The Fog Lifting: What She Wrote at Six Months and Thirteen Days Sober – Barb C.

You might not identify with a person who had a 50-year drinking career, but the thing is that everyone who's in this room tonight can probably look at page 44, and that's what we have in common. Whether the other incidents that surrounded it and the disaster and the heartbreaks that all of us have as a side effect from our alcoholism, this is what is the root of our allergy. And I feel like I probably haven't shared seven minutes, but it's so concise in what I wanted to say. I'm just really grateful, and I hope that if you're new that you have the chance to read over this and to ask yourself those two questions. So thank you. And now our main speaker tonight is Barbara. Thank you very much. I'm Barbara. I'm an alcoholic. And I've recently lost just a little bit of weight, and my skirt just about came off. And I didn't wear good underwear tonight, so you don't want to see that. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you about that. Welcome to the people that are new to Alcoholics Anonymous. First time I took a coin at Alcoholics Anonymous, I had 90 days and it's funny I've accomplished a lot of things in my life and that was one of the highlights of my existence and of course I still have that coin and I have all the coins that I've collected over the years and they mean more to me than pretty much anything that I have. If my house caught on fire i'd rescue my coins because um i'm an alcoholic and i'm from a long line of alcoholics and most of the people in my family go to their grave drunk or are going to their grave drinking and and i am sober and i think that that says you know everything about Alcoholics Anonymous. I am so uncomfortable in my own skin if I don't have alcohol in me. I can't even begin to tell you guys, and I know I don�t have to explain it to you, what it feels like to take those drinks. You know, that feeling? I mean, it just did everything for me. Everything. My sobriety date is August 16th, 1992, and And I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I had to. I didn' t even come here for any reason except that I fell in love with someone that got here five and a half years before me. Tricky, you tricky bastards. Because that's the only thing that I'll sell my soul for is a man, you know? I will. I'll go to any lengths. I will So I wanted to read something to you guys, and I debated on this, but I'm going to do it. And if you don't like it, then I'll just say April Fool's. So in the back of my little big book, I've had this since I first got sober. I got the softback big book so I could carry it in my backpack back then. I was 28 when I got sober, but it acted like I was 15 and had a big purple backpack. And I carried this with me everywhere. Now I keep smaller ones in my car, but I have the big book with me everywhere. It just, I don't know, it just feels like something I can hold on to that's tangible. But at six months and 13 days sober, I wrote, I can think more clearly. It's as if my heart is starting to push out the fog, or my head is starting to push off the fog and the sunlight is flooding the newly vacant space. I'm not a writer, by the way. Some days are still a struggle, but I know that there is a tomorrow and I'm excited to see it. And then I wrote my little next thing. Tomorrow is eight months. It's getting easier to be human, and I'm working on being true to myself and being no one's doormat. Heard that in AA. Practice makes perfect, so practice, practice, practice until it's habit. And thenI wrote, today I finished the big book. I must say that sobriety is a lot of work. I do like my life and myself a lot more, but I am frustrated because I sometimes slip into old habits. Now that I have the tools, I have no excuses, and that's very hard to face being held accountable here I go one day at a time three days until I get nine months and then I put and my mom had her operation today the dogs getting too big hope to move to another place one month and one day till I have a year sure hope I'm one of the lucky ones that stays sober one day at time tonight own itself be true and and I've been doing inputs you know I've writing in there for years and years years and years. But I look at that, I refer back to that because, you know, when I was a little girl, I had so much discomfort. I felt like I was on the outside always. And, you know, I looked like I fit in. And people would say, such a cute little girl. You've got these little talents and, you know, you're just a neat little kid. And I thought they were lying to me, you know? The adults are out to sabotage me and trick me into being confident, you You know, I mean, what is that? And I just was so uncomfortable in my own skin. My mom would always encourage me to play with little kids on the playground, and I couldn't walk that 900 miles, you know, over to that little girl and say, my name's Barbie, you now, because what if she rejected me? Or, more scary, what if he liked me? That's a lot of pressure too. And I had no self-esteem. I had not self-worth. I didn't know where I fit in the world. I was absolutely nuts. And I remember when I was very, very young, if I heard anyone whisper across the room or talking or anything, if I came into the room, I thought, they're talking about me, and it wasn't good. It's not like they were saying good things. Oh, she has pretty hair. They were