The Illness of Alcoholism and the Biochemical Genetic Factor – Eve M.

Required on Saturday, June the 5th, 1982 at the Desert AA Roundup, Palm Springs, California. To Speaker Eve Marsh of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Please object to the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and do not play this recording for entertainment or commercial purposes. And please do not break the anonymity of the speaker or any AA member at any public level. I know I'm not supposed to say much up here, but I've been asked for so many people, are you still a Baptist preacher? No. I found Alcoholics Anonymous, thank God. Now comes a job that I don't feel qualified to do, but I thank God for the honor of having the privilege to do it. How can you introduce our lovely ladies that we have as our speaker tonight? The best way that I know how to introduce Eve is say she is a real good member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I give you your speaker tonight, Eves Morris. I can't tell you what an absolute thrill it is for me to be here. I can'T thank all of you enough for the wonderful hospitality that you've shown me since I've been here. When Elsie Fay called me and said, will you come out to the Palm Desert or the Desert Roundup? I said, Will I? I was so thrilled when Johnny got on the phone and said you're going to be with us. And I've looking forward to this for such a long time. And sometimes when you look forward too much to things they don't measure up. But this has surpassed all my anticipation. It's been wonderful to meet all the members of the committee, Elsie Fay and Johnny and all the rest of them. And my beautiful and charming hostess, Lois and Norm. They've been lovely and I thank them for the lovely corsage that they gave me. And the opportunity to see so many old friends, friends that I used to know in New York, friends thatI have met when I've been out here before and the opportunity to make new ones. And I'm terribly happy that although I don't see any theme anywhere on the program or down here on the banners, I feel very definitely that you have decided on a theme for this roundup. And it's one of my favorite quotations from the big book. And so I'm glad it's your theme and that is be absolutely enticed on enjoying life. My name is Eve Marsh, and I'm a recovered alcoholic. My home group is the Los Olos AWOL group, and that doesn't mean a way without leave, it means a way of life. And I like to say that I'm recovered because the big book says that we have been given the gift of recovery, that we are recovered. That we have recovered, but it goes on to say that we don't have a daily reprieve and that the maintenance of our sobriety is dependent upon maintaining our spiritual condition and sometimes I remember when I first came around to AA I used to hear people say well I think it's a wonderful program but I don't get the spiritual side you know and when you look at that big book there is no side because that's what it says it says we can be given the gift of recovery on a daily basis and given this daily reprieve as long as we maintain our spiritual condition so I think from the very beginning we have to come to an acceptance for the fact that this program is spiritual in nature and that it is in this way that we are able to grow out of the pain into an understanding and into this joy of living. But who would have thought when they first got sober that we were ever going to enjoy life again? I mean, we were so totally dependent on things outside of ourselves to make us happy because we didn't have any of this inner stuff. You know, happiness is an inside job and I was so thrilled to hear that it is the theme for the our team convention or conference that happiness is an inside job and i'm sure that you were like me that you spent so many years thinking if only i had that i'd be happy you know then you get that and you're not happy or if only he loved me i'd be happy and then he loves you and he's the son of a gun you know and that's where we're going to go so i mean we're always looking for something outside of ourselves to make us happy And it isn't until we get involved in this program and we get into this beautiful fellowship that we begin to have an understanding of what life is really and truly all about. And I think it's for that reason that we are able finally to begin to enjoy life. But for most of us, life wasn't a joy. Life wasn't the pleasure. We were so dependent on that magic, that elixir, that booze, that alcohol, that something that gave us that inner sense of well-being, that inner chance of comfort, that glow, that thing that made it all right. that may be whole, that may be a person that may be able to communicate. Because I was one of those people that I believe I was an alcoholic from the day I was born. And of course there are a lot of people today who are working in alcoholism and research and alcoholism who have come to the conclusion that we are born with this illness. But you can't make an alcoholic. You can't take somebody and pour booze down them and pour it down them and pour down them. And if they haven't got that biochemical genetic whatever it is, you can let them an an alcoholic. So we got it. Whether we liked it or not, we've got the illness. And certainly I was one of those from the very beginning because I was one of these people who was not whole. I was one of the people who felt a misfit. I never felt that I belonged. I always felt separate and apart. Have you ever heard an alcoholic who said he felt as if he did belong? We never felt a part of. We always felt apart from. And that terrible separation that we had, that sense and lack of well-being and lack and fear and all these things that we've lived with and this terrible inability to communicate and this awful feeling of how awful I am. I'm not worthy of anything. I'm that much. I'm at last, you know? And we hate ourselves and we don't know what we're really like. And we sometimes get ideas about what we like from other people. Other people don't mean to give us misperceptions about ourselves but we accept them at face value. We take the idea. One of the speakers said something about that today that somebody told her, she believed it, you know. And I was the same way. And I'm certain that my father never in this world intended to do anything that was going to make me uncomfortable or unhappy. But I can have very clearly as a young girl, my mother had died, I was about 12 and I had two younger sisters and Dad used to take us around to meet some of his friends sometimes and he'd introduce us to people and everyone was very aware of our loss and so he'd start out with my youngest sister who was a, he used to call her Peach because she had a peaches and cream complexion and he'd star out and he would say this is daddy's peach and everybody would smile and ooh and ah and you could sort of hear them say poor little girl just lost her mother in a tipping city, you know and you'd hear this