The Burden of Pretending Everything Was All Right – Lila R.

My name is Margaret, and I'm an alcoholic. I've been told early on when I got sober that we were never to turn down an AA request. And my sponsor asked, and i said, oh, a couple weeks ago, I think it was. And I said, hmm, but I'll come. And she said, no, okay, we'll save you for another time. So when she messaged me, I messaged back. This is my second sobriety. The reason that we get up here is for those of you that are new with us or maybe in your first year, those that are still struggling because you can be sober a while and still struggle and think, you know, is this really worth it? Life might be really easy if I could just block it all out. And so they asked us to get up and tell us what it was like, what happened, and what we're like now. I'm not going to be able to do that in seven minutes. So we won't go there. But just some kind of basic things. And as I was coming tonight, I was reminded about something that I used to hear in my first year of sobriety when I was back east. This is where I got sober my first years. I was in the Midwest. and we used to talk a lot about Father Martin's book called Chalk Talk and in Chalk Talking Father Martin worked with a lot of adolescents and teenagers and that kind of thing and his message was this if alcohol is getting you in trouble from the very get-go maybe you ought to think about what's happening, right? And, you know alcohol got me in trouble from like the very get-go and you know but even there's a place deep inside of us where we know other people aren't doing this but there you are and not me right i remember that my we were allowed to have sparkling burgundy on thanksgiving and christmas a little bit and my mother used to be just horrified at a certain age i don't know eight nine whatever after first communion surely and but you know i used to down very quickly my mother would be alarmed margaret you're supposed to sip it right and the first time i got drunk i made the decision to get drunk and it was at my high school graduation or prom i think it was graduation and i went back with my very best girlfriend in the whole wide world and we drank a lot of bourbon and my date was, those were the days. He went home and apologized to my mother. Wow. He took me to his mother's house. His mom and my mom are both widows. And she applied him with coffee and tried to stay with me. But before he even took me home, he actually took the rap because he didn't take good care of me. What a time, right? That was how I was brought up. That was the milieu of the value system and the way that I was brought up that there were very strict lines and that kind of thing. Anyway, I never drank bourbon much after that but I did manage to find other things to drink. I remember that when I was in my 20s we saved our money and drank on, my husband and I on Friday night and it was gin because it was cheaper we get high quicker on a martini and i hated gin and i hated martinis but none of that prevents an alcoholic from drinking you know we may not horrible but we'll drink it because of the effect we get i remember a cousin telling me you know margaret we were visiting relatives someplace in cleveland and she said wouldn't you rather have tea and i thought no i don't want tea they're offering alcohol here and it's free because we were on a strict budget and that kind of thing. First time I got sober, I was sober for about five years. I was living in another country. Life was not going well. My marriage was disintegrating and it had been. And I got the notion that maybe AA would do it. Before we moved to this other country, we lived up north and I used to sneak into meetings at Stanford and sneak into meetings in Cupertino, sneak into meetings at San Jose and sit in the back and listen. So that when I got to England after being there for about, I don't know, six or seven months it was horrible because I announced to my children that the problems were all over. That mom was an alcoholic, I was in AA and don't worry, I'd fix it, everything would be fine. If you're ever tempted to do that and you're kind of new, it's better not to really um it doesn't get fixed all that easy anyway guess what uh being sober didn't solve my marriage problems and um it disintegrated it would have unless we both got on the same ship we were not on the sameship i mean i married uh of course i married an alcoholic i mean you know what else could be more new, right? So I was out for 10 years and when I came into AA I was pretty beat up. And everything was kind of gone. My children didn't want anything to do with me. My family, my brother didn't wanna have anything to deal with me and I was kinda basically kicked out of his house where I was living and taking care of really I took really good care of my brother. and uh you know it was starting all over again and um i was very fortunate i think that wherever you get sober you feel really lucky you know you you find other people who are getting sober at the same time and you form these wonderful friendships and bonds and that kind of thing because nobody has a job right i mean we're unemployable we just you know got lots of free time and you get good friends and good buddies and that kind of thing so anyway I'm going to tell you something else too, and you can do the math I'll go ahead and tell you, it's okay I've gotten over myself a lot in AA I was 56 or 57 when I came into AA and I thought it's too old it's just too old to get sober I'll never have five years or ten years or twenty years or any of that kind of thing right but for some reason I was just so beat up and so sick of being sick which is what we hear around here that I decided because you know like Clancy said there was no place else to go he says it very well and very eloquently when he said there wasn't any there was it so I came into the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous I have 15 years of sobriety now and gosh, so that makes me 71 and you know, I just thought I would die if I'd ever admit that I'm this old, but you know what I look in the mirror, who am I kidding right, I mean, you know really so it's okay today but one of the things that my sponsor said and I'll close with this that I probably should share and I don't