get back to those days and of course it didn't work and i had i was living by several philosophies in those days and one was change conditions and things and then everything will be all right. And so I now decided the thing for me to do since I was about 22 years old, I was over the hill, I've done everything, I have been everywhere. The thing for me to is to settle down and get married. So I carefully selected a victim and it happened to be a bartender I couldn't stand now he didn't drink which should have been my first clue but I wasn't looking for clues, I was looking for answers and so as I say he didn' t drink but Al-Anons have learned that every pot goes out and finds a lid that fits it right? He didn't drink, but he was a compulsive gambler. He turned out to be a compulsive Gambler. And to give you a clue as to how this went, he gambled my drinking money and I drank his gambling money. And that's a very tense way to live, I'll tell you. And of course neither one of us knew anything about this obsessive compulsive thing that we have and you know the race was on we took the geographic for each other I'm pretty sure moved to Southern California and I knew if I got him away from all those gamblers and the bookies up there that everything would be alright and I'm sure he was thinking the same thing about my drinking buddies and we moved to the San Fernando Valley and nothing changed much because I met a wonderful drinking companion right across the street from me, a little old housewife from Iowa. And the race was on because he found some bookies right up on the corner. And I knew that this marriage was doomed unless I did something about it. And there was nothing really that I could think of that I could do, except that if I had a baby, then maybe things would change. And so I decided that I would get pregnant and really settle down. And maybe if I got in this pregnant condition, he would realize the error of his ways and that we're going to need the money for the baby well you know how it goes and so with this pregnancy i decided that i would be the perfect wife the perfect housekeeper the perfect mother and everything was going to be perfect i was going gonna be like my neighbors i lived in a nest of texans up there by the way and those women i mean they really take care of their men don't they i mean they're the super housekeepers and some of them neurotic as hell you know but none of them drank except my lady across street from iowa the rest of them are all texans up there and i was going to be like them you know i was gonna hang my clothes out on mondays and chit chat across the fence and i Was going to wear pink curlers to the market like they did and i really was trying to do everything so perfect and be like somebody because i had no identity of my own and so i started doing these things and above all i knew that this woman i wanted to be did not drink so i went on the way god that tricks me up going on the wagon and i tell you the this you know the insanity had to come out somewhere and i became a compulsive housekeeper now i used to clean the corners with pins and i had a toothbrush that cleaned the lettering on the appliances with and q-tips you know in my pockets getting little corners here and there and if the old man got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the john his bed was made before he got back now you may think that that's a little alcoholic exaggeration and it might be at that but not much because uh i was talking about this uh one time uh at a thing up in san francisco and an al-anon lady came up to me she was hysterical with laughter because she identified with it all. She said, but I did something you didn't do. And I said, what's that? And she said, I used to blow the dust out of the keyholes. So, you know, when I hear things like that, I know I belong. See, I know I belongs. Anyway, this went on, you know, and the baby, when the baby was born, it's a wonder I didn't boil him because by that time I was cleaning the walls with hexol and making everything so damn sanitary. I tell you, it was just awful. I knew I was crazy, and yet I was compelled to do all those things. I couldn't stop myself. And it went on that way for several months until I found out I was pregnant again. Now. Well, yes, oh God, she said. That's right. That's why. Because, see, I hadn't planned this one. And you know how that is. I hadn'T planned that one. Here I had this whole... the first child's whole future written down. I knew what schools he was going to, what his profession was going to be, what kind of clothes he was gong to wear, everything. And here comes this intruder. And I had not planned on this, and therefore it was his fault. My husband. So, you know, with the resentment like that, and again, again, the disappointment, disillusionment went back to drinking. And it seems that within a very short period of time, not, I didn't know anything about the progression. I started drinking out of control again and again. And I'm not very proud of telling you that I was drunk and pregnant and all those things, but I don't have to be ashamed anymore either. I'd do a lot of things to get ready for you people. And so it was during this time that found my haven. My lady across the street and I found this wonderful neighborhood bar. I loved the bars. I love the unreal atmosphere, that dark tinkling music and the tinkle of the glasses. And you know I love going in there and have those guys tell me how wonderful, how sexy, how desirable, how intelligent I was, you know. I used to love that and of course I can tell you that in those bars I never met a common laborer. I always met nuclear scientists, brain surgeons, senators you know I really associated with some classy people and for many years I thought you know that I was a bar drinker because I just you know went to hit on