The Dry Drunk Years: Pulling the Shade Down on Every Feeling – Billie S.

hi everybody my name is Billy stork and I'm an alcoholic I'm real excited to be here today and I want to thank Harry and Cindy in the committee for allowing me to get this great pleasure and come here I have to tell you that last night when and they announced that Billy S. from Pasadena was going to be the spiritual speaker, I got real scared. And people said to me, Well, you know, it's about time you get over that scared. Are you still scared? And this is the fifth one of these deals that I've done, and I didn't get over the scaredness yet. So I don't know if I'm ever going to get over this scaredness. I like to start my talks by telling you about how I feel because for so long I didn't know anything about how I feel and I was talking to milk on Friday night and he was talking to me about name the feelings most of the time it's like two days before I can name the feelings two days later I know what the feeling is but when I'm in it it's real hard so the more I practice when I share telling my feelings the more I get to know what what they are. And what I'm really realizing is that most of my recovery today is about feelings, and it's about putting adequate behavior with those feelings. Because for so long, when I got here, if you asked me about feelings, I would tell you about my headache, my toe ache, my backache. I had absolutely no idea about feelings almost my My whole life, what I did with feelings is I just pulled the shade right down on the feelings. Feelings that came from everywhere. Feelings That Came From Nowhere. Feelings THAT I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE AND I DIDNT KNOW HOW TO COPE WITH THEM. And what I begin to know right now today, I'm learning a whole lot of things about feelings. And what i'm learning to know today is life is feelings and I am feelings. And I can't heal anything that I can feel. And it seems like everything I do in life is to get the feeling. Everything I do is for feelings. So the more I can identify those feelings and the more I can put adequate behavior. See, I didn't know how to put adequate behavior for so much of my life. People said about me, she just doesn't act right. Well, you know, how can you act right when you don't identify feelings. The other thing, I came here to Alcoholics Anonymous and I was told to live in the now. It's very difficult to live in the know when I can't identify feeling. And it's taken me a long, long time to do that. I was 10 years in August and I didn't even start identifying feelings until, I guess us until a couple of years ago. And where I started identifying feelings is by sitting in participation meetings and listening to your feelings. When I could listen to your feelings from those feelings, then I started slowly identifying my feelings. And the other thing is, you know, I do medical sales and I have to drive around. Sometimes I have have to stop the car and say, how do you feel, Billy? Because I don't know how to get the feelings from here to here so that I can have a choice in life. I never had any choices in life, what happened is I would just react. Whatever came along, this was out there reacting because I didn't know who to identify those feelings because I pulled the shade down on them, I had to drink through them and I had stuff them right down. And what I know today day is feelings will lie to me. I can wake up in the morning and be in the shower and think, Larry, my boyfriend over here is screwing around on me. And you know, I know that's not true. But when I can identify the feelings, then I get the choice whether I want to change the feelings or not. And the other thing I'm finding out, feelings just are. You know, society and I grew up with the fact that I shouldn't have anger, that I should not hate my mother, that all these feelings were right feelings and wrong feelings. And today I find out that feelings just are. Feelings are okay. I think it was Thursday night. I had been gone for two days and I was going out to talk in a meeting and I had about like one hour and I hadn't seen Larry for a couple of days and my feelings really hurt because he got on the phone and started talking to somebody. And I wanted to be talking to him, so I snitted out of the door and he came running after her and he said, are you mad? And I said, well, I couldn't say I was mad, of course, because I didn't know that yet. But I said well, just feel discounted. And he said well,I have things to do. AndI got to say to him well, it's okay. It's okay if I feel discount and it'sokay if you, you know, if you want to have things to do. And we get to have a relationship like that today where it's okay for us to be different. It's okay for us for us, to have our feelings. I am the daughter of an alcoholic, the wife of two alcoholics, an alcoholic myself and I have five drug addicted or alcoholic children. And I have an 18 year old granddaughter that's out there. She's She's been in about three recovery homes, and she comes in and out, and she can't even get this deal yet. And I talk a little bit about the family disease of alcoholism because that's what my life is. And God, it doesn't tell you about all my aunts and my uncles. And when they came out with that deal about the genetic things of alcoholismo, I could have told them that a long, long time ago. if you don't relate to the family disease of alcoholism and if your family isn't riddled with it, I hope that you will listen for the feelings and listen for their recovery. I was the oldest of four children. My father was a periodic alcoholic and my mother was very, very ill and I was like the top sergeant. I bossed everybody around. I made sure that the little kids had the right color socks on. They had the lunch money. They went to school on time And our house was one of those typical alcoholic families that was full of chaos, struggle, drama, fights, brawls, and all the nightmares that go along with the disease of alcoholism. And we never had any consistency in our house. Never ever knew what was going to be happening. One day I came home from school and my father was passed out in the front yard. and I went over, I was always real ashamed and real embarrassed so I didn't want anybody on the outside to be seeing what was going on so I ran over there and I shook him and I tried to wake him up but he wouldn't wake up so I went in the house, pretty soon it began raining real real hard and I gathered up my mother who was ill and my four little sisters and we went out there and we drugged and we pulled and we shoved him in the war shed and we covered him up and went in the house. And the incredible part of that story to me today is that nobody said one single word about it. Never talked to our mother about Daddy's alcoholism. We never talked to each other about it and we sure didn't talk to our teachers because that would have been disloyal and we loved our father. I lived this life that was full of broken promises and cover-ups. Some of the