little murmur going around and then he'd get to my next sister and he was saying this is sis, she's the beauty of the family and everybody wouldn't look at sis and say god didn't she look lovely lovely, lovely, loving, you now and then there'd be a long silence then he would put his arms across my shoulder and he'd say and this is daddy's big girl and I felt so big and so awkward I felt like I was so homely and unattractive I was all elbows and knees and nose just damn nose gone you know so that I was always and I was tall to those days. You know, I'm 5'8 and a half. I guess I shrunk a little at my old age, but anyhow, I was 5' 8 1⁄2 or 5' 9", and in those days that was tall. They didn't grow great American beauties then the way they do today, these lovely beautiful things that walk around with their heads in the air, proud as can be at six feet. I love it. And I went around with a goby-drawn plunge trying to hide the fact that I was so big. And so was always uncomfortable with myself i didn't know who i was and i had these fears these terrible fears nobody was going to love me i was unlovable so how could anybody love me if i didn t love me but i didn d know that then i just thought that i was unlivable and i didn' t know how to get along and then it was say i was 16 the time for me to go off to college have me to grow up to college i was no more ready for college than the man on the moon Oh, I'd passed all the examinations. You know, we're smart. You know. Not really intelligent. Just so smart. And so I'd pass the tests and flying colors. Probably the next day I couldn't have answered a question, but that didn't make any difference. And so, I got in. But I was so totally unready socially. I didn't know how to get along with people. And I got up there, and we'd been living without our mother. We were housekeepers, and these things had been kind of a sixes and sevens. My dad was a playwright, and playwrights were up and down and up and down. So, you know, sometimes we were flushed, and sometimes we weren't. And so I got there to Bassett, and my dad, they were also Greenwich, Connecticut. It was just too, you knew, too easy. And I really didn't know how to handle it. I was very uncomfortable, and I'd met my roommate, and she was very Greenwich and very Tweety and the horses that and I felt so inadequate and I went down to chapel with my father and I said dad for God's sake please take me home take me when I don't belong here and I'm crying and he said you're a big girl you can handle it you know defining goes off and I got back up to my room and discovered that my roommate has requested a transfer. I felt absolutely totally rejected and I tell this story even though I've told it so many times because to me it is so exemplified, this terrible ambivalence with which we lived for so long. Because I felt absolute rejected, unlovable, I didn't know what to do and And all of a sudden, my new roommate walked in, and I'm sure she was a lovely girl. But she was even homier than I was. And she had long, dank, dark hair, a load of books. I knew she was admiring. And at the same moment that I am saying to myself, I'm so totally rejected and have such feelings of inferiority, reality, I'm looking at this new roommate and saying, that I deserve better than this. And that carried through with me all the days of my life until I got sober, until I'd been sober for a little while, until i began to know who and what I was. These feelings of arrogance on the one hand to cover up this terrible fear and an advocacy that I had that feeling of on the other. And these swings between these two, and I didn't understand But there I was. There I was at Bathurst. And so I thought I'd make the best of it. And, of course, this is back to Corruption days. I don't think that anybody here old enough to remember that. But it was a wonderful thing, you know. It was a lovely thing. Nobody was ever going to drink again. You could get some more. You couldn't. It's absolutely going to make us all holier-than-thou, I guess. there. But it didn't work that way. Television left us a wonderful legacy. It left us a legacy of making public intoxication socially acceptable, which is an unfortunate legacy. But at that time I didn't want to drink. I was terrified of drinking. I didn t know what it would do to me. I did nt want to be out of control. And even though I had all these feelings of fear and feelings that I didn d belong and that I never went anywhere, I never was invited to a fraternity party or to a football game on him, because in those days if you didn't drink out of the hip flask, you didn t go no place. And I was terrified to take a drink. There was a lot of talk about bad booze and people going blind and all that kind of thing, and so I was just really scared. But mostly I was scared because I didn t want to lose control. I didn't want to loose control of the situation. You know, we alcoholics may not be able to control our liquor and god knows we can't but boy we are the most controlling people in the world you know if you can't control every situation that you're in you know how uncomfortable you are and i didn't want to be in a position where i wasn't in control and so i was i knew i was going to go to europe at the end of my sophomore year and so i thought to myself i'll wait until i get to europe that's in those days that's what all daddies did. They somehow borrowed enough money or got it together somehow or other, and your little girl went on the grand tour to Europe with three or four chaperones. It was quite different from what it is today. And the result is that I decided I'd wait and drink when I got there. That way I would drink a few cans yet. You know, a little wine with my meal. Graciously. Not the way these prohibition people were drinking around me. And so I waited. And at the end of my sophomore year, I joined my little tour group and I got on board the ship and we headed out. But I didn't wait until I got to Europe. At 12 miles out, they began to serve. And so the man next to me ordered an orange blossom. I didn' t know what a drink was. I did' n know what to order. But, I mean, after all, we've learned, haven't we, to follow along pretend like we know what we're doing and then after that we knew it early on. And so I had an orange blossom, and you know the most marvelous thing happened to me? The most marvelous things! I drank that orange blossom and all of a sudden I was five foot two I felt good I was adorable and I had another one and I could chat and talk with people and so you see that's why I know I was an alcoholic from the beginning because from the beginning alcohol was giving me something I didn't have inside yet It was making me whole because I wasn't whole. I was using it to cope. You know, unfortunately, too often people wait and wait and see what this alcohol gives you, somebody, before they start even thinking in terms of whether maybe or not he's suffering from this illness or something. What it does to us isn't