even think about it I don' t even think abut it I guess I was about 59 or 60, someplace in there. I decided to try to become a teacher. And so at that age, I got a job on an emergency credential and got my credentialing through an alternative credentialing program that's offered with LAUSD. I got an Apple Award for my scholarship and for what I've done in my program. I've gotten a lot of things since then. I go for, I don't know, I'm just who I am. It doesn't leave you if you want to be number one. I've got to tell you that I always struggle with that. I would love to be as humble as Mother Teresa, that I would have, let it be your expectations to have no expectations. I'm not there. Might I just look up to the people who are saints in doing that? but anyway, I've gone for grants I've gotten them and it's been amazing and so if you're worried that you're too old you're not if you think you'll never get a job, you will and if you know that doors are closed they can open now to be honest, I was desperate and so I worked really hard and I knew that there wasn't anybody to take care of me. So, you know, and somehow or another I did it without drinking which was just wonderful. Right? I did sober. I did a degree drunk so I know there is a difference. I mean, I got a master's drunk and there is the difference. You can do it both ways. Sober is much better to get degrees and get jobs and keep jobs. It works a lot better. So with that, welcome to anybody who's new or in your first year or if you're having a hard time, we're here to help you. And please come and talk to us. We've all been there. And a sober life is better than a drunk life. Really, just better than I thought. So thank you very much. So now, again, my name is Margaret, and I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to introduce our speaker for this evening Lila my name is Lila and I'm an alcoholic okay welcome back Colleen name like Colleen you need to stay here personal experience in that area coming from Ireland had my eyes closed just getting a little settled after our drive across the United States to get here and I was listening to chapter three you know and scotch to brandy well I remember the night that I couldn't drink enough scotch just wasn't working couldn't get drunk so I switched to brandy in order to finish the job that didn't work either so anyway I don't know I think around the beginning of October at the end of September I'm going to just stop talking really or not saying yes because to tell you the truth if I can stay sober and if I could stay spiritually fit got a good shot at a meeting for the next four hours and 45 minutes. I'll be sober 43 years. It's really a reflective time. I didn't realize it till I was sitting there and I was listening to chapter 3, and was listening to Chapter 5, and I'm thinking of how many times I have felt the sense of peace and contentment from just sitting there listening to the sounds of somebody read from a podium of Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't help but think of the rituals, you know, the rituals that you acquire. We all know that the disease of alcoholism is a habit, it becomes habitual, well so too does sobriety, and thank God I know that about myself, I know I'm a person of habit, I I know that I'm a creature of ritual. I know, despite my Irishness and all of it, that I absolutely have to have some sort of parameters within which I can function. And you know, I spent my whole life insisting that that was not the case. And I spent half my life in Alcoholics Anonymous practically insisting that that wasn't the case, work the steps any damn way you want, just work them until you start working them in the order that they're written. You're shocked that they really work quickly, efficiently, and things happen a lot faster. what it was like, what happened and what it's like now let me just tell you simply what that was October of 1969 and prior to that time I spent all of my time most of mytime on a bathroom floor that's the kind of alcoholic that I was that'sthe nature of alcoholism in those days they didn't have a lot of rehabilitation places there was no whatever you just ended up on the bathroom floor and i don't know how any self-serving alcoholic has not experienced a bathroom floor if you haven't you really should get down there tonight and be grateful really do you know put your face up against the porcelain now and slide it up the toilet so you can feel how really especially out here 95 degrees uh how really cool that is and what a tremendous thing it is to be coming out of a state of unconsciousness from the night before floor and be on that floor and that tile and that porcelain. So, that's what it was like. Does it matter really all the stuff that happened? You can't stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous for 43 years unless you're a real alcoholic. I wouldn't be able to stand you. I would be able to come in here. So do I have to prove it? No. All I just have to say to you, those that are the alcoholics of my kind, that I ended up on a bathroom floor. And frankly, I didn't mind. And I was so tired and so fed up and so incapable of one more day of going out and pretending that everything was all right, of even saying hello to somebody. Oh my God, the burden of having to pretend one more day that everything was all right. And that feeling of desperation and the loneliness, that pitiful, incomprehensible loneliness that alcoholics of my kind experience. In fact, at that time in my life, I didn't even want to kill myself. I just didn't have the energy for it. I was too depressed to be bothered and what are you going to do anyway kill yourself and then you die and then you go on to wherever you go and they're also your dead relatives and then they're going to lecture you there you know I don't know and I wasn't about to take it so you take your miserable little self to another miserable little existence it was not even, I didn't even have the strength to kill myself. I just had the strength to appreciate the coolness of the porcelain. I was so grateful when I would reach the sink because I could look in the mirror and if that mirror depending on how fast it was moving up and down I would know automatically whether I was going to fall down