broken promises, you can have a new pair of shoes next payday And next payday came around and my father would be a drunk. And some of the cover-ups, my father isn't home or my father's too sick. He couldn't say he was drunk in the back room and that he couldn't go to work because he didn't want to tell people that, see? And I guess the biggest broken promise of all was I'll never touch another drop to drink. I'll Never Drink Again. Over and over and over again he promised us that. and over and over he got drunk and I didn't understand. I didn' t understand it until many, many, many years later when I used to get these horrible, terrible, bad hangovers. I would be so hungover my eyes would be just swollen completely shut. I'd be so sick and I would wake up in the morning and promise myself I'm never, ever going to touch it again. I'm not going to drink again until about four o'clock that very same day, the gnawing had come right down in the pit of my stomach and God I'd be drunk all over again. And I'd be out there, I couldn't remember who I was with the night before, what I did, where my car was. And it would be over and over, no self-esteem and over andover and over again I'd do that. And now today I know that I'm not responsible for my alcoholism, but I am responsible for my recovery. I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when I was 13 years old. Chuck C. was his speaker. My father said he could relate to that man because he was a periodic like he was. I got my first description of an alcoholic. An alcoholic is one who just takes one little teaspoon of alcohol into to his system and he has to get drunk. Well, you see, that was the description of my father's alcoholism because he was a periodic. Since I've come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I know that it's not how long you drink. It's not what you drink, it's not when you drink it, it' s not how old you are, it is not how much you drink... The bottom line is if you have to continue drinking and it causes problems in any area of your life. My father stayed in that meeting for one year. And at one year, they gave him this little serenity plaque. And I mean, I've been dragging that thing around for years and patting it on my wall because it's a reminder to me that I don't ever have one drink left. Because after one year he decided maybe he wasn't a real alcoholic. And he decided that he'd go out and try to do some more drinking. drinking. And over the next ten years, he was always going to come back to Alcoholics Anonymous. He was always gonna get his life together and he was always gonna do this thing. Sometimes he'd get six months, sometimes he'd get six weeks. But he never really made it back here. And after about ten years he started talking about dying because he had to drink every single solitary day. He had to have those drinks. And my father became a hallucinating, insane drunk that had to drink every day. And it took a long, long, Long time with the funny little animals and the DTs. And I was a nurse by then and I was giving him tomato juice. It took a Long time for him to wake up one morning to finally be free from this horrible disease. and you know that I know that I stand here today because of watching that and nursing him back together when I was 14 years old I became pregnant my mother died and I got married all in that order I married a guy who was not an alcoholic and he just loved the women neither one of us knew how to make a commitment by the time I was 20 years old I was eight months pregnant with my fourth child, and he ran off with another woman. And as I look back on it now, I told you about all that chaos and all that stuff, but as I Look Back On It Now, I have to look at the good part of that life. You see, I lived in all that Chaos, but I also learned how to survive by pulling the shade down on all those feelings, by not trusting enough to share all that Stuff, By denying all that stuff, I became a survivor. And I learned how to just adjust to whatever was going on. And I realized that I better take care of me because nobody else was going to take care of me. So I needed to takecare of me so I learned a lot of good things that really helped me with those four little babies and being 20 years old. And I don't know, we survived it some way. I married another guy and we moved down to Indio and this guy drank beer and a lot of it. And whenever I drank, I thought that you drink to black out and to hide all this pain. So most all the time, I didn't drink very much, but whatever I did, I drank until I blacked out. One night I got in a fight with this guy and I went for a walk and I blacked up. The police picked me up. I'm 23 years old. Police picked me out, threw me me in jail and next morning I got bailed out of jail. Next morning I had to go to court and the judge said, Billy Jean Swanson and he pounds that cavil down and he fined me $25 for drunk walking. And I was mortified and I was embarrassed and I was ashamed. I was so ashamed. See, I never wanted to be an alcoholic like my father was. Never. So I went home and I decided that what I'm going to do is I'm not ever going to drink again, and then I won't be an alcoholic. And so for the next 13 years, I didn't have anything to drink. What I also decided was I didn' t want to be an alcoholic, and I sure didn' T want to marry to one. So I became totally obsessed with my husband's bottle. I begged, I pleaded, I threw the booze down the sink. I had another child because I thought maybe if he had his own kid that would do it. I did everything I could to get him to stop his drinking. I became the little angel, and I became the little saint, and he was the bad guy, and I became the martyr and the victim. Poor Billy, married to this old drunk with five kids. Poor, poor me, you know? That was the real story of my life. And it's real hard for me to tell you about my feelings, because I've told you almost my whole whole life I just pulled that shade down. I heard a description in Alcoholics Anonymous that talks about an alcoholic, a description of an alcoholic. An alcoholic is one with a great thirst for wholeness and that was me. I was always searching for something, looking for something to fill up the empty, lonely, needy, so very, very unworthy, unworthiness places way down in here. I was always looking for something. And what I decided to do is maybe if I found a God. Well, you know, I went to three of the major religions to find this God because I don't do anything just a little bit. And I got baptized in three of the Major Religions. And when I found out that I had to measure up, I found the God that I had to be good enough for. One of those 100% perfect gods, that I had to 100% be perfect for. And I had quit smoking and I had to quit drinking and you know what? I couldn't do that. And now I couldn´t quit smoking and then I couldn' quit drinking. It just didn't work for me. And I found a God that i had to measure up to and a God, that i have to be good enough. And i know there's a different God now