The Fellowship That Kept Her Sober but Not Recovered – Ann G.

Thank you. I'm Ann Garrity, and I'm an alcoholic. I came around the side there, you know, as those young people leap off this platform, I'd probably break my hip on the way up. And I don't know what you do to resuscitate a broken hip, but I'm sure it isn't anything I want to have done tonight. I wanted to sort of clarify the involvement part. She means involvement with service. I'm not involved with a lot of affairs and this sort of thing. I'm willing and able but you know how it goes I want to did you notice those delegates when I first came on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and if you're new here tonight it's the best piece of advice that I got and what they told me was look around the room and look at the dumbest looking idiot that you can find and you can figure if they can make it you can make now if you look around at those delegates you know that if they could be delegates so you can be a delegate. You know, they all come in all sizes, all shapes, both sexes. Well, all sexes really, but anyway. All you have to do is sort of be in the right spot at the right time. This is a typical Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It's just like the first meeting that I walked into when I was new on the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous. I had already read the book, so that took care of that part of it. I had stolen it from the library. I didn't mean to steal it, but what happened was I got it home and then when I found out what kind of a book it was, I wasn't going to take it back with my name in it, I'll tell you that so I kept it actually I underlined it for my husband who needed it and put it in the bathroom, you know, where else will you read something like that at that stage, and it didn't turn out too well he didn't think much of the book of Alcoholics Anonymous and I kept the book for quite a long time and I used to tell this story when I was fairly new on the program and finally somebody said, did you ever replace the book? I thought, oh, did I ever replace the book. No, but I will in the morning and I finally had to go out and buy another book for the library which somebody promptly stole there hasn't been a book of Alcoholics Anonymous in our library in the last ten years and I put in about four of them every time I win one I donate it to the library that way I can take it off my income tax and you're a poor widow you've got to get alone as long as you can anyway my first alcoholics and items meeting I walked into a group of people down there in Los Osos and I don't have to tell you that Los Oso's isn't very big I mean you think Fresno is little you all live in Los Oso's it's on the south end of Morro Bay it's ten miles out towards the ocean from San Luis Obispo and it now has about 17,000 people all of whom stop in front of my house every day on their way to work at the stop sign from about 4 o'clock in the morning until about 8 o' clock at night. But anyway, the traffic has increased. I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I had read the book of Alcoholics Anonymous and I said to an old copy that the copy said we are thousands who have been cured of this disease and I thought that's wonderful. They certainly won't be at this meeting. And they weren't. My neighbors were at that meeting. I don't know about you, but when I walk into a room full of my neighbors, I don' t think much of anonymity, I' ll tell you that. I tried to persuade them that I was there to do a research book, a research paper on nursing, being the token nurse of the neighborhood, as it were. And I also was a Girl Scout leader at the time. As a matter of fact, I don''t know about Girl Scouts in Fresno, but the Girl Scots in Santa Barbara Ventura, and San Luis Obispo County has elected me as the Outstanding Girl Scout Leader of the Year the year I came on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's pretty tricky. That's because I was laid back. You know, I never got too excited about all the things. We used to have fabulous, fabulous campouts. I always took a bottle of wine to the bottom of my sleeping bag. And that sort of soothes these things. You know, tents fell down, didn't bother me a bit, you know. Pancakes burned, good, couldn't eat in the morning anyway. Actually, I am not sure how you young people raise children without booze, you know. The people in the back who are necking, please stop. You're making the leader nervous. The thing that goes on in alcoholic anonymous meetings went on that night. Somebody, of course, said, what are you doing here? And somebody else said, we're waiting for you. They always say that. Do you ever notice that in Amy? We're waiting voor you. What do you mean you're waiting vor me, you know? You didn't even know I was coming. I didn't know Iwas coming two days before. I never intended to come. If I had known that I was going to attend alcoholics and honest meetings and get invited over to Fresno to tell me what it was like and what happened, I would have made it more exciting, to be perfectly honest. I would Have started earlier and lasted longer. As it was, I just thought it was sort of a local issue, whether I got sober or not. It was a local issue in my own house, as a matter of fact. I came from a long line of alcoholics. I think like a lot of young people on our program today, I came From a Family of Alcoholics, and I was fully convinced that I would never take a drink of alcohol. And I never did until I was about 12 years old. And it wasn't quite as bad as I expected. And I didn't fall down drunk, and I didn' t cause any problems with my open bladder. And so I didn''t have any troubles. And I thought, well, that isn't so bad. I never had another drink for another couple of years back in the Depression in the 1930s. It was not the social thing for teenagers to do is to drink. I mean, some of my friends talk about prohibition, and I was over, I was back in Michigan a few weeks ago, andI was over at Mrs. Dolan's, and I suddenly remembered that I used to sip on her dandelion wine down in the cellar. And I asked Yvonne, who was her daughter-in-law, about the dandelion wine. I thought there might be some left, and I was going to throw it out. But anyway, I thought so. I'd look at it. It was nostalgia, but it had been gone for many years. When I was 14 years old, it was half a century ago, to be honest. So, I mean, you know, it doesn't last that long. i um i never uh i didn't take another drink until i was about 14 years old we were going on a camp out of grow cap and um we all put in our pittance as it were we got a bottle of wine a very expensive bottle of line it cost about 89 cents a gallon and back in 1930 when you put in 10 cents that was a big deal. And we went out on the grow cap and we had this girl's party at Phyllis Rose's grandmother's house, and we played charades. We started drinking the wine before we started playing charades, and I had quite a lot of wine in me. Some of the girls didn't drink much wine at all, you know how that is. There's always somebody that doesn't drink, heavens no. And there's always someone who sips a little bit and says that's enough, Then there's the rest of us who pig out. I was a pigger-outer from the beginning. And