and be unconscious again or whether I Was going to be able to hang on and begin the day that's what it was like bathroom floor what happened i joined alcoholics anonymous series of events all the things you look back the stories change ever so slightly it becomes a lot less dramatic and a lot more important because what it means is that a series of events got kicked into place sometime while I was on that bathroom floor. I believe now, all these years later, that somehow in one of those states of absolute unconsciousness... You know, they talk in the book somewhere. I don't memorize anything in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have no intention of it becoming complacent with it. I believe that the big book and the 12 and 12 should really be joined together. They are one in the same, the man wrote it 14 years later for people that stayed sober. So I don't memorize anything. But somewhere in that literature, probably around in the 12th and 12th sounds like it, they talk about sometimes our character defects that we react to are below the level of consciousness. Well, you know, I know that when I was on that bathroom floor, below the a level of consciousness was the desperation so that when I was coming out of a blackout, I could hear myself say all those years ago, God help me. Now you would think like, oh, that's great. I was so enraged when I heard myself say, God, help me, I was so angry that I would have needed help. I was so brazenly upset that it gave me the energy to get off the floor because I had no intention of ever asking anyone for help, ever. God, you, AA, absolutely no one. I had been fine by myself. I would be all right. It was just a matter of time. I was having maybe more potatoes before I went out to drink, I don't know. But whatever it was, I was going to figure it out. And I certainly, of all entities, things, it was not going to be a God. Certainly not. However, I don�t know what you believe in. It doesn�t really matter. It�s kind of an outside issue if the truth be known. What matters is that you believe something. And what matters is that it's important to you and what matters is that you never bob you know you don't have to explain that to anybody except explain to them what your thing is and be proud of it because if you stay sober a long time you will change your mind a thousand times so that eventually if you're like me my kind of alcoholic the only person i can address really is my own kind of alcoholic the experiences of myself is that every time i see you know god of your own understanding, I think they should only know. I have less understanding now, but I have a closer connection now. How do you explain it? Ah, you don't really. The truth is, even then, I did not believe in a god of my Irish heritage or my Catholicism or anything like that. Just didn't believe in that anymore. Although, you know, in a pinch, there's nothing like a drunk in a church. You know, when things would get really, really bad, you know, I'd fall into one of those Catholic churches and light the place ablaze in candles. Especially St. Anthony. I really like that guy. And then I'd do a couple of the Blessed Virgin and Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all of them. And then if the church happened to have the stations of the cross around from the old days, I would just go and look at all the people. Drunk. So, you don't know. You don't really. It's all in there, isn't it? you know. Now, am I a devout Catholic? Well, I'm far from it. Do I have tremendous respect? Of course I do. My mother needed that in order to transcend into the next world and that's what took her there and I have all the respect in the world for anybody that believes in anything as long as you believe in something. Now however, on that bathroom floor, I didn't believe in that God that you know, as Jane says, with a goat and a stick and a shaft and all that. But I did believe ever since I was small in leprechauns and fairies you know little fairies, blinking fairies. And I believed in gardening and angels. You know, I was too young to join Alcoholics Anonymous unlike Margaret, you know It's the exact opposite, but it works for all of us, doesn't it? I thought I was too young. But I believed in angels. Well, I didn't believe in angels, all of them. I believed an unparticular angel. There's this little holy card and it's a little angel and it crosses over a bridge over some rushing water. And there's a Little Kid underneath the wing of this angel and that was the angel I believed. No other angel, that specific one. and it's a very big holy card in my country that i grew up in and i had they were all over the house and uh anyway i believed that angel and i was afraid of water anyway uh that's i chased a leprechaun when i was really small and i fell in the river and almost you know drowned i was afraid of ever since i saw that leprechon let me tell you whatever uh but i so consequently i was scared of water and so when i saw the angel picture when i Was very little i was very attracted to that angel picture and that became a picture that meant something to me. So I thought, you know, okay, there's that angel and that angel can protect me. That angel can protect me. Now all these kinds of thoughts are going on when I'm trying to get drunk on the couch with all the lights on, with the couch facing the door because I was in a state of paranoia already in my alcoholism where they were coming to get me and I couldn't even leave my own place. So, you know, it all, in time, it all clears up, you know and you get to see back to when it really started so there I was coming off the bathroom floor and I thought but you see I believed that somebody heard me and I knew that it wasn't a god of the typical understanding but I knewthat somebody heardme and I believe like the old people told me in Ireland you know there's not a fear like there is in this country or any most about death you know they died at home they were waked at home you all heard about those amazing Irish wakes, you know, they go on for a week and they're very small cottages. I don't know if many of you have had a chance to go back or go to Ireland, but the cottages are very small, you know, and they would have all the villagers were coming in and, you know, it's