today. But that's what I found at that time. In the meantime, my children are growing up. And my children are growing crooked just like I did. See, I didn't know how to be a mother any more than my mother knew how to a mother or than my children know how to be mother because we have all these generations of this stuff. And my children growing up crooked and they're doing their drugs and they are doing their pregnancies and they doing all their stuff. My husband passed out in the back room and And I haven't had a drink for 13 years. And I feel this empty, lonely, needy, so godly, so unworthy places. And I remember walking down the stairs and getting under the seat of his car and giving out his bottle of vodka and drinking the whole thing. And, of course, the paramedics came because I got so drunk. And I had taken this bottle of Darvon. And the par medics came. They took me to Parkside West. That's the psych ward in Covina. And I stayed there for three months in a locked ward. And everybody thought I was crazy because I hadn't been drinking all those years. And I thought I Was Crazy, too. And my insurance finally ran out of there and I got out of that hospital. And I got rid of that husband. I mean, I left that husband because it was all his fault. Everything was his fault and I was sure that when I got Rid of Him, everything was going to be okay. Okay, so I moved into this apartment and I'm living in this apartment. And since I've come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I know that you can wake up in the morning and that your whole life can be totally different. On this morning I woke up, you know, this was the worst day of my entire life. And having gone through this day, I know that I can go through any day or anything the rest of my life because there was a policeman at my door and he told me that my 20-year-old son Bobby had been murdered, had been stabbed to death. And see, almost my whole life I lived in denial. Denial is ya-ya land. Ya, it's going to get better. Ya, its going to be better. No, it never happened. I lived in this denial, and I knew that it wasn't going to be him. I knew the kid was going to walk in the door any minute. I did what a mother does to bury her son. I went up to Forest Lawn and made the arrangements. And on the third day, the coroner had his body because it was over holiday. And on my third day I went there and I looked, and oh my God, it was him. And I cursed God. I said, God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you done this to me? Why have You taken the most precious thing in my whole life, in my world, and that's my child? And I curse God. And if anybody, not only did I have that emotional pain, if anybody talked to me about it, I would turn my back about God. And I got this pain right here in my heart like a knife that's twisting and turning and twisting and turning. Just like instead of him, they knifed me and it stayed there a long, long time. And I couldn't pull the shade down on all the feelings of anger and rage and guilt. And so what happened was I started drinking every single solitary day, still trying to look good on the outside, I'm just nuts on the inside, just crazy on the inside. About that time, I got picked up on a 502 and I got thrown in the jail because I was drinking so much. And I remember I had called my current boyfriend to come and get me and he wouldn't come and get me. And I remember there was a tall, beautiful woman and she was standing over in the corner. She was laughing at me. She said, you know, you give it away way for free and your boyfriend won't even come and get you. And I charge plenty and my pimp's coming to get me. And her pimp did come and get her. And, I stayed in the jail all night and I rode one of those green wire buses to court the next day and I rushed. I went before that judge and, you know, this time I rationalized it and I minimized it. Anybody with all my problems when they do the same thing? So I got out of that deal. And see, I decided, well, the God thing didn't work and I'm living in this apartment and what do I need now but I need to have a man. And I didn't do that just a little bit either, finding a man, see. I got love and sex all mixed up. I came here to this program and I totally empty broken-hearted one of the biggest things is I did not know how to do relationships for a long time I have a hundred friends out there but if anybody anybody starts to get close to me I get real scared and I push them away or I do something to get him away because I don't know how they have relationships and here I was a couple of years ago, and I was like about eight years sober, and I was deciding that, you know, I don't even need a relationship. I had had so many bad relationships in my life, I decided I didn't need one, that I'd be okay by myself. And I got to being okay by myself, and I got into loving Billy and taking care of Billy. And then one night I read in the 12 and 12 at our 12-step book, at our 12- step study, that every person has a compelling desire for a spiritual, mental, and physical relationship with another person. And then it said God fashioned us that way. So wow! So then I met Larry about that time. And we both agreed that we wanted to have an intimate, close relationship. Neither one of us had ever had one. So we want to really try this. And I tell you, it's been a hard journey. It's been an incredible journey. It's bene wonderful to have a very best friend, to have somebody that supports me and is in my corner and shares everything with me. It's ben wonderful, but we've done some of the things. And one of the thing I didn't tell you about feelings was that what's so awesome is to tell the truth about those feelings in love. Telling the truth about those feeling has been then just awesome. I don't want to tell you the truth about my feelings because I might hurt your feelings, or you might not like me, or you're not going to do what I want you to do. So I don'T want to TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT MY FEELINGS. But now that I know that I tell the truth in love about my feeling, you know what happens is my relationship gets better, my work gets better. All kinds of things. So that's one of the things that Larry and I do, is we tell the truth about our feelings. Is it okay? Tell the truth about our feeling. Oh, it's better. Okay, good. Yeah, it was hard for me too, because it was coming right back at me. Anyway, so we have these deals that we made. One of the of things that we did is we decided to have a 30-day clause. We're both alcoholics. And the first thing we do, we get in a fight and we want to cut and run. See? But what we've decided to do is just to stay for 30 days. So often I would get in this fight and I would want to cat and run and the next morning I'd wake up, I'd want to get back. It was too late. So now we have this 30-Day Clause. And we also have a commitment. And the commitment isn't to each other, the commitment is to ourselves. Because we want to have this intimate relationship. For