The Ego That Got Her Drunk on Sixteen Months of Sobriety – Dottie S.

I'm an alcoholic and my name is Dottie Shore and I'm so grateful to be here I wonder if you really know how awesome it is to be asked to come and speak for many years people used to say for God's sake Dotties shut up and you get sober and they pay your way to speak now everything changes i want to thank the committee for the privilege and i i'm not saying that to be polite it is a deep honor and a privilege to me and i'm always in awe of it but somebody wants to hear what i have to say and i must tell you now that this loving lady over here is one of the finest hostesses i've ever had she's gone above and beyond the call of duty to treat me lovingly And I thank her. Let's give her a hand, please. Happy Mother's Day, you mothers. And you fathers. That didn't come out right, did it? Oh dear, I knew I'd do something like that. you know i stood up here on this uh platform i looked out there and i saw that american flag and i'm going to ask all of you to stand up and look out that window and let's salute the flag this morning look at it out there isn't that gorgeous look at i pledge allegiance of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you now go ahead let's give the flag a hand you know we're very fortunate to be sober we're very blessed to have Alcoholics Anonymous and I think we're blessed to live in this country you know when you've been around the program a little while and you hear the 12 steps read over and over and over and the 12 traditions read over if you're not careful you're going to go someplace in your mind now I'm not self-obsessed you understand but I'm usually thinking about me and one night several years ago I realized that i had they'd read the 12 steps and i hadn't heard one word and it kind of scared me i thought hey dummy that's what got you sober so i made a vow that night that i would close my eyes and i would listen and if you love the program like i do and the steps you're going to read them with meaning and maybe i'd get some new things new thoughts out of it so the first night i sat there and closed my eyes then the leader said the only requirement for a membership is a desire to stop stinking a few nights later someone said we'll now have joe read the 12 positions of alcoholic dynamics and then someone was to read animosity is the spiritual foundation please know i'm not making fun of anyone because the thing that i love is that they read it and they go right over it and don't realize they've even said it and I'm sure I'll say something today that I don't really mean to but I started collecting them and I really got some beauties a woman said many of us exclaimed what an odor I can't go through with it and someone was to read humbly asked him to restore our shortcomings and someone read no human power can relieve alcoholism but God could and would have caught and lastly but not least I think it's the top it says our leaders are but twisted servants they do not get oh you know we've been so blessed at this roundup i think we've had a group of the best speakers i have ever heard how about you guys haven't they been great ah just wonderful just really great well i'm going to talk to you this morning about a filthy stinking rotten cunning baffling powerful disease called alcoholism and you know not only are we alcoholics but we're crazy you know that don't you no place in the world can you be as sick as we are and have so much fun getting well i often think though how crazy we are because we take our disease so lightly there's nobody out there that can help us i often thing about this dread disease called aids and one day they're going to find some cure for this but there's no cure for alcoholism they can start between now and 100 years from now and they will never find a cure for alcoholism because there is no such thing we can arrest this disease but we cannot cure it and being the personality that you and i have thank god they can't cure it because if we ever found a way we could successfully drink we'd take this country right down the tubes you know that don't you but i often think too about how crazy we are because if everybody in this room god forbid had been diagnosed as having aids and they said we can't cure you but i'll tell you what if you go to a meeting two or three nights a week sit on some hard chairs drink some lousy coffee and lie to each other a little bit we can arrest this disease there wouldn't be there wouldn t be places here or in southern california anyplace else for for meeting places people will jam it you know what happens to us we get too tired or it may be raining out god forbid you know we may shrink or dissolve or something or it's too hot it's too cold we don't like the speaker or we have all kinds of or maybe a good television program so we won't go but dear god if we thought for one minute this disease would break out and it can so that's why i say we're crazy we have a very very peculiar disease we have an allergy of the body now 1935 dr silkworth said that that's what we had and i agree with that i had an allergic daughter and there's no antihistamines or antibiotics in our day when she was little and she almost died she'd have terrible allergies going to bronchial pneumonia and almost die so i understand allergy but about 15 16 years ago the only medical group that i know that's done anything on the research of the disease of alcoholism was the alien institute on alcoholic studies and i'm so grateful they did this and they had papers out at that time and i haven't seen one lately but they took six alcoholics and hospitalized them until by blood count in urinalysis the alcohol is out of their system they asked for six non-alcoholic volunteers they took these 12 people gave them a pint of whiskey to drink and waited 24 hours from the last drink and began testing again in every one of the non-alkoholics they found the alcohol either out of the body totally or in the bladder ready to be passed out in the urine so they knew the alcohol had burned up oxidized gone through the kidneys into the bladder not in the year and as it's supposed to do but loved ones this is the most important statement i can give you today in every one of the alcoholics they found the alcohol in the spinal fluid now we have a biochemical imbalance we have a gland in our body that breaks down or never functions in my particular case i was alcoholic from drink one some of you folks have had good drinking time and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and you can't do it anymore it's like the pancreas in the diabetic that fails and you become a diabetic and once you're a diabetic you're always a diabetic and once you're an alcoholic you're almost an alcoholic so when you and i take alcohol in any form into our body it goes into our bloodstream to our spinal fluid and to our brain and the first part of our brain that's affected is in the front and it contains the eye care factor and that's sedated immediately that's why one drinks too much and a thousand aren't enough now also they tell me that two thousand gallons of blood course through our body in 24 hours so how fast does it take for us to swallow a little bit of flit down our throat to go into our bloodstream spinal fluid to our brain very quickly now one last is a bit of statistics they take a brain scan of the alcoholic's brain and they'll find all these little white spots like little cotton balls small and it's what is known as dead brain cells now granted we have billions upon billions upon millions of brain cells but the body is the brain is the only part of our body that cannot repair itself and so when god is good to us and we have to give the credit where it's due when we have a dead brain cell we can it'll pick up and go around it but loved ones will come a time when you and i if we continue to preserve this thing we will pursue it to the gates of insanity and death and we will take the drink that will wipe away our ability to make it a decision and stick to it we'll either die physically or mentally and per i'd prefer to die physically myself than to die mentally and i know people and if you're around here long enough you'll know we call them in and outers they come in and they sit and they seem to get well for two or three months and they're gone and they come back and they are out and they took the drink that wiped away their ability to make a decision we suffer from a killer disease we will take our minds or take our our lives or my god come in please come in here and join us and find the only happiness that i believe a human being can find under god's heaven i thank god today that i'm an alcoholic now it may sound strange some of you new people but thank god my neuroses broke out into a disease called alcoholism and drove me beyond my will to come to alcoholics anonymous because out of my weakness has come my strength i'm a far better person today because i'm a sober member of aa and if it had never happened to me out of my weakness and out of your weakness will come strength i wonder if you know how i felt today to be the longest sober member in this room and i'm only 28 years old but it's a miracle that i'm here absolute miracle now my first entrance into alcoholics anonymous was on february the 8th 1950 that was 37 years ago i was only eight years old when i got here but i had 19 years of drinking and i had four and a half years of chronic alcoholism i was never