the men when at the actual truth is that that's the only place I got validated I knew that there was not much truth in what they were telling me but it sounded good to my ears because I had such a low opinion of myself see I didn't want to be that way but I had given it a good try I had been on the wagon I had tried to be a wonderful woman and it wasn't for me I was just terribly miscast in that role and so it went on and it went on and after the second child was born my husband took a dim view of my activities and he left me. And then he would come back and we'd each promise you know not to do it so much, you know, he wouldn't drink, he wouldn't gamble so much if I didn't drink so much and of course neither one of us were able to keep our own promises to ourselves let alone anyone else. And so it was back and forth and back and fourth and he'd always return for the sake of the children and it was just an endless thing until you know as a joy as the result of one of these joyous reunions I got pregnant the third time and my god I was outraged womanhood Mike I knew he did it deliberately I knew that he wanted to keep me pregnant and barefoot and out in the country and I I couldn't stand it. I had a resentment against him you could subdivide. I absolutely was pure hatred, and I didn't want him in my life at all because I knew that it was because of him that I found myself in these terrible circumstances. And so during that pregnancy, I was drunk most of the time. I was flopping around that neighborhood like a fish, and it was a neighborhood disgrace, really. And as I say, I don't say that with any pride at all. I don't have to be ashamed of it either because that was part of getting ready for Alcoholics Anonymous. I could not see any hope for myself at all anywhere except that I would drink for a while and then I'd stay sober for a little while. And I just accepted the fact that that's the way my life was going to be. Drunk sometimes, sober sometimes. And as I say, there was just no hope for me. After my third child was born, my husband left me for what proved to be the last time. And now I was free to do what I wanted to do and live my life the way I wanted it to live it. And I went down. The downward spiral started, and all those things that happened to alcoholic women started to happen to me. Morley said he always hears women say all those thing that happened to alcoholic woman. They never talk about it. I don't talk about because none of your damn business. it's my sponsor's business but they did I found myself in positions of total degradation and humiliation God, I didn't want to be there I remember coming to an alley one cold gray dawn sick and shaking and scared and wondering what had happened to all these dreams that I'd had. And I hope I never forget the morning, the Sunday morning when I was lurching down one of our main thoroughfares, drunk and staggering and falling, and my knees buckling under me and coming upon the church that was just, Catholic Church of Mass was just letting out and this family coming down the stairs And I hope I never forget the look in those two boys' eyes when they saw this dirty, drunken, reeling, sobbing woman. I wanted to die. I wanted the earth to swallow me up. I was choking back my tears and cursing myself, and I couldn't stand it. I couldn'T stand it, and you know, I didn't want to be there. I didn' t want to be that. That wasn't part of what my future was going to be, and yet here I was. And I wasn't through yet, but the end was coming because I really at that point did not want to live. I had already attempted suicide twice and had failed at that and so here I was a failure a total failure as a wife as a mother as a woman and what was the point in living there was no point and all these things that were happening to me drove me to drinking behind closed doors and drawn shades and drinking around the clock while my children went without without food, and without baths. And thank God I had those wonderful Texas neighbors that saw that my children got fed and taken care of while I was going insane. And by that time, I got into some pills and alcohol and total insanity. And I really didn't care. It wasn't that I didn't carry it's that I couldn't care, I really could not care anymore because I felt that I had tried the best I could, and nothing worked. And so it was sometime during that time, I knew that I was going to have such a hatred against my husband. It was homicidal. I knew the only way I was ever going to get any peace in this world was for him to be dead. And I was trying to kill him. I really was. I was that insane on the pills and the alcohol. I look back on it now, and I can't imagine how I was saved from that. But I do know how it was. And so sometime, I don't know whether it was day or night, but it seems to me that it was almost audible when I heard the words, Mary, you desperately need help. And the next thing I knew, I was calling the North Hollywood Clubhouse of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, it took me two years on AA to remember where I had heard about AA. And then I remembered that I had been at a drunken brawl across the street and there was a red-haired woman there and she was drinking a Coke. And I hated women, especially people who didn't drink. And I somehow must have asked her why the hell she wasn't drinking. And she said something to me about having found a better way to live and something about AA. But it didn't register, or I had no recollection of it registering. But when I tell you this, I am reminding myself that my responsibility in 12-step work is to scatter the seed and not demand that it sprout on the spot. Because I'm sure this woman, whom I have not seen again, does not know that what she said to me that night to this drunken woman, she planted a seed and that I am today sober. I