pretty cool over there in terms of temperature. So they just take the coffin and the guy and they just put him outside, it was perfectly fine, so they would have a bigger room for a party, you know. It was a celebration and they were going to bring them to the other side and, and you know they would know that they were going to die because the banshees would come and you could hear in the wind, you So there was all this, and the knock on the door, and here they are. So I grew up with this belief that there was another life, that there wasn't afterlife, that there were people out there. So here I am coming off the bathroom floor, and I believed when I finally ended up bumped through all those little coincidences that we now know are actually us receiving the guidance that is available at all times. Not just in times of great desperation, I have come to know, but then I didn't recognize it at all. This is in reflection, and I rarely talk about this. It's been a long time, so it's one of those nights, the pre-birthday night, right? So I believed that perhaps they were the reason that I got bumped into Alcoholics Anonymous, that somebody really was watching out for me. And they heard that prayer on that lower level, below my level of consciousness as I became conscious, and I finally heard the last of God help me and I believe now that somebody was sitting up there waiting to get their wings and somebody said you know I think it might be time for this one God knows she's tried to stop drinking enormous amount of times what alcoholic does not try to stop drinking all the time maybe don't come to AA and everything but you're certainly trying to stop change it twisted chain so a bunch of things happened i ended up in this meeting you go down 12 steps and you go into this room and uh oh my god i couldn't believe it and there's a greeter i was greeted today with the enthusiasm of the greeter that greeted me on my first night in alcoholics anonymous barber and uh welcome to alcoholics anonymous now i got dressed to go to the meeting so that they would not know that I was an alcoholic. Saturday night, Huntington Park, California. I drive a long way, you know. Huntington Part, California I drive down there so they do not know that I'm a member of AA and I am enraged immediately upon coming into the because anger is my way of life. That's what keeps me going. If I wasn't angry and enrazed all the time I wouldn't have been able to function for God's sake. It's my nature. So I get into the room And the person says to me, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. You're new, aren't you? And I thought, for God's sake, how do they know that? Could it be that I was green? Could it been that my left leg did not operate, that I was dragging it? Could it have been that I had alcoholic poisoning and could not move and turn my head from one side to the other? Could it had been that hand was so wet it practically slipped? You know, could it be the greeter? And the greeters in those days were the most important people in the room because we came in shaking green shaking perspiring desperate usually on our own usually because we absolutely had to usually because We couldn't figure out what the hell we were even doing there but we were there couldn't even believe it and this newcomer signals to all these old timers these old guys sitting in the corner over there you know where they sit in their seats and they have some sort of sign language I don't know and they signal with each other before you know it I'm in the front row all right I'm in the Front Row I believe that I did not stay sober because I heard a thing they came rushing up to me and said drink this coca-cola as fast as you can eat this Hershey bar as fast you can they brought me a jelly doughnut the size of your head and I said eat this doughnut as fast as you care I know what a bunch of crazy losers these people are all I want is a drink in there loading me up with sugar even I know it's a problem now they gave me a little bit of coffee because I really had a I was physically destroyed at that age I was poisoned to death and I would have in time died from alcoholic poisoning sitting there on that couch it was coming when your legs go and your head goes like it's just a matter of time I didn't know that then just having a rough patch drink myself right out of that it's a matter of time get it all balanced and things are gonna be okay must be the alcohol It's got to be the scotch. It's gotta go, maybe it'd be the brandy. Maybe if I drank a beer, maybe if I, you know, whatever. Maybe ifI stopped drinking that stuff that I used to collect after parties and let it, you now, brew in the refrigerator, blow your brain right out of your head. Maybe, you knoW, maybe, maybe, maybemaybe, but no, what am I doing? I'm sitting in the front row of a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous drinking Coca-Colas, eating Hershey bars and donuts with about two inches of cup of coffee with a bunch of people sitting at a table talking about when they were prisoners and they shot people and I don't know what the hell they did and they had this wind going through them and I think, uh, had that wind got that, I understand and now they're out and they have picket fences and dogs and cats in cars and I'm thinking, what am I doing here? I gotta go! And another voice would say, no you can't and then another voice would say but I have to get out now and the other voice would say yeah, get out now and another voice would say but i can't i gotta cross in front of that thing and the table and go to the road you know they put you so you can't well if i was drunk that wouldn't have mattered but i wasn't kinda i can' t leave now i'm gonna have to wait and you know get out get out lila if you don't get out now they're gonna trap you they trap you these people trap you it's all just some big bunch of stuff they tell you don' t pay any attention to them and i'm looking at the signs that used to be on the walls, easy does it. I'm thinking, what the hell could that possibly mean? Easy does it? What are they talking about? Nothing is easy. Think, think, think. I think, that is why I'm here because I did think and it was wrong to think. It was completely wrong but for the grace of God, there