The Chapter 3 Experiments That Didn’t Work – Penny P.

I walked into my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on Sunday, October 9th, 1977 in Honolulu, Hawaii. And since that time, I have not used or abused alcohol or any other substance that allows me to take a trip without leaving my chair. And last October 9rd, I celebrated 24 years of continuous sobriety in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. My home group is the Saturday Morning Principal Studies Group in San Ramon, California, We're a steps and traditions study. We study the steps one at a time using the big book, and then we study the traditions one at the time using the 12 and 12. And we have about 40 chairs in our room, and when we study the steps, almost all of those chairs are filled. When we study the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, all of them are filled, all of these chairs are filled, and we have people sitting on the floor to talk about the traditions of Alcoholic Anonymous. And I believe that happens in my home group because we talk about the traditions as another set of steps. My experience has been that the steps helped me live with me and the traditions helped me to live with you. The steps helped me from committing suicide and the tradition's helped me from committing homicide. And I have a sponsor, my sponsor is Peg M of Bellevue, Nebraska. And Peg has been my sponsor since my 19th AA birthday. She was a present to myself. And, um, I believe, and you may come to understand why I say this as I to share my story this evening, that Peg has indeed saved my life. I want to do something real quickly. I am always – I always feel so privileged to be invited to participate in any AA function, to be of service in any way. And I'm always kind of astounded when people call up and ask me to come out of town. I always want to say, don't you have somebody in Dayton that can do that? because as Sterling said earlier, you know, the people that are standing up here, we're really grateful to be of service. We don't get paid to do that. For those of you that are new or may not know, we don't give you a chance to do this. We don' t get paid for you to come here and do this, but we don' d do it because we' re great people. We do it Because we've been taught about the difference between commitment and convenience, and I'm very grateful to Be asked to do This. And I'm always really overwhelmed when I have the opportunity to speak after a recovery countdown. It just overwhelms me to see the recovery in the room. I love it when there are old-timers and newcomers and when we honor those people. One of the things that I've learned in recovery is, and I've earned it even more in these past few years, is about sponsorship. And I am going to talk a lot about that this evening. And one of the reasons I'm going to talk about it so much is because I have a lot of sponsorship family here this evening. And even though I live in California, some of my sponsees are here. One of my sister's sponsee is here. And I would like you to see my sponsorship family. So I'm gonna ask first of all, my sister sponseed to stand up. And now I'm just gonna ask you to stand. And to stay standing. I'm going to ask all of the women that I sponsor to stand up. And I'm gonna ask, I have the mother of one of my sponsees is in the program. I'm gunna ask her to stand. And I'd like to ask her sponsor to send them. and of the women standing if you are sponsored by them I would like you to stand up if your sponsor is standing I'd like you to stand If there's anyone else that their sponsor is standing, I don't know if there is. I'd like you to stand up. No. This is my sponsorship family. And I'm 2,000 miles from home, and I have people who care about me and are here to support me. And that's what Alcoholics Anonymous has given me because I've got to tell you, So when I walked in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous on October 9, 1977, nobody was standing up for me. I want to thank all of you for being here. Thank you. I wantto, as the other speakers have said, I wantt to thank Pat for inviting me. Where did he go? Where is he? He's here somewhere. And staying after me, I didn't get as many phone calls as the others got. But I got e-mails. I'd open my mailbox and there's another message from Pat. The nice thing with e-mail is that you don't have to read it right away. It can kind of age for a while. But I'm really grateful. I was grateful to get the phone call and to be asked to come here and speak. And for those of you who had anything to do with that, I want to thank you for that. It's been a great committee, and this committee puts on a great conference. It's Been a Great Day, and it's been an amazing day. It's a very full day, and I feel really honored and privileged to have shared the podium with the speakers that you had today. What a great lineup of speakers you guys put together, and so I'm glad to be here. Thank you. I grew up, even though I live in California now, I grew up in Michigan, and I grew up in a family that, as someone else said, I was theirs. That's what made it dysfunctional. My family was probably a really good family. It's the only one I know. I grewup with a younger brother and an older sister, and I drew up always knowing there was something different about me. I went to school knowing that, you know, I always looked at other people, andI always compared my insides to your outsides, and I always came up short. I knew that you guys just knew how to do stuff that I didn't know how to do. I didn'T know how people knew how to apply to colleges or how to do SATs or how to get on different things, how to get involved in different things in school. At one point, I went out for cheerleading because I always loved to be the center of attention, and you'll figure that out after I've talked about myself for a while here. I get to talk about my favorite topic. I thought I was going to say AA, didn't you? Well, some of you didn't. I always loved to be the center of attention, so I figured if I went out for cheerleading that that would do it. Problem was I didn't like some of the things you got to do to be a cheerleader, like tumbling and aerobics and acrobatics and all of that kind of stuff. So I didn't make the team. Always one to love or resentment, I went out for sports and made them cheer for me. I was on every team that women could participate in when I was in school, and that was many years ago, more years than I can remember now. I graduated from high school, and I got engaged at my senior prom. And in the next year, I broke that engagement five times. Should have told me something. The last time he gave me the ring back, he said, if you walk out on me once more, if you give me the Ringback once more I'm going to walk out on you and you'll never see me again. And I was 18 years old from the Midwest. I didn't fit in anywhere. I couldn't be self-supporting through my own contributions. So I figured, well, I better marry this man otherwise I'll be an old maid. And at 18 years in Michigan that was a big deal. I've got to tell you, I turn 51 next month and I don't really care. But Old Maid is not bad. I actually kind of like it. We got married a month after