so what happened to me was that we started to play this game of charades, and all of a sudden it was my turn, and I leaped out from underneath my blanket with on a stitch of clothes on, holding nothing but a geranium leaf in front of me and an apple in my hand, and it was Eve, you know. You all guessed that, I can see. it didn't cover any more then than it would cover now to be perfectly honest i was embarrassed about that for a long time and i started then at 14 years of age to control my drinking and i managed to control it till i was 44 laying down dead drunk finding out the program of alcoholics anonymous and i'll tell you how i can control it because some of you may want to go back out and try it again and it's nice to know how to control your drinking um i mean there are always somebody that's going to go back out. I mean, that's what Clancy says. I'm just going with what Clrency says. You've got to put him in every pitch you make in Southern California or you're automatically expelled from Alcoholics Anonymous. So if any of you know him, be sure that I tell him that I mentioned his name tonight in Fresno. But I thought this whole story got around school the next day, and I thought I was disgraced. And I thought to myself that I will not drink and get drunk in this town again, which I did not. Luckily enough, I wasn't there too much longer, but my intentions were honest. And I was back in Michigan a couple weeks ago for the second time this evening, and a bunch of us girls were standing around and we were sitting around the table over at Aggie's and I brought up this business about the picnic out at Grow Cap this night. And Aline remembered it. She said, I didn't drink a thing and some of you other people drank much too much. This is 50 years later. And I said, I've always been embarrassed about that charade game we played. Nobody remembered it but me. and how can you make amends to a bunch of people that don't remember the most important thing in your life that went on and I was all set to say something and apologize to these nice people I figured I didn't have to they didn't know anything about it when does it work I'm not sure whether I should have apologized or not I go back next year I walked the bridge from Mackinac from St. Angus over to Mackinac City, which absolutely impresses nobody in California. But 55,000 of us Michiganders walked that bridge on Labor Day. It's the only day they open it. People come from all over that part of the country and they walk the bridge. If you've ever been stationed up at the Sioux or any place out there in Michigan, you know about the bridge? I came back all full of vim and vigor because I had walked the bridge and so far it hasn't impressed one soul. Is there anybody here tonight that is impressed at all? Thank you, thank you. There we go, we got a few. That's a five-mile bridge for, you know, and some guy didn't make it, he leaped off it. They tell me he might have been drunk. You all saw me all dressed up, didn't you? I don't have to stay that way, do I? I don't go down too far, but I go down a little ways. Maybe that's far enough. But anyway, I could slip out of my skirt and none of you would know it up here anyway, so you don't know how far I'm really going. It wasn't easy to get drunk back in the 30s. I know that some people talk about probation and they drank their father's wine and they did this and that. My father made beer and it never didn't even get out of the bottle because it always exploded in the cellar. When I was back this year, I went past my old home where I was born and raised and grew up, and they had a for sale sign on the front of it. And so I called the lady who had their number on the for sale line. This is a couple weeks ago, as I mentioned for the third time. And I said, that house in Dickinson is for sale. And she said, yes, it is. And I asked her, how much do you want for it? She said, well, you know, it has three bedrooms. And I said, oh, well, good. It has three bedrooms. How much do you want for it? She said, it also has a remodeled kitchen. And I says, fine, how much do you want it for? She said what we're asking, $25,000. I almost bought it just because it was a bargain. I have no intention of going back to Michigan and living. It's nice to have property back there for $25K. The only thing that stopped me was I didn't have $25k. Actually, I didn' t have $2,500. I couldn't have made a down payment. But anyway. But I was showing off. You know, alcoholics never get over that. I've been sober for quite a while, but I still like to show off. And I said, did you build on an extra bedroom? And she said, yes, yes. They built on an extrabedroom downstairs. And I asked her, does it have a full basement now? She said, no, it doesn't have any basement at all. And I says, what happened to the basement under the kitchen? And she says, oh, it does not have a basement under the kitchen. I said have you looked under the kitchen? I mean, there might still be some of my dad's beard on there. I don't think anybody's looked out of that kitchen since I left home. Anyway, I didn't buy it and I'm back out here and here I am. I went down to the University of Michigan School of Nursing. I went downstairs because that's what I wanted to be. I wanted be a nurse from the time I was about seven years old and I finished my duty at the hospital last night at 1130 and I still love it. The one thing that has never been destroyed in my life Sober or drinking has been my love of nursing. And I'm one of those fortunate people who have spent their entire lives, and I retired a few years ago. I only worked part-time. You know, women retire, but they only work part-timing. And they call that retirement. They're afraid if they retire completely, they're going to have to do housework. At least I am afraid if I retire completely I'm going to be able to do household. So I don't retire completely. I just do enough so I don' t have to vacuum and mop the kitchen. But anyway, what happened to me was I went down and I became a nurse. And just as I finished my nursing career and graduated from university, I was all set to go in the service and serve my country in 1943. For those people who are figuring it's 44 years ago. And that's more than that, isn't it? But anyway it doesn't make much difference. It's a long time ago. And what I did was, I got married. I got marriage because, well actually because somebody asked me. And I didn't know how to be turning down, frankly. I think I had been leading him astray for quite a while. And he just got this urge out of no place and said, why don't we get married? Well, I was already, you know, pinned to a couple of other guys and dating a few other ones. And I had to write, well, I had to mimeograph my Dear John letters as a matter of fact. But I did and I married him. And then it turned out it was a big mistake. I don't know why it was a big mistakes but it only lasted a few months and I retired from marriage at that time and went into the service. That's where I wanted to go in the first place. I don' t know how many of you people come from back east but those people back east have a weird way of saving things. Now, I don't know about Californians, but I mean, the back Easter... I went back East and Clarice, my good friend Clarice said, I've