so many years, oh I said about making a commitment, sure. But I was always looking out the side because I knew that this one wasn't going to work and I was you know, I was looking for the one that was going to come next. The good one that's going to come first. And the other thing that we do is we allow each other to be different. different. We allow each other to be individuals. The way I like to explain it is that it's like you have two pillars that are out here holding up one roof, and these two pillars get to have their own life, they get to be different, and they get the have their own ideas. And you put these two pillar over here together like this, and you know what happens? The roof starts rocking like this! But you keep those pillars out here when two Two individuals that have a solid foundation to build this relationship on. And the other thing is, we have just a lot of fun. We both do our talks in AA, and we just have lots of fun in Alcoholics Anonymous and lots of joy because we didn't get sober for anything but to have fun and to enjoy our lives. So I don't know where I am right now with my story because I got... See, those relationships are still doing it to me. anyway oh yeah um so i got out of jail and i'm living in this apartment and i've seen all these guys and um um and i i met this guy yeah that's what happened i got rid of that oh i know what What happened is I got rid of that guy that wouldn't come and get me out of jail. I got ready to go. I got married to that guy, and I met another guy, and he told me he was an alcoholic, and he hadn't had a drink in eight years, and he took Anabuse. He didn't come to AA. He took Anibuse. And so he didn't like my drinking much, but he put up with it, and I thought, geez, it would really be nice. It would be super if I had somebody to drink with. And when I was a little girl, he was Daddy's little darling when he was drinking. And one night I came home from a sales meeting and he met me at the door with a Manhattan and I was in my glory for about two days or maybe three days. This guy was a gentle, soft-spoken pediatrician, baby doctor. And I need to tell you, after a couple of days of drinking, he was a raving, raging maniac that took his clothes off in public. It was unbelievable. what he did. It was unbelievable. So it only took about, I mean, it took about two weeks and we had to take him down and put him in a care unit. And he went to the care unit and the first Saturday night I went down to the hospital and I got all these guys and I took them down to this Lark Allen meeting, this meeting in West Covina and it's a big speaker meeting and I took him back to the hotel and I went home and I looked up in the the liquor cabinet and I saw that booze and I said, now he is an alcoholic and we're going to have to throw all this booze away so I better drink it. And I tried. I tried to drink it all and my daughter came home at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm trying to kill myself like I always do when I'm drunk. She took me down to the care unit and dumped me in the care union. And that daughter dumped me into the care units because she went through most of my alcoholism she dumped me in that care unit she really never had anything at all to do with Alcoholics Anonymous she had a lot of resentments and a lot of stuff going on with me now I've made my amends to her but I don't didn't think she heard him she wouldn't have anything to do about Alcoholics Anonymous and last August was my 10th birthday and I gave myself this little birthday party and I almost didn't invite her at the last minute because Because she never had anything to do with anything. And at the last minute I sent her an invitation. And she came and she brought me a card that said, I'm proud to be your daughter. And she went to the meeting that I was sharing at that night. And she gave me my cake. And our relationship is healed because of this program and because I get to be an example to her. And out of all my children, you know, I have five drug-addicted children and all the rest of them are in a program but that one. And see, she's God's now. I get to allow her to be God's kid. And all I get to do is be a wonderful, good example to her and I never give up hope. Never give up hope that God will work in her life to show her that there's a way to live where she doesn't have to drink and she doesn' t have to use drugs. Anyway, um, I'm getting lost. So she came to that birthday party, and can't you tell me where I am, somebody? Oh, I'm in the care unit. That's right. Oh, good. The care unit said they could get us sober, but in order to stay sober, we had to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. and we had to work a program, and we had to get a sponsor. The next week I went back to that Lark Ellen meeting and I met a sponsor, I met A Lady and a man gave me a little piece of paper with the name Daisy on it and I was scared to call her, real scared to call Her, but I decided I wanted to be sober, and I called Her up and she told me I could meet Her at a meeting called Stepping Stones in Covina and I meant Her over at that meeting and She said that She would be my sponsor if I would do two things If I would agree to go to that step study, and if I would call her before I drank. I'm sure glad that I did both of those things, especially the step study. I went to that steps study in Covina for seven years, and now I go to one in Pasadena. And what I find in steps studies, I find people that are committed to sobriety. I find peopIe that want to be sober. If you don't belong to a steps study, I highly encourage you to go through one. And if you don't have a sponsor, I highly encourage you to get one because this lady, she loved me unconditionally. She offered me help. She offered me hope and she just loved me. You know, she died a couple of years ago and I always told her, I want to grow up and I want to be just exactly like you are. And when she died, a couple years ago, I went down to the hospital and she said, you know, Billy, I can't make any more 12 step calls and I said oh yes you can because um whenever I go out to share I'm going to share the recovery that you gave me that's really what I hope to do today to share that recovery because that's why I'm here and I know that's Why You're Here and this lady was a real stepper she believed really in the steps she said that I drank because of fear anger and guilt if I wanted to get the promises of this program, the freedom and the growth and the happiness that I was going to have to work those steps. And right away she had me coming on step one. She had me writing, why did I think I was an alcoholic and why was my life unmanageable? You know, I knew why I was a woman. I was not an alcoholic. She told me that step one was the surrender step. Step one was a defeated step. step. Step one was the step that when I just was sick and tired of living that way, and I didn't want to live that way anymore, and I would have the courage to not drink, that it took the