don't even know whether she's sober. I've never seen her again. But I called the North Hollywood Clubhouse And a young man answered the phone, and he sensed my either insanity or my despair or whatever it was. He said he'd be right out. And now, he broke one of the unwritten laws of AA, you know, a man calling on a drunken woman. That's a no-no in our area. I don't know about here. I imagine it is. But anyway, if this young man had any romantic inclinations on the way out to my house, I can assure you that when I opened that door, especially if he was downwind, you know, I hadn't bathed in I don't know how long. And yet, you know, he came in with this big A.A. smile and I was drinking out of my cheese glass And he kept talking, and he kept smiling. And I said, finally, aren't you going to stop me from drinking? And he said, no, go ahead. Well, that got my attention because no one had ever told me to keep drinking. So I kept drinking. I kept drinkin' out of my cheese glass. And he finally talked me into going to a meeting that night. And I was delighted that anybody asked me to go anywhere because everybody was telling me to get the hell out. And so I put my raincoat on over my dirty moo-moo. And, you know, that's what showed up on your doorstep. He took me clear out into the boonies. I mean, it was miles and miles and Miles and Miles out to Chatsworth. And it was a little tiny meeting. It was about, oh, maybe 20 people in that meeting. It was a little tiny church Sunday school class. And as I approached, I looked in the window and my heart sank because it looked just like a damn PTA meeting again. And of course I was half in the back. Well, no, I was crazy insane, crying and screaming. And I started to back off and he said, well, come over to the front door here and take a look inside. They're really nice people. so you know he isn't this supposed to be a program of attraction rather than promotion well he got me in the front door and shoved me in you know so he broke rule number two and by the way he broke no that was rule number three that he broke because rule number one rule number four rule number five rule number six rule number seven rule number two he um told me i was alcoholic and you know that sounded rather scientific to me compared to what I had been called, you know. And so, anyway, he turned me over to the woman who was to become my sponsor, my first sponsor. And she represented everything I hated in women. She was soft-spoken, spiritual, well-groomed, cunning, baffling, and powerful. and she spoon-fed my soul now I can't tell you what I can tell you anything that there was said at that meeting that night because I was too drunk and crazy but I can turn you what i felt I felt a power greater than myself and I didn't even recognize it i felt such a strong power now you have to remember that i was not alcoholic i went there because it was the only place anybody would have me and yet i found this power and those people accepted me in my original form as is without any questions or judgment and so I remember the thing that really got to my heart and that was when after the meeting a little old weaseled up guy came up and put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek and I can't tell you what that meant to me because no one had done that for so long and I had such a hunger just to be accepted I couldn't accept myself and so my sponsor took me home that night and she we parked in the my driveway and she looked at me dead in the eyes he said I want you to know that our relationship has to be based on strict honesty and it scared the hell out of me I didn't even know I was a liar till bit. Then she said something that really scared me. She said, I will pick you up tomorrow night at eight o'clock and we're going to a woman's stag. I almost threw up. Oh my God. I was too afraid to tell her I hated women. And then as she drove away the final blow, she said, by the way, I'd appreciate it if you would bathe before I pick you up. And I thought, what do they want from me, these people? What do they want from my life? What do I want from them? Don't they know who I am? It took me all day the next day. I couldn't get my eyebrows on and my lipstick was done. Oh God, it was awful. but I really, I was really making this supreme effort. I had a half of a fifth of vodka on that sink and everything within me wanted me to just take one or two drinks to stop the shakes, to stop this fear, this awful fear that I had but I didn't do it for that day and she picked me up and we went to the woman's stag and I knew that I did not belong because certainly I did no identify with that beautiful woman who was so carefully combed and had one of these expensive little black dresses with a string of pearls, and she was sitting there so elegantly. And I thought, boy, there's a toast burner if I ever saw one. This one has never been off the block, you know. I just didn't belong here but then you know I believe that when the student is ready the teacher will appear because the next woman who spoke spoke in my native tongue profanity and I was home free and so little by little I became acquainted with those women and I can tell you today that those women saved my sanity saved my life because see I was so used to manipulating men that I could con men I still can but women I mean they'd hit you with the truth and it hurts you know the truth hurts but a lie hurts worse let's face it and so I started going to ten meetings a week my husband found out that I was going to Alcoholics Anonymous, and it drove him right up the wall. He couldn't stand it. He went so far as to call central office and tell them that I was neglecting my children, he was going to kill me, and he was going to take my children away, and all these things. And I luckily was in that home group, there was a nucleus of five very hard-nosed