my 19th birthday, and I didn't drink in high school. It might have helped, but I didnít know that at the time. We went on our honeymoon to New York, and the drinking age in Michigan was 21, and the drink age in New York was 18. We went to Newark on our honeymoons, and we went to a cocktail lounge. Didn't go to a bar, went to a lounge, got to the lounge. And it was dark and it was smoky and it had those red leather banquets. And I used to love the movies of the 30s and 40s, you know, with Carol Lombard and Joan Crawford and Betty Davis and all of those actresses and the drama and how they looked and they'd hold a drink in their hand with the little pinky out and they had a cigarette holder, and they'd take a sip, and they were gorgeous. And I sat in this cocktail lounge in New York, and I took a sip and I looked how, I felt how they looked. It was magic. Now the next morning when I'm puking my guts out in the toilet, I don't know that I thought of Piper Laurie or Lee Remick in the days of Wine and Roses. And I know that reference just went over the bunch of a whole lot of people's heads. We were talking at dinner, Sterling, this morning. Sterling explained to some of you who may not know what a record is. Days of Wine and Roses. It's available on videotape rented. And DVD. And that was the beginning of my drinking career, but I didn't know it at the time. We came back to Michigan from our honeymoon, and my husband and I worked together. We'd go to work together, and we'd drive home. We stopped at a little party store on the way home, and he'd pick up a six-pack of beer, and weíd go home, and heíd drink, and weíd fight, and Iíd cry, and heíd pass out. And a six pack of beer stopped working for him, so he needed two six packs of beer. And I didnít know about Al-Anon. And heíd pick up two six-packs of beer and weíll go home and heíll drink, and weíre fighting, and Iíll cry, and heís pass out When he got to three six-backs of beer I realized my marriage wasn't working, and I needed to do something to fix it. And so what I decided that I could either have a baby or I could drink with my husband, and I'm grateful that I picked alcohol over bringing a baby into what was to be the hell of my life. I didn't like beer, and all you could pick up at this little party store that we stopped at was beer or wine, and so I drank wine. And I live in the Livermore Valley in California. It's a beautiful valley in the foothills of the Sierras. We have several beautiful wineries in our valley. I'm told that they have wonderful California wines from these wineries. I'd love to tell you that I drank some of those fine California wines. I'd like to tell that I had a great time. I'd also love to say that I'd loved to tell you that we drank some nice French wines. I drank Ripple. Other Ripple drinkers? Okay, now those are the people that those of you who don't know about Ripple go to to ask. You know, those of us that drink Ripple, we got sober, Ripple went out of business. That's power, you know? But I drank Ripple. I didn't necessarily like Ripple but Ripple took me where I needed to go. The problem with Ripple used to come in flavors and each flavor had a different color label and I would buy a bottle of each different flavor. And I would go home and I had a tub and I poured them all into the tub and I'd mix them up and then I'd pour them back into the bottle I had my own private label, Rainbow Ripple. And that's where my drinking started and where my drinkings took me was drinking in Skid Row bars Supporting my habit the way women who drink in those kinds of bars find it necessary to support their habit. If I had to pay for more than one drink, I went to another bar. I came to behind those bars with my hair matted to my face from my own puke, having wet and messed myself. I wasn't a pretty drunk and I wasn' t a nice drunk. I was a desperate drunk. When I went to parties, if it was bring your own bottle, I always took a bottle. It was always in one of those nice brown liquor store bags, you know, that you can twist around the neck of the bottle. I always got there and I always put my bottle way in the back. And when I was leaving, I always went into the kitchen when there was no one around and I took my bottle from in the bag and I take the top off of it because it was empty and I filled it with the dregs from whatever was left. And that would take me through the next couple days. and it didn't matter what I was mixing in that bottle. It took me where I needed to go. It did what I need alcohol to do for me. If I had a party in my home, it wasn't unusual for me the next morning to drink warm beer with cigarette butts in it. I was an alcoholic and I needed alcohol. I did whatever it took to support that habit and that's what I brought to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous on Sunday, October 9th, 1977. Now I didn't live on Skid Row, I just drank there. And I drank there because that's where I sit. I didn' t feel like I sit with the people in those nice bars. I didn''t feel like, I didn ''t know how, you know, booze did a lot of things for me. It took me a lot of places. It made me a lot of thing. When I was drinking in those bars, and again these are Skid row bars, I drank with pilots and astronauts and surgeons. I was frequently those things. I was never a nurse. I was a doctor. I was Never a flight attendant. I was A pilot. The problem I had, and someone else referred to it, is that I was A blackout drinker. So I have no idea what I told people when I was in blackouts. I frequently came to in places where I didn't know where I was where I didn't recognize the ceiling. I didn' t know who I was with or how I had gotten there or how long I had been there. And I got into a place where I couldn' t look at myself in the mirror anymore. And I wore contact lenses. It' s hard to do, but you get used to it. I still don' t need a mirror to put contact lenses in. And I got to that place that our big book talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. And my first marriage had ended. I'd left my first husband after he threw me through the living room window for the second time. I'd gone back to him after the first time. And I left him, and I moved in with my sister. Now, our book says, and as other speakers have said, we don't name anyone an alcoholic. But if it walks like a duck and drinks like a buck, I had been married to a duck. I moved into a house with my brother-in-law, who's probably a duck, I lived with her for a while, and then I moved in with a woman that I worked with who's probably a duck. And then I met this guy, and actually I was on a date with his best friend, and he stopped by our table at the bar, and so I left with him. And we went out, and we went outside. We went out drinking, and I was still an underage drinker. I changed drinks in every bar we went to because someone else was paying for it. So I was trying out all this different stuff, and I passed out in the last bar we were in, and I fell out of the booth, and he had to pick me up and carry me out. And as we're driving home, I came to puking, which always makes a great impression on a first date. And he said he thought there was something wrong with my drinking, and I thought he