important. It's what it does for us. Why can't somebody see that early on? Why can'T somebody see what's going on with us, that we're needing that, that we'Re using it because we'R not able to cope with these problems of life and of getting along and of being whole without this extra help that God has given us. And so I was an alcoholic from the very beginning, and now I know. I didn't know it for a long time, but I know it now. Incidentally, I'd like to point out that it's true of me, and I think it's true of almost every speaker that you hear. So what we share with you is some hindsight. What we share with you about what we used to be like is what we've learned about ourselves through this program. I didn't know these things about me then, but I have learned these things About Me through the 12 Steps of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so I thought I'd found the answer. And this was wonderful. This was marvelous. So I went back to college that fall, at Old Bell. Oh how wonderful times! I had such a good time they kicked me out at the end of my junior year. They caught me taking one drink on the campus. I want to tell you times have changed. I went up to visit my granddaughter who graduated from St. John's University in New York State a couple of years ago. I went to college too soon. Booze, cigarettes, none. It was fantastic how science changed. And so there I was, and then something else happened, which I share because I think it's so typical of the way we are. Certainly, it is the way I was. I was absolutely devastated by the fact that I had been kicked out. I felt terrible remorse guilt shame fear all of those things my father had to come up and get me I hated to face him I wanted to throw myself in his arms and say oh god dad I'm so sorry my mother had gone to Bethlehem for me my sister was due to come the following year and here I had been kicked out. And I wanted so badly to tell him how sorry I was. But did I? No. You know how we are. Oh, God, Dad, you have no idea what this place is like. It is horrible. Honestly, if they hadn't asked me to leave, I would have left anyhow. I would've left because this place is for the birds. It's awful. all the bravado, all the hiding the hurt, all the defense mechanisms, all of the pretense. Because I couldn't bear to let on how badly I felt. I couldn t bear to be that wrong. And I said besides I know what I want to do with my life and he said what's that? Well I said it depends on you if that. I want to go into the theater. My uncle was quite a famous this star who had his own company. I didn't have to do any work. I just said, I'd like to go on the stage one day while you're doing it. He said, all right, we can go on the stage, you know. I mean, what work was it? And so there I am. I start working in theater and I've worked for so long. And of course, eventually I leave. I also started in doing something else with alcoholics too. I started in getting married. And unfortunately that sometimes carries with it something else known as pregnancy and the result was that my theater career was somewhat interrupted when I couldn't get into my costumes any longer but I went back to it and I went on working at it for a while and eventually that tea didn't work out. My drinking in the field, I know it did. I was drunk on stage which is something that's absolutely beyond the pale. You're not allowed to do that, do that. It's a very uncomfortable feeling I can tell you. Horrible feeling. And so finally after about six or eight years, maybe nine I've forgotten my uncle finally said you know dear I don't have a part big enough for you next year and he put it that way and that was okay with me but you know it took me a long time of sobriety and a long term of working with myself in these steps to try and figure out what that was all about. You know, I really thought that I wanted to be an actress. That isn't what I wanted. You know what I want. I didn't want to go through all the hard work that it takes to really be a fine technician, to really learn my craft and of course you didn't have those and even those days had to project to the last show in the balcony as Elsa was talking about at one time the other day. You only had to learn how to speak from the diaphragm and forget and walk properly and carry books on your head and dance like a kid, have lovely grace and all. Did I want to be over at work? No, I didn't really care about all that. What I wanted was the end result. What I needed was to be a star. What I really wanted was my name in life. I wanted people to come rushing up to me and say, Oh, you're wonderful. Get out your autograph. And you know why? I know why now. I felt that if everybody else said I was wonderful, maybe I could begin to think so. Don't we all do that? Don't you all set these tremendous goals? Have you ever talked to anybody who said, my goal in life is to be the second best secretary in La Jolla? No? People don't do that. We want to be top. We wantto be the best because we're striving to prove something. We constantly have to prove to ourselves that we're okay. Because down deep inside, we don't think we are. And of course, I didn't know back then. I didn' t know that then. So the world was against me. I cried a lot. I was full of pity for myself. I had a little boy. I'd left my husband. You know, I used to say that I left him because he was allergic to work. And he was. But that isn't really the honest reason why I left him. I left him because I really wanted to go to bed with another guy. And in those days, my dear friends, in those ways, you didn't do that if you were already married to somebody else. So you had to get a divorce to make it legal and all this kind of thing. And that was really the reason that I left them. And for many, many years, I wasn't honest about that but I've gotten that way slowly a little bit better anyway and so there I was uh I didn't have a job any longer and I and I had a divorce and a little boy to look after and things weren't so very good and as a matter of fact things really began to deteriorate with me because drinking had really taken over my life and I kind of remembered vaguely very vaguely because you don't like to remember things. And every day when I had started off for college, I taught myself how to smoke because I had figured that I wasn't going to drink. And so in order to be socially acceptable, I really should learn how to smoke. And so I remember speaking up to my grandmother's apartment when I was 15 years old and trying to learn how to smoke so that I'd be casual about it, you know, and do it correctly. And my other grandmother, who was an England Methodist, was very strict and I got up to visit her one day, and she saw me smoking. And she said, my dear, are you smoking? And I said, yes, can everybody smoke? And she sort of used to do this with her fingers. And she thought, my dearest, smoking leads to drinking, and drinking leads to prostitution. I bet she was kind of dumb, but she