courage not to drink, and that I didn t have any more excuses and no more rewards. See, I wanted to give myself, I would be good for a little while, and then I'd give give myself a reward. I didn't have any more excuses and no more rewards. She said that if I had one little excuse lurking in the back of my mind, see, I have a Harvard attorney up here that tells me just one more time, just one More drink, I'll quit tomorrow on and on and on. But she said, I don't have one more excuse. If I had One little excuse Lurking in the back of my mind I would drink again And for me to drink again Is nothing but death or insanity And that my life didn't have any balance My higher power My papa That's where I get my balance That's the one that relieves me from the insanity And you know how It's just a real, real simple thing But it's not a real Real easy thing And the simple thing is and the simple thing is is just to give up the struggle give up the struggle you know it's so easy see where there's a hurricane there's this big hurricane whirling around where the quiet place is is right in the middle of it and it's just if we just give up the struggle and trust the papa trust the higher power then it works but I had a terrible time trusting my higher power told you that I cursed God God, completely cursed God. But I kept on going to this step study that she told me about. The step study was a recovery house for women. And those women had lost their health. They lost their hope. They Lost their children. They Lossed their jobs. They lost everything. And as I sat in that step study every Tuesday night, listening to those women and watching those women, it was about nine months and it was Bobby, my son's birthday and i was crazy i woke up in the morning and i was just crazy why me poor me i knew i just knew like that young kid knew if i could just get to that step study i would be safe and i would and i got to that step study and i sat down on the chair and i remember getting to that stuff study i remember concentrating my foot on the gas pedal because i knew if I could just buy those liquor stores and get a drink that would get rid of that terrible pain down in here. I got into that step study and I sat on the chair and the women in that meeting, they listened to me and they loved me and they said, Billy, if you just don't drink one day at a time your life will get better and my life did get better and my little lady, she taught me about death she taughtme that I had to let his spirit go that it's a physical law of our universe that energy never dies and then he's just up there he wrote a poem before he died and the poem was I am who I am and I had that put on his gravestone because you see I believe he is and I believe he's probably up there watching this and I'll see him again someday and so I sat in that step study and and I kept watching those ladies and there was a young woman by the name of Cindy Cindy and Cindy had been through that house a 90-day program two times. And Cindy could not stay sober. And every time I went into the meeting, she had the most helpless, hopeless, lost look on her face that you have ever seen. And one night I went in to the meeting and her hand would be up every time because she couldn't even get 30 days. And one day I went to the house and I said to her, Cindy, Cindy what's happened to you? And she said, I don't know, but I haven't smiled in so long that my face hurts. And you know what? That's the miracle that we all get to be part of. That's a miracle that's we get to part of and it's real, real exciting. And I saw Cindy down in Pomona about a year ago and she still got the lights on. She still got this deal. And it's exciting to watch people grow and to be there with them. And I continued to watch those women. Something was relieving them of their alcoholism. Something was relieved in me of my alcoholism Something was getting their lives back together, their jobs back together. Everything was coming back together and as I watched them I knew that there had to be some kind of a higher power and today I know there's no difference in the pains and the joys and the tears and all of those things that we have. I know there is no difference. I know a lady who says, if you want to see the face of God, just look around. And I just love that because that's how I found my God. And now my little lady, she's telling me that I've got to work that fourth step. Real hard for me to workthat fourth step I'm a perfectionist. I want to write everything out just perfect. And I kept procrastinating. She was really smart. She got this little tablet. It was about this big. big. And she had me just write, just write the good stuff and the bad stuff, she said. She helped me with the good staff. I didn't know much good about me, but she helped me. And she used to tell me that some of my defects of character were going to turn into assets. Today I believe that, but I didn' t know it. She told me just to turn the page and never look back. And I kept turning the page, and I wrote for five or six months. Sometimes times I'd drive around and have to put a little note down there, and I'd just turn the page, and just turn the page and just turned the page. And finally, after about six months, I took it down. I was real scared, real ashamed, real embarrassed. And I handed it to her. And she said, oh no, you've got to read it to me. And so I read it to her, and she shared some of her stuff. And afterwards, she said to me, do you believe that God can forgive you for all these things? And I said, yeah, I believe that. And she said, well then you never get to talk about it again. She said, we alcoholics, we like to pick at our sores and go on and on and off about it and it just brings on the guilt. She said you never talk about It again, you never write about It it again, it's gone and you're free. Imagine being free from all that stuff for all those years. years. And then she said, any time I talked to her about it, she'd say, oh no, that's gone. You can't talk to me about that. And about that time I heard Clancy talking. He was talking about the women from Main Street who don't get sober. They don't get sober because of the guilt and because women are supposed to be be Madonna's. And I knew, I knew that I was free then. Just totally free. And you know on my sixth and seventh step I go to that step study and I've been going there now for ten years and what happens is I continue to learn more about me and more about living life. And so the thing that that thing is we read a paragraph, we do the traditions and then we do the steps and the thing it talks about is humility. And it talks about humility all the time in 6 and 7. One of the things it says is the first move towards humility is recognizing my character defects. You know what? When I came here, I didn't have any character defects and I have so many today and my mind our mind, it only has two emotions in our mind. Fear and love. Those are the only emotions that are there in every one of my character defects. You