go I. Where am I going? Where? Not where these people are going. I don't want to be in their church room. I don' t want to eat their donuts. I don''t want to look like them, sound like them. I don ''t want a picket fence. I don.''t want cats and dogs. I do want the car. Even then, I had my priorities in order. But by the grace of God, there go I. Probably one of the most meaningful signs I've ever seen in Alcoholics Anonymous. How over the years as I had to get rid of my judgment and all of those things, do I now look at everyone and say, but for the grace of God, could I have your life? Could I have you problem? Could i have your burden? Absolutely. Could I be you on the street? Could still be drinking? Could I'd be the guy on the streets that's just so painful to see? Could I've been my dead brother? Could it be my dead sister? my dead father? Oh, yes. But for the grace of God. However, on the other hand, can I be like the people that went before me in Alcoholics Anonymous and greeted me that night anyway? But forthegraceofgod, can i represent AlcoholicsAnonymous? Can I show up anyway when I don't want to drive? But forthegraceofGod, there go I. Can I be the front of the road? Can I take my seat over and over and over and again? Because perhaps it's a way of being of service. Will I go and speak at these things every few months or whenever I can even though I reduced it dramatically because the quality is more important than the entertainment and the quality? Yes. Because somebody else did it. And those signs, they've meant everything now. easy does it Lila have you paused today have you done the best you can do you really understand the serenity prayer and what that really means now have you really thought that through oh God but I looked at them that night and of course I judged them and I was enraged and all the rest of them first things first let go and let God and the one you know which is the most important in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, what is that thing about let go and let live or let live and I don't know, were we just starting? What is it? Oh yeah, yeah. Live and let liv. Good almighty how we've messed up that in AA, isn't it? The program where no one can ever be excluded if they have the desire to stop drinking. The only requirement to sit in this room is a desire to start drinking. No one can ever tell you anything else. Oh yes, as you're sober after a while You understand that it's a program of attraction It's the only thing that people like me when they were new could see So you look as well as you can You know, you bring out the bling So they're attracted What do they want? They want your watch They want their shoes So what? We trick you Before I knew it So that's what it was like. I was on the bathroom floor. What happened? I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. And what is it like now? I have not been on a bathroom floor in 43 years. I became physically sober. That's what it was. That's how it was like. What happened, it wasn't enough. I had to work with a sponsor. I had to go to the meetings for 90 days. I had to have more. I had to get off the seizure row. They put me in the seizure row. All those little signals with that greeter and all those old guys was to determine how much coke I needed and how much I needed because the sugar had affected as we do when we start to detox and come off of alcohol and they were afraid I was going to have a seizure and I didn't even know I was in the seizure row. I thought going on move move move the guy beside me all of us were like making noise they didn't kick us out of the meeting they didn't say get out you're moving around too much and making sounds like oh because we saw dead people going by because one day the speaker was pink and the other guy was blue and the colors are going off and I was detoxing and having DTS in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now the little guy beside me, well one day we're just sitting there moving all around seeing each other's dead relatives and he flops on the floor like a fish. It was awful. Anyway they come out very calmly. The big paws in Alcoholics Anonymous, easy does it. And they grab him by the legs, make something in his mouth and they move him into the side room and 10 minutes later he's back and I had my first spiritual experience in alcoholism of the profound kind. Am I here all these years because God touched me on the shoulder and I got struck into spirituality? No, I got terrified that if I didn't keep coming to Alcoholics Anonymous I was going to get a bloody seizure and be hauled into that back room with a wallet in my mouth. Believe me it kept me sober long enough for you to trick me further. It kept me sobre long enough for me to start competing with you. I wanted to sit in the second row and the third row. And then when I did, I was resentful that a newcomer got my seat. Can you imagine? And then I got the cookie commitment and they fired me from the cookie commitment because I just didn't think it was pretty enough. And I got doilies and I made them into little designs and, you know, my natural creative self and, You know, the leader in me took over and I got fired from the commitment because I would get up in the middle of the meeting if you should dare to take a cookie and messed them up. I got up and fixed them again. You know, all the traits of who we are going to be when we are sober for the rest of our lives occur in how you behave and who you are in your first six months. So pay attention to yourself. And if you can't, try to get a friend right now like I have with Gretchen and Jane has with Georgia and people have with each other, who all those years later will remind you what you really were like. And you'll find out you have the same little weirdnesses. I live in an orderly house. Chances are, in my house, as soon as you leave, I organize the cookies. I'm 65 years of age now and I do that. See, I got it. I got it when an old guy in that room said to me, by the way, when you go home tonight, you put your cap back on the toothpaste. I thought, oh for God's sake with my level of intelligence I have to listen to this horse shit about putting a cap on the toothpaste. I should be talked about the dying from the disease of alcoholism