like, oh my God, she thinks she's so cute, and she's a dog. And I just knew. I knew. And that makes it very difficult to be in the world when you're the center of it, when you are the absolute center of the world. And in my family it was even more difficult because I was vying for center because there was alcoholism in my family and when I was 16 years old I went to a wedding reception and someone put a beer in front of me and my mom was across the room I knew I wasn't supposed to drink but it's interesting, I always had a sense that I should And I'd had little sips when I was a kid. I didn't like the taste. I never got enough in me to feel any effects. But there was a really popular boy sitting at this counter in this kitchen, and he pushed this little beer across. And, you know, I just didn't feel comfortable being there. I wasn't good enough. I wasn'T popular enough. It wasn'T pretty enough. It wasn't smart enough. You know, it was never enough. And he pushed that across the table, and I took a gulp. I didn'T particularly like the tastes. That changed later, by the way, because I ended up selling my soul for beer. But at that time, I drank that beer down as fast as I could. Just, you know, not a lot. But, you Know, I weighed 128 pounds and I didn't take much back then. And I physically felt the alcohol. For me, this was my experience. It shot out through my arms and it went straight down my center. her. And I remember kind of lifting my head and all of a sudden that boy wasn't that popular. And I was pretty and I was smart and I Was more than enough. And quite frankly, I didn't care if my mom came running across the room and embarrassed me to death that I was drinking a beer because you know, who cares if you get in trouble by your mom? And she did, she came running Across the room. And she grabbed the beer away from me because she had divorced my my father, who always admitted he was alcoholic. And she drove me home and it was a beautiful car ride home. You know, the summer breeze had changed. All of a sudden I could feel it. I could smell it. And we got home and I put the headphones on. I was, of course, in trouble. Got sent to my room, you know, put stereo on. There was a group called The Cars and they had a song called Moving in Stereo. And it was really cool for you young people, no big deal. But for us old folks, it moved from microphone to microphone. And And I put it on, and it went, life's the same, moving in stereo. And it just moved from, and I swear to God, I had found spirituality. I was centered. I was, you know? And it was one of the first times in my life, and i'm not kidding, I took a full breath to the bottom of my lungs. And I filled myself with calm. And it wasn't just me. It was the alcohol. And I didn't know that that didn't do that for everyone else out there. You know, statistically, they say about nine-tenths of the population, roughly, are not alcoholic. And I've talked to my mom who's non-alcoholic, and I asked her when I first got sober, I said, you know, what's it like when you drink? And she said, kind of makes me a little sleepy. And it's so funny because it's a stimulant for me. You know? My whole thing is, you now, let's put on as little as possible clothing-wise and go out and let's dance for seven hours. You know, that's not a barbiturate. That's not downer. And, you know, I didn't understand what she was talking about. And my mom is an evaporation person. When she has a drink, which she's only ever drank grasshoppers. I don't know what those are, but they sound disgusting. They're green. I know they're green, and she lets them evaporate. And have you guys seen people that let alcohol evaporate? Only alcoholics know what that is. When someone orders a drink and all you can think is, drink it, drink drink it. Drink it. Why'd you order that if you're not going to drink it? And then when you're sober, you're thinking, I can't even finish it for them. It just seems like such a waste. So sad. So when I got that alcohol in me, I had a sense that I needed to pursue that feeling. And I did. I had code of conduct in high school that I signed, but I had no no intention of fulfilling that. And I drank for the rest of my years in high school, and I accomplished wonderful things in high school, and they never fulfilled me. I was queen of this court, and I was head cheerleader, and I did, you know, those things that are supposed to make you have a great high school experience. They don't if you're alcoholic. They do not fill the hole. What filled that feeling of emptiness in me was alcohol. I mean, it really filled it thoroughly. Problem is, is that I would sober up. You know, I would sobre up. and but I was willing to go to any lengths to fill that hole even if it was just for a few hours even if I threw up in my hair which I often did even if i did stupid things or overspent my budget or what have you um and so you know I went to college and in college I said you know the stupidest thing I ever did was do things where you have to behave and people have expectations of you and so I did nothing in college and that included going to class all I did was party and And periodically I'd go to class, and I don't know about you alcoholics, but most of us, we hardly have to attend class. I mean, we pass college, we do amazing things at half speed. And my whole thing was, why be first chair flute if you can be last year flute and party? And