old-timers, and they were mean to me. but you know the caring came through and uh they used to laugh when i told them that but my husband took to calling me and threatening to kill me because he was crazy too you know and uh threatening to take the children and i'm sure he could have if he'd gone to court because i was an unfit mother i mean i knew that and it was driving me right up the wall i i was just going crazy from listening to him and i was trying desperately not to drink at him and I just called my sponsor one day and I was in such a state I said, I don't know what I'm going to kill that guy I'm gonna drink I'm wanna do something What am I gonna do? And he called She said, why don't you hang up? Just never occurred to me That's all I come for where you get even You know And I thought This woman's crazy These people are telling me do all these things that you know they're so against everything i've ever done and i knew they wouldn't work but i you know i'd run out of my own resources by then so next time he called with my guts churning i answered the phone and i said i'm sorry but you're upsetting my serenity and i hung up real fast and you know it was very tough it was very tough but I knew some I had some feeling that I was literally fighting for my life for me this thing was a matter of survival which it really is it's that's the bottom line around here a matter of revival something in me told that and I really didn't want to live that much but I thought I'd give it one more try for the sake of the children if nothing else and besides I didn't want anyone to say that Mary died drunk and so it went and I went to attend meetings a week and I started to really just drink up everything I mostly I'd I'd go to the means because I couldn't understand too much I was too run-down I I went to feel that power, to feel that unconditional love, to feel the thing that I have always felt in these meetings. No matter how big or how small they are, that feeling is there. The power greater than me. And I have loved it. And so came the time when my husband wanted to just sort of see if we could smooth things out because with my not fighting him and not getting into a big argument with him and not even talking to him things you know everything seemed to subside and we got together and we started talking about the future of the children and we had made a mistake in the marriage and all this stuff and we went along pretty well that way until he must have had a bad day at the races but he called me one day in his insanity he did start the whole thing over again about going to kill me take the kids all this stuff and i just i just went right out of my mind and that was the night of the woman's stag and i went screaming to the woman to the women's stags that night and asking them for direction and what will i do and i was screaming and just insane and one of those very elegant women gave me direction, told me what to do, which advice I use to this day. She said, pray for the son of a bitch. And that's the last thing I wanted to do for God's sake. So that night, of course everything has been the last things I've ever done. The last thing you know, starting with step one. so that at the end of that meeting i started to pray for him i didn't mean a damn word of it i didn' t mean a word of it but i did it because they told me to do it and i kept doing it and i kept going it and pretty soon everything was lifted from me the resentment the anger this is where i really identified with virginia this morning that awful terrible homicidal anger and it started lifting from me and then one of those hard-nosed guys came up to me and he said, don't you think it's time you made amends to this man and I said, well Roy if you think so and I was privileged to make my amends to him just two weeks before he died of a heart attack and I guess maybe this is the time when my never-ending love affair with the people of Alcoholics Anonymous really happened because though I was only four and a half months sober, it seems to me that literally hundreds of people whom I barely knew who cared about me offered of themselves offered money offered to take my children they came by car they came by wire they came by phone I was overwhelmed I was absolutely overwhelmed and sustained in the morning that I heard that he had died of a heart attack I got a feeling of acceptance that I had never experienced before in my life and everything was calm and everything was calm within me I look back and I can't remember that it was frightening or difficult or any of those things because I was surrounded by the people who cared about me when I couldn't care about myself and so the ensuing years with me with three little children very very deeply in debt didn't have much future. At the time we were running a restaurant, we had been running a restaurant for 12 years and we were very deeply in debt to the IRS and everybody and so I was told that I was responsible for making amends to the IRS and any of the creditors even though I hadn't run up the bills and so I ran that restaurant for another year and during that year, the AA people came in and drank up all my coffee and took up all the tables. And pretty soon we started meetings there. At the end of the year, my landlord allowed us to open that place as a clubhouse called The Nest. And it is in existence today. And I can't say that I had anything to do with it because it just evolved. you know you people took over that's all it just evolved and uh so you know it was necessary for me to take a to find some kind of employment i worked behind the coffee bar for a while there and then i got a job in a hospital kitchen and i'm telling you you know that this is my poverty period more and maurice and i were talking about the beginnings of aa sometimes our stories after we get sober are worse than