got some letters you wrote me when you were in training. I was in training from 40 to 43. You know, she sent those letters out to me. She put them in an envelope and she sent out these letters. And I couldn't believe them. They looked like I had written them yesterday. I just had to scratch out the guy's name and put a different guy in. But I mean as far as the letters were concerned, I haven't changed that much. It really gave me a setback, because I thought I was growing on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And here I am with 40-year-old letters that look like they were written yesterday. I own amends to myself, so maybe I'll make that tonight, having an extra ice cream or something. But anyway, this guy wrote and he asked me for a divorce. And my heart was broken. But my head was working. And I knew that a Southern California divorce wasn't worth very much. And I got an annulment. And before I got the annulament, I had gone down and I had joined the Army, the Air Force Corps. And the Army had called me to come in October or whatever it was. And the annullment wasn't final until November. And so I took Bud's name and went into the service. and I suddenly realized about the, we had basic training down in Atlantic City, New Jersey and I certainly realized that there was nobody in New Jersey who knew me. There was nobody in New Jersey that knew that my mother and my father had a drinking problem. There was nobody in New Jersey that knew that my cousins had a drinking problem that my aunts my uncles you know all the Irish and northern part of Michigan and all the Welsh and all the Scotch and everybody and nobody knew anything about me and so what I did is I practiced anonymity at a local level for the time I was in the service. I figured I'd go in as Ann Romig, and no matter what happened to poor old Ann Romik, I'd throw the name off when I came out of the service anyway and start all over again. And I really had quite a blast. I spent about a year and a half passing out every night and coming to every morning. And I very much enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it, it was my high part of my drinking. I was one of those people that the Army was made for. I was sent over to Tinian in the Marianas, and I went over on the Matsonia. And we landed in the – we didn't land. We pulled into the harbor on Tinian over in the Maryanas, and they put us on these LSTs, and they rowed us into the shore. And as we looked up from the LSTS in our little fatigues in our gas masks – the island had been secured for a year or so, but, you know, you have to get the gas masks ashore some way. And you can't leave them hanging around the deck of the Mansonia. But anyway, I looked up, and down along this breakwater, it's solid men. And I looked out in front, and there were solid men There were 25,000 men, and 500 girls And I was one of them I knew I'd made the right decision And I never saw another deal like that until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous When I came in, they were still screening women to be sure there were ladies. But anyway, I did a lot of drinking in the service, and I went on up to the Army of Occupation in Japan, and I did lots of drinking up in the Army Of Occupaction in Japan. And I came back home, and I landed in Seattle. And we landed in Seattle, and we got a ride downtown, and we went into the Olympic Hotel in Seattle, and we called home. And I said, I'm home, which upset my mother no end because she was getting some money from me from the government because I was her sole support or something. But anyway, many, many years later, I walked in the Olympic Hotel in Seattle, and I was a general service representative. And I was back as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous to attend the Seattle Prasa. That was quite a long ways back in my sobriety. But it was the same hotel. It looked the same. And most of the thing that had changed differently was me. I went back to Rochester, New York, and I remarried again because first things first. You know, it's a thing to do. Somebody else asked me, as a matter of fact. I was taking flying lessons, and I think he thought I was going to kill myself. I had a little trouble with depth perception. It was supposed to come across the field at 500 feet or something. I forget anyway, right rudder, left rudder. And I was coming down. You could see the grass growing where I was looking out the window. So Herb Sayle, to save me from committing suicide on Beecham Field in Rochester, New York, married me, which was sort of nice of him, because actually we had six kids in the next eight years. And so it's a good thing we were married. I can really run for president because we were buried in time. I mean, you know, I don't have any desire to run for president, but I may. You never can tell. Somebody from San Luis is running for president. I can't think of his name. Nobody else from San Luís can think of His name either, but He is running for president so. So there we were. Herb and I got married. We were both alcoholics. We drank a heck of a lot. and he got into Clarkson Institute of Technology up in northern New York, and he said to me, we won't drink while I'm up there. He said, if I'm going to get through four years of college and you're going to keep having, he didn't know I was going to have all these pregnancies, but I mean actually half of the fault was his at all times. It wasn't just me. He went ahead and decided that we wouldn't drink, and I wasn't as assertive as I am now and I decided we wouldn't drink either. It didn't make that much difference to me then. I don't think that I had crossed that invisible line. If it meant that he would have to have his engineering degree in the next four years and that we wouldnít drink in spite of the fact that I, as I said, passed out and came to for most of my time in the service, it didnít seem necessary for me to drink and it wasnít necessary for us to drink. Simply because I found a little bottle of little orange heart-shaped pills, and they were called dexedrine. And so I popped a couple of dexhedrine up. It wasn't my idea. It wasn'T my fault. It wasn' t my idea, but some nurse I was working with said, why don't we have some of those because we're all getting a little fat from all these kids. and we thought that we would have a few of these and that would keep us thin. I haven't had one in 30 years, but the ones I took 30 years ago haven't got me thin yet. I don't know if they're going to make it. Does everybody know that smoke rises or whatever it does? But anyway. Anyway, so then I got on this dexedrine. I had a little personality change on dexhedrine. I don't know how many people here have dexédrine, but they have little personality changes, you know? You throw coffee cups and you stay up all night, you wash windows at 4 o'clock in the morning because you can't see the moon out there. And my husband got a little suspicious. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm not doing anything. I'm just washing this goddamn window. Everybody washes windows in the middle of the night. You're not supposed to wash windows when the sun is shining, right? Right. And you certainly can't wash them in the rain. But anyway, the logical time is 4 o'clock in the morning. And so he decided that I must be on some kind of pills. Excuse me. And so we decided that we were going to go to the hospital. So he decidedthat I would come off the pills and we went on a little vacation up to Michigan from Potsdam, New York and he bought me a gallon of wine to get off the pills, which was a wise move on his part because at that time they didn't have a pill anonymous, but they did have alcoholics anonymous. It was heading me in the right direction is what it was doing. Excuse me. And I discovered wine again. I was to have a 16-, 17-year fault with wine. It did for me what I needed to have it done I got off the Dexedrine I probably would have run out of Dexédrine eventually I never ran out of wine until the last day, I'll tell you that And we went back to school and I did alright We graduated, or he graduated We moved out to California in 1951 He was an engineer with Division of Highways And we had, as I said, very little drinking in the four years previously And we came to California, and we certainly thought we could afford a few beers. And we started out like most people do with a six-pack of beer, four for him and two for me. I hadn't heard about women's lib yet. And then I discovered that it could be four for Him and two from me and another two from Me if I bought two extras and hit them. So I started doing that, and that worked pretty well. Actually, Herb decided that four for HIM and a bottle for HIM was pretty good, And so he hid the bottle. And I was telling this story one time, and it got on a little piece of tape, and one of my kids was listening to the tape. And he said, we used to have a good time with that. I said, what do you mean you used to Have a Good Time With That? You know, some more will be revealed when it comes to your children, I'll tell you that. And he says, well, you know, Mike and I used to find the bottles where Daddy hid them or where you hid them and so forth. And he say, we use to say to ourselves, obviously they're not going to ask each other where the bottle is. So that's how they started drinking. They didn't even, you know, start with ten senses of their own. They started with my ten senses. But anyway. Incidentally, none of my boys drink now. They don't belong in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because they haven't gotten over the habit of smoking different kinds of dried grasses. But they're all very proud that they don't drink. I haven't got the heart to tell them. You know how Mother is. I continued on with the wine. The wine didn't count. I went to a doctor. Thank God for doctors. Aren't they wonderful? You go to a Doctor, and the Doctor says, Ann, no wonder you're having troubles. He's got five children. That was not my sixth child. And he said, Herb drinks too much. We all know that. Yep, yep, you know. And he says, Why don't you try a little wine before you go to bed at night? I went out and bought a gallon. I thought there was going to be a long pregnancy. I don't know whether it was a long presidency or not, but that gallon didn't last very long. And I drank it out of a coffee cup because I didn't want the children to see me. And pretty soon it became so it wasn't quite enough. And so I thought, what I need is a mixed drink. And soI mixed a little turpenthydrate and codeine cough syrup with the wine. And it does make a nice mixed drink if you haven't tried it. You're too late because you're here tonight and you can't try it. but actually they don't make driven hydrate and codeine anymore it's ridiculous that's why I'm not apologizing for this cough I've been on the program of alcoholics for 21 years and I finally am starting to cough again I took so much cough syrup those last few years I haven't coughed in 20 years so it's sort of a pleasure to sit up here and cough at you I finally, the other night, I was having trouble with this cough and I said, we're out for dinner. One of our friends had us over for dinner and they're all talking about this new magic cough syrup, non-alcoholic cough syrups. Fantastic. It lasts for 12 hours. I got some. It lasted 20 minutes and didn't have any kick to it. It was just absolutely useless. I fed it to the cat. The cat has not coughed since. That's not true. I just threw that in to see if you were all listening. I didn't intend to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. My husband kept drinking. Of course, actually, I don't blame him, but, you know, I mean... And then our second son, who was 16 years old, He was hurt in a car accident the week before Christmas, and he lived about five days. And he died the week Before Christmas, and he was buried just exactly the week beforehand. The week before Christmaseve. And at that time I was drinking steadily. I was passing out every night. I was doing this coffee cup bit. I don't remember whether I was off the cough syrup yet or not. I had to get off the coughing syrup because it made me itch. and I got allergic to it and I kept itching people down here are nodding I don't know if they're falling asleep or whether they're agreeing with me but anyway makes you itch I would get to bed at night with this cough syrup itch coming on and I would try to convince my stomach that we were asleep and I was trying to convince I would sneak up here to scratch my back just as I would get there to scratch my back my stomach would wake up and say oh are we awake there I would be full of itchers and vomiting. And it just didn't work. So I went to the doctor. I said, the doctor, you know, I'm having a lot of trouble with physical problems. And I didn't realize it was a codeine. I thought that I was probably coming down with some rare allergy to kitchen detergent perhaps, something like that. And I said I also am waking up stiff in the morning. I didn't bother to tell him I was going to bed stiff at night. I don't believe in telling doctors all this stuff, because you pay them so much money, let them figure out what's wrong with you, you know. I worked for doctors for years. It's amazing the number of people that have the same idea that I do. I thought that I had tuberculosis, because I woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning with night sweats. And I know that night sweats are a sign of tuberculosis because I am a nurse. And so I went to the doctor. I weighed about 180 pounds. And thanks to the cough syrup, I hadn't coughed in years. But anyway, I told him, I think I have tuberculosis. And Gabe looked at me, you know, I Think He Thinks I'm Nuts. And we had a chest X-ray and I didn't have tuberculosis. We had a blood test and I Didn't Have Arthritis. All of this stuff changed after I became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. All these things, when I gave up the cough syrup, when I give up the little Miltowns that I used to, the non-addictive pills that I use to use when I went on duty in the morning, I didn't drink on duty. I poured myself a shot glass full, oh, a medicine glass full of cough syrup and then I'd have maybe a Miltow or an Equinol or Ritalin. And I wasn't addicted to them, I just liked them. There's a difference. I didn't buy them, I didn'T steal them, I just used them. Now I know that this is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, you don't want to hear about that. However, it just