I always said to people, I don' t really care if I'm that good at anything because I know I could be if I applied myself. myself. And I lived in that space, you know? And it was enough. It was enough to say, you know, I mean, I used to always look at people's clothing and go, no big deal. I could make that. You know, or if someone did a work of art, I could paint that. I never did any of that stuff, but I could if I wanted to. Because alcohol made me a sculptor and a designer and a model and it made me everything. It filled me. I went to college and I did what what most college people do. I partied a lot. And when I was at college, I met this guy that was what I thought was the most drop-dead gorgeous creature I had ever seen. And then he opened his mouth and he was drunk. And I had made this promise to myself that I would never get involved with someone who was handsome and drank because that was my dad and he wasn't a man. He was a heartbreaker. and I just I thought if I avoided that combination then my life would be good and so I went out with this guy a few times and I told him don't come around when you're drunk and he came around one time he was drunk because he was always drunk because it was a drunk see how that works and and he came over to my apartment and I said I told you not to come over when you dropped and he's like you know and I thought well I dodged that bullet thank thank God. And, you know, he disappeared for a while. And one day I opened my door and there was this six foot four creature and it was his dad and his dad was picking up his clothes. And I said, he said, I'm Chris's dad. And I said oh what happened to Chris? He goes well he's in detox you know he's getting sober. And uh and I thought what is detox? What is getting sober? I don't even know what that is. What is that? Who does that? Why would you do that? I mean you know isn't Chris Chris 20, you know, I mean, so he got sober and I he came back to school and he was sober and he was really boring. And, and, and he didn't show up much in the evenings. I never saw him at parties anymore, per se, but he still went to one of our local bars. And he was, he still for whatever reason, thought that he needed to go out dancing. And you know what I mean? He was just like 1920. 20, it was 20 years old, just had just turned 21. And I watched this guy who really was a sloppy, obnoxious, really gross drunk, turn into this like really present conscious human being. And, um, and I thought, well, I don't want to date him. You know, that's too much pressure. I don'T want to be around someone who has value, someone who's accountable, who's, who has expectations of me, who'S paying attention to what I'M doing. And that's perfect because I graduated college. And my whole thought was, I need to get the heck out of Oregon because that's the problem. You know, that's what's wrong with me. And, you know, if you're new, I don't know if you identify with this, but it's always something out there. It's always Something Out There. And what's interesting is that everything that was wrong with me in my life, there's only one common denominator, me. That's it, me, so, you know, I mean, I would blame my mom, my dad jobs school the state I lived in the apartments that you know everything but the only common denominator was me and they always say wherever you go there you are and that was a real problem for me because I was really trying to stay ahead of Barb but she stuck on me and I can't get away from her and I couldn't get way from her but I thought maybe I'll move to California and become the mayor of San Diego you know I don't know what that was about I don't hate politics by the way I don t even vote but I I thought, you know, because money, property, and prestige, things that I thought would fix me. I was always trying to seek out something. And what I did is I took myself, and I took my way of thinking, and I take the only thing that ever worked for me, and that was my drinking. And I went to California. And I proceeded in a five-year period of time to take a life with potential and turn it into almost like an atomic blast landscape. It was horrific. horrific. The things that I did in California were the things that I swore I would never do in my value system. Now, I didn't go out and prostitute myself, but I did things that were outside of my value system. I didnít, you know, steal money from the company I worked at, but ìI always used their postage machine.î You know, I was doing really tiny little insidious kind of dishonest, you know, things, but they werenít really of my character. And when When you start building up things that aren't within your character and your value system, and you sober up, all of a sudden you're left with you and your actions. And you want to know what takes care of all that? Drinking. If I just go out and do some tequila shooters, I no longer have to worry about if I owe money to someone. I don't have to worried about that my relationship's violent. I don' t have to think about that I'm a month late on rent. I don''t have to worrying about the fact that I''m being sexually harassed at work. Who cares? It's all gone for one night. It just disappears, and it's perfect. And I don't understand why alcohol does that for me, but I can tell you that I was absolutely convinced that I was not alcoholic because what I thought alcoholic was involved a paper bag around Ripple, something