and how great I'm doing and how helpful I am to all these other drunks and how I have the dime in my pocket to make the phone call so that I call you before I drink by the way, can anybody in the year 2012 really drink without calling somebody? Everybody's wired they're wired in the goddamn meetings we had to die we had to find the phone booth we had to get out of the car and find a booth if we wanted to kill ourselves we had to like actually stand by the phone and call somebody we couldn't even go get the knife because we were attached to the wall as the people work with us as we've got a few years sober and we started to have an emotional kind of sobriety because then what happened well what happened was that I needed an emotional sobriete I needed to work the damn steps i did i have to tell you i am very emotionally kind of like okay i'm right size with myself some days i flip right out but even that's right size kind of enjoy it but over the years i do the same thing i did then but we used to have to call and they would say do things like get out of bed if you were depressed because I can't get out of bed. I've been in bed for five days. Get out. Could it be that easy that you just get out of the bed? Yes, you put your feet on the ground and you get up. Okay. Now turn around and make the bed. What? Make the bed Yes, call me back because we were attached to the wall. It's not like you can wake the bed and walk around it now. Put yourself on speaker. I mean the bullshit I have to listen to now doesn't even matter because I know they can make the bad and I can be present while they walk around the bed. Take a shower, call me back. Eat a slice of toast, call my back. Make a cup of tea, call back. That's what it was like. What was the name of the game? What was trick? Get you kind of involved in there so that you thought, I'm not doing what this idiot wants me to do anymore. They don't know what they're doing. They're stupid. Well then go get yourself a baby and do it your way. Okay, I certainly will. And what's that poor baby subjected to? worse than me. I do what they did and what I think too. Does anybody get drunk over that? No. That's how AA works. We refine it, we change it, it changes with the times it becomes contemporary. It's amazing. What was the name of the game though, the real name ofthe game that I don't hear enough about anymore? Because when we sat in those meetings and they looked out at us. They said, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. You are now a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous. Welcome Colleen. Welcome back. May your preparation the last time be for you to stay this time. Don't ever look back what you did wrong because whatever you did was right enough to get you here today. Welcome back. I hope you accept your membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I hope that this time you know that as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous you have a seat. You have a seed in every meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous in this whole world. I have had the privilege of being in many places in this world and sat in my seat. As a member Alcoholics anonymous we have a responsibility that everyone who has a desire to stop drinking because they say they do. I have to put my hand out and welcome them to Alcoholics Anonymous. There are many, many, many meetings in Alcoholics Anonymous of all kinds. There are many people in Alcoholic Anonymous of all kinds. We all fit. Find the place you're the most comfortable. Let no one ever drive you out of Alcoholics Anonymous The longer you stay sober the more you will come to know that not everyone is good in Alcoholics Anonymous. We're just sick people trying to get well. And we have all different levels of sickness and all different levels of well. You see, that's why we drank, not to feel that. And now when you take all of that away, it doesn't take away why we drink. And then when we're sober for a while And we don't change why we still have it, or we don t even know. I wish you all as members of AA that you contain and maintain your membership in good standing until you find out how sick you really are. Oh, it'll be a fantastic time. You'll have all these old-time idiots coming up to you and saying this is the best place you could possibly be because they know, they know that if you get into that 12 and 12 and you get into the work and you read that book like the sober person that you are today you will find the promises and you will find the solutions. And if you are like me and my kind of alcoholic, you would believe that amazing thing they told me that I have no other alternative but to always have my membership in Alcoholics Anonymous be the number one priority in my life because I was told that I have a disease and the disease of alcoholism and that I am going to have to spend and hey, you know what they told me? I don't want to shock you here. Let me just put it the simple way. You can't drink again for the rest of your life. All of you that shut your minds down, I suggest you talk to your sponsor. All of your saying do it a minute at a time, a day at a Time while she's scaring everybody. You got to know that for Christ's sake. You have to know that it is my responsibility is someone that stays sober this long to tell you, don't ever forget it. It says in the book, in little letters that tilt, no reservations whatsoever. They don't tilt a lot there. Even people like us tilt. Oh, look at that. Must be important. Tilted. Yes. If your mother dies and the bagpipes come out, you can't drink. now how you do it is a day at a time a minute at a time an hour at a phone call at a time and for god's sake don't forget to eat how many calls over the years have been oh my god i'm gonna kill myself oh here we go when was the last time you had something to eat who can eat when they're thinking of killing themselves perhaps if you had a sandwich you might not want to kill yourself. Have a bologna sandwich and call me back. Oh, I can't believe I feel so much better. Can you imagine? How many people did we really lose? Jump off bridges. Jesus, all they had to do was eat a sandwich. Do you think these people were kidding at the beginning when said the most important thing you can do