only have one character defect, and that is fear. Behind fear comes every single one of our character defects Behind fear come all the rage, all the guilt, all of the resentment, all the inferiority, all superiority. All of my characters defects all start to come behind fear. And on the other side is love. And behind love comes all the wonderful, beautiful principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. All of the willingness, the beauty, the joy, the honesty, all of those wonderful principles that we have here in Alcoholics Anonymous, they come behind love. And see fear is just the inability, you're afraid to love. So how do I get out of this fear and into the love? It's real easy for me to tell the women I sponsor how to do this. It's getting a little better with me doing it. But how I do that is, how do I get out of the fear and into love? Because see, myself, I can only have one emotion in here at the same, at one time. So how do i get out of that? Well, the best thing I do is I tell my babies, and what I try to do is go out and do another loving thing. for fun and for free as Chuck C. and everybody here this weekend has been talking about go out and do something for Alcoholics Anonymous go out and give your gift out and get out of that fear and into that love get into the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous when I did my eighth step was making amends making the list to make my amends the best amends I made for me is staying sober these ten years and I guess This, when I made that list, is the first time I started taking responsibility for my life. I never wanted to be responsible for me and I didn't want to be responsible for anything I did. If it turned out good, then I'd take the credit. But if it was bad, it was your fault or his fault or whatever. And now I'm finding out, like so many people talked about here from this podium this weekend, that happiness is a total inside job. See, it's like, yeah, if only there was is peace on earth. Yeah, if only I didn't have to go to work. If only Jim or Joe or whatever his name is would come back and make Billy happy. If Only I were skinnier, if Only I were younger, If Only i were prettier, If only I had a better job, all of those things. And I'm finding out more and more that none of those matters. That the happiness is that that inside job. Some of the amends that I made were, first of all to my husband, that husband that I blamed for everything. He continued on his drinking. I left him and took the kids and I left them, but he continued on His drinking and His drinking got worse and worse and worse and I got sober and I went to Him and I made an amend to Him about what my part was and he couldn't hear me. He was drinking. It was a young man, still in his late 40s and he got the esophageal varices and he had this bypass operation in the hospital. And one night I was sharing from the podium and I looked up and he was standing in the back of the room and he Was sober. And I got to give him an amend, a public amend. And he He never drank again, but his cirrhosis of the liver was irreversible. When he died, didn't even have enough left upstairs to tie his shoe or to take care of himself. Alcohol had robbed him of every single thing. Everything. And the husband that I, that was the alcoholic that took the antabuse, I told you, I didn't know how to do relationships. We didn't knew how to relationships. relationships our relationship was like passing in the night we were married for 13 years and we were separated and he had this bypass he had and he went on the table only one percent die of that angioplasty surgery and he never made it off the table he died on the table with that and I had gotten a new sponsor because my sponsor died and my sponsor had me me writing an inventory on what my part was. All the men in my life, starting way back with my father, she had writing what my heart was. And I had written this long inventory and shoved it under the bed. And so when Bob died, I went with his kids down to the funeral house and I arranged for his funeral. And then I went home that night and I got out that long inventory, and I wrote an amends letter to Bob about what my part was. And you know, today I still feel sorry. We both wanted to have that relationship, that intimate close relationship, but we didn't know how. We absolutely did not know how to do that. So I wrote all of my part, and it went down early the next morning before anybody got I got there, and I sat before the casket and I read that amends letter to him. And then I folded it up and I put it there over his heart. And you know what? Alcoholics Anonymous got me free one more time. I got to be free from these amends. My last amend is absolutely awesome because it's with my daughter Cindy. Cindy was hit by a car when she was 17. Bilateral cerebral contusion, brain stem damage, fractured femur. and she was in a coma for two months. She was flown home by United Airlines from Portland, Oregon, and we thought she would be a vegetable. She was in intensive care, sitting there in intensive care for so long. Finally one day, a phone call came, and the nurse had put the phone up to her mouth, and she said, Mom, come and help me. I ran to the hospital. I didn't even have my shoes on. I ran into the hospital, everything Everything had to be reprogrammed. How to walk, how to talk, how to eat, everything had to be reprorammed. She had lost her memory from all of the past. She lost her taste and lost her smell but she was going to be okay. And now it's ten years later Cindy's been through her drugs and her alcohols and Cindy's three years sober. At the end of this month Larry and I are going to go give Cindy and Jimmy their three year birthday cake And I'm so proud of her. She sponsors young women, and she's just a beautiful, beautiful young lady. She was doing her fourth step, and, um, she called me up. Larry was sitting over the bed, and he said, You know, Mom, I've got to talk to you. I just have a lot of feelings. I don't have any memories much. The feelings are that you never wanted me. You hated me. me. You never loved me. You always spanked me worse than the rest of the kids. You always slapped me on the head. You always rejected me. You never wanted me. And I sat there and I took a big deep breath. And I tell you, I must have torn your claw. Did I turn it off? Is it okay? Wow. Wow. I sat there on the bed and I took a big deep breath. And I said, you know, Cindy, that's the truth. I didn't love you. I didn' t want you. I rejected you and I spanked you. I hated myself for those feelings and I shoved them down and I never faced them. Until right now. And I didn't love you. You were my fourth child. I was 20 years old. I was eight months pregnant with you. And your father walked out and left me. Totally disappeared. And I did not want you. But I want you to know that I love you with my whole heart now. And I am so proud of you, Cindy. And Cindy hung up. And I called my sponsor real, real fast. And my sponsor said that I