really drunk and i was never really sober i weighed 82 pounds i was suffering from malnutrition my lips were split and bleeding at the corners i had these bumps under my neck they called vitamin deficiency bumps i was unemployable i couldn't drive a car on the freeway i couldn' t arrange my hair by myself or buy a dress by myself without five people telling me it was okay i had two daughters and a husband and i totally incapable of doing anything now i look back and i wasn't totally incapable but i had convinced myself that i was totally incapable and so i was a blob taking up space now i had a caricature in my mind of what an alcoholic was i had sister two years older than i am she was a radio singer junior champion skier and a model and she developed cirrhosis of the liver and she had a stomach that swelled the size of a nine-month pregnancy she was wearing dirty blue jeans and a maternity jacket and wandering the streets of reno our hometown i happen to be a native nevadan by the and I'm glad to be back in Nevada this was a talented woman and she was a fifth-a-day drinker the bar type all that and see I was not I was the pull the window shade down hide the bottle crying drunk never got in jail never went to uh had an accident I never left the house and so this was an alcoholic and over the Christmas holiday of 1949 1950 we came from California back to Reno and when I saw my sister I was horrified and God forgive me at that time I called her a dirty alcoholic because see back there it was a dirty word on the way home my husband said I hope you never get to be like that and I said don't be silly I got too much sense to let that happen to me little did I know I was alcoholic then but I thought it was how much you drank I thought It was what you did so many people come to alcoholics and say I'm not an alcoholic because I eat i've never lost my job i haven't lost my family um you know all these excuses of why you're not an alcoholic and that doesn't constitute alcoholism but at any rate when i got back to california i decided then that maybe my problem was alcohol it wasn't because he didn't have enough money or uh you know that my mother treated me badly or any of those things it was maybe alcohol is my problem maybe i better quit so i made up my mind i was going to quit drinking and I went on my last what I thought was my last drunk on January the 1st 1950 and I got hopelessly drunk and the only time I have not been able to get up out of bed was that next morning on July 1st or January 1st and my husband said I said you're going to bring me something to bed I can't get out I had never had him ever bring alcohol to bed for me so typically non-alcoholic you went out and bought a bottle of old ram's head rye I think he left the ram in it I swear to God they must have. And so I took several drinks to get up out of bed that morning, and this was going to be my last drinking. Little did I know that I was a full-blown alcoholic and that I would suffer hallucinations and blackouts that would terrorize me. The month of January was the worst time I'd ever gone through. I had hallucinations. I would see people with their eyes up like this looking in my window. I'd pull the windowshells and shades down, take a drink, pull them back up. I was the tardiest drunk that got to AA. That takes a lot of moving. I saw foam come to the hardwood floors. I had blackouts that I didn't even know. I used to think that I was just thinking pretty heavy for about four hours. On February 8, 1950, I was to call North Hollywood a clubhouse and I don't remember ever calling it. I heard a speaker here today who called out and said, My God, help me. And you know, our God is so wonderful. He doesn't really need our feelings to perform miracles. we can cry out in bargaining and begging and not even believing but I think once we cry God help me that he has to hear because I came out of a blackout and a couple of hours had gone by the bottle was gone I was afraid my kids would find me drunk and I screamed my God help and my next thought was North Hollywood AA Clubhouse and I don't remember ever dialing it or calling I don' t know and a woman said to me how do you know if you're an alcoholic and she said is it for you or your husband and I said my husband of course and then i started to blubber and cry as only an alcoholic can blub her and cry and she said don't kid me it's for you isn't it and i said yes and she said i'll be right out i said you can't come out i don't want my husband to know i'm an alcoholic she said she thought she had an alcoholic in the ding-a-ling at the same time on that phone she said some wonderful words that i'll tell you what i'll do baby i'll come out in the morning on one condition that you're not drinking i want to talk to you and not a bottle if you're drinking i'll leave well i had long before taken four and five straight shops down vomit them up the woman stay down i get my kids off of school and do my work and i guess i must have wanted this more than i thought because i walk and sweat and shook and died and she got there about 8 30 in the morning and she told me i had a disease and i thought man have they got a cop out how can you get mad at somebody because they're sick but she did tell me about the program and i was so lonely i'm an extrovert by nature of course you didn't know that unless i told you i'd become totally introverted i was afraid to even go out to the trash one time i went off the trash and i would this woman came out from her apartment and i invited her to dinner that night and i didn't no i had so she she and her husband came to the door that night knocked on the door and i went there and i said yes she said well we're here for dinner and i oh you made a mistake it's tomorrow night well i had to stay reasonably sober that next day and cook and by god i wasn't let that happen to me again so i never went outside terrible so she came and she explained it to me and she told me about it and she said you got to go to a meeting and i said i can't go i've got to find some way to lie to my husband because i don't want him to know and she says another very prophetic word she said honey there's a program of rigorous honesty and if you start to lie you'll never make it so i said well let me handle him tonight and i'll go tomorrow night and she's said fine so al came home and of course i'm not dramatic now you understand that don't you and i said i got something i want to tell you and I made him sit in a chair with his back to me and I said um I'm an alcoholic and I called AA and his shoulders start to go like that and I say oh please god don't laugh at me and he turned around looked up at me with these tears coming out of his eyes and he said thank god I had the papers for Camarillo state hospital ready to sign i often think about that i think i would have gone over the brink had they ever locked me up because i never thought i was alcoholic i knew i was insane and he did i hid the alcohol so well and the worst thing is i used to mask my breath by chewing coffee grounds and parsley all that stuff he's got the worst sense of smell of anybody in the whole world you never would have smelled it anyhow isn't that awful so anyhow i told him about it and he was very pleased and when the kids came home from school i said i'm going to have a big surprise from you one week from today i don't know if i thought they're going to give me a shot or wave a magic wand but one week from today it'd be all over i remember later when they asked me a couple weeks later what was that big surprise and i said I'm not going to drink anymore and he said oh that anyhow that next night i was to go to an alcoholics and wellness meeting and i would drive myself i went over i don'T know how many of you've been a lot of you people have been from north hollywood it was an old episcopal church and so when i got down the sidewalk and walked in i i expect to see people with swelled bellies like my sister and swelled faces and dirty blue jeans and maternity jackets and and you know like i thought alcoholics looked and i saw people just like you and i thought oh damn it's a church meeting and i've got the wrong night so i started to walk away and a woman came to the door and she said honey can i help you and I said I don't think so and she says are you an alcoholic? And I said, yes. And she said, oh, come back. You are so welcome. Gives me a lump in my throat tonight, today. And I went back and she put her arms around me. I started to cry. She put her hands around me and she kind of rocked me and petted me and said, it's going to be all right, baby. It's going be all right. Now those are prophetic words. They take a little while. Oh, it is all right! And I saw the birthday cake celebration that night and I sat in an audience. my older sister was a radio singer junior champion skier and a model and i sit in an audience and watched her on the stage getting roses for singing cups for skiing modeling and i'm sitting there watching these people up there and they had corsages on they're getting their birthday cakes and my sick little mind said jeez all you gotta do is not drink for a year you'll be up there on the stage eating your cake and they'll be down there looking at you and you'll have your night on the stage now something happened that night that is sad the speaker and i had to pray hard to forgive him gave 55 minutes of the most horrendous drunkologue i have ever heard fifths a day sanitariums