just didn't know how to have a good time. I was not one of those alcoholics that tossed my cookies. I mean, I don't know about any of you, but I was a puker. I was a blackout drinker. I did what it took to support that habit. That man married me. Now, you know, he wasn't an alcoholic. He probably could have benefited from the program of Al-Anon, no doubt. But he married me, and I married him basically for the same reason I'd married my first husband. I did not know how to be self-supporting through my own contributions. By this time, I was working for the Michigan State Police. And I – cops are good people to drink with because we take care of our own. You probably won't well in those days. I don't know how it is now. You probably don't get a DUI if you're drinking with cops. But I had been working for the Michigan State Police, and I had just lost my job as a result of my drinking. And so this man called me up and asked me out to dinner that night, and I said, why don't we get married? And he said, sure, why Don't We Do That? And so we did. And that was my second marriage, and we were married. It was kind of – I didn't realize until after we were buried that he had some kind of unreasonable expectations of me. He thought I should stop dating just because we'd gotten married. i i thought that that was just you know that's asking a bit much i um i i got another job and my boss expected me to show up every day and um and he expected me to stay there all day once i got there And I had a dog that, you know how you've got to walk those puppies? And they expect to be fed every day. It was just too much for me to handle. And I realized that what I needed to do was I needed to get a different look on things, get a different view on things. And so I talked to my husband about it and he suggested that we move. It wasn't my idea, but he suggested that we move. And he thought that maybe if we moved to Hawaii, that that would be a good place to take care of my drinking. And as it turns out, it was a great place to take careofmydrinking. It worked for about a week. And then I found the kinds of bars that I liked. Now, the bars I liked were dark. They always had a jukebox in the back with sad country music on it. Because if there was sad country music on a jukebox, I could get somebody to pay for my boots. It cost me a quarter for a drink because I could put a quarter in the juke box. I could play sad country songs. I could sit at the bar. I would put my head down. I can get those eyes. And somebody would come up and they'd put their arm around me and say, there, there sweetie let me buy you a drink. And whatever it took to pay for that, I was willing to pay it. My husband kept talking to me about my drinking. I told him that he was silly. I tried a lot of things that alcoholics try. I tried all of the things that it talks about in Chapter 3. I cried changing my drinks. I tried drinking only at home. My husband was more than willing to have a stocked bar at home. I tried drinking never at home I tried getting more physical exercise I joined the baseball team I tried all of the things as I said, I've been a blackout drinker I came to one day and my car was up against a telephone pole. I have no idea if I pulled it off or if I ran off the road. I don't know how I got there I came another time. Again, I was a drinker and a driver. I drank and went places I just don't know where I went because I was in a blackout. I came out of a blackouts driving down Alamoana Boulevard, and the radio was on, and Elvis was dead. It was August of 1977. And I was at the lowest I'd ever been. My husband fixed dinner one evening, and we had some kind of an argument over a bottle of wine. Imagine that. He had opened a bottle OF wine. It was a nice bottle OF winE. I knew this because it had a cork. I didn't usually drink wine that had corks unless I needed the fiber because I couldn't figure out how to get corks out of bottles I could never get the things, the screw things to work and so I just put those things in and he had opened a nice bottle of wine and we had an argument and I picked up the bottle of wine and I chugged it, and he got upset with me because I hadn't allowed it to breathe. I didn't know about breathing wine. You know, Ripple never needed to breathe, and I picked up my plate, and I walked out of the living room into the dining room, and there was a small step between the livingroom and the diningroom, and I missed it, and I fell, and my plate flew, and one of the dogs grabbed the steak, and the other dog grabbed the potato, and they ran off, and I'm there on the ground, and my husband looked at me, and I looked up at him, and I said, don't say it. And he said, Don't say what? And I said that if I hadn't have had that drink, I chugged a bottle of wine, if I hadn't had that drank, I wouldn't have done that. And he looked at us, and he said to me, I'm not going to do that. He looked at the look that alcoholics have seen, the looks that our loved ones give us. And he says, if you hadn't have, he wouldn't have. And then he stepped over me, and went into the dining room and sat down and had his dinner. and I got up and I went back into the kitchen to fix myself another plate of food he walked in behind me he said you're an alcoholic he said I don't know if I can continue to live with you and you know I've been called a lot of things in those bars and my husband had called me a lot in arguments but I'd never been called an alcoholic and I knew what an alcoholic was because I had some alcoholism in my family, not in my immediate family but aunts and uncles that suffered from our disease I'd had an uncle who died of a wet brain in the hospital where my mother worked and I'd watched my Uncle Paul die. My grandfather had died as a direct result of being intoxicated and I knew my grandfather was an alcoholic and I know he was an alcoholist and I wasn't that. But all I could hear in my mind was those words And my husband went out of town on business the next day, and this baseball team that I had joined, we had a game, and I went to the game. And I missed a real easy field. I was a shortstop, andI missed this real easyfield. And my coach pulled me out of the game very unceremoniously, and I questioned whether his mother knew who his father was. I didn't do it quite that way. But I've been taught the same thing David's been taught. I don't use that language from the podium. And I got in my car and I took off. And as I'm pulling out of Kapi'olani Park, I kept thinking if I could hit that little rock wall along Diamond Head Road hard enough, I could kind of put my car over the side and I could go down the cliffs and I would die. And that's what I wanted to do. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn'T live like this anymore. I couldn' t do this anymore . I couldn''t show up anymore. I couldn ''t look in the mirror anymore. I couldn?'t stand who I was anymore. I didn''t want to do this any more. I just couldn'' t do life. and I didn't know how not to do it. I didn' t know what else to do but I hadn' t had a drink that morning and I knew that if I aimed my car towards that wall that at the last minute I'd kick my foot up off the accelerator and I wouldn' t hit the wall hard enough and I would' n't die, I'd wake up in some hospital room somewhere and I'd be in pain and I was in pain, I didn''t need any more pain and I went home to fix a drink so that I could kill myself and I got the bottles out and I started to fix myself a drink and I went to the back of the house and I picked up the phone and I called information and I asked for the phone number for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I called AlcoholicsAnonymous and a woman answered the phone and I didn't like women when I got here because you were competition for the people that were supporting my habit. I knew what I would do to get the person that was buying your booze to buy mine and I knew what you would do to get this person that was behind my booze to buy yours And this woman answered the phone, so I told her that I wanted to know something about Alcoholics Anonymous for a friend of mine that I thought might have a problem. And she said, oh, maybe you'd like to go to a meeting. And I said, I didn't want to goto a meeting, thank you very much. Maybe she could just send me some literature. I could do a correspondence course. And she says, oh sweetie, we don't send out literature, but if you go to an evening, you can get some literature and you can meet some women and get some phone numbers. How special. And I said, well, I don't think my friend would want to do that, but maybe you could just tell me about Alcoholics Anonymous and then I'll tell my friend about Alcoholic Anonymous. And so she started talking about Alcoholix Anonymous, but as most of you know, it's hard to talk about Alcoholice Anonymous without talking about God. I interrupted her and explained to her that I don' t believe in God. She said, how does your friend believe in G-d? Now, I let her tell me where there was a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I wouldn't go to one in my own neighborhood. I didn't want my neighbors seeing me going into one of those AA meetings. My neighbors had called the EMTs on me about a month before because I was passed out on my front lawn and they thought I was dead. But I couldn't let them see me go into an AA meeting, for God's sake. My anonymity, you know. So, she told me about this meeting at the Ala Moana YMCA and I went to that meeting. She told me to go in and go up to the first woman I saw and tell her I was a newcomer. I walked up that night and there were a bunch of people outside drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and laughing and joking and I thought that's the party I should be at. I didn't know and I walked through this crowd of people and I looked and I talked into the meeting room and it was a little bit before the meeting and there was no one in the room. The chairs were set up. There was noone there. Everyone was outside drinking coffee and smoking cigarets Except in the back by the coffee pots, there was one person, a woman. And I walked up to her and before I could say anything, I started crying. And she looked at me and said, oh, you're a newcomer. And she took me outside and she introduced me to the women of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the women gave me their phone numbers. And some of the men gave me theirs. Some of them gave me the phone numbers and the women took them away from me. they sat me right up front between Blanche and Connie and Alan Kay, secretary of the meeting and I'm sitting there crying oh my god my life is over I'll never have fun again I was having fun and I sat there crying and Alan started the meeting And he says, do we have any newcomers here tonight? It's not to embarrass you. Just so we can get to know you. And Blanche kind of nudged me in the ribs and my hand went up. And I'm crying. And Alan says, would you like to give us your name? And I cried through my whole first 24 years. But I cried throughout my whole First Meeting. And I left as soon as the meeting was over. Oh, we stood up at the end to say the Lord's Prayer. Someone else said this tonight. I knew it was a cult. You're praying at the beginning, you're praying at the End. I figured I'd show up next week and you're going to give me a tambourine and tell me where to report to the airport. That's just it. I knew. But I had no place else to go. I didn't go to a meeting from that Sunday until the following Sunday. I didn' t hear 90 meetings in 90 days. They had given me their numbers. They had giving me meeting schedules. I had every pamphlet that had been, because I love pamphlets. I'd been in every pamphet that was in the rack. I went back the following Sunday. I walked in. The only person in the room was the coffee maker, Blanche. She comes up to me and says, Perry, I'm great to see you. How many meetings did you get to this week? I said, Sunday. I was here on Sunday. She said, during the week, how many meetings did you go to during the day? During the week. Sunday. I was there on Sunday And she said, no. She went over to the pamphlet rack and she picked up a meeting schedule and she marked some stuff on it. She took me outside to Renee. She said to Renee, she said I've marked the meetings where I'll meet Penny. Will you mark the meetings were you'll meet Kenny? And Renee circled some things and Renee took me over to Connie C. And she says to Connie, she says Blanche and I have marked the meetings where we'll meet penny. Will you Mark meetings where you'll make him? And I went to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous because I thought it would be rude not to show up. Those of you who have heard me speak know that I always share that story when I speak, because when I introduced myself this evening, I shared with you that last October, I celebrated 24 years of continuous sobriety in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. In September, Blanche celebrated 24 year of continuous sobrity in the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous and in August, Connie celebrated 24 of continuous subriety. If you do the math, Those women took that action with 30 and 60 days of sobriety. Now, what that means to me tonight, that's more important to me today than it's ever been in my whole sobriete. Because I'm really grateful that there's a fellow here with 35 years and Ruth here with 28 years, and that there's people with more sobriety than me and less sobriery than me. What that means to me is that no matter how long you're sober, no matter what 12-step program you're participating in, as a matter of fact, you have a message to carry to me. You have a massage to carry. You have the message to other alcoholics and to other Alamones. You have message if you're one of the people that got one of those beautiful key rings. You have a message to carry to me because I need to know it hasn't gotten any better out there. It doesn't matter what Zima tastes like, it hasn'T gotten any better out There. And I need To know those things. Because my brain, the farther I'm away from a drink, the reason I keep coming to meetings is to hear what happens to people who don't come to meetings. But I also need to hear What it's still like out there? because just because I know my story doesn't mean that's the story I'd get if I picked up a drink. I do not believe that if I kicked