validated her pain, that I allowed her to go through her pain so that she could get on the other side to some kind of joy and to some kind of happiness. A few weeks and it went by and I didn't hear from Cindy and suddenly she called and said she was coming. I was so nervous and I was so scared and finally the day arrived and she got there and she took me in the bathroom. And she said, you know, Mom, you made your ninth step on me by telling me the truth. And I want to make a ninth step to you by telling you what a rotten little kid I was. But the best part of that, the best point is the best piece of that is that I don't have to try to get your love anymore. I know you love me. And we have the greatest healed relationship right now. Last year on Mother's Day, I got to share at Laughlin. And my children had been in such chaos. They had been fighting and screaming for such violent stuff that I wouldn't even talk from this podium from, that they hadn't even spoken for two years. But now the three of them are in this program. They were sitting in the front row. All of them were sitting there united in the first row. I couldn't talk about how wonderful it was. But you know, from all that chaos and drama and struggle, we come to healed relationships in this family. We come to the joy of sobriety. We come into a family that gets to be united and it's absolutely wonderful. My son Danny, a heroin addict, 15 years. A bad heroin addict. I did everything. He was my only son. He was the only boy left. I wanted to fix him. I wanted this saved him. I bailed him out of jail, I bought him cars, I did everything to try to make him okay. I gave him so much money that, um, I gave Him so much money and He took drugs with a lot of it, see. And, um finally He spent a year in the county jail and, um it wasn't even six months He was out and He had six felony counts against Him. The call came, Mom, Mom Mom, this time I'm going to go to San Quentin. You've got to help me. Only this time, I had gone to Al-Anon. I had a committed meeting for one year that I stayed in Al-Anon. And those ladies and those people in Al Anon, they taught me how to give Him tough love. They taught me how to say, Okay God, He's your kid and He's my kid. You love Him and I love Him and I can't take care of him, you've got to take care of him. So I had to say to Danny I'm not your source, Danny and Danny didn't go to San Quentin, he went to a place called Crossroads up in Eureka, California and there he spent nine months and he's a little conner that Danny is, just like a lot of us are. He spent nine month and he became one of the counselors and he came home to Covina and finally he got home home a couple of years later to Covina and I'm living with him and I am six years sober. Didn't get a program, didn't go to any steps, didn t have a sponsor. We all know what happens to you then. It wasn t very long time he had the needle back in his arm not only in his arm but in his wife's arm. And I m living there walking around in my denial, my ya-ya and he's nodding out, and it's a trip, you know. But it wasn't very long until, it wasn'T very long at all, until he knew what it was to be free, and he decided that they'd go up to Bullhead City up there and cold turkey kicked it. They went up to bullhead city in eight days, they cold turkey-kicked it. And he came back to the house, and he went right by the house to the connection. That's how cunning and powerful and baffling this disease is and can be. It wasn't very long until he went back up there again. And this time, eight days, he called turkey kicked it again. And thistime he found old Joe in a brand new little Alano club. He found old joe sober 35 years out of the swamps of Alabama and old Joe made him read his fourth step when he was 23 days sober. and Danny in January is going to have three years clean he calls it because he goes to Narcotics Anonymous now and he said you know mom I can't just deal with this God thing but I can turn my will and my life over to love and you know what, God is love and then Gloria my next daughter, she went through that house that meant so much to my sobriety she went though that house almost five years ago her deal was cocaine Cocaine and alcohol, cocaine and alcohol back and forth. She used to say, Mom, I want to go to your Tuesday night meeting. And I'd go over there on Tuesday night and I'd bang on the door and she'd be hiding behind the drapes. Wouldn't come out. She wouldn't come until she lost her kid, her job, her apartment, her car, everything. Then I took her to Stepping Stones, that house. And now she's got five years and I'm so proud of her. Just so proud of her. Because we get to live in all that joy now. I don't mean to stand here and tell you that everything is joyful because, you know, we have our down times too. But we have tools to use now. We have steps to use. We have you to use, and it's just marvelous. My job, eight years ago in my job, my sales, I do medical sales, and my sales were minus $4,000. And the bottom line is what your sales is over last year. I heard a tape that said, show up and go with the flow. Show up? I didn't used to like to go to places where they wouldn't smile at me, places where они бы не купили моего продукта. And я начал появиться, и это означало выключить каждый кнопку и просто подождать и доверять моему высокому силу, доверить моему папе, просто подойдти и доверься ему. И я начал делать это и сказал, сделайте 12-step calls на моих клиентов. Как я могу сделать 12-stop calls на мои клиенты? Give my customers love and service. How can I help you? What can I do for you? I just received my eighth Achievers Award, eight years in a row of more than $100,000 increase. I married that dinner the other night. And two years ago, I got the Gold Cup, the highest award American Scientist gives anyone. And I didn't get that Gold Cup. There's no way that drunk lady could walk down the aisle and get that gold cup. Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous got that gold cup. Larry and I were buying a house, and that's real exciting. We got this little 1926 built-in house, we gutted it. Larry's doing new plumbing, new electric, everything in this house. It's real excited for us. And a couple months ago when it was trying to go through escrow, the phone rang early in the morning. And this lady says, I said, Billy, start please. And Larry went, ooh. He handed me over the phone and she said, Billy, star please. And see, I know I've been learning in the program for these ten years and when somebody attacks me, just to come down and be real calm. So I was real nice to this lady. Real, real nice turn. I got her calmed down. We made an appointment for me to go and see her the next morning. So I wasn't really anxious to get there the next day because I wanted to see what this witch looked like. So I walked in there, and she didn't really look like a big witch or anything. And I sat down, and I looked around, and over on her desk was a little framed picture of a girl. And I read that thing, and