jails 502s 86s jesus i heard more numbers than ever heard before in my life didn't even know what he was talking about and so i'm sitting there saying uh i knew it i knew it wasn't alcoholic. I didn't drink that much, didn't drink that long, I didn' t do those things. Well maybe I'm only a little alcoholic. You can't be a little pregnant did you know that? And so I fell in the trap of trying to identify with a drinking pattern. Oh loved ones if there's newcomers here don't try to identify with my drinking pattern because you never will. You probably spilled more than I drank. But it's not how much you drink. It's not how long you drink, it's It's not what brand. It's Not how old you are, where you've been that constitutes alcoholism. And I tried to identify with that drinking pattern and I couldn't. And I broke two rules that night. I didn't know there were rules. But the two rules I broke was this. Your life must become an open book to one other human being. Now don't be compulsive confessors and get up and tell everybody about yourself because you get sober and you wish a hell of a hand, you know? But your life becomes an open book to one other human being. Secrets will kill you and i didn't let my life become an open book i was absolutely scared to death that if i told that lady that was to be my sponsor that i didnít think i was an alcoholic you wouldnít let me come here anymore and let me tell you when i hit the doors of north hollywood that woman gave me a gift that is so rare that we very seldom see it except in aa itís called agape love thatís spelled a-g-a-p-e that's god's kind of love unconditional we don't care where you've been what you've done how old you are what color you are if you are an alcoholic and want help oh my god i think sometimes we care too much but that is agape love and you won't find it in churches i'm sorry to say or any place that i know except within the doors of alcoholics anonymous and that's why we're the only thing that's successful for the drunk we are the only thing is successful forthe compulsive overeater or the emotionally disturbed or the narcotic addict because we know that we know that we what's going on inside of you and so anyhow with that birthday cake celebration and the whole thing and back in 1950 it was like a men's stag group very few women and they found out i had this gift of gab now you didn't know that if i hadn't told you that either did you they put me on the circuit when i was 49 days dry i spoke from bakersfield to san diego and from santa barbara to riverside any place in between i went to 365 meetings that first year more because i went sunday noon lunches monday lunches i had babies stacked behind me like cordwood people started telling me how wonderful i was and i agreed with them they started quoting me and misquoting me now i had a total recall memory at one time. Bruce took care of that, but I have quite a photographic memory. And my sponsor was a book woman and she would quote the book and people would just look at her. So she'd quote the book and I'd run home and memorize it and come back and quote the books. I didn't work this desk because I'm not sick ding-a-ling like you guys, you understand? And besides, I'm a great teacher and you're telling me how wonderful I am and I'm agreeing. And so I just thought, well, I finally found my niche. I'm now an alcoholic, but if I don't tell you, that'll be all right and I'll just help you get well. Huge lucky people. Never took an inventory. See, I thought alcohol was my problem. And a lot of you sitting here today think alcohol is your problem. Loved ones, alcohol is not your problem Alcohol is the sick answer you found to your problem We belong to the cult of the comfortable We damn near kill ourselves trying to get comfortable But see, thank God because if I came to AA through the doors and they said put the cork in the bottle and everything will be fine and send me out to my family or out on the street and I'll tell you you're not doing me any favors you're condemning me to hell because I can't stand to live dry I've got to have something else don't just take alcohol away from me and leave me with nothing else because I'm not because I don't I can stand pain oh I can stand physical pain I've worked in the pharmacy with a broken toe I've had a lot of other things happen to me and I don' t like it but I can take it but my God don' T give me five minutes of unadulterated emotional pain without some help groggles at the top of my head i can't stand emotional pain none of you understand that of course what i'm talking about so a year went by on the wings on february 8th 1951 i stood at the podium at north hollywood and i had a corsage took out off that big my two kids and my husband sat in the front row people patted me on the back and told me how great i was again i agreed they gave me more presents than i'd ever gotten any needle birthday and i guess i thought i graduated well i made it now during that whole year i would have told you i was happy happier than ever been before in my life but i didn't even know the meaning of the word happiness happiness is a byproduct of right living i was in a perpetual state of excitement yay book says we're used to three things excitement anxiety and depression peace of mind and a quiet heart we don't think about and that's a fact and so as this adrenaline starts to leave and i'm tired i was working i went to work three months after i was sober i worked 40 hours a week took care of two kids and a husband an apartment and was out practically every night you got to know i had something going for me and when the adrenaline started to leave i'm tired and i thought well i'm an old timer now about a year i'll sit back and let the newcomer take over did a lot of crazy things that first year after that year i was asked to speak in azusa one night it was a driving rainstorm wouldn't your wife wouldn't take the rain away and I got there it was a place about this big and there were six old people sitting there and I thought gee they arrived late at this meeting the meeting started and there was still six old people sitting there and I'm thinking how dare they ask the great Dottie Shore to come to speak to six old people so from then on when they asked me to come I'd screen the group I'd ask them how big the group was it was a big group I went it was a small group I sent one of my babies you know I can't be bothered with that small time stuff I did the worst thing i think an alcoholic can do and that's turn down 12-step calls god forgive me i never let them go but i let my babies do it you know i'm an old timer i can't be bothered with that new drunk i look back on those days and i think what was i thinking of and the answer comes back you weren't thinking at all dummy that's what's the problem and i didn't know what was happening and my foundation was very low and i thought booze was my problem i had no problem staying away from drug alcohol and had i taken an inventory i would have found out that one of my deep-seated problems my big defective character is a hopeless neurotic need for attention now we all have it but mine was totally out of proportion i know now that i became a pathological liar i was an exaggerator i was a clown i was buffoon i'd mispronounce words i'd fall down i'd do anything that i had to do in order to get your attention now as long as you had patted me on the back and told me how great i was i could have stayed with you a long time dry and sick but when it stopped my neuroses kicked into ill again and i had to do something to get her attention now i'd go on tuesday night and i hadn't been there since the following tuesday and nobody rushed to the door and said where were you the phone isn't ringing i think the hell with them i won't call them either get damn lost in that way i called my sponsor she wouldn't give me two hours of undivided attention on the phone anymore she's working with newcomers and i'm mad at her she said to me you better do something about your resentments i said i don't have resentments have justifiable anger well i went to a meeting on june the 10th 1951 and the leader was leading it was a beginner's meeting and he said how many new people in the room about 15 people raised their hand. You know what he had the nerve to say? He said, you are the most important people in the room. I thought, like hell they are. Old-timer like me you lose now. You haven't lost any, you lose those newcomers, but now an old-timer. And I was angry and I loved the meeting before and I love the meeting after, but I split. And on the way home I'm crying and my sick little mind says, I know what I do. I'll get drunk and I'll punish them. And then they're going to be sorry. and I used to get drunk with poor Al all the time I'm not going to bother with him I picked the whole North Hollywood group I see Al coming home in my mind he finds me drinking he goes to the phone he calls North Hollywood and he's saying my God Dottie's drunk and they're saying oh no and they get in a caravan of cars and come over and 12 step me they make amends and I forgive them and we kiss and make up and they put me in the car and take me to North Hollywood and I'm a newcomer again oh joy well you know it didn't happen that way don't you on June the 11th 1951 I got up that morning I cleaned my house I wasn't going to have them call me slob you understand I put on my earrings and my makeup and I put on clean underwear in case