up a drank, I would die. I believe I am one of those alcoholics that would pick up a drunk and live a very long, very painful death. I just, and I don't believe that I'd come back to Alcoholics Anonymous because, like Sterling said, you know, I have a big mouth. I love to be the center of attention. And, you now, I have an ego the size of Texas. I started going to meetings, and I would love to stand here and tell you that because those women took those actions, I got right into Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't do that. At a couple of weeks sober, I had a woman appoint herself as my sponsor. I did not really know what a sponsor was. This woman appointed herself as my sponsor, explained to me that a sponsor is someone that I can share things with, that I can share my deepest, darkest secret with. I had this deep, dark secret that I knew that if you knew, you would not let me stay here. That if you knew, the things I had done or the person I was that you would ask me to leave. That you would not sit next to me in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't know why I took the risk of sharing that with this person but I did. And what happened was she shared it at group level. She laughed about it and she attributed it to me. And what that did for me was I knew I couldn't trust you guys. I knew there was nothing I could tell you because you were going to share it. And what that's taught me in the years I've been sober is how important it is to keep a confidence. And no matter how insignificant I may think it is, unless someone has given me permission to share with others what they've shared with me, it is not my place to share it because we never know what's important to another person. Today those secrets aren't important to me. It's who I am, and it's what I am. But that's not who it was when I had a couple weeks sober. And we're so fragile when we're that new. And we'RE looking for any excuse. And I don't know how I didn't drink over those things. There were a couple of times that I decided I was going to get drunk. I'll tell you, one of the things that I decide I was gonna get drunk over, I was goin' to meetings, and I was hearing a lot of people raise their hands and comin' back from slips. And I DON'T KNOW WHY THAT WAS AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME, EXCEPT THAT'S PROBABLY WHAT I WAS LISTENIN' FOR. And I heard all these people come raising their hands and say, oh, well, when I had my last slip and when I came back from this slip and the first slip I had. And I kept thinking, well I can have a slip and now I'll just come back to AA. Now newcomers think that way. That's how my brain goes because I'm looking at people that are sitting in meetings sober. Well, they're saying they're sober. And they had a slip. So I can drink and come to AA。 That's what my brain is saying. Well, so I had this plan because I came to my first AA meeting. Nobody came and 12-stepped me. Nobody came in, got me, and took me to my 1st meeting. I went to my 2nd meeting by myself. Now, that's not because I'm so great. It's because I wouldn't stay on the line longer than 3 minutes because I thought this woman was tracing the call. And so I was going to take her. I envisioned this big panel truck with a red AA on the side that could pick me up. I figured I'd have a dead drunk on top or something. So I figured that if I had a slip, I could call AA and I'd get to have a 12-step call. And they'd come and they'd pick me up and they take me to detox because I didn't go to detox before. And I figuredthat would be an experience I should not miss. And then after detox, maybe I could go to treatment because I met people who'd gone to treatment and they had all this information that they got while they were in treatment. So maybe I should go to treat. That sounded like the easier, softer way. And then after I went to treatment, maybe I could go to a halfway house. And there was a halfway House in Honolulu at the time called the Bells of St. Francis, Halfway House for Women. And the women who graduated from St. Francis were called the bells, the bells of St.-Francis. And I wanted to be a bell. So I started planning a slip because I looked at all these people coming back from slips. And I sat at coffee one night across from a guy named Harry Lake. And Harry was, I mean, he'd been sober three days less than God. He was at least 13 years sober at the time. And I know I didn't mean to say this loud enough for Harry here because I was scared of Harry. But I said out loud, well, when I have my slip. And Harry looked at me and said, when you what? I said, well when I don't have my sleep. because I have a real problem with what they said and what I heard. But what I remember is Harry reaching across the table, grabbing me and pulling me and saying, who told you you were going to live? And in the next month, three people that I'd gotten sober with picked up a drink and died. And I do not believe that I was scared into sobriety, but what I believe happened for me is that God intervened and that I heard a message the way I needed to hear a message. And what I know today is that not everybody who comes to Alcoholics Anonymous stays sober, and not everybody Who Has a Slip gets to come back. What I know Today is that every alcoholic eventually takes their last drink. And some of us get our sobriety date on a birthday cake, and some of Us get it on a tombstone. And I want mine on a Birthday cake. I want to be able to come and talk about my last drink I have buried alcoholics who have thought that they could pick up a drink. I went to meetings and I thought I was different And I thought you wouldn't understand And I couldn't share things about myself And if you know what, I was really like And I know today that none of those things are true But at the time, I thought they were I thought if you really knew what I was like And what happened for me Is that I started keeping secrets and lies And what I'm here to share with you tonight If you hear nothing else from me tonight Please hear about secrets and lines Because what I know now What I know is that secrets and lives will kill us It doesn't matter how long we're sober. I started keeping secrets and lies, and I was going to meetings, and I came to the one place where I could ask for help, and I said, no thanks. I'm fine. And at 18 months of sobriety, I was in the same place I'd been on October 9th, 1977. I was suicidal, and then I was homicidal, and I didn't know how to do this deal, and Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't working for me. I had subscribed to the sponsor program called Sponsor DuJour. if you ever talked to me on the phone you'd been my sponsor at that period of time I finally found the perfect sponsor, I got her as a service commitment, friends of mine were moving back to the mainland and she had been their service commitment and I took it over I had to go to the hospital and visit her and read to her I'd read to her and then I'd talk to her a little bit and I realized she was the perfect sponsor for me because she was in a coma and I decided that that was a good way to work the steps with this sponsor in a coma. So, you know, I didn't think I really needed all the