really had something. in any event about that time another man came into my life and this time i was a little bit more careful i was really quite selective and he was a gorgeous man and the wonderful thing about him was he drank exactly the same way i did no more criticizing my drinking no more being upset with me because i've had too much and all the rest of it and there was another great thing he had that pleased me very much. Because at that time in my life I was a terrible snob. I was, I was terrible snub in the sense that if you weren't in the arts, my dear, I really didn't care to have very much to do with you, you know. Oh, you were in business? Oh, actually, you know, this guy was a poor out-of-work radio announcer but that made him okay, you know because that was in the arts anyhow we fell madly in love we did have a great deal going forth we loved each other deeply he was a very exciting man he had a beautiful soul with the soul of a poet it's the spirit i said none of us have these qualities that we lose themselves because we don't believe in ourselves we don t know who we are and we keep pretending we're something else and of course i was pretending i was something else i was becoming that i was this lovely charming thing and he's sitting on a wonderful plant i'm beautiful and charming and then you get together you wonder why you have problems because this mask doesn't know this mask and we're two totally different human beings but down basically underneath there is a tremendous lot of love and we should have had everything going to make that marriage a beautiful one successful one except for the fact that we both of us have the illness of alcoholism we were both of us ill and had no understanding of the factors it wasn't in and so we started our marriage and we had two beautiful little girls and my son came back came to live with us and as i said we had everything going for us except that he suffered from this dreadful illness about which neither one of us have any understanding had together. And he was very difficult for me because I thought he was so handsome, I thought it was so beautiful and he didn't think I was. I remember once he sat down and looked at me we were both a little bit drunk I guess and he looked at me and he said you know the the homiest goddamn woman I ever saw. I believed him. I believed in him. This was ended the other day, my dear friend. Chuck told me that I was the homest girl at general service during those early years. Didn't you, Chuck? But you know, that's all part and... I love you, Chuck. That's all in part and parcel of this terrible feeling of inadequacy that we have, this terrible feelings that we really don't amount to very much. But I began to be aware of the fact that there was something wrong with us. I began be aware that there were something wrong. But my problem was, as it so often is, that it was something that was wrong with him. Even as I had been looking in the early days for something outside of me to make me happy, having been looking for something outside there that was going to make everything all right. Now I'm blaming something outside of me for the problems that we're having. I'm claiming Roger. I'm blamey Roger. If Roger didn't drink, I wouldn't drink. If Roger wouldn't have this problem, I wouldn' t have this prob- It's all Roger's fault. And people would come to me and say, Evie, you're drinking an offer. I'd say, I know it's Roger. That's some of his dicks. I can't live with him if I don't drink all these excuses and reasons my eyes because i can't face the fact that i have to be responsible for my own life that i had to be accountable for my drinking and so i begin to blame it on him as we always do circumstances places and things we keep thinking of a reason for why things happen to us and we have to learn that those are not the reasons why things happened to us We have learned to be responsible, thank goodness, in our sobriety. But you can break down that word in another way. You can break that word down to response-adoly. In other words, do we have the ability to respond properly to things that happen to us? And this is where our attitudes have to change. And this what we learn as we come into this fellowship. But I didn't know about it at that time. I just thought that if he got sober, I wouldn't have any more problems. Jack Alexander piece in 1941, and that was called Three Trades of Drink. And I thought, God, what corn. But you know, it's true. What freedom we have. What's freedom? We couldn't be joyous and have the truth if we weren't free of this terrible addiction. And so I read the article, and I asked him to read it, and he wasn't interested. He didn't want to read the talk, but oh well. That's it. I'll have to go on drinking. That was right and my father died. My father died and left us a little bit of money, left me a little bit of the money and I thought to myself, well, I know what's the matter. One of the reasons I drink so much is the fact that Roger always drinks it all up and I'm always sure there isn't going to be anything left for me and the result is that I'm always feeding him to the bottle, you know, because I want to be sure and get my share, share. God, I still do that. Last night I counted the shrimps on my friend's plate to make sure they didn't have any more than I did. I thought I had the solution to this problem. My father had left me a little bit of money, so I began ordering the liquor by the case because I figured that way there'd always be enough and I wouldn't have to drink it in order to protect my supply. Funny thing. Didn't work out that way at all. I just drank more. And eventually the time came when I no longer could handle myself. I no long could bear the way I was. I no more could live with what I had become. My fear of going on living with these had gotten greater than my fear of trying to live without it. And believe me, my fear at trying to leave without it was very great. But I could no longer stand what I was doing to my children. I could not longer stand myself. hated myself. I had such a feeling of degradation and despair. My son was 14. He was beginning to look at me with such distaste. I don't think he hated me, but he sure didn't love me. I remember asking him one night, I said, honey, why do you go out of Eden? Why don't you stay home? It's so exciting. I said over this is during the Second World War and over the ship from the river, the convoy's there in the Hudson and he looked under the side drive and the convoys are getting ready to take the ships out to sea and I said, so what do you want to do now? Oh, he said, I can't stand to stay home once we get drunk. I couldn't stand that and my little girls they used to look at me and say, Mommy, take us to the park. You know, in New York you take them to the parks and you don't put them outside you have to go with them And I'd say, I can't. Mommy's too sick. Then I'd hate myself because I didn't believe I was sick. I thought I was terrible. I