something happens how about you gals didn't your mother girl, let's tell you to have a clean underwear on in case something happened. All right. And I didn't drive because I knew what blackouts were, see? And I didn't want to get in any trouble. I didn' t want to get very drunk. Didn' t wanna get in any trouble, just wanted to scare the hell out of the people at North Hollywood. So I walked to the liquor store and I got the same old half pint and I come toodling home. Now remember who you're talking to. Sixteen months and three days circuit speaker. Are you impressed? I was so damn impressed it almost killed me. and i know now today what i got drunk on that day was ego e-g-o edging god out you can get drunk faster on ego honey you can't anything else and we have to be careful because we're egocentric for the inferiority complexes now for a few minutes i'm going to feel like i am the best speaker in in alcoholics anonymous and five minutes from now i think god i didn't say anything i wanted to say and the old pendulum will go up and down i'm fine one minute and bad you'd know what i'm talking about you do the same thing well let me tell you something now if you guys ever decide to drink again and you know how we hide bottles and you lose one just call an al-anon member to come in they're like ferrets they can find a bottle that nobody else can find i happen to be a member of al-anan so i'm not i'm just having fun with them they know that anyhow about two and a half years before i got to aa my husband would find the bottle he'd pour it down the sink hold me at arm's length and if i had a knife i'd have killed him i'd stuck it right in his throat because now i'd had to get up in the morning get those kids off to school get him out of there pick up the nickels and dimes get to the liquor store to buy the drink and i told you i was taking three or four shots down whoop they'd come performance day so i had to find a place to hide my supply i'm looking and looking and looking and one day i look up in the cupboard and i see the vinegar bottle did you know vinegar and bourbon are the same color so i'm not a fancy drunk i didn't drink out of a cocktail glass i drank out of a vinegar bottle for two and a half years i poured the vinegared out of the vinegar bottle put the whiskey in the vinegar bottle i put it right up in front of the cupboard and al would come home and find me a little drunk right he'd go out there and he'd move that bottle back and forth he looked up never found my supply but now it's going to be different i'm not going to hide the bottle i don't give a damn who knows i'm drinking right wrong i went home took the vinegar out of the cupboard poured it down the sink put my whiskey in the vinegar bottle took my first drink out of a vinegar bottle 16 months and three days circus speaker you want to know about aa just ask me if you don't i'll tell you about it anyhow head knowledge alone is not enough there's nothing about this program i don't know there was nothing about the program at that time i didn't know when that whiskey burned my throat so help me god if someone had slapped me like that and waken me out of a sleepwalk it couldn't have been more violent and i thought oh my god what have i done there goes 16 months of sobriety shot to hell and that was the first realization i had loved ones that i had taken that drink i was mentally drunk long before i took the drink when you reach for the drink you're drunk up here a long time before you ever reach for that and when that was burning my throat. I loved you people so much. I love you today so much and the one thing I love the most, I had once again thrown away and I stood there terrorized waiting for something to happen and I waited and I awaited and nothing happened and I thought oh hell I knew all along I wasn't like those drunks over at North Hollywood and I walked out in the kitchen to get what I thought was going to be my second drink and I remember nothing from this time on. What I tell you now loved ones i told him about my husband and my sponsor al was an outside salesman we'd had a particularly bad fight the night before there was no alan on but he knew my personality had changed he said i was saying things like i might as well be drunk as the way i am those sbs don't appreciate me and i was talking like i did before i called a and he was nervous and upset so he came home thank god he heard me screaming a half a block before he got to the house i'd never had this before remember this is a progressive disease i didn't pick up where i left off i picked up as if i had been drinking heavily for 16 months when you came in the front in the house i was on the front room floor beating my heels so i almost broke the bones in my feet i had screamed and and wretched and vomited so i broke a blood vessel into my esophagus and i'm vomiting blood it's coming out my nose i had wretched till i broke the blood vessels in my eyes my eyeballs hemorrhaged and when he tried to get me up off the floor and put me on the couch i went totally limp i remember loved ones back in 1951 there was no care unit no hospitalization they wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot pole during that first year a girl and i took another one to the hospital on the verge of the dt's and he told me to get that lousy drunk out of their waiting room oh are we blessed today to know that we have a disease that it's hereditary that is passed on in the genes that we are not bad people who drink too much we drink too much and do bad things and what a difference so at any rate he was so startled and so upset you remember that two blocks from where we lived with a medical center and there were seven doors along the sidewalk of medical suites and he ran up there and came to the first door available now the office was full of people he went past the people into it to the receptionist and she was busy and he went passed her into the doctor's examining room now you got know how terrorized he was here's a guy laying on the table being examined and al goes barging in there the doctor told me later he'd never seen anyone as terrorized as al was and he grabbed the doctor and he said my wife's been sober 16 months she's drinking and she's dying for god's sake come with me and the first of many miracles which is set forth for dottie shore because he didn't say get the rescue squad oh my god another drunk or do you have hospitalization fill out this for him. You know what they do? He just picked up his black medical bag, left an office full of people and ran the two blocks to my home. And you know why? He was an alcoholic. My God. My God. Isn't that odd? That's God. Isn't it a coincidence? That is a complicated way of spelling God, isn't it? When he got to the house he put the stethoscope on my chest he turned to my husband he said mr sure we're too late there's no heartbeat no pulse no respiration so loved ones on june 11th 1951 36 years ago next month i died of a killer terminal filthy rotten stinking cunning baffling powerful disease called alcoholism and the only reason i'm here today is by the grace of god now we use that word very lightly but for the grace of god you know what it literally means it's a free unearned unmerited unwanted gift no human power can relieve your alcoholism god can and will if sought and if you are here with one day five days like robbie or one hour you have the grace of god on you a free un-earned unmarranted unwarranted gift and you can either put it on you like a cold warm coat on a cold night or you can go and knock it off but we who are here today we whether we're alcoholic or non-alcoholic are the most blessed people in the whole world and when jim said last night we are chosen oh i want to stand up and say amen i agree many are called if you're chosen why do you think you're sitting here and people you know die why me i used to say why me why am i an alcoholic now i think why me how come i'm here how come i'm sober why me it's because god had something he wanted me to do i was chosen not because i wasn't worth it not because I earned it but in his wisdom he knew that he knew that I would do what he told me to do once I became surrendered well the doctor said when Al got hysterical the doctor took a needle about that long out of his bag and he shot me directly in the chest cavity and gave me artificial resuscitation and by the grace of God my heart started beating just take it back supposing Al had been one minute late and the doctor had waited two minutes they could have brought my heart back but my brain would have been damaged when I went to the doctor a couple days later oh the next night that night I was sedated all night long this blood vessel in the esophagus was ruptured and it kept bleeding the next morning when I woke up at the foot of my bed I had a vanity with a great big mirror and I sat up and you know all of us women are vain and you guys are vain too but I'm just talking for you women and I like to look good and I stood up in that bed that morning and looked in that mirror and I saw a monster my face was swelled my lips were puffed out like this I had no whites for eyes and you don't know how much I had to drink that morning are you ready three lousy shots of whiskey is it how much you drink is it how long you drink you said what brand is it with whom let me tell you something loved ones everybody in this room's got another drunk in them but some of you don't have sobering up time