happens that it got me here maybe a little bit faster. I finally, after Michael was I was killed in this accident. I gave up all my outside activities. I stopped being the Girl Scout leader, the Boy Scout leader. The blood bank, blood drawer. That was a good trick. But anyway, I stopped all these outside activities and I was like Linda. I sat home to write a book, the Great American Novel. I couldn't get off the first couple of paragraphs. But I really tried. and my drinking then became all right. If you lose a 16-year-old son, it doesn't make any difference if you go out and get drunk once in a while. I didn't go out to get drunk, incidentally. I never drank in public after I left the service for any very, very few times. I was strictly a home drinker. I was a coffee cup drinker I was the kind of drinker that hid their bottles in the dryer and behind the cleaning solutions, which didn't get moved very much. I was not a perfectionist. I was one of those women who cleaned house madly. Thank God. I mean, that would have been just almost too much. I was a plain old pass-out every night and come-to-every-morning drinker. And I did this for about ten years. I would still be doing it, except one night in my living room, a herb came out and he wanted to know why I didn't want to come to bed. Well, by this time going to bed was absolutely useless on both our parts and nothing happened. And the work to get nothing to happen, you know, just wore you out. And so I said, I'll be there later. and he went back down this long hall that we have there at the house and I said, God, what do I do? And God answered me. Now, I don't know whether it was the left side of my brain talking to the right side or my imagination or whether I was hallucinating or whether actually God lives in the rafters in my living room and I don' t know for sure. I never have gotten up there to clean them out so I can' t tell you He may still be there. But what happened was that the voice said, why don't you quit drinking? I don't know how you ladies feel about this, but I knew that if he quit drinking, everything would be okay. It was not up to me to quit drinking. And the voice thought again, you know, I said, what about the guy down in the hall? And he said, well, why aren't you quitting drinking? I'd already read the book, as I tell you. I evidently had a seed planted when Herb had one run on Alcoholics Anonymous a year and a half before. And I decided to quit drinking and go to Al-Anon. I thought that was sort of simple. Obviously, I had a drunken husband. I was eligible for Al-Anon. I didn't know that you could go to al-Anan and drink. If I had known that, I would have been the Al- Anon speaker tonight because I would have done it. But unfortunately, I couldn't stay sober enough to get to Al Anon. I thought that you had to, you know, just arrive at least in a sober state of mind. And I just couldn't do it. So otherwise I could be working the steps and drinking and everything would be hunky-dory, I'm sure. God forbid. But anyway, I finally called her friend of mine who had a handsome, intelligent, charming husband who was on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to her, I said, I have to go to an AlcoholicsAnonymous meeting. Can I go with Danny? She said, well, Danny isn't the alcoholic. She said I am. Well, she was a real bitch. You know, then I was sort of stuck. I had to go with her. And I went with her for a long time. She dragged me to meetings all the time. And I was on the program about seven months of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was having a really good time. I didn't worry about the steps of Alcoholic Anonymous. And I didn' t worry about the program of Alcoholix Anonymous . I was just having a great time with the fellowship of Alcoholice Anonymous And you can stay sober on the fellowship of Alcoholiix Anonymus quite a long-time as long as you don't drink and you go to a meeting every night and nothing tragic happens or nothing good happens. I don't know whether it was tragic or good, but my husband died. And I thought it was pretty good myself. I thought they told me things would get better and there certainly was better without him around. And all of a sudden there's oodles of money. It was just unbelievable. Social Security sent money. The Vision Highway sent money, the neighbors sent money the church sent money you know the American Legion sent money gosh and I love money. I haven't had that much money in years. So I buried the poor man because he was dead and I didn't realize at the time that my lack of feelings at that time were a symptom of my alcoholism. I didn' t realize that the inability to cry and carry on and feel badly about the whole thing and be sorry for what had happened, and so on and so forth. I just thought, good, that's what I thought. And it took me a long time to realize that the lack of feelings were one of the symptoms of my alcoholism. And when I finally got that settled in my own mind, I just had a real good Irish time. I just cried and cried and cried. But anyway, at that time it was pretty good. We got the airplane out of the living room for one thing. Since the station wagon, incidentally. It's a pretty good-sized airplane. It was across the back of the living room, and some poor man from the airport called, and he said, oh my God, Ann, I've heard the news, what can I do? I said, you can get this goddamn airplane out of the Living Room, that's what you can do. We were recovering it. When you recover a station wagon, you put on some cloth on it, and then you dope it up, you know? And I might have been not drinking, but I think I was sniffing boo every time I went through the Living Room, huh? No wonder I felt so good about sobriety. So Marty isn't bad at all. I can sniff enough glue. So finally, you know what I did? Everything got really good. The bills got paid. I was a chief honcho. I got a car instead of the station wagon, instead of an airplane. I gave the truck to my kid, one of my boys. And life was so good that I thought that I did not have a drunken husband. I did not have a lot of bills. I did not have anybody nagging me. The kids all had underwear out of that why don't I drink? There was no reason for me not to drink. Everything was fine. And I went out and I tried it. Then I found out the great fact about alcoholism. It doesn't make any difference how good things are out there. It doesn'T make any difference how bad things are out there. It doesn't make any difference whether I had checks bouncing all over town or whether I Had enough money to buy check, to pay the bills. It didn't make that much difference. But the only thing that was important when I put alcohol into my system, regardless of what was going on externally, internally, I couldn't stop drinking and I got drunk again and again for the summer. I had to come back to Alcoholics Anonymous in August of 1966, and admit to my innermost self finally that I was an alcoholic. I didn't read the book again for a long, long time. I didn' t read the book again because people told me to read the book. They didn't say to re-read the book, re- read the book, go to the book every day ad infinitum. And so the only thing I got from the Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was what a speaker told me about the