steps. I'd heard the steps read in every meeting, of course, and I didn'T think all of them really applied to me because I didn' t think I was powerless or that my life had been unmanageable. And it wasn' t really that I didn''t believe in God. I was really hiding from God. And so I didn ''t need to do the next two steps. But, you know, that fourth step. Now, I know a lot of people are afraid of that fourth step, but I heard somebody talk about those three columns on page 65 and I looked them up in my book. Whenever anybody would quote the book in a meeting, I'd go home and I'd look it up because I knew you wanted to be accurate. And if you weren't, I could come back and tell you at group level. But somebody had talked about those three columns. Three columns on age 65 and how they helped them with their four steps. So I looked it up And I realized that I could do the fourth step. I didn't need to do the first three, but I could do the forth one because right above that in the paragraph right above that a couple words caught my eye. It says grudge list. I could so a grudge list and the three columns who I'm resentful at and what they've done to me and what it affects. So I had no problems coming up with a list of people that I was resentful as and what they did to me. And then what it affects is really just my issues. And I had issues. And so I did this four-step. I wrote out those three columns. Now, if you're doing the steps without a sponsor or with a sponsor in a coma, you might not turn the page. So you won't see the sentence that says to conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. I didn't see that. That's how far I got. And soI did those three columnsthen then I took a trip. I went to Michigan to visit my family and I wentto an AA meeting and I looked around the room, and I picked out a likely hymn. And I asked him if he'd hear my fifth step, and he said, sure, why don't we go to my place? And so we went and did my fifth steps, and I don't think he'd ever done a fifth step. I'm not sure he'd ever heard a fifth steps. I thought he was sober when he heard my fifth step. He thought I did a great fifth step and told me I should go home and do six and seven. Well, I didn't think I really needed six and nine. Six and seven because I hadn't had any character defects or shortcomings on my four-step list. Everyone else had, though. And so I didn't need eight, but nine. I looked at nine and I realized that if any of those people ever got sober, they sure owed me amends. And then I went to meetings and I listened to people talk about 10, 11, and 12 being the maintenance steps, so I was maintaining. And that's where I was at 18 months of sobriety. And I wondered why I was suicidal. I decided I was going to kill myself on a Saturday, and I went to a meeting on Friday night. And I didn't go to a meet-in so that somebody would say something that would save my life. I went to a met-in that Friday night because I was angry at you, and I wanted you all to feel really bad when you opened the paper on Sunday morning and read on the front page that I was dead. Illusions of Grandeur. I really believed that the way I was going to kill myself is going to show up on the front page of the Sunday paper, and And I was going to do it on Sunday, on Saturday. Friday night I went to a meeting and after the meeting I was stomping out of the room because no one had talked to me because I stood in the back with that angry look we're all capable of getting. And on my way out to my car, a guy grabbed me and pushed me up against my car and he said, you know, Penny, if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to die. He didn't tell me I was gonna get drunk or I was just gonna get loaded. He told me I wasn't gonna die. And I looked at him at the way an alcoholic woman knows how to look at an alcoholic man, and I said, I don't know what you're talking about. And I cried all the way home, and I didn't kill myself the next day just to prove that he was wrong. And shortly after that, God put a woman in my life that believed that recovery from the disease of alcoholism is based on the 12 steps as they're outlined in our big book. And I made the mistake of introducing her to my sponsor in a coma. She suggested I might want to get a sponsor that was actively going to meetings. She helped me find one. She helpedme find a sponsor that believed that recovery from the disease of alcoholism is based on the 12 steps as they're outlined in our big book, and I got a sponsor that started taking me through the steps of AA in our Big Book. She took me through Chapter 3 for the first step because on the first page of Chapter 3 it says that we had to admit to our innermost cells that we were alcoholic. This is the first stop in recovery. And then she took me into Chapter 4 for the second step, and I told her I didn't believe in God. And she said, that's okay. Can you believe that I believe in god? And she gave me permission to use her god. For a long time, I prayed to other people's gods. And then She took me in to Chapter 5 for the third and fourth step and into Chapter 6 for 5 through 11 and then into Chapter 7 for Step 12. And I got sober at a time and in a place where we had the opportunity to do a lot of 12-step calls. and I wound up surrounded by people that are active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they've got me into the middle of a lifeboat. And as Sterling said earlier today, you know, it's hard to fall overboard when you're in the middle of the boat, and at two-and-a-half years of sobriety, I had a job offer on the mainland, and I took it, and I moved to Washington, D.C., and I lived there for a while, traveled on business a lot, and my business brought me to California, in 86. And after I'd been out there about six months, I decided to ask for relocation. And my family relocated, or my business relocated me and then they downsized me. But before that happened, I'd done single for a long time. I'd come home shortly after I had gotten sober with that. And I was still married to that second husband. I came home and I found a note from him that he was gone out of town on business. He'd be back in a week, and we need to talk. That's 24 years ago. He's not home yet. So I've been single for a long time in AA, and I've been active in the program. I came out to California, and I started going to meetings, and I got the home group that I have today. And there were a lot of old-timers that went to that home group at that time. Most of them have moved to other parts of the country now, but there were great people that went to that meeting and I loved it because we talked about the steps and the traditions. We talked about putting the traditions into practice in my life. What it means to have unity in my meeting and in my home and in my job. And what's an ultimate authority in my home and my meeting in my job? And how do we take a group conscience? And how am I part of a team? And what does anonymity mean in those places? And I got to see that the traditions are just another set of steps for me. And as I said earlier, they help me to live with you. And I was going to that meeting and there was a very nice man going to that meeting. And he asked me out and we