now as a member of AA and to maintain that is to get your ass to a meeting as often as you drank? Whoa, that's a problem. It's a lot. Well, you know, do the best you can. Now, you can even like plug in or something I don't even know. I like talking. I gotta speed this up. But do you get it? Do you get it. You got to know that. You have to know that. So when you're sober five years and you're emotionally wrecked, and when you're sober 10 years and you find out there's people that are stealing an AA, embezzling money from you, sleeping with newcomers, and doing every goddamn thing they're not supposed to do, you won't leave. You'll think, well, those guys need to do the steps. And by the way, what about me? Because you have nowhere else to go. You got to know that. So when they say you can't drink again for the rest of your life, and by theway, you got to go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for the rest of your life I thought right I'm out here in three weeks three weeks three weeks in three week's I thought I could run the place however in 18 years I didn't think I could stay and everything was going well on the outside because I did what I do I I got it all together, but I didn't spend enough time inside. I didn' t make room, and I forgot that I can't drink for the rest of my life and have to go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for the rest of me life, but that I had to read this damn book for the rest of m y life, and then I had to spend time looking for a God and it would take me the rest of my life. I trained myself at the beginning to stay here, because I have nowhere else to go. So I stayed no matter what. I stayed when I couldn't stand you. I staid when I was a newcomer and it was exciting. I staid when I wa just a comer. And oh God, it's hard to just be a comer! You're a nothing really. You're not an old-timer, you're not a new comer, you are just a a comer. None of us like to be comers. We're too important. And those are the years where you do the most work. Those are the year when you're going through people and relationships to find out how to have one. Those of the years when you finding out what your passion is. Those are the ears when things happen. They don't happen because you're not working the program, they happen because that's your destiny. And you have to get through that. You have to get through those desert years so that you can get into the place where you know you can't go anywhere, where you know that the answer is in those steps, where you know that you're going to work and then read that book as if you're only the dying can, where you're looking for the spiritual connections, when you're working with people, when you know that when you are unmanageable it's because you're under the influence of not alcohol, you're sober as judges. You should also know that if you want to go to church, you're going to drink again, you've got to make that decision stone cold sober. You've got to have something going on here so that this mind of yours has the habit of going, the body has the habit of going to meetings so that your body has eaten something so that you don't have that sugar drop that makes your judgment be completely impaired. You can't be under the influence of lack of food. You Can't be Under the Influence of Too Much Sugar. You Can't Be Under the influence of Lack of Spiritual Connection. You Can't under the influence anger and frustration and all the seven deadly things they have in the book and all those defects of character. You Can't Under the Influx of Your Own Selfishness. You have to understand That's what you're under the influence of when you're sober. And it's nobody's fault. That's the other trick in AA. Oh, how I wish you'd stay sober long enough to find out what I have found out. There's nobody to blame. What a horrible thing for a first-class blamer. I can't blame you. And by the way, if you drink, don't be coming in here telling us what happened and whose fault it was. Just come in here and say that you stopped going to meetings while you were in the room. that you left in your mind because we have a disease of the mind and that's the first thing that's going to go is your mind and if you're sitting here judging me today you are in trouble already hope you have a big dime because this is the truth for me my kind of alcoholic is under the influence of emotions now, and when I am, I'm unmanageable. And when I'm under the influence of something that is not real, and any imagined fear that I can create, because all of my fears are imagined really, because if it's real, I can handle it. You will have the privilege as members of AA of staying sober and going in and out of these meetings, of watching people live and be happy and live and die. You'll have the opportunity to be richer and to be poor, and all kinds of things will happen to you. And oh, tell me, tell you, on the outside it will make you sad sometimes when you hear terrifically sad news that we just heard and other things. But it will not change you because you will have this strength inside, you see. And when all else is fearful, you will Have a place that you can come. And the first place you learn to come is to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And how you learn To do that is by showing up no matter what and sitting in That seat that your membership entitles you to. And The next thing you know is that you have to feel while you're in those meetings, particularly when you're brand new? 90 days, a year, doing it again, starting over spiritually, all the same. You have to listen to that stuff being read and you have to listened to it with a quietness of heart so that you can begin to understand there's a quietess in you and that this is a safe place. You've to practice as your membership and they told me this. When you are a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and you walk into that meeting room, you leave everything else in the parking lot. You leave your judgment and your prejudices and your bullshit and all that stuff outside. You come in here as the alcoholic that you are. You coming here is a person who cannot drink. You're coming here as a person who's not drinking now. You've come in hearing you can look into the eyes of those other people