thought it was degraded. I thought that I was guilty. I thought i was awful. And to say I was a sick was another lie. And so I hated myself even more. And I would think, oh my God, I hope I don't get the DTs. I was so frightened I'd do something to hurt these children because I abhorred my children. I thought if I do anything to hurt them And finally, I wouldn't be able to stand it any longer, and I think, well, maybe if I just have one, I could just feel it, and so I've gone, and now I have one. And then I say, as God makes it, let's stay there, because there are those mornings when nothing good. And I just stay down, and then I begin to almost feel all right. And so I think of maybe, maybe just one more, and hopefully one more. and I'd be almost back to normal because that's what we do we drink to feel normal and I've had the third one and I'll be off and I'm going to be out of the park with the car at a time you know and the whole damn thing would start all over again and I would wake up the next morning saying what happened I promised my boy I wouldn't drink again and here I am I didn't understand what was going on, and I didn' t know much about alcoholism, but I remembered that little article that I had read, and on top of that my mother-in-law had come to see us, and we were both drunk, and her visit was timely, and she was an elderly lady. God, she must have been about as old as I am now! I thought she was older than God! Anyhow, she came to see it, and I've never forgotten. She left a little note for us. It didn't last, it didn't visit very long. She left this little note on the refrigerator, and it said, My dear children, the world pounds upon inebriates. And it said... My dear childen, the world bounds upon inebrites. Inebriates? Indeed! Those of you who don't like the word alcoholic, try inebriates. She went on to say, I have written to the Alcoholic Foundation, which is the old name for the General Service office in New York, and asked them to send me some literature. And I've always been very grateful that my first real knowledge about Alcoholics Anonymous came from that office where I was eventually to work and which meant so much to me over the years. And those articles came, those little pamphlets came into the story of a woman. And I suddenly realized that I wasn't the only person in the world that did the things I did. That I had an illness and that there was hope. That there was an answer in this Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It took me another four months to come to you because I was terrified to come alone and Roger didn't want any part of it. But finally, after a summer of being unable to stay sober on my own, and I had promised my boy that if I couldn't do it alone, I would come here, I put in that phone call. And I went down to the old 24th Street Clubhouse. And I had, as we all do, such terrible fear about what I was going to find when I got here. The old 24 Street Club in New York used to have a long dark hall that led to this big big room that went this way and we used to call that the last mile and you felt like you were walking down that last mile as you walked in that hallway and i stood out there on the street and i looked down this dark tunnel hall but i could see at the end of this room at the end of the hall this room that was full of light and so i walked down that hall into to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and to the light and the life and the love that AlcoholicsAnonymous represents to me. And I knew as I came in that I had found answers. I didn't know what answers, but I had that sense of love and warmth and understanding that we all ever seem to feel when we first make contact with AA, when we really and truly want to do something about the problem. And while I didn't really understand what it was all about, nonetheless, I had that sense as I said that here were going to be the answers. I didn' t know how much work was entailed. I didn'' t know how much effort I was going to have to put in to this program. I didn '' t know how much I was gong to have changed. And I'' m glad they didn''t tell me all that at the beginning. My God, don'' t tell them what work it is they won't stay, you know? I just thought this is wonderful. Everybody's sober and everybody's happy and I'm going to find answers here. But I was still full of fear and I still had that terrible wall around me. I still have this awful feeling that nobody could like me. I still was afraid to go up and say hi, my name's Eve and I knew. I couldn't do that. If he didn't speak to me, I sat back in the corner and cried. I was a damn mess. I was really if i can get sober anybody can get sober because i was a very very sick girl i'm sure of that very sick indeed but i knew that there was hope here i knew there was answers i knew it was understanding and as i said i didn't know that i had to change as a matter of fact the first time i heard that serenity prayer god grant me this humanity to accept the things i cannot change i thought isn't that wonderful i don't I can just accept myself as I am, kind of awkward and stupid, not very bright, never amount to very much, but at least I don't have to drink. They said, I heard Bill say once, you don't need to drink, you just have to be a man. You don't want to have to think against your own will, because that made a lot of sense to me. And then it said, courage to change the things you can. And I thought to myself, wonderful. By God, I'm going to change water. And so I went about trying to do that for some considerable time until I learned, of course, what the meaning of that beautiful prayer really is. And I learned that the only person that I could change was me. And it's a hard process because we can't change ourselves until we know what we are and what we have to change. It was easy enough to admit that I was an alcoholic. I was so glad to know I was not. I was just an alcoholic you know everybody else the old big book when I came in had a great bright incidentally Eddie took my opening line last night so I didn't use it to over with but I'll give it to you now I'm at that point in my life where I am exactly half of my life in the fellowship with Alcoholics Anonymous I'm 37 years sober and 74 years old So, in those early days, the book had a big bright red and yellow cover, and you were supposed to be able to turn it inside out so that if you carried the book with you, you'd be very anonymous and then nobody would know that you were there. What the hell was that? I used to carry that red and Yellow Cover and get on that bus, Alcoholics Anonymous all of it. I was so proud I was an AlcoholicsAnonymous. I was so glad I was there and not in a nut house somewhere. I was so glad to know that I had an illness from which I could recover. And you know, really and truly when you come right down to it, there are not many illnesses that are as serious, as devastating, and as debilitating as ours from which you can recover by just staying away from