went out. And he's a nice guy and sober a long time. And he has to marry him. And I said yes. And I married my third husband. And we were very visible as an AA couple. We did a lot of AA functions together. He's very active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and just a really nice guy. He's got a great story. He got sober in a penitentiary, and I'm an ex-cop. We are people who would not normally mix. And AA was good. And I became what my friend Doug calls a rim runner. I was just kind of running around the outside rim of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd been sober a while, and I was complacent. I had a step study and a tradition study for a home group. And every time we talked about the fifth step, something happened for me because we'd get to that fifth step And inevitably, somebody would talk about take it to the grave stuff. About stuff that when you do your fifth step that you decide, well, you know, I don't really need to tell them that. Nobody needs to know that. And every time we did a fifth step, I felt uncomfortable in that meeting. And what happened for me was I started planning trips out of town the weekend we were doing a fifth stop. And I didn't see that either. For my 19th birthday, I had a sponsor. I wasn't using a sponsor, I wasn'T really sponsored. I had started doing a meeting in my home for my sponsees once a month and we were going through the steps in the book and we Were on the fourth step and I asked each of them to I didn't know what was going to happen when I started that meeting and when we started studying the steps but when we got to the fourth Step I asked Each of my sponcees to write a fourth step And I told them that I'd do it, too. And the weekend before we met again, I was at a retreat in Southern California with Gloria D. And I figured, well, since the meeting's on Monday, I better do my four-step because I told my sponsees that I would. And so I started writing my four step and I went down to breakfast and I asked Gloria if she would hear my fifth step that day. And I realized that I had a lot of stuff that I needed to talk to a sponsor about, but a lot OF it was about a sponsor. And so I did my fifth step with Gloria and I came home and I was talking to my friend Polly P., who spoke here for you last year. And I was taking to Polly that evening and I told her what was going on and that I thought I needed a sponsor and I didn't know anybody in the area that I felt comfortable with. And she said, well, how about Peg M.? And I said, well, you know, Peg lives in Bellevue and Nebraska, and I don't really want an out-of-town sponsor. Later that evening, I was talking with my friend Sharon B., and Sharon said, you now, if anything ever happened to Clancy, I'd get Peg Martin as my sponsor. And I thought, yeah, but Peg's in Nebraska, and I really don't want an our town sponsor. Next day, I talked to my friend Jill, and she said, Peg is really a great sponsor. And I though, no, that's funny. And so I called Peg and asked her if she'd sponsor me, and she gave me an assignment and asked me to call her back in two days. And I called her back two days later and told her the results of my assignment and asked her if she'd sponsor me. She told me what she expects of her sponsees. For out-of-town sponsee, she expects, first of all, that I'm willing to be sponsored. She expects that I go to at least three meetings a week. I generally go to more. I have to call her at least once a week, I call her on Thursday mornings at 830. I am on the phone to my sponsor on Thursdays at 8 30. I have do you have a service commitment? I have be active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have to be sponsoring other people. And I see some of my sponsees are sitting here nodding and looking at their sponsee's going, See? See? That's why I tell you you have to do that. And the other thing that happened when I asked Peg to be my sponsor, it was my 19th birthday the day I asked her that. And I said, Peg, I'm 19 years sober and I'm low maintenance. If anybody ever asks you to be their sponsor and says they're low maintenance, run as fast as you can. And for the next 11 months, I called Peg every Thursday at 830. Hi, Peg, I'm fine. Yep, see you in October. Hi, Peg, yeah, I am fine. Oh, yeah this is going on or that's going on. Yep, I can handle it. Okay, yep, I will do that. In October of 1997, all of that stuff that I hadn't talked about, all of those secrets and lies came home to roost. and I had done some very unprincipled things. I had taken some actions that I was ashamed of. I didn't think I could talk about it with anybody because what would people think? What would happen if people found out? I hurt people that never deserve to be hurt And I finally called Peg and talked to her about it, and she told me what I had to do. She said I needed to write a four-step. And she told me I needed to work the steps. What I heard her say was write a fourth step. Now, I normally live on six and seven, and you know, I tried doing the steps cafeteria style when I was new, and it didn't work when I Was New. I've got to tell you, it doesn't work when you're an old-timer either. Because I tried going from six and seven to four, and I couldn't get my four-stepped written. And I was driving to the airport on a Friday afternoon, and I was talking to God. And I couldn't figure out why I couldn'T write this fourth step. And I realized that it was because I hadn't done the first three steps. So I did the first two steps. The first three sets on the way to the air port. My God has a great sense of humor. I got to San Francisco airport. My flight had been delayed an hour and a half. I'm sitting in the gate area with my carry-on luggage, and all I have in my carry-on luggage is a notebook, a pen, a big book, and a deck of cards. And I put the deck of cars away. And I started writing my four-step. And I wrote my four step all the way from San Francisco to Okoboji, Iowa. And I went to a conference in Okobojai, Iowa, and then I got on a plane and came home. And I'm really grateful there was no one sitting next to me on those flights because I just wrote. And I would love to tell you that, you know, I looked at myself right away, and I didn't do that for a long time. It was about him, and it was about her, and het was about them, and et was about you. And it was about everybody but me. And I finally, an hour and a half out of San Francisco, wrote the sentence. It's not about them. It's about me. And I've got to get rid of secrets and lies. And I'm not going to live if I don't talk to somebody about this. And I called Peg when I got home, and I did a fifth step. And she was in the Bay Area a couple weeks later, and I finished it up. And I had to go to Glenn, and And I had to tell him that I had to leave the marriage. My husband is, my favorite ex-husband is an incredible man because he completely understood and he knew what was going on. And he said, I know you do. What can I do to help you? And what happened was when I talked to Peg about what was gonna happen as a result of what I'd done, she told me that no matter what happened, that I would never talk bad about him. that if I needed to talk bad about Glenn, that I would call