when we were drinking as far as financially is concerned. And I went through this poverty period, and I was working in this hospital kitchen in the most menial job you can possibly imagine. I was cleaning pots and pans and employees' toilets, and every once in a while passing out a tray or two. And i hated that job. I hated it because everybody around me was highly neurotic and crazy and i was trying to you know trying to get well and and they were taking it away from me and um you know i stayed my i wanted to quit and my sponsor kept telling me i had to stay there until god moved me and i couldn't imagine why the hell god would put me in a position that way and i Was making dollar 15 an hour you know it's just enough to put bread on the table but uh and the women of uh the aa women were giving me clothes to wear because i didn't have any clothes and I uh gratefully accepted them because uh that'll that'll level your ego clear down if you've got any and also they they get they furnish clothes for my children there for a while and so it went until um one time uh the the bank on the corner wanted to buy my house because they needed parking places. So I was in a position to get my price. And at that time, my daughter who had been running the streets had reached a crisis of her own so I had some money there. But what I wanted to say about this experience I had in that hospital kitchen, it was probably one of the most meaningful experiences I've had in AA in that having to do those menial things and put one foot in front of another and try to be grateful, my values changed drastically because my values were always based on money, property, and prestige. And I had had those things and I always came up empty. But had I not been in that position I would not have been able to appreciate and be grateful for some of the things I'll tell you about now. For instance, I don't believe my son, my oldest son made first-string varsity in his high school, and I don t believe that i could have felt the overwhelming gratitude that i felt when i went into that stadium at his first game and i was thinking to myself as i was walking in my god you know it could have been so different if i you know if it hadn't been for those people and if it it hadn't been for Alcoholics Anonymous, I would not be walking into the stadium with my head up and feeling this tremendous sense of gratitude for being privileged to share probably the most important day in my kid's life. And as I was thinking those things, you know, i started to well up inside i started choke up here and i got in into the stadium and i sat clear at the end zone and i sat there all by myself because i wanted to feel all this and think about it and know that in other days i probably if i showed up at all i would have been a disgrace and an embarrassment to him. And yet I was allowed to be here, sober. And as I watched those kids warm up out on the football field I was just overwhelmed and when they called my kid's name out over the loudspeaker I just broke down and cried. And sometimes I have such overwhelming gratitude that I can't stand it it spills out of my eyes. And then there are other days when I wondered where the hell it went. That's the human condition, I guess. And my second son followed in my oldest son's footsteps and I was out there every Friday crying. I really was. I remember one time... Some of you people know Keith C., former football player. His son and mine were playing on opposing teams and I went out the game with him. And his son was in the end zone and my kid was guarding. A pass was thrown to his son and my kit intercepted and ran that ball back 65 yards and I weren't ape and I was beating Keith on the head and jumping up and down. It's the first time I've wet my pants since I sobered up. Let me tell you about that kid, you know, that John of mine. He was the intruder, remember? John. He has a beautiful wife. He has given me two gorgeous grandsons. He has an amazing wife. She's a very beautiful spiritual wife. and they a few years ago were remarried they born again in that church and I went and attended the wedding and afterwards they had a reception in their home and the minister was there and everybody was there drinking their little champagne and my son who's very serious came over and knelt by my chair and put his hand on my arm and he said mother I've got to talk to very seriously and I said what about he said mother you've got to be saved and I said John you don't know what the hell it is to be safe I tell you, that kid, maybe this doesn't mean too much to you, but it really does to me. Last year, he was the top rookie salesman in the whole United States for his insurance company. He's got a lovely home up there in Thousand Oaks, and as I say, a very beautiful wife and a loving, kind person, uh, and all that, you know. And I spoke out in that area last year, and he drove me to the meeting and stayed for the meeting, and listened to me talk. on the way home there was silence in the car and suddenly he said mother the next time you talk to those people tell them that if it wasn't for them I wouldn't be where I am today and that tore me up because it's the truth it's really the truth and I've only told you part of my joy and I could go on for many more hours I suppose telling you the wondrous things that have happened to me since I came to Alcoholics Anonymous but I think too that I must share my pain with you Several of the speakers have spoken about happiness and sadness, and that's part of life. Because see my daughter at the age of 12 picked up her first drink and became an instant alcoholic, and I was to know the agony of not knowing where she was. Of going to police stations, of going to juvenile hall, of signing APBs, of sleepless nights, of heartbreak, of frustration. Those of you who have kids out there know what I'm