one drink one day at a time. And yet that ain't easy of it, because we still have that compulsion. We still have that allergy. We've still had that feeling this time it'll be different. And we still have that lack inside, that terrible need to do something that's going to fill us up. And we don't realize that starting into work on these steps is what's going fill us up. I didn't mind saying I knew I was an alcoholic. Of course, I figured my life was unmanageable because of Roger. And I had to change that around a little bit i had to finally recognize the fact that my life was unmanageable and not just because of the drinking but my life wasn't manageable because of me and so i had to begin to take make some changes but i didn't know much about me and the second step restored me to sanity that i could easily accept because i knew i was nuts i thought i was much nuttier than i was the booze had helped to make me nutty you know those days it was difficult sometimes to put people on the flight deck in bellevue which is our psycho ward in new york city and it was difficult to get people up on the flight deck because they never knew whether they were drunks who were nutty because they drank or whether they weren't nuts who drank. You know, I mean, it was typical to separate the two. And so I didn't know what I was like. But I could take the second step and came to believe that a power greater than myself couldn't restore me to sanity because I could see that power in these meetings. I could feel that power in those people in Alcoholics Anonymous who were staying sober. And the third step made it easy to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood it. And I had no more idea what my higher power was than the man in the moon. And I couldn't make a decision because I didn't know what God was. And I went working with the four steps. And I think these two steps work together because how, people used to say, get yourself out of your way. Get yourself out if you're wrong way. What do they mean? What do we mean, get herself out of her own way? I didn' t even know who I was. How could I get out of my way? and it was very important to me to find out who or what I was it's a fourth step very important indeed to me to find how I was all about and it wasn't important in relationship to the third step because I went through one of those guilt trips and I didn't understand what it was all above people would ask me how I'd come along with the third set I'd say I'm not worthy of God's love honey that's an ego trip you know and i didn't realize how sick my ego was and i didn't trust god i used to sort of try do something about turning my will in my life over but then i'd take it back you know and i used think it was very fun when i was meeting meetings closed meetings and talking about one of these steps and i'd say i could turn it over to god said he didn't understand my financial problems you know i wasn't i was a little bit like that marvelous story about the man who was having great difficulty about God and was talking to his sponsor. He said, hell, I can prove to you there's no God. What do you mean you can prove there's not God? I'll just go through. He said I was lost up in Alaska and all the snow. There wasn't anywhere that was mild and there I was and I prayed to God and I said if there's a God, help me, save me. Well, he said, guy. He said, God didn't do nothing. He said some dumb Eskimo came along and put me on. And that's kind of the way I was, and I couldn't even trust it. Let him go and then take him back. I came to believe, but I wasn't sure. And I had a lot of work to do on that step. I had a lot of trouble getting myself out of my own way because my ego was so sick Can the four steps help me with this? And I think the fourth step is important for us. Because it's through the fourth step that I think we begin to do something that's so important. And one of the things they said to me when I first got sober, you've got to learn to love yourself and forgive yourself. And I thought, forgive myself? How can I ever forgive myself for the things I've done to my kids? The sins of omission as well as the sins of commission. How can i ever forgive myself and love myself after those feelings. And you know, I want to tell you something. Sometimes there's very good reason for the 10th step. There's very Good reason for continuing to work with these programs because sometimes some of these things we've buried so deep and they come up much later on and we have to starting all over again. I think I was sober two or three years when suddenly I was hit between the eyes but the sudden memory of something that I had blocked out. And my little boy, my little boy was three years old, and I lived on Gramercy Park in New York, and I was trying to get a job in the theater. And in Gramerci Park you had keys to the park, it was private, and I live there on the park. My father did, I was there. And so I locked him in the park and I said, Mommy will be back in about an hour and a half. I've got an appointment. And when I got back, it was dark, and he was all alone in that park. And I had buried that. I couldn't bear to face that. And so there I was, several four or five years, and suddenly I'm hit with this, and I have to forgive myself all over again. I have put another amends on my list of making amends. And of course the making of amends such a glorious process because we soon learn that it isn't just what we do in the beginning about suddenly overcompensating rushing down and buying pretty things at least you've got a good mother I am I'm making amends to my little girl here with lovely little velvet dresses I can't afford them at all I'm a good mother you know that isn't it that isn' t it I think the way we make amends to those we've hurt so much that we love the most is the way which we love them the rest of our lives and the way which we treat them the rest of our lives and so I tried to do that was that son of mine who is now 52 years old. I don't think he knew anything, but I sure as hell did. And so I began working on that fourth step to find out who I was. Because how can I get rid of this sick ego and turn my will in my life over to the care of God as I understand him when I'm still so involved with self? As the big book says, we're so totally involved with ourselves. And I was still frightened of people and I couldn't They'd received what you were trying to offer me. All the love was here for me, but I couldn't accept it. I couldn' t receive it because I still had that wall around me. I still held my shield up when I came to meetings. And so I had to begin to work on that fourth step. And all I could see was awful. All I could feel was the devastation. All I can see was the things that were degrading that I felt so bitterly ashamed of. And someone said to me, You have to look at the good. you have to look at the good and let it flourish and nurture and I began to try and find something that was good and I knew how much I