and they know you're an alcoholic and you know they're an alcohol again that's enough. That's the healing. It happens in the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous even though we look at the signs, we don't really hear them sometimes. You don't hear the words, but you know. You know. You know that when you are unmanageable, you must go to the second step because it promises you that you will be restored to some sort of sanity. Not a big deal. Just a little balance. Just a Little Balance. It's enough. And when you go to The Third Step and it tells you to make a decision. Make the damn decision. That's what your will is for, to make that decision. To do what? Turn over all this terrible stuff? No, it doesn't say that. This has made a decision to turn your will and your life over. You get yourself the hell out of the way. That is the third step. It is going to take all you can to do that. Get yourself the heck out of the way, you are the problem. And then when you can step aside, you can refreshingly look and have the courage to look at the fourth and fifth step with somebody and work through that fourth and fifth whichever way they want you to do it and when you finish all of that you will have been unmanageable you will start to feel more balanced you'll get yourself out of the way you'll look at what the problems really are you'll Get Reality Back your fears are fearful because they're imagined you'll GET YOUR REALITY BACK and you'll GET TO THE SEPTICS and it'll say entirely ready to DO WHAT to accept your life the way it is this very moment. You don't have to like it. You don' t have to do anything. You just have to say, This is my reality. This is it. The good, the bad, and the indifferent. And when you can do that, you can go to that seventh step and you'll be very happy to feel the humility of saying, Please help me. Because you have been taken out of the way in three so that you could look at what there is there factually in four and five so that você pode dizer que isso é eu e agora você vai me ajudar? me. And then you will be given eight and nine to deal with the only problems you will have for the rest of your entire life, and that's the people here, everywhere. And every now and then you'll get to 10 and you can pause. You can pause and you Can stay there because you will want to be there more. And you'll clean up yourself and you'll go to one or you do whatever you need to do to always get to ten. Can't get to10 without going through one through 10. And in your wish for 11, and you start to talk to your dead relatives because they'll be more of them if you're my age and if you've been sober as long as I am. And you know one thing for sure. I don't know about gods and all that stuff loving me, but I need somebody to get me. You see, when I walked into these rooms all those years ago, you got me. I knew you got me. And I got you. And when I need more now, I know they get me." I know my mother loves me. I know she loves me more now that she's dead. I always knew my grandmothers loved me. Jane's mother. I have so many people that unconditionally loved me when they were here. I'm the one that spit in their face and they love me now. That's enough spiritual love coming at me to keep me going until I get up there or go wherever you go, but I'll be going because they're waiting for me and I'm still a member and oh God am I proud of that, but they're prouder and as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous I have a conscious contact with them all the time I'm not afraid to talk to them that's who my God is that who's all these years and I finally have somebody that gets me that's all I've ever wanted so I'm safe now here and I'm saved there I have somebody that I love and have spent many, many years with oh my God how lucky am I how lucky I am whatever comes our way we can handle it because we know as a result of the 12th step of the program for Alcoholics Anonymous, we know how to do the best we can because we're members of Alcoholics Anonymous. We've done the best we can on every 12-step call we ever made. We've shown the best way to do it. We've seen the best that we can when we reach out in a meeting. We've known the best they can when they were secretary. We've found the best weekend we cut up the fruit. We've been the best week and we put the chairs out and so when we have a problem, we do the best we came and as members of Alcoholics anonymous, we know how to do that and we know that you had to leave a place better than when we found it, and we know how to leave people better than when we found them. And we know how to say to one another in this room on this night, may we be always together. Oh yes, let's do it a day at a time. Let's do a person at a time.Let's do with a smile at a time. Don't be afraid. Don t be afraid because when you are in here your fear has been subsided. When you're in here even though you don't know it below the level of consciousness, you're being softened and soothed out by all of us. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous, Colleen. This time, you have to stay. We need you. Thank you. Thank you very much. The moments are getting closer where I get to say to myself, gosh, I'm glad I didn't miss that meeting. And that's happening more and more the longer I stay sober i have asked marion to read a vision for you and to pray us out of the meeting hi everyone i'm mary and i'm an alcoholic a vision for you oh i don't know my glasses on our book is meant to be suggestive only we realize we we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come if your own house is in order, but obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with him is right and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to him and to your fellows clear away the wreckage of your past give freely of what you find and join us we shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny may god bless you and keep you until then and after a moment of silence for those suffering in and out of the rooms would you please join me in the serenity prayer I wasn't very loud I'm so glad you were here me too holy cow God pray me this serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Keep coming back. It works if you work it. Keep coming. Thank you. Rowan?