talking about. I was to go through that. then one day as i mentioned earlier she reached a certain crisis in her life and it was exactly at that time that god had the bank by my house so i've had this money ready money and i had already been to hawaii uh to speak at an aa convention the year previously and i knew that's where i wanted to go so i was able to go with my daughter you know take the geographic and we went down there and she did fine for about three months and then she got up got caught up with those people and in the meantime i was privileged to start working uh running a halfway house for women at saint francis hospital down there and i thank god for for being able to work when all these things were going on and again it was the same thing over and over and over again and I couldn't you know I was going crazy I was doing crazy there was no way I knew how to let go of her after all I was her mother and a mother's instinct is to protect her young and as much as I knew about AA and alcoholism and everything else I really didn't know how to handle her and time after time she came and i'd give her another chance enabling her to do her thing she was heavily into drugs by now and it was breaking my heart came the day when i couldn't stand it anymore and so i joined alan on over there and thank god for those women thank god for those women they gave me the strength and the direction that i needed to do what i had to do which was the last thing i ever wanted to do in my life and the next time my daughter showed up i took her down to the honolulu airport and as she came apart crying and screaming and begging for another chance I had to shove her onto the plane and tell her to get the hell out of my life. And I had to walk away as fast as I could because I didn't have the strength to stand there. And the AA and the Al-Anon women were waiting for me, and I was all right. I was alright. It came to pass do you ever notice it doesn't say and it came to stay it came to pass that my boss gave me a short vacation and what I wanted to do was to go up to the valley where all that good AA was and so I went and I walked into one of my home groups on a Sunday night, and my daughter was reading Chapter 5 from the podium. And I would like to report to you that from that day to this, she hasn't found it necessary to take any alcohol or drugs, but that is not the truth. Because after three years with us, she chose to go out to that never-never land where the days are so long and the nights are so dark and there's no hope anywhere. And I had to really stay out of it. I knew that it would destroy me if I did not, and again my Al-Anon teachings enabled me to do that. I remember calling Clancy one evening. Clancy is my sponsor too. I remember him in the middle of the night one night, and I was crazy as a coot because i had heard that my daughter was up on the road with no clothes uh i mean everything she owned goes with her and no money no place to go drunk and on drugs and hitchhiking and it just i just went crazy and thank god for somebody like clancy because he may be dictatorial to some people but with me he's always been very tender tender and direct because he ordered he said you know what you're doing mary you're sitting there wringing your hands trying to figure out how you can fix her and it was true because my mind at that time was so confused i i didn't know what to do he said i want you to get down on your knees and pray as hard as you've ever prayed because see i hadn't slept in several nights and i did exactly that after i repeated after him we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable see i've all those things left me in my in my terrible agony and so i did as i was directed and i had this terrible hatred for her and that night i slept for the first time in a few days and the next morning when I woke up all of that hatred and resentment and all those fears had left me because I had prayed as he had directed me to do I heard from time to time what was happening with her but I also knew that my life is none of my business from the third step and so therefore her life was none of my business and I try to remember that her life was none of my life it was none of my business and I lived those days in the knowledge that every day and every night the conclusion of these meetings that over one million recovered alcoholics are praying for people like her. And that gave me solace. A couple of months ago, I received a hysterical call from her at six o'clock one morning she had reached that point of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization where the only answer is suicide and she said she was going to commit suicide and i reached back into my al-anon pocket again and said claudia you know where you can get help she did overdose she did call you people they took her to the hospital had her stomach pumped took her to a detox place and I stayed totally totally out of it I'm happy to report to you that she has about 40 days sobriety this time I don't know I don' t know how to express my love for you people You've given me my life and you've given me my daughter's life. Not me, because I'm totally out of it, believe me, from my Al-Anon teachings. There's no way that I express to you what my sobriety has meant to me. Everything I have, everything that I hold dear, has been forced upon me by the people who cared about me when I couldn't care about myself. And you know, I suppose that I and many of you are living examples that it's possible to stay sober with a broken heart. Because I've known many of you who have. But the bottom line is survival. Survival. And so, again, my deep gratitude to you for having me come down to your beautiful state of Texas. But most of all, for teaching me to walk in the dignity of sobriety. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.