they call Ripple. I've never had Ripple in my life. you were homeless and that's kind of interesting because in my family there's alcoholics none of them are homeless they're all employed and they don't have paper bags around their drinks they drink out of crystal and um you know and they admit they're alcoholic but somehow I thought if I were alcoholic it would involve being homeless and I wasn't I was never willing to look at me ever you know ever and in that journey down in California about five years into it this This guy that I went to college with, who was about five and a half years sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, called me. And we had stayed in touch over the years. And he said, hey, you know, you want to hook up or whatever? And I was living with a guy who had hair longer than mine. And, you Know, he thought he was hips looking cool, Mr. L.A. And he was going to be famous if he could just quit drinking. And, You know, I mean, if you line up 100 guys, I will pick out the drunk every single time. That's my favorite flavor of man. And, you know, I allowed him to take our world and drive it into the ground. And we were sleeping in separate rooms, and we were living in Hollywood, and it was a violent, dark, sad relationship. And,you know,I had such low self-esteem that every once in a while I'd have this little awakening. I'd think, God, what am I doing? This is my life. This is it. This is what you do. This is why you do with a college degree and all this potential. This iswhat happens. and, you know, and then something would like sweep in and say, don't look at that. Don't, don' t, don''t look at tha, you kno And I think, meh And I would go to Trader Joe's and I'd get whatever was on sale and all of a sudden it didn't matter. It would just be gone. It would absolutely be gone And this gentleman who called me we hooked up, just, you now, not hook up That's a whole new language We didn't hook up But we hooked u Eventually we hooked But I saw him And we got together in California briefly. He was visiting his father, and we went for a drive. And he turned to me several times. We had a conversation, and I'd known him for all these years, and he had really changed something about this man. It wasn't just that he wasn't drinking. It was that it was almost like he was emitting light, you know? Like maybe it was the sunlight of the Spirit. I don't know. You know, I don' t know what that is. But, honestly, this guy was such a nasty, sad, self-consumed individual. And then he had these five and a half years of sobriety. And he just, I mean, he was like, so tell me what's going on. You know, he wasn't talking about himself the whole time. I don't even know what that's about because, you know, I'm all about that thing. You guys hear people say, me, me. Let's talk about you. What do you think about me? You know? That was my life. Me, me . . . he wasn't doing that. And he said, you know what, Barb, you deserve to be happy. And I don't know why that resonated with me. But I thought, you know, yeah. And I'm not. I'm not happy. And so, you know, that just stuck in my head. And so I went home and I quit my job and I moved out of my apartment and I dumped my boyfriend and I moved up to Portland and I got engaged to him. And because now the problem was California and it was, you know, and I very much adored this man And I by no means wanted to be with him for any other reason except that my heart really felt drawn to him. And what he said was, please don't drink in my home. And he had no idea I was alcoholic because I've never had a DUI. I'm not a blackout drunk. The things that I did while drinking were, you know, just I kind of peed myself a little sometimes. And I puked in my hair all the time. And if you held my hair back, you were my new best friend. And I'm not kidding. And I always overspent my credit card. Back in the day there was no electronic thing they didn't keep track of. So then I'd get this huge credit card bill. And when I drank I got full of bravado and I would go into the bars down in L.A. and I'd be like, you know, I write music for a living. I've never written any music in my life. But you could be anything you want when you're drinking. What are they going to background check you? They don't even know your name. you know? And so I could live this fantasy life. And so he said, please don't drink in my house. I'm like, you know what? No big deal. I won't drink at all. How's that a big deal? And within a very short period of time, and I can't remember how long it was, but just a few weeks probably, I was the most uncomfortable and miserable I have ever been in my life. Now, how can you be alcoholic if you eliminate alcohol how's that alcoholic and what i read in the big book was is alcohol is but a symptom and when i heard that in aa i thought oh thank god you know because i eliminated the alcohol went away and i became irritable and discontent and i became volatile and i become almost psychotic i mean i was just almost vibrating in my skin in. And so by then he was engaged to me, lucky fellow. And he's five and a half years sober and he's maybe comparing, he'd been arrested a lot in DUIs and he was a crazy loon when he drank and in comparison I was just a party girl. But I have this ism, I truly do. And if you take alcohol out of my life, I have absolutely no skills. I am profoundly immature. mature. I am deeply self-centered. I