left i think when you come to aa they give you some invisible pieces of paper one ten fifteen i don't know you got it's called sobering-up time i punched my last one i had one for me to drink is to die thank god i know that i've got another drunk in me i have no sobering up time left and the last thing i ever want to do is die drunk for god's sake what a legacy to leave for your family and that can happen to us and so the thing that is so amazing to me is that i'm even here now when i went back to the doctor a couple days later he took me by the shoulders and he shook me and he said i want you to hear me girl see how long ago it was he called me girl he said you were as dead as anybody I've ever examined and the only reason you're here is by that shot I gave you and I thought oh now I thought I should have told him then but I didn't know it wasn't your shot it was God but at any rate he said if you drink again you'll die and the first thought that went through my mind is why didn't he let me go Jesus I had my out I don't know about you people but I don'y like it out there in the world do you like it out there I damn near killed myself trying to be like those people out there but you know I don't like it out there and I've always been a Pollyanna let's kiss and make up and live happy ever after and so I had my out you know not too long ago I was in Des Moines, Iowa and I happened to turn the news on waiting to go to a meeting and they told about a man whose little boy was seven years old and he kept wetting the bed and this man amputated his penis and threw it down the toilet because she wet the bed Don't you love those kind of things? Don't You just think that's a wonderful world out there? That's what I didn't want. And I thought when He told me I was dead as anybody's ever examined, why didn't He let me go? But thank God on top of that came this thought. There has to be something God wants me to do. And about June the 13th, 1951, I made a commitment to sound to something like this. I said, okay, I don't understand how it's Your will that I am here, but I promise you I will never be too tired nor too busy to answer a call for anyone Just please use me all the days of my life till I'm all used up for your glory. Be careful you pray that prayer because you're going to be moving. I mean moving. There's very few states now that I haven't spoken in and I think, my God, moi? Old dumb dotty who couldn't drive, couldn't hold on a job, puts a cork in the bottle and lets God have his way and this happens? It can happen to me, it'll happen to you. That's up to you well I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous and it was harder to go back than there was to go here I am the circuit speaker big shot I told my husband don't you tell anybody I got drunk or I'll kill you I was going to bluff it out I got to the doors of North Hollywood and they had a sign on me that said slip going on and off like a sound sign it couldn't have been worse and I started to cry and I had so many people say oh Dottie thank God you're back and you were so solid what was wrong tell us it won't happen to us and one old timer don't you love him standing over there saying hey sure what the hell step were you taking when you took that drink oh I hated his guts that night but he gave me the clue what in the hell step had I ever taken I had taught them preached them read them recited them done everything with them but work them now have I decided I had taken that inventory and found out my deep pursuit of problem one of them was a neurotic need for attention the only reason i got drunk was to get these people attention now supposing i'd have gotten out of that caper and they came home over and 12 stepped me and kissed me and took me back the very next time i got unhappy i'd done the same thing over again god has wondrous ways to perform miracles so i went back and i thought i said to my husband that next morning how could it have happened my god didn't i work with people didn't I talk all the time didn't answer coffee cups didn't agree people the door didn't read didn't lead meetings didn't i do everything and he said yeah you did honey but out of every evil will come some good and one day we'll know why and see to get out of a drunk like that and not find out why will be a fate worse than death because you'll have to repeat the same mistake if you don't learn the lessons from your mistake you're doomed to repeat them again and so i went back to aa to find out what you know what happened and i realized that i had accepted the fact that i was physically allergic because i was a sick drunk i didn't know about this thing up here called the obsession of the mind i thought it was to keep me out of a liquor store and my hand off a glass but for 16 months that thing up there said you're not like these people get your thinking straightened around and one day you can drink again not now but one day and god knows our book puts it better the great obsession of every abnormal drinker is that somehow some way someday we're going to control and enjoy our drinking the delusion is astonishing many will pursue it at the gates of insanity and death and see i pursued the gates of insanity and death for me to drink is to die but now loved ones i got to find a way to live comfortable i can't live dry guy said not too long ago he had a belly full of ground glass and his brain was hemorrhaging and that sounds dramatic but you know what i'm talking about don't just put the cork in the bottle and then just let me stay out there naked not comfortable in my own skin god make me comfortable i cant do it don't you understand and i promise you if you apply these steps you will get comfortable you will get completed you will have the grace of god on you a free unearned unmerited unwarranted gift well i was to find out that i knew about the allergy of the body i finally found out what the obsession of the mind was i didn't know we have a threefold disease we have an allergy of the body an obsession of the mind and a spiritual illness or a soul sickness those aren't my words that's the book i'm not talking about religion now god spare me from religion religion damn near killed me i almost killed you guys too um soul sickness a spiritual wellness and that's why we get well in aa we're sick in three ways physically spiritually and emotionally and if you want to get well physically you're tilted you've got to get the whole package in there and the only way you can do it is to simply follow these steps. Well, I started, I would keep willing as though he was a dying can, I'll do anything he'd tell me, but I come to the third step. Wow, can't do it. Cannot, will not turn my life and my will or that crackpot that's up there on the cloud going to pull that lever and send me straight to hell. No way, I can't doing it. Now I'm going to tell you what happened to me and I'm talking about a Roman Catholic priest, not the church. So don't get your little spiritual religious backs up because I'm just going to tell you about a practicing alcoholic priest that almost killed me. It's wonderful. I heard the guy talk about being a Methodist and a Baptist. You know, God's sake, aren't you glad we're spiritual and not religious? I am. Yeah. Anyhow, I was taught and trained by a Roman Catholic priest who was a practicing alcoholic, and the poor man died drunk. He died long before AA came in. But he terrorized me. He told me every time I committed a sin, I was nailing another nail in Jesus' hand. And he told me once that when I really had something bad, that if I would look at the Virgin Mary statue, I would see her cry. And I looked at it one day and I swear to God I saw a tear come out of her eye. And I was terrorized. Now he also taught me to say thee and thou, had to hold your hands just a certain way, put your nose on the third finger. And he had a prayer book and he would hit that prayer book with a rubber band and we don't have to kneel. If you didn't, you got hit on the head. Then he'd hit the rubber band again, you all stood up. And he was terrorised. I look back on him now and my heart aches for him, but he terrorised me. Now, when I was 16 years old, I ran away and got married. I had a baby sister nine years younger. I had this one two years older, and I was lost in there. And my little head says if I run away and get married and have my own home, I'll get out of this bad situation. So I picked a boy, 17, who didn't have a job. Oh, very smart. Very smart. So we ended up living with my mother. Tried to get away from her. Two months later, I'm pregnant for my oldest daughter, and he wanted me to have an abortion and I was terrorized, horrified and I made the first of many decisions that I was going to have that baby it was going be my husband's my mother's or my sister's I thought Immaculate Conception had come back it's going to be all mine and I'll tell you truly for those nine months was the night the best part of my life up to that point I felt important I felt wonderful that Iwas having this baby now he never wanted it he never participated in anything with me and she was born and she wasn't an hour old that Iwas praying she'd grow up and get the hell out of my hair Iwas scared to death of her and he wouldn't hold her said she was more like a sister than a daughter and of course the marriage was not was doomed to failure so i didn't go home to mother i was already there i just kicked him out and one day shortly after this time the baby wasn't even a year old i was walking her in the buggy and the priest was walking up and down reading his office and he comes over and he said when you're gonna have that kid baptized i said not till i get married again did you know you don't tell a Catholic priest that? I thought I'd clue you in. He said, you can't get married again. If you do, you'll be living in adultery and any child of that issue will be illegitimate. And I pulled myself up on my self-willed and I said, I'm going to get married Again. And he said, you are excommunicated. Well, darlings, if God had called me on the phone and said, Dottie, this is God, you're excommunitated, it couldn't have been more official. My mother never investigated. I sure didn't. And for 19 long years, I wondered the face of this earth like a lost soul my daughter al and i got married we had sandy sandy was sick they told me she'd never lived to grow up and every time she got sick god was going to kill her and punish me i went to 1500 funerals in my own mind i go down to the morgue and pick out a little pink casket and little gold shoes go through the funeral go home and close the door and let the cobwebs in the dust collect in her room i milked this neurotic morbid imagination till it almost destroyed me and i do believe that alcohol at that time became my friend because i believe had i continued like that i'd have gone straight to the top of my head and so alcohol was a friend for a while but as with most false friends it turned on me and almost kicked the hell out of me but this was terrible and so i never i never had any i didn't pray when sandy was so sick and her temperature would go so high and remember no antibiotics no antihistamines we'd have to wait for our temperature got high enough to kill this bronchitis that she had and every time she got sick, she was going to die. And every time it was, he's going to do that. Now the reason I'm telling you this is because when I came to the third step and you dare, the people I love the most in the world dare to tell me to turn my life and my will over to that thing up there, you've got to be kidding me. You know what I'd do if I turned my life over to him? He's goingto pull that lever and right down to hell he's gonna put me. And so I went to my sponsor and I said, I can't work the third step. If I don't work it, I'll get drunk. She said, honey, why can't you work the third step and i said because i'm afraid of god she will tell me about him i started to tell her she said oh shut up let's run i'm a friend of him too so she said honey you're gonna have to find new god you know god's not lost so i went the only place i've ever known to go for answers and that was to you people i went over north hollywood i remember i used to have to say thee and thou, and pray so and so. I went over and I said to the first person, how do you believe in God? He said, you mean the old panel Joe? I thought, oh, I hope he didn't hear that. My God, that's blasphemy. I said, how you believe en God? You mean the old HP? Oh, God, that's terrible. He's really going to get us. Somebody said, the old man upstairs? Uh-huh, that does it. That does it, he's going to really pull that lever. And again, one wonderful soul picked by God said, Dottie, get over here. Do you really want to find God? I said I got to. He said no, honey. The only thing you've got to do is die and pay taxes. You don't have to do anything. He says, if you'll do what I tell you to do, will you promise? And I said, I'll do anything he said. All right. For one week, I want you to pray this prayer. You say, God, reveal yourself to me as you really are. Know the prayer and start looking without exaggeration. Loved ones. I prayed it a hundred times a day and in less than a week, he got off that silly cloud, threw away those books, took off that white outfit and came down and became my daddy God. Now the first night I went to a meeting after praying this prayer a guy got up and he said if you're having trouble finding God take the word good and take one O out of it. Anything as good as God. And I said if you go outside tomorrow morning and the sun's out there you're not surprised you don't say gee, the sun is cold this morning. Can't be. By its very nature the sun isn't hot. The sun is a hot thing. God by his very nature can't be good and bad punishing and rewarding. By his very natural he's all good. Hell, I never heard that before. So I continue on praying, God, reveal yourself to me as you really are. Well, I was walking in the house one day praying this prayer. Out of my memory bank popped a thought I hadn't thought about since I was 9, 10, 11 years old. I was raised next door to a girl whose mother died when she was born and her grandparents were raising her. And I was over there more than I was home. And she called her grandfather Daddy Dick and their grandmother, Grandma Jo. And when I'd be over there playing, Daddy Dick would grab me every now and then, put me on his lap, lay my head on his shoulder, and he'd whisper. And he'd say, you know, Dottie, if you ever need anything, just ask Daddy Dick. Now they knew that I was neglected at home. And they were loving people. He wasn't a successful man. And I hadn't thought about him in 100 years. But during this week, I thought, every time I asked that old man to do anything for me, he did it. He used to fix my roller skates. He went to the dumps one day and got a doll buggy and refurnished it and gave it to me. He filled the need that I had never had for my family and I thought maybe I could climb up in the lap of Daddy God. I'd lay my head on his shoulder and he'd say, you know, Dotty, if you ever need anything just ask Daddy God Well even so I thought oh this is so familiar oh this has really pushed it you know it borders on blast for me to talk to God about Daddy God On the seventh day when my sponsor used to say open the A book and read open the Bible in the Bible and read. If you're upset, just start reading something. Well, this was a spiritual question so I opened the Bible, put my finger down and glory to God, these are the words that popped off that page. You who are human parents full of sin, if your children ask you for a piece of bread, would you give them a stone? They ask you for a fish, would you gave them a serpent? How much more will your heavenly Father, there was the words, grant to those who believe in him? And all of a sudden it became alright and that night I went to a meeting and I've said the Lord's Prayer since I was able to speak but I usually say it this way Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name kingdom come, kingdom come Mr. David Daly-Brand you know how to do that don't you? You don't even have to be taught how to be a Christian how to deal with that do you? And I've spent the Lord'S Prayer in AA meetings for the 16 months and I don't know how many months has gone by now and I never thought what I was saying it was just let's get this thing over so I can go have coffee with the people and get into the social part you know and this night on the 7th night and I held hands and we all said our father if someone had put their fingers in my ears and blocked it I never heard another word and I thought my God you said our father you didn't say my father you didn's say your father you said our father and I knew why I loved you because you're my brothers and sisters and he's our father and as long as we try to do this the best we can certainly not perfect we will have everything that we've ever dreamed or prayed about in our wildest drunken dreams because from that time on my life turned 180 degrees now i won't tell you that i got sober and i sailed off in the sunset and everything's been wonderful that i'm more beautiful although i am that i am younger richer that everything has changed and i've had a lot of unhappiness tremendous amount of unhaappiness and a tremendous amount of joy. And if you ever read the prophet, you'll know that the hole that's dug out with your joy is filled with your grief and the hole is dug outwith your grief is how much happiness you can receive. And I've had a lot of unhappiness. My oldest sister died, 39 years old, blew apart as a result of alcoholic hemorrhages. I had to go home to Reno to a drunken Irish wake. My mother got so drunk she fell off the chair and my sister's dead with her head swelled the size of both shoulders this was not the talented beautiful radio singer this was a sick destroyed alcoholic and i learned how to say the serenity prayer that time if i ever learned it in my life god grant me the serentity to accept that i can't change and i made it through but when they had the after the wake after these funeral they passed the whiskey around and i turned it down and they called me a hypocrite and yet i knew that you people were praying for me and i got out of it, and I came home. And a few years later, my oldest daughter became a full-blown addict alcoholic, and she's smashing her life away. I had to take my grandson from her. He's sucking his thumb. He's wet in the bed. His heels were flitting bleeding. His toenails had grown to the top of his toes. Every hair follicle on his leg is full of pus pimples because he's so dirty, and it's not because I'm putting her down. This is what happens with alcoholic addicts. And my sponsor and my people in AA said, you're contributing to the delinquency of that minor child, you've got to take him. One of my kids had grown, and I didn't know what to do. But the little boy kept begging me, please call me Nana, please Nana don't send me back, please don't sent me back. And so I made the decision, which was the hardest I've ever done, to get the guardianship of this baby. I had to kidnap him because if she found me, she would have had me arrested for kidnapping. And I'll never forget Mary Poppins if I lived to be 1,000 years old. I sat through four showings of Mary Popпins at the Grumman's Chinese Theater and i'm crying and my grandson said this is a happy pope phil why are you crying nana and so we got the guardianship paper signed on the monday and the process server told me that when he gave her the papers presented her with the paper she was so stoned she couldn't write her own name and he helped her sign her name and went out and sat in the car and he watched her leave the apartment walk down the sidewalk and walk away and leave everything her personal belongings furniture clothes everything and disappeared off the face of this earth good reason to get drunk isn't it why sure daughter disappeared you took her kids all your fault i knew that i knew that if i couldn't handle it sober i couldn'T handle it drunk and i spoon fed my grandson little bits of this program and he starts to get well and i told him you know he'd come home late from school and he'd give me this big story about how kids had caught him and knocked him off the bicycle and he beat them up and all. And I thought, oh, geez, we've got another pathological liar coming down. So I told him about pathological lying, and I said, you know, these stories are wonderful and you tell me, but be sure and tell me they're just a story. So he was been in school, I guess, about six weeks, and then I went over to the teacher and I asked, how's he doing? And she said, well, Mrs. Shore, your grandson did something that's never happened before. And I felt, God, he must have raped somebody in the restroom. Scared me to death. She said, we had a talk on Washington, D.C., and he raised his hand and he told about how you took him to the White House and you walked in the Rose Garden with the president. And he went on and told this great big story. And she said, he really took me in. And so she said recess time came. And usually he would run right out to recess. But she said this time I really, he kind of fooled around the desk. And after a while he came up and he said, Mrs. Burton? She said, Jess, did you know that story I told you about Washington D.C.? And she says, Jess. He said, well, I'm a pathological liar, but I'm working on it and things things start to go great but about six months after she disappeared and i'm working i'm going to al-anon thank god for al-anan they saved my sanity now a.a tried to help me but they say kick the bitch out that's that's reject a.i said release her with love and the greatest thing you'll ever learn aas is to get that pamphlet on detachment my god it saved my life 100 times over but at any rate i went to them and i thought i was doing pretty good but i was waking up about two o'clock in the morning with a smothering sensation like i had a pillow over my face and i wake up like that and i think my god something's wrong with my heart or my lungs so i went for the doctor he said daddy there's nothing wrong it's emotional you better get to a psychiatrist well i've had no problem with psychiatry because i know that i suffer from grave emotional disorders. But I was unhappy that the program hadn't worked. And so I leave him and I thought, okay. And on the way home, I'm crying. And I was working with a girl whose husband was an Episcopal priest and he was in Al-Anon. And inadvertently, which is a complicated way of spelling God, I find myself on the day on the other side of the way over to his house and I said, Father Ken, what's the matter with me? He said, it's obvious you're in a panic. What are you afraid of? I said I'm afraid I won't see Anne alive again. He said you have to accept it. You may never see her alive again and I just screamed in agony But I can't. He said, then go on fighting. And our book says we cease to fight everything and everybody, including alcohol. The only fight I ever gave was alcohol. I went home, got down on my knees and said something along these lines. All right, Lord, I don't understand how it can be your will that Ann has to die. But if she has to Die, I surrender her to you even unto death. Just give me the strength to go through it. And loved ones, it was like a low went off my shoulders. I went to bed that night, slept all night for the first time. Got up the next day and it was about my business and the phone rang at noon. It was my daughter. Isn't that odd? People say, isn't that oddly? That's God. Now she didn't get well right away. But I had her son and I couldn't help her. Oh gee, if you've got alcoholics in your family, don't try and help them. Oh God, don' t break your heart. Because see, it's mama talking. I'd worked with 15,000 people by this time. I'm what, 15 years sober. And everything I said was wrong. but one person who didn't have half the program I've got came along said the magic word and she's been sober ever since you see so she came to me after she'd been sober quite a while to make amends and I said Ann there's no reason for make amends the fact that you're alive I said I already lost you unto death what are you talking about so I told her about this little ex thing and she said my god when was that and I told him she said mother do you know what I was doing that day and I said, I have no idea. Well, she was going into Tijuana, Mexico, across San Diego, into Timana, Mexico. And at that time, you could pick up a thousand of any of her drugs you wanted. And so the last time she went through, the Hells Angels had been picked up going across the border. I guess I'm the only one that blesses the Hell's Angels. But they had drugs in every pocket. So they closed the border down. And when Ann goes in the last Time, the pharmacist said, I can't give you any more. You'll have to have a prescription. Well, now it's not like going to another liquor store, you understand. She was burned out. I told you I weighed 82 pounds, I'm 5 foot 2. She's 5 foot 7, she weighed less than 70 pounds. She was more dead than alive. I remember the first time I ever saw her after that, I went to put my arms around her and it was like hugging a board. She was hard, the skin was hard. She was frozen. How she ever lived through it is God's mercy and his grace. So anyhow, she came back to the valley and she lived very close to where we were. She put blankets and towels and blocked all the doors and windows. took the last of her drugs, which is a huge overdose, turned the gas on and laid down to die. And that afternoon they turned the glass off. They turned the lights out for lack of payment. Isn't that odd? Isn't it that odd that's God? Now she's got over 22 years of sobriety, thank God. I gave my grandson back to her when he was about, and she was about a year or two years sober and in less than six months he's a full-blown addict alcoholic. This is a family disease. It is hereditary. It is passed on in the genes. Please don't forget that. It may skip a generation but if you have alcoholism you are predisposed and the only way you'll ever escape it is just not to take that drink and for us that's impossible because how many times this weekend have we heard our beloved speaker say and then I took a drink and then I felt comfortable see when we take a drink and it does for us it doesn't do that to the normsies out there we take a drink and it does something so different that it is alcoholism that's what alcoholism is the speaker Bob first night speaker described the feelings of the alcoholic better than anybody I've ever seen if you weren't here for God's sake get the tape because I lived through things that I had forgotten he brought back feelings and emotions in me that i used to suffer it was almost too much for me to stand but thank god i haven't forgotten what it's like to be like that and that's what'll happen for us to drink is to die now my grandson is now about 14 15 years sober on the program my youngest grandson wait a minute this goes on my youngest daughter is not an alcoholic she gave me two grandchildren a granddaughter who's never smoked or drank absolutely delightful person a grandson who's used and drank since he was 13. And I never fell in the trap of telling these people anything. And my grandson, my youngest grandson, I would see him, and I'd put my arms around him and say, praying for you, babe. He'd say, I know you are, Nana. He now has six months of sobriety. And don't despair. It took me 13 years of hammering at God before he finally got this kid. but if we have the patience to wait upon the lord his timing is not ours but somehow it works well since i've been sober i've gone back to a church of my choice i'm a born-again christian and i read the bible but see it not would not have done it loved ones if i had come to the doors of north hollywood that night and the woman said are you an alcoholic and i'd have said yes and she said honey come in and accept jesus i would have died not that jesus couldn't do it but you take us who are so wounded or so starved so misinformed and try and put religion down us and you're going to lose us but you get real smart and real sneaky and you bring me in here and you tell me to find a god of my understanding and i found a daddy god and with a daddy God he revealed to me that Jesus is the savior and I'm not trying to proselytize him I'm is telling you how i believe you brought me back full cycle i thank you for that i'm now in my opinion total i'm not fragmented anymore and i also know that god is using me the harvest is plentiful do you know that the workers are very few very few people will get up in the middle of night and go out and call somebody they don't want to bother at this thing this lady has handled that desk down there when there should be a lot of people relieving her. Another girl had been there from 7 o'clock in the morning to 5 o' clock at night and nobody sat at that desk. And you go to a meeting and they have the coffee all made and the chairs all set up and literature out and you don't pick up your coffee cup and you leave and you think gremlins did it? The harvest is plentiful the workers are few and I've been active since day one and I will die active. The way I'd like to die is standing up here talking it may scare you to death but I'd love to just flip out right up here. That would be wonderful. I would love it. Now, I've got to tell you something because I believe in sharing experience, strength, and hope. My husband Al was in Al-Anon at the very beginning, 1951. He was the first intergroup chairman of Southern California. He started the central office and the Al announcer and most people don't know my husband started the Alateens. But my husband unfortunately worked in the business end of the program. Oh, he's very productive. He did great. He never worked the program for himself. I decided to go into partnership with an alcoholic partner, and I begged him not to. I said, please don't. The man's a practicing alcoholic. He said, oh, Dottie, anybody that drinks too much, you think's an alcoholic. I said well, it takes one to know one, you know? So we sold our house, took our savings, and he went into business. And my husband was a brilliant man. But less than nine months were down the drain. We lost our house. Our cars. Everything but some old furniture. Lost our savings. We walked out of the bankruptcy court with $7 and an old car. And we were in our 50s. My husband never attended another Al-Anon meeting from that day till now. And you can die in many ways. And my husband, I divorced him after eight years of staying with this. I loved him too long to hate him. I couldn't stay with him and watch this disintegration. He now has emphysema and he's slowly dying. And he's never ever attended another al-Anan meeting. You think we're the only ones who do that, right? We're very good friends. I would have been married to him 50 years. But it's all right. I'm alone now. I'm a man's woman. I'd like to be alone, but that's the way God wants it. But I'd rather be alone than be with someone and lonely. Do you understand what I'm talking about? And I have a lot of lovely friends. I have all of you. I have my youngest daughter. And my granddaughter, who is the joy of my life, has given me two great-grandsons. Now, if you love me, tell me I don't look old enough to be a great-great-grandmother, okay? But just think, 35 years ago I could have missed three grandchildren and these great grandbabies that are so wonderful and they just adore me. And I would not have been here and I've never known the love of God and the love for God. The love of the people. Now, three years ago my youngest sister, nine years younger than I am, died of alcoholism. Lost two of them. My mother's died since I got sober. My daddy died. A lot of bad things. A lot OF wonderful things. because you know what the wonderful things are, the miracles that have happened. Somebody paid my way to the Holy Land. Some group of people. I don't know where it came from. And I walked the path that Jesus walked, the most wonderful experience of my whole lifetime. And I've spoken all over. Next month, I've got the great honor. My birthday is June the 10th, or 11th. On June the10th is AA's birthday and the Founder's Day banquet in Akron, Ohio, I've been asked to speak at. Hey, come on, you know. You've got to know. Are you clapping for me? Are you clapping for me because I'm a finger on the hand of God? Dottie Shore by herself is nothing. Oh, I'd like to say I'm something, but I'm nothing. But I can do all things through God in this AA program and so can you. Make up your mind how happy you want to be and don't limit yourself because you can be as happy as you make up your mind to be. And it says it doesn't take much of a person to work this program but it takes all of you and you'll get out of this program what you put in. Now, I have a great love affair for people. I have help buttons about that big around. After Al and I were divorced, I was working in the pharmacy not making enough money to live on and I'm praying to God to get me out of there because in a pharmacy, you're dispensing nine out of every ten prescriptions for Valium or Librium and you can't help these people. And like I said, I wasn't making any money so I started saying, Lord, either help me make more money or get me off of this. But I was fully trained in pharmacy but no other livelihood. And two weeks later, my A-baby calls. She said, Dottie, my mother died and left me a small inheritance. And I want you to go to school and do the thing you do the best. And I said, I can't take your money. She said. Dottier, would you do it for me? Well, she got me. I said yes. So I went to UCLA. I worked 40 hours a week. Went to school for three and a half years at night. And 16 years ago, I came out of there with my certificate. And I've been in private practice ever since. Carrying the message to the people who are bleeding and hurting. The emotionally induced illnesses, which are alcoholism, drug addiction, migraines, high blood pressure, ulcers, colitis. You know, if you don't do something about your deep receded problem you're going to become a compulsive overeater or you're gonna have migraines or you gonna have high blood pressure. We will have to break out somewhere else. Don't do that to yourself. Get in here and find out what your deep receiver problem is. Work your steps and then walk, not trudge, walk a happy road of destiny and give this away as you go along. Now I had trouble because of my ego and I'm well aware of it. When people clap and tell me how wonderful I am, Jesus, I heard my tape or blah, blah, blah. I think, God, how can I handle this without getting that ego back in there? Because I don't want to get drunk. And there's a woman by the name of Corrie Ten Boone. I don' know how many of you people have heard of her. She was a Dutch woman who took all these people into her home, all these Jews, and she was put in a concentration camp and lost members of her family. And when she was let out, she was what we call a tramp for the world. She went around talking about the miracles that happened. And I was in her company one day and i asked her i said how do you handle it everybody's looking at you and wanting you to speak and everything she said i had a lot of trouble but she said I asked the Lord one day how can I handle this and he said I'll tell you what you do you accept every compliment as a flower and when you get enough of them together just hand me the bouquet and so you see I can take the compliments now because I know where it comes from by myself I'm nothing but I can do all things through AA and God and so it's been I'm more comfortable now I can relax and not think, oh God, I hope I don't take this. I hope i don't get full of my ego. I don' t have to worry. It's not me anyhow. Now when my youngest sister died three years ago, I went home to the funeral. And she had three kids, late 20s, early 30s. And the middle one got a bad beating emotionally. And she was loving her one minute and hating her the next. And I said, Kathy, you're going to have to deal with this. Your mother was a sick alcoholic. And if you don't deal with your hatred, you're gonna make victims of your children. so she said I said you bury your hatred with your mother and she said well will you go up the casket with me at the last I don't like open caskets I'll do anything with her so after everybody had gone she and I walked up took our hands like this and she says alright mother I place my hatred in the casket and she turned around to walk away and look back and she say you dirty bitch you'll never hurt me again now when my sister died my mother adored her she dressed her like a princess my sister sang all over My mother just lived vicariously through her. Yet my mother said, when she called me that night, Dottie Eplen died tonight. Thank God it's over. She had three severe hemorrhages, blood from every opening. So my sisters have two epitaphs. One is, thank God it'S over. The other one is, you bitch, you'll never hurt me again. What's your epitaphe going to be, loved ones? Poor guy, he couldn't get honest. Stopped going to meetings. Couldn't admit they were alcoholic. I don't know what it is. Now, you know I'm not dramatic. And I thought, well, all right, my sisters both have an epitaph. It doesn't say Evelyn Singer, Evelyn Junior Champion Skier. You think about Evelyn, you think, Evelyne, thank God it's over. The other one, you bitch, you'll never hurt me again. And I though, well if we're going to have one, what would I like mine to read? And I think I'd like to have it say, Dottie Shore, well done, oh good and faithful servant. Because I've tried. Thank you for my life.