Book of Alcoholic Anonymous. And I never got it straight, you know. There was that one Jack White from down at Long Beach. I mean, very few of you remember him, but there's always somebody in the room that remembers Jack. And Jack used to say, make sure your own house is in order. That's how he ended up his pitch. And I said to myself when I first time I heard that, how does he know about my house? You know? So I went home and I cleaned house. Came up to four o'clock in the morning. I washed the floors and waxed the floors, did the dishes, you know, swept the vacuums. Oh, I just had a wonderful time. defrosted the refrigerator. And you know, I haven't been drunk since. So it might be the refrigerator defrosting that does it. I'm like Linda. I'm not sure how the program works. But I finally bought a refrigerator that defrosts itself. Just to be sure I never get caught with ice in the refrigerator." I then, of course, had a car and my friend Lois who was dragging me to meetings before this episode of mine only went three times a week, her husband wasn't too well and I went every night. The first year and a half in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I was there all the time. I was here every single night I was every time there was something going on in the daytime I played cribbage at the Alana Club every afternoon I fell in and out of love like you fall in and out of hot coffee. It was a great time of my life. I still hadn't bothered to work the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous because I wasn't drinking, and I knew the secret of Alcoholic Anonymous. I knew if you don't take the first drink, you won't get drunk. And the old-timers that were around me at that time, that was the basis of their program, and that's about all they knew about the program of Alcoholix Anonymous, and when I listen to young people today, our newcomers today, not necessarily young, but the newcomers on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, who are actually working the steps of Alcoholic Anonymous right from the beginning. They're way ahead of where I was back in those days. They used to say, put the plug in the jug and come to meetings, and that's what we did. We put the mug in the jig and come into meetings, and we'd get into big arguments about how humble we should be or, you know, or what general service was doing or something exciting. And I just went to everything there was in AlcoholicsAnonymous, so I started going to some general service meetings, which was not my idea, but there was a thing to do on Sunday morning. My only other choice was go to Mass, and I had already left that part of my life out from some time before. And I fought my way back. I had about a year and a half in the program at Alcoholics Anonymous before I was able to go back to work as a nurse. Somewhere in those first few weeks of sobriety, I realized that I couldn't cope with nursing and getting sober. And I thought that they wouldn't let me stay in AlcoholicsAnonymous. And if you're new here tonight, you may think they may not let you stay in Alcoholics Anonymous because you're not old enough, you haven't drank enough, you don't act that way, you know, you hasn't been in the service or ad infinitum. I thought certainly somebody would say to me, you don'T have to join this group of AlcoholicsAnonymous. A nice girl like you doesn't need to be here. Nobody ever said that. On my fifth birthday, some idiot said I was the sickest woman he'd ever seen come on the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. I mean, I don't know who he was, but you know. At the time it didn't sound very nice, But anyway, I married in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous again. I caught him between the first and the second step. When he admitted he was parous over alcohol and before he had regained his sanity, I had him. It's pretty exciting. I think it was about three years. I think I had three years sobriety just after Bill and I were married. But anyway, he had about a year. We waited for him to have his year. I didn't wait for him to learn too much about the program, but enough to stay sober for a year anyway. And we had a great big church wedding, a Methodist church. My Irish ancestors rolled in their graves and the earthquake was 6.2, but outside of that it was all right. and 22 months later he was dead. He died of cancer of the lung. So for the third time in seven years I walked down that center aisle at St. Timothy's Catholic Church in Morro Bay buying a casket, my son and two husbands. And let me assure you that I and God were not on speaking terms. I did not have anything to do with God as I understand him. I didn't have anything TO do with turning my will and my life over to a higher power. I was just plain matter than hell. I figured that I had done the things that had to be done in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was doing the things they were asking me to do. And I couldn't believe that this kind of thing was happening to me. I was one of those people who projected, and I projected my whole life way ahead. And I had projected it with Bill Garrity, and it wasn't coming through that way. And I was working down in Arroyo Grande at the time, and I was driving 22 miles to work. I was coming home one day, and I was complaining, and I decided that, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous was not the answer to my problem. Sobriety was notthe answer tomy problem. And nobody would care anyway in this sort of nonsensical stuff. And as I was coming down the road, I kept saying to God, youknow, they promised methat good things would come. And finally, God reminded me that sometimes in our lives we are put in a position to do the good things for somebody else instead of the good thingscoming to us. And I figured in that case that Bill Garrity had been an only child. His mother had come up and lived with him. I mean, he wasn't a child. He was in his 40s, but his mother had came up and lived with us while Bill was dying. And otherwise, he would have been in a veterans hospital or a nursing home. And that perhaps I was Bill's good and I sat back and waited for my own. My own has come to pass and I've been very lucky with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can say that the program of Alcoholic Anonymous and I have gotten along for 21 years. Annette asked me not how long I'd been sober and how long I had been sober. And I said, well, I haven't had a drink in 21 years and I don't know how many years of that has been sobriety and how much of many years is that has Been Nothing But Holding On by the Skin of My Teeth, as my mother used to say. I was one of those people that thought that when you once did the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and you raced through the steps that first time that that was enough. I finally was lucky enough to hear a man say to me when I was about 12 years sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said to me, if the promises of Alcoholic Anonymous are not coming true for you, then it is time to go back and handle things that used to baffle us. We will intuitively know what to do. And I didn't know any of those things. All I knew was that when things went wrong to me I went to a meeting and I whined