am so self-consumed that I can barely leave the house for fear that possibly someone might glimpse me from across the street and have a judgmental look in their eye. You know? I mean, truly. And when I first got involved with this gentleman, we moved to a new apartment and he said, go down to Fred Meyer and get some boxes so we can pack. And we used to go grocery shopping together, so I had a lot of grocery bags. And I was like, I can't go down there and ask them, extend myself. Do you guys have any boxes? You know, I mean, I was so, like, how embarrassing. What if they don't? What if они не делают это? Won't they judge me for being stupid? You know? And then what if they do? Then I have to walk out with boxes, and people might look at me. I'm moving. I'm not. I'm leaving. That's why I have boxes. You know. I have two legs. Everything's about me. Everyone's looking at me. Everything. That's my whole world. And so we moved our entire apartment in grocery bags. That's all I had, grocery bags, and I asked a friend to help us. Do you know how many stairs you have to go up and down when you live on the third floor, each carrying two grocery bags? You know? And my friend was like, you know, and this guy wasn't a drinker, and he's like, what the hell is wrong with you? You live two blocks from Fred Meyer. Oh, they didn't have any boxes. That's why I told him, they don't have anything. And so before we moved, this gentleman and I had sworn off drinking. The cops had been called on us, of course, because I get very volatile, very theatrical, very uncomfortable. And I did not have a sufficient substitute. I had used alcohol in my life to fill a part of the world, to fill what I now call my God hole, that hole, whatever that was. I know if you're alcoholic, you know what that is when you pour it in you and you just can exhale, it was gone. And I had sworn it off to someone who was sober. And after we had a particularly volatile evening, this guy said to me, for God's sake, Barb, if you were to drink again, what would you do? You know, and I said, oh, I'd go down to Santa Fe and I'd have a double shot quart of gold with a beer back and head to the Mission Theater and I get a pitcher of some dark beer and, you know, just kind of see where the evening went. And he kind of looked at me, and he said, well, what would your mom do if she'd sworn off drinking? I said, my mom, she'd order a grasshopper and watch it evaporate because that's what she does. And then he said the thing that saved my life. He said, what Would Your Father Do? And my dad says that he's alcoholic. And I said my dad would go down to Santa Fe and have a double shot Coral Gold with a beer back. And I stopped short before I went on, and I said oh, oh, my God, am I alcoholic? alcoholic, it had never occurred to me. My grandfather's alcoholic, my cousin's alcoholic my aunt's alcoholic my dad's alcoholic that's just my dad side you know and then there's my mom's side and I have relatives that when you go to their hotel room there's already a mini bar set up and there is no mini bar that comes with the hotel room you know there's a box of wine you know I mean that's the way my family travels and he said to me what we're we're talking Alcoholics Anonymous, and that is we can't diagnose another alcoholic. And he said, you know what? I can't tell you if you're an alcoholic. You're going to have to diagnose yourself. Why don't you call the AA hotline? And I'm like, eh? You know, AA? What the heck would I do that? I mean, you Know, just don't drink. But you know What? There was something deep down inside me, and I thought on an unconscious level, he's sober, he goes to AA, why not? And I called that hotline, and this very, very old gentleman, he said, oh, you know, it was really, and I said, my name's Barbara, and I don't know why I'm calling it every day. And I just, and he said sweetheart, sweetheart, what is it that you'd like to do? I mean, what are you, I was maniacal, and I'm going to lose my fiancee, and And I just, and I didn't, you know, who knows what he was asking specifically. But I said, I just want to drink. And I had never, ever put all of my discomfort and inability to be a piece of my own skin together with the fact that I gained so much relief from putting alcohol in my body. I'd never made that connection. And he said, i suggest you go to an AA meeting. meeting. And I went to an AA meeting the next day, and I introduced myself as being at my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and you guys welcomed me. I cannot believe what Alcoholics Anonymous did for me at my first meeting. Every single person in there talked about their alcoholism. I thank God they didn't talk about heroin or cocaine. And I'm not saying that, you know, I didn't try a couple of things here and there, didn't put a needle in my arm. I'm a big wussy, but I definitely, you know, sat there and I was listening for the similarities. And they talked about feelings of being different than apart from and not good enough. They talked about how they never ever felt like they belonged on the planet. They talked About how when they got to school, they thought everyone got there 30 minutes early and got the manual on how to be there. And you know and then they come walking in. Oh shit, You know, what do I do? That's how I had felt my whole life. And, you know, I am so grateful that the people that were in that meeting, you know, did singleness of purpose, that they had read this book, that they had the long form of the traditions, you know, and they knew that what they saw in front of them was an alcoholic. And that if I didn't identify in that meeting, and this is no kidding, I would have never come back because that's the kind of girl I am. It's black and white. You get one shot, bada-bing, bida-boom, I'm out Because, you know, I just don't. Unless, of course, you're an abusive boyfriend, I stay forever. Okay? So there's that part of me that's not black and white. But, you Know, and so I stayed in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, You know, I got right into the steps. I started working the steps I did not believe the first half of step one because I didn't understand what being powerless over alcohol was. I didn'T understand that when you go to a bar and you've driven all your friends and you say, I'm only going to have three beers, I'm the designated driver, driver and you put a beer in you and your head says, yeah, but seven beers never really get you that bust. And you get to seven, you're like, you know what? You're feeling pretty good. Why not 12? You know? And, and, and that's me. I'm powerless over alcohol. If you put alcohol in my body, I experienced something called the phenomenon of craving every single time, every single Time I drank one time in my life, I had one drink. And that is simply because someone said, we each get one sake. You want to get the next round? And I was like, I'm not paying for this stuff. This is disgusting. So I went back to work and immediately went to Trader Joe's afterwards and got some alcohol and went home and anesthetized myself so that I could cook dinner. So I started right in in Alcoholics Anonymous. I did a lot of things not perfect, and I did it wrong. I did what I did with a lot or things full force. But what I didn't is I did. I went to meetings of AlcoholicsAnonymous. I eventually got a sponsor, but I did work with someone in the program who I didn't call my sponsor because I'm all about not giving power to people and I couldn't trust women. They're the enemy. They're in the competition. It turns out gals rock, by the way, and guys rock too. It turns OUT you guys aren't the enemy either. And, you know, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous completely just naive. I had no idea what this organization was about. I told my best friend that I had joined AlcoholicsAnonymous Just shortly after I joined, she says, oh my God, it's a cult. And I was like, it'a cult? You know, I'd never heard that. What do you mean it's cult? It's cult because I'm thinking, you know, it''s a cult, you know? And I thought, gosh, I haven't heard anyone talk about, you know, you must do this, give me all your money, which I didn't have any of. I was unemployed. I was unemployable. My car's plates were expired. I couldn't drive my car. I had nothing to give you guys. I had no one to bring except my experience, my story. And, you know, and I came home and I told my husband. At that time he was my husband by then. Poor, poor bastard. And just kidding. It's been an amazing journey. And he said a cult, you now, something that doesn't ask you to give any money, maybe a dollar, two dollars, that encourages you to be accountable for your past, pay back money that you owe people, people to find a power greater than yourself you know to be of service to others to build a relationship with that power that you find here he's like how is that a cult so i'm i went back to her and i said you know what carol you are incorrect i'm not in a cult um and you know to this day every time i talk to that friend which is often she says how's your sobriety how's aa i'm so proud of you because you guys made me what i am today i used to be bravado on the outside but inside i was broken i was spiritually bankrupt i was not a human being i wasn't unless i had alcohol and then i had wings you know i was i was just powerful but you know I came in here and you guys said you know what you don't get to drink it's like oh my god how do you do that and you said oh by the way read this here's a sufficient substitute here's some spiritual tools that you can use so that you can be on the planet and act as if you're one of the earth people, you know? And they say, and I walk undetected amongst them. I do every day, you know, I love it. And I'm like, you know, I can't believe that they don't notice because I hold the door open for people and I make eye contact and I talk to people in the elevator and I have this grace that I used to see in you guys when I first came here. If you want what we have, stick around if you don't know what that is. It is phenomenal what happens to people when they get sober. The best people I've ever known are sober alcoholics. I mean, and that may sound vain, and of course I'm biased, but seriously, you guys are amazing. I mean I've called friends, haven't we all, at 2 in the morning? Blah, blah, blah. You know, click. That's what you hear on the end. And I call you guys. you know and people like honey it's okay then they're done that you're gonna be okay you guys are the best family I've ever had this is the most remarkable place I've never been if you are new to alcoholics anonymous you might be skeptical that's okay I didn't come in here with you know my little pom-poms from high school go sobriety yeah all the way I came in here and I thought you've got to be kidding. I'm an AA. Kill me now. Because this is not where you aspire. You know, you don't go out in the world and hand over your resume and the first thing it says, I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. You knows? Nobody gives a rat's patootie out there. They don't care that we're sober. They expect us to act like earth people, don't they? They expect that. You will learn in here if you're new. You really will find a host of friends. You will find a place where you belong. You will Find a place Where your deepest darkest secrets Don't even make People don't even bat an eye here You know I've had people say Oh my god I gotta explain this to you Before I tell you Because it's heinous And then they tell me And I'm like I did that twice You know I don't understand how that's heinious You know so Alcoholics Anonymous I don' t get why it works But I'll take a stab I think it might be Because there is a power out there And I was very reluctant to admit that. I grew up Baptist, and that's neither here nor there, but I had some preconceived ideas before I came here. You know, God was really big and mean, and he was keeping score. And I had already blown it. And I didn't think that I could get back in good graces with whatever that was. And it turns out that that God of my childhood is not the God that I believe in now. Thank goodness, because I couldn't survive on the planet it if I stuck with that little girl God. Today, I have a 41-year-old woman's conception of God, and you guys gave that to me. You know, I'm looking at hundreds of people that get what I'm talking about, that connection that there is a power that is all, and I'm not it. That's all I need to know. All I have to do is show up here, love you guys, let you love me, be of service to you, you know, give it back so that I can receive it. It It is really simple, you guys. If you're an alcoholic and you've got the committee and it's sitting up there going, blah-da-blah-da, when will she shut up? I want to go and get a Starbucks. You know, because we're just, I don't know about you, but I have all this judgment, judgment. That's okay. You know? A lot of people in this room are going to die drunk. It might be me. I heard that on a speaker tape once and I thought, oh, the heck it will be. What do I have to do? You know ? Because, and it tells you in this big book. If you are new tonight, don't leave without a big book if you don't have one. You guys, if you've been here a while, don't let those new people leave without a big book and phone numbers. I mean, honest to God, it is a crapshoot that you came through that door tonight. I don't even know how we find our way here. But if you have found your way here, for God's sake, don' t take it for granted. I mean don't take it granted. It is absolutely miraculous that we're here. And it is so phenomenal to stay. Before I close, I just want to tell you that I've been married for 13 years. I've been completely faithful. I'm a faithful person anyways, but I've been completely thankful in every way, shape, and form of the word. I am deeply in love with my husband, second row back and shaved head. That's him. So if you have any questions about the validity of what I shared, go to Chris. You know, I have walked through fire and sobriety. And my husband said I can share this, and so I shall because this isn't boo-hoo barb. This is about what you can walk through sober. And, you know, I've lost relatives in sobriety. Some of them were drinking. One of them was murdered. All of them had alcohol involved in some way. But seven months ago, I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And I've got to tell you something. That was not in the plan. My finger's here, right? Because I can't feel it, you Know? I've Got numb fingertips. I've GOT chronic dizziness. I have horrible fatigue. Sometimes I still tinkle in my pants. And I'm sober. And it's really, people are like, wear a pad. I'm like, I'm 41. I don't want to do that yet. But guess what? I've got a neurological little, you know, I've got lesions on my brain. So what? Boo hoo. This is life. There is no promises except to say that one day at a time, if I'm lucky, I won't drink. One day at a Time. Three and a half months ago, I had to have my vet come to my home. And this is far harder than being diagnosed with MS. mess and he put a needle in my dog's arm who I got when I was eight months sober. And he sent that little bastard to heaven. And that dog, oh, he was an alcoholic. I know it. He needed a drink so bad. He was psycho. And I used to just complain about him all the time. God bless him. He was my best friend in the whole world besides Chris. And I watched his little spirit go, it's just gone. And I just sobbed and I thought, I can't survive this. I can't survive this. I didn't want to drink. How's that possible, you guys? How's that possible? I'm an alcoholic and I didnít want to drink. I donít get it. All I can say is that I do the steps. I live in 10, 11, and 12. I hit my knees every morning because thatís the way my kneeís been. I give it over to a power greater than myself. I come here amongst you guys three to five times a week no matter what. I have a sponsor. I sponsor women And this is the best life I've ever known. And if you guys do what's suggested in here, well, I'll tell you something. You'll be embarrassed about how good it will get. Keep coming back.