her. I would not talk with a sponsee about it. I would Not Talk in Meetings About It. I Would Not Talk With My Friends About It I Would Talk With my Sponsor About It And I don't know what direction Glenn got from his sponsor, but I know both Glenn and his sponsor and I know that Glenn did not talk bad about me to anybody either. And as a result of that, Glenn and I are great friends today. I spoke with him this evening. He says hello and sends his greetings. He especially says hello to you, Dave. And they're brother-sponsees. I left my marriage, and I had to make some major changes in my life. And what happened when I was going through that is Peg gave me a passage out of the book to read, and it's in the chapter, The Family Afterword, which we don't read very often. It's on page 124, and it says, Cling to the thought that in God's hands the dark past is the greatest possession you have, the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them. And what's happened for me is that a friend of Glenn's, one of Glenn Sponsee's talked to me a couple months after this all happened, about four or five months. He had heard me speak recently just before that in a conference and he said, you know, you're not talking about that stuff from the podium and I'm concerned about you because I think if you don't talk about it from the stadium you're going to die. He said, but don't take my word for it. You've got to talk to your sponsor about it. I can't tell you those things. He said, so I think you should talk to Peg. And I called Peg and I knew she was going to say, no, you can't talk about that from the podium. Peg didn't say that. And what happened for me is that I really don't know what kind of a message I carry from up here. And I certainly don't have a lot of time to do that. And I don't really know what type of message I carried for newcomers. I'm not here to scare you. but what I really want to do is talk to the people that are in middle sobriety because I want to tell you that I know I'm not unique you know this is a this is the new fourth edition of the big book and I go to a big book meeting on Friday nights and all of us most of us have the new forth edition so we sit there and we read and we highlight and we underline and we share but I've noticed all of a sudden starting with new books at the same time is we all came here thinking we're so different. We're all highlighting the same thing in the book. We're all making notes in the margins. We're all underlining stuff that we've already highlighted, and I thought I was different, and what I am is I'm just like you. I'm selfish, self-centered, self-seeking. I want to be liked. I don't want you to know that I'm not perfect, and I know I'm not perfect and I know you're not perfect. I just don't want you to point it out to me. I'm afraid that you're not going to like me. And I know that there are people here that aren't going to like me I'm worried that you'll find out that I had secrets and lies that there was stuff going on that I was afraid for people to find out and what I know is I'm not unique and I know this because of people who come up and talk to me after I speak and I'm here to tell you that if you're sitting out there and you think you don't have anybody to talk to But if there's something going on and you're afraid to talk to anybody here about it, because what will people think? Please talk to me. I'll give you my card. You can call me. You can e-mail me. Certainly, first I would recommend that you try and talk to your sponsor about it. But I know that in a room this size, there's someone that is scared to death of what's going to happen if people find out what I did or what I've been doing or what haven't shared. And you're the one I'm talking to. because secrets and lies can kill us, and I know that because I was on the edge of a lifeboat. I was flipping over, and I was going to slide under, and nobody was going notice. When I came to that dark night of the soul at 20 years of sobriety, I thought I was gonna have to leave AA. What's happened for me is that I had a sponsor who loved me. I had sponsees who loved my. I had sister sponsees who loved me, who called and emailed, who had no clue what was going on and told me they cared about me. What Alcoholics Anonymous has given me is people who love me and they don't even have to. And I didn't have to go to that place to find that out. That's just the path that I took. You don't haveと go there. What I know today is that I am so blessed in the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous. This really isn't the message that I want to carry. I really want to have this nice, cheery message that people are going to go home and say, God, wasn't she great? What I know is that Alcoholics Anonymous has saved my life. Sponsorship has saved me. Sponsored has saved both being sponsored and being a sponsor. People have called me, and I think that Sterling referred to this also. So, you know, right about the time that I'd think, oh, I'm not going to do this deal anymore, the phone would ring and stupid me, I'd pick it up. Maria talked about it when she was sharing this morning, you now. I think I'll just knife myself in the gut, but maybe I'll answer the phone first, you know. And it's somebody on the other line who needs somebody to be of service. I'm of service today. I do H&I. I go into both the women's penitentiary and our women's jail, and I don't do that because I'm a good person. I do that porque me hace sentir bien, porque salgo de ahí en un alto. Soy una servicio en mi grupo de casa, soy la persona de la literatura. Tengo comisiones de servicio hoy. Soy el liaison de H&I para nuestro grupo interno, y si quieres aprender sobre las tradiciones, entra en nuestro grupo. Me encanta Alcoholics Anonymous. I am in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. My favorite ex-husband is one of my dearest friends today. We talk regularly. I have a good life today, and it's because of AA. It's because OF Sponsors. It's Because OF Spontorship. It's Beacuse OF People Like You. I am so grateful to be here, and I want to close this passage. It used to be on page 312 in the book. In the fourth edition, it's on page 276. The last 24 years of my life have been rich and meaningful. I've had my share of problems, heartaches, and disappointments because that is life. But also I have known a great deal of joy and a peace that is the handmaiden of an inner freedom. I have a wealth of friends, and with my AA friends, an unusual quality of fellowship. For to these people I am truly related, first through mutual pain and despair and later through mutual objectives and newfound faith and hope. And as the years go by working together, sharing our experiences with one another and also sharing a mutual trust, understanding, and love without strings, without obligation, We acquire relationships that are unique and priceless. There is no more aloneness with that awful ache so deep in the heart of every alcoholic that nothing before could ever reach it, that ache is gone and never need return again. Now there is a sense of belonging, of being wanted and needed and loved. In return for a bottle and a hangover, I have been given the keys to the kingdom. Thank you.