it talked about a young girl, 14 years old, being in a car accident and being in coma. coma. And I looked over at her and I said, is that your daughter? She said, yeah. And I said how long ago was that? She says that was 14 years ago. And what happened to your daughter? Oh she said she's still in the coma. She's still exactly the same. And last week she said we lost the insurance. We took care of my daughter so we're trying to fight it in the Supreme Court. And then she shared a little bit and I shared a lot of things and she told me that she wouldn't have admitted it at that time but at that point she, her husband and her daughter would have been better off had her daughter died. I got to share back with her some of my stuff that I wouldn't trade places with her for anything but the lesson that I got from all that is again one more time those judgments judgments. You know, what I'd really like to do and what I would like to see coming up in my sobriety is to try to get rid of the comparisons and get rid as many judgements as I can because they keep on coming up. We have teachers. He was talking about the teachers and I talk about lessons. I do all things for lessons. One of my biggest lessons has has been for forgiveness. I had this pain in my heart, and it just stayed there, and it's just twisted. And my little lady, my sponsor told me that in order to get rid of that pain, I was going to have to forgive the murderer of my child. How do you forgive the murderer? of your son? I wrestled with it, and I went on and on and On. How was I going to forgive the murder? I didn't know. What was I gonna do? How was i gonna do it? Finally it came to me. I don't know how. probably somebody told me, when I was driving around out there in a blackout, I didn't kill somebody. God, I could have so many times. And when I decided that maybe the murderer of Bobby was drug-affected or alcoholic, and then I could forgive him, I forgave that murderer. And you know what happened when I forgav him? That pain went away down in my heart. And I never, ever got it again. I never got that pain again. I find out that forgiveness is the key to my serenity. Forgiveness is the keys to my life. It's the key of the peace and serenety that I looked for all my life and how I do forgiveness, you know what? Forgiveness is just a decision but I gotta sometimes make that decision. It's a decision to let the hurt go. It's an decision to make the pain go. Sometimes I have to make that decision over and over and over again. Our big book tells us that forgiveness is letting go of the judgments. Here comes those judgments again. Our big book tells it's to see the other man as spiritually sick. I know that I've gotten a lot of forgiveness, a lot of freedom from forgiveness. I guess my biggest lesson is to trust my higher power, to learn to trust my papa. And on my tenth step, what I do is I write two simple little things because I do writings these days to try to find out who I am and where I am. I write what happened during the day, what good thing happened during the night, and what bad thing happened in of the day. And what the 10th step does for me, the best thing that the 10 step does for me. It tells me that I don't have to be perfect. God, I want to be perfect my whole entire life and make prompt amends tells me that I do not have to perfect anymore. On my 11th step, you know, I probably would not be here without that 11th Step, without that Papa, Papa, without that talking to him every day and trusting him every day. I was up in Lancaster doing my medical sales because I come up here every two weeks or up there to Lancaster every two week and I spend the night and I got the flu real bad one night and was real sick and I couldn't get out of the hotel and I thought oh my God I'm all alone and I was about three years sober and I realized that I wasn't alone and that I had my Papa. That was the the first time that I realized I had a source, that I had my best friend. I had somebody to be in my corner for me. And when I remember, boy, is he there. On the 12th step, my lady told me, my little lady told me to go to meetings to give, not to get. And said, I have nothing to give. And she would say, stand in the corner and give him your smile. Just give him your smile. And since then, I always try to go to meetings to give and not to get. It helped me so much last night when I heard Tom say that we all need to go and give our stories. It really helped me a lot because I know that whenever I face my fear, whenever I walk straight head on into my fear. Whenever I trust my higher power. Whenever Whenever I come and share my story from the heart, that it always comes out good. And then I get to the other side, and man, I tell you, on the other sid is so much joy. So much joy! One of the greatest lessons that I've had to learn is love. Love is the most powerful force there is, I believe, in this universe. And all I ever wanted, all I ever wanted was somebody to love me. God, I went through all those men and I came here and I had to ask for forgiveness for accepting sex when all I every wanted was somebody to Love Me. And the deal was my little lady, I always close with this deal. My little lady one day she taught me about receiving love. One day somebody came up and said I said, boy, that's a nice new pair of shoes you have on. And I went, these old things. And she said, you know what? You just slapped that lady's gift right in the face. You just slap it right in her face. Why don't you learn to say thank you? So from then I started saying thank you. And it's grown over these ten years so that now I've learned to receive your love. As I say, all I ever wanted was somebody to love me. There were a lot of people that loved me in my life. But the deal was, I was so unworthy that I wasn't worthy enough to receive your love. And it's an incredible journey to start receiving the love. In these rooms, I find so much love and laughter. So much love ин laughter. after, but I haven't always been able to receive it. And I hope that whoever is here today, all of you here today will open yourself up just a little more to be able to receive that love. It's incredible. It' s just wonderful, wonderful to be able to give that gift. I think that all people have a basic humanistic need. They is all of your gift? We here in Alcoholics Anonymous, we have the best gift in the whole world. You know, because all we have to do is put our hand out to another drunk and help another drunk. It's a wonderful, wonderful gift we have. And I feel so fortunate and so blessed to be up here and to be able to share with all of you and to share my love with all of you and to be able to receive your love I guess I heard somebody else a lot of people say that this is the greatest alcoholics anonymous it's the greatest event of the century and it is all of those 12-step programs out there transforming thousands of lives and we get to be part of it it's exciting and it's wonderful and I'm grateful and God bless you all Thank you all and thank you.