loved my children you can't do much against mother love you know so I figured well maybe that was a start I really had you know we have a lot of love in us we have a lot of love we have love in it the problem is that we're so self-involved we can't let it out because we're afraid you're not going to love us was so fearful of rejection, at least I was, that I didn't dare step out and say, I love you so that you could love me because I had a little back to it. And so I found that little bit of mother love and I thought, well, there is a beautiful little flower and I used to try and look at it like a flower garden and I found this one little rose, this mother love and I tried to nurture it and let it grow and the soul of a sudden I began to see all the weeds. All the weeds that were trampled in the best of that garden of my soul. The weeds of resentment and anger and frustration and hostility and rage, anger, self-pity. All of those things that were a part of me that I hadn't gotten rid of. And I began realize that none of those flowers could grow. That nothing could be nurtured, nothing could go on if I didn't get rid of all these things, these weeds that were stifling that part of me which I wanted so desperately to nurture and to have to grow into life. And so I began to work on this resentment, this anger, this fear. And fear is the common denominator with them all, I do believe. Resentment is our number one enemy, yes, but what's it rooted in? It's rooted in fear. It's rooted in fear that you will take something away from me that I think is mine, and none of us really own anything. But we don't know that. And so I began to work on trying to get rid of these things that were a part of me that had to change. And I find the fourth step a tremendously exciting one because that's the name of the game. Who am I? What am I ? And I've always been trying to be somebody. And finally we learned that we are somebody, even if we're nobody, if you know what I mean. We don't have to have our name in lights. We don' t have to be famous, we have to be whole. We have to real. We have to at one with this higher power that we come to understand. We no longer have to feel that separation. And we learned to do this through the steps and through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous as we learn to love one another. And finally I was able to leave my field outside the door when I came into meetings. And I was able to say, I like you. I stepped in the right direction. But people would know so I could receive the love that you were giving me and then I could love you. And it worked backwards but never mind it worked. Because if we can learn to receive then we can give. And sometimes I think it's harder for us to receive than it is to give. Because we've been so prideful, we've been so full of arrogance we've done so full of insecurity that we have felt that somehow it denigrated us if we had to receive something and we have to be the lady bound to her here let me give you something first so to learn to receive I think is a very important part of our growth and so I began to be able to do these things by working with steps getting rid of my shortcomings my defects of character as far as I had to identify them first and by getting my ego in place I could begin to understand what the third step was all about. That sick ego, you know, that's that two sides, this terrible feeling of inferiority and a terrible feeling of superiority. And that's the dross on both sides. And we have to get back to that pure goal, that inner self, that divinity within, that perfect God-self that we all are. to be true to that to know that we're whole then I can turn to my higher power then I say then I will be done because my ego is no longer standing in the way that sickness that had kept me in prayer all these years that sickness that had not allowed me to be a person it had made me dependent on something outside of myself to be me not to be mean I didn't know who he was but to be a front to be at the side to be somebody and now I can learn to be me and with the 10th step and the constant inventory it's good to keep checking on ourselves I love the story about the little boy the little Boy went into the drugstore and asked the man if he could use the telephone and the man said sure go ahead so the Little Boy dialed the phone and said miss brown yeah i just wondered uh you need to have your lawn mowed oh you got a boy lawn okay he's doing okay oh i see how about cutting shrubs you need somebody cut you have a boy cutting shrub what about teaming up that driveway oh you've got a way of doing that I said, you okay? Oh, thank you. Oh, Druggist was kind of impressed with this little boy. So he said, listen son, he said if you need a job, I'll be glad to give you a job. Who's that on your job? Druggists said, what was all that phone call about? Oh, he says, I'm Mrs. Brown's boy. I was just checking up on myself. So in a way, that's what we do with the 10 steps. We have to keep checking up on ourselves. We keep checking up on ourself. And of course the 11th step is such a beautiful one because it helps us to keep that sense of oneness and prove our conscious contact with God as we understand him. How many of us would die if we did not have that morning hour, that time that we take to ourselves, that timethat we devote to being meditating, to being at one with our higher power? I can remember back in the good old days, you'd be up late playing poker or doing something, you know, and you'd get home at one o'clock and you had to get the kids up and go to work the next day. And you'd look at the clock and say, gee, one o'. Well, I could sleep till eight. Ah, if I caught the bus, I'd sleep till ten after. You know, so you'd get down and you're busting and sweating. Oh, kids! You know. Not a moment to yourself. And you get to work in an absolute rage and you wonder what's wrong. I wouldn't miss that getting up an hour early for anything on God's earth. Because that's the time that I have to be no longer separate, but be one with what I call my higher power. And I've come to believe, as it says in the big book, the big books says it, most people come to belief it is deep inner reality. And i believe that God is an inner reality and not a distant possibility. But you know it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, a lot of willingness to have all these things come about in our lives. And it's necessary to have change because we can't stay the same way we are. I do believe that it's not possible for us to stay as we were when we came in and stay sober. I think we have to affect these changes in ourselves. This change of attitude, and my change of attitude involves such silly things as my height. I'm glad I'm tall I'm proud to be tall I can see parades and if you buy a big nose it holds my glasses up those used to be things that were so insurmountable and how many times do we look at situations and we can change our attitude about it and the situation