and I cried and I came on home and I managed to get through that day without taking a drink and I went on the next day. And the promises were not coming and nothing was going right and I was doing the things that I thought were the right things to do. What had happened to me, and it has happened to many people in my ages of sobriety, it happens to people between seven and ten years, is that you get sort of a burnout on Alcoholics Anonymous. You've gone to all the meetings that you want to go to, you listen to all those people say the same thing, and you know exactly what so-and-so is going to say and you don't know what such-and‑such is goingto say. You've lost your sponsor because they've died or they've passed away or they're done something. And you just keep on coasting through and a half a dozen people ask you to be their sponsor. And you say yes because you've got this five years or seven years or whatever it is, sobriety. And you don't have anything to give away. And you do not know that. And I'm not saying just you. I'm saying this for me. I didn't know that I didn' t have anything to give way. I didn''t know that I was still staying sober on the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous that the program wasn't working. And I had to go back and start the program of Alcoholic Anonymous over again. And I did that. And at the same time I was doing the things that other people were doing. I was going to meetings, I was acting as a secretary and I was active as an alternate general service representative and I went back and I started working the steps and one of my people that I had been sponsoring said to me one time she said practice the principles in all your affairs and what are the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and I thought what are the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous and I knew about the first principle of Alcoholical Anonymous which is honesty We have to honestly admit to our innermost selves that we're alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. And we went back to Chapter 3, and we went back, and I started over again in practice. And I got through, and I managed to get some faith, and I managed to get some hope, and I managed to get some integrity. And I started to be able to do a fourth step that was a real fourth step. It wasn't the fourth step that I had taken before. That was my husband's fourth step, and it wasn't the fourth step that I happened to me in all those years when I was growing up I would have been self will run riot since the day I was born and I was now practically I think I was up in my 50s by this time and I still self-will run riot what I wanted I found a way to deserve it and I found a ways that I could taught myself into it I was a great con artist when I drinking because none of my friends knew I drank because of this hidden drinking at home and this facade I kept up as the as a leader of all the things in my community. And so I never drank more than two drinks in public, and I conned everybody into thinking that my husband was the drunk and I was the poor martyr. But the worst person of all that I had conned, of course, was myself. I had conned myself into thinking that what I did was not that bad and my program didn't have to be that good and I WAS WILLING TO SETTLE FOR THE GOOD AND NOT WAIT FOR THE BEST. And Bill reminds us of that in some of his writings. that we can settle anywhere along this program of Alcoholics Anonymous that you want to settle for. You can settle for nothing but being sober tonight and going home and, you know, coming back tomorrow morning and going to your meeting tomorrow morning and being sober until tomorrow night. You can go from meeting to meeting by keeping the plug in the jug and not drinking between meetings, and you'll get years of sobriety. But if you want the program to really work for you, if you wanted it to be a program of recovery, in my opinion, you have to do what I had to do. I went back and I worked on the steps I went back and I worked on the fourth step and I found someone else to take another fifth step and I worked on the shortcomings and I worked on the defects of character and I had a lot of trouble with the defects of character because I didn't have anyone I came to this program you had them I could always find yours and finally one night sitting in a meeting I thought to myself it's funny that the people that I don't like in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous are the people who act like I act. You know, who have the same faults as I probably do. And I found out when I was pointing a finger at somebody else in the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous that I was putting the three fingers at myself and I finally learned to sit down with a list of defects of character and shortcomings. It's taken me years to make the amends. I went back to Michigan a few weeks ago because my cousin has been sick with cancer. And my other cousin called and said, I think you should come back because Lee wants to see you. And I didn't want to go back to Michigan. I wanted to take a trip someplace else. I wanted up to Vancouver. I wanted go hither. I wanted yon. But I really didn't wanna go back Michigan. And my cousin's wife sort of shamed me into it. And I went back. And I flew back to michigan and discovered that I have cousins back there that love me and I have cousin's that I love. And I'm grateful for the chance to go back and say, you know, I'm sorry for all those years. And my cousin Lee said to me, do you remember the time that I shot out all the windows in your playhouse with my BB gun? And I said, you always were a nasty kid. He said, so were you. I didn't know that he knew I was a nasty child. I knew he was a nastiest kid. I didn' t realize that he had the same opinion about me. And so we had a lot of sort of general amends to make. And I can honestly say tonight when I stand here that I love the cousins that I have left, because that's all we have left in my family are cousins. One of my other cousins flew in from Italy, not to see me, but because he was coming home to Mackinac Island that year and he was there. And so we managed to make more amends, and this is 21 years of sobriety and I'm still making amends for the things that I've done. Because I've been a door slammer all my life. I've become one of those people that walk out of one life and into another. I managed to learn through prayer and meditation what God expected me to do I also learned to let him do for me what he wanted to do not what I wanted to I'm grateful today for all the things that I wanted that I didn't get from Alcoholics Anonymous I'm thankful when I said I want this and I want that and I don't want something else that God said no absolutely no because it has worked out much better for me the 12th step talks about we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and I didn't have any message for a long time to carry to alcoholcs I could only tell you put the plug in the jug and keep coming back I now can tell you because I've been to other places I've heard other people talk about the 3rd step prayer and the 7th step prayers and the things to do in Alcoholics Anonymous and I can tell how we make a better sponsor today if I were in a position to sponsor anybody and I'm not yet in the position to sponsor everybody because I just finished up being the past delegate from Southern California and I am now the chairperson of the Southern California Area Assembly and it's not fair to somebody because I'm at home very much I work part-time at the hospital as you know it says to practice the principles and they talk about the principle of service and in the 12th step and most of you know, from what Linda said tonight, I've been involved in service. And I didn't intend to be involved in service and nobody ever intends to be involved in service. I don't think anybody accepts a job as general service representative for their group and says, oh goody. You know, you never have five people running for general service representative unless you've got a different bunch of groups up here that I do. You know somebody sticks you with that job. Your sponsor says you're going to be the general service or the alternate general service or you're gonna be the general service representative and then you try to give your report nobody wants to hear your report yeah there are three branches of service and the other two are a lot more fun you know how hospitals an institutional service is fun you go in there and people pat you on your back and tell you're good in a good job and they're glad to see you and it's wonderful that you're here and they give a Christmas party every year and you come out you feel good about what you've done you feel about the service of hospital institution And if you have a central office, you go down to the central office and you either stuff things in envelopes or you answer the telephones or you help with the projects at central office and you feel good about yourself because you know you've done something that day that you can see for Alcoholics Anonymous. But in general service, you don't see what you're doing day by day. You're fighting an uphill battle from the time you're first an alternate general service representative to the time that you're a past delegate in this business. People are saying to you, how come? How come they have politics in AA? I don't think we have politics in AA, but I'm not going to argue with you tonight because you know what you think. And I give you the right to have your ideas and I have my ideas. But I can tell you that anything that I have given to Alcoholics Anonymous over the years that I've been a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous and I've served in these different capacities that I Have always, always gotten back tenfold of what I've managed to give to Alcoholic Anonymous. And one of the things that I managed to give was my work in general service, and I never did any of it with delight. I became an alternate GSR because I talked somebody else into becoming a GSR, and I figured that they would do it and I would get the credit for being alternate and I wouldn't have to do anything. She lasted about three meetings of district meetings. She said it wasn't good for her, and some great important event was coming up that my vote was absolutely necessary. I don't remember what it was, you know, big deal. But anyway, I went, and then one of the girls who happened to be a district committee person needed a ride, needed a driver, and I became the driver. I became The Alternate. I became a district community member. And three years ago, I was elected delegate for the Southern California Area Assembly. I wasn't elected delegate to the Southern Carolina Area Assembly because I was the best one to have the job. I was an elected delegate because they couldn't stand the other two people that were running. We were having a lot of trouble down there in Southern California. We had a delegate that was quite strong. That is, he was abrasive is what he was. Anyway, here we were telling everybody what to do and nobody wanted to do it, especially the central offices. Now, I don't know how your central offices work, but the central office in Southern Carolina don't like general service telling them what to do, nor do the H&I like general service telling you what to do, and he was telling everybody what to do. And he had these other two people who were friends of his doing it, and they were going to stand for a delegate. And they all got up to Bakersfield. Thank God for Bakersield, because what happened to me was that my car blew up and I couldn't get to Bakersfeld. So I couldn'T get into the argument. And I was the only one that was neutral. And everybody was so appreciative of the fact that I kept my mouth shut for one meeting that they elected me delegate. That was one of their big mistakes. It turned out that, you know, as a delegate, I blossomed, I'll tell you. I ran around telling my story everywhere. And as I say, if I had known that I was going to tell so many people what I was like, I would have made it better. But it was too late then. I don't want to go back out and start over. Past delegates who go out and get drunk are not on the goodwill list, you now. You don't get, well, actually you don't get anything from New York after you're a past delegate, do you? Nothing. Nothing comes. Day after you are a past delegate, poof, you're cut off the mailing list, you know. They don't even know you exist back there unless once in a while you write them a letter. Then they have a form letter they send out. They say, dear past delegate. Glad to get your letter. We certainly appreciate your input, you we inputted it into the waste river basket matter of fact there is not a lot of feedback that comes with service in a general service area as compared to in my opinion central officer H and I the feedback that we get we people who struggle through a central general service and enjoy it because I did enjoy every bit of it I enjoy being here tonight I enjoyed being Sacramento I I enjoy being down in Southern California. The rewards that come, come in the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's impossible to serve the program of Alcoholic Anonymous without studying the program of Alcoholical Anonymous, knowing what you're doing and what you are talking about and what has happened to you. I'm not the same person that I was when I came on this program 21 years ago. I'm not the same person I was 12 years ago. For my 16th birthday, I stood on the Great Wall of China. And that was a long way from the drunk that came out of this program when they, the first year, they're 16 years before. 16th year, I and another friend of mine went to Japan, back to Japan where I had served in the Army of Occupation and where I hadn't been drunk every night, night after night after night. We went back and we got into the mainland of China, stood at the Great wall. and I think that was one of the high points in my alcoholic life it was a long way from St. Angus, Michigan it was along way from drunken parents it was long away from trying to get myself through college and it was along way from those first days on the program where I held on with my fingers and it had turned out that I had trudged the road of happy destiny that far and I had forgotten to trudge. Actually, what I had done was hop, skipped, and jumped and loved every minute of it. I want to thank you for having me tonight and may God continue to bless us all. Thank you.