seems so different and it's all in the way in which we look at things and that's what this program is all about how we look at ourselves, how we look at other people, how we look to our fellow man and how we try and live this program one day at a time. It didn't happen to me all at once. As I told you, I've been sober a long time and I'm constantly having to make changes in myself. I'm constantly having work on defects of character. I know what most of them are. Unfortunately, I enjoy some But I'm aware of them, and so I try and work on them. And such wonderful things have happened to me since I've been in this fellowship. I can remember I used to sit in the last row, and things were not easy. Roger and I had gotten a divorce. He was drunk every night for six years, my first six years of my sobriety, and we finally separated. And I had the children, I was working, it wasn't easy. And I'd sit in the last row and I'd listen to people up here on the podium and some pretty little thing would get up here and say, I've been sober about six months now and everything's wonderful. I've got a new Cadillac and I'm going to get married and you know... And I sit there in the back row thinking why doesn't anything good ever happen to me? forgetting the fact that I had been given the gift of sobriety if beyond which there was nothing greater that I'd been given the gift of tools with which I could work to change my life and so I learned to change my attitude and to be grateful for those children that I have kept I learned to be thankful for the fact that my husband was an alcoholic because if he had not been I would surely have lost those children that meant so much to me and we've shared I've shared Alcoholics Anonymous in the program with my kids and I can remember quite some time ago when my older girl came running home from school one day and she said oh money I know what I want to be when I grow up and I said what do you want to do darling oh he said I want be a ballet dancer and a member of AA. I knew what she meant. She felt that wonderful love and companionship and friendship that was exuded in our home because it was full of AA members all the time. That's what she felt, and that's what you wanted. She didn't want to go through the pain of alcoholism to reach this fellowship. Sadly, she had to. But she has five years of sobriety. And my other daughter used to be really and truly quite on the ball about things. She really and really, really had the program. As a matter of fact, today she's extremely active in Al-Anon. She's head of the Literature Committee for our state Florida convention for the Al-Alanon part of the program She has a regular Al-Alanon group. she's been working on the fifth step recently so it is a part of her life as well but i can remember once i was going off to a speak at some big conference or something or other and back in those days i used to wear very large hats um some of you may not know what a hat is But I used to love these great cartwheels, because being big, they looked nice on me, you know. And so I was sitting there trying to decide how to pack, and I said, I can't decide now, I can' t decide. I said I'd take the big hat which looks better on me. It's hard to pack. Also, I took that little one, which isn't becoming, but it's easier to pack and this conversation is going on. And my youngest one was then about ten, she was a little thing. and I can hear what she leaned over the dressing table and said, Mommy, I thought the important thing was what you said, not what you wore. That's still hard for some of us who do this circuit. I have to tell you that I hope you like this dress because I got it to see again but I don't always trust them right away and so I tried this one out down in Lake Charles, Louisiana And it went pretty well down there, so I could wear this. Such wonderful things have happened to me. I've been so blessed since I'd been in this fellowship. I never thought when I walked in that door in that old 24th Street Club when I sat in those meetings and I heard Bill talk because in those days Bill talked a bit about his own story and not just about the structure and the traditions and the other things that he found eventually to be so important for the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I never thought when I sat in those meetings, so frightened and so terrified, and so full of myself and such a pain in the neck to everybody, including myself, I never though that I would have the opportunity to eventually work at our local office in New York as the coordinator or secretary of the central office and to go on from there to the General Service Office for us in 17 years writing to groups all over the world working with public relations at the conferences all very spastic to have a sense of being at that heart of AA because I'm convinced that without that central point that focal point of inquiry AA would not have grown the way it has and my great love was AA around the world my great loved was to watch AA growing everywhere to hear it in another language and to know that it works. And I have sat in meetings in Germany and not understood a word. I've sat in meeting in Spain and understood practically nothing. I've had meetings in France and understood a little bit, not much. And I've set meetings in Japan. A man wanted to translate for me. I said no, because I looked around. I didn't have to be told because I could see these faces and these poor little men were sitting around admission in the state hospital that's not an unusual tour group but i went there anyway it's a nut house and they're sitting around they were sitting on these little low stairs chairs around this table and they'd be talking everything was very very bad and then all of a sudden Everything was wonderful. So what the hell did I need anybody to translate for? And so life has been very full. And I know that Bill knew what he was talking about when he said in that book, We absolutely insist on enjoying life. Can you imagine 3,000 of us in this magnificent, beautiful spot, enjoying every minute of it so much? And did you hear them talk about last weekend? You know, they like to have us drunk here. Last weekend, they had 400 towels stolen. That's why we only get one towel at the beach here. We don't do that anymore. Assays, maybe? Not towels. And so we have learned that life is to be lived, that people are to be loved, and that God is to be trusted. I found a beautiful little poem in a little magazine that I read sometimes. I haven't memorized it yet, so I'm going to have to read it, but I'd like to share it with you. Healing plows and sows a field of grain, or plants a tender seedling in the soil, relying on the sunshine and the rain, trusting God. He whose heart is filled with love for all, who has compassion for his fellow men and empathy with all things great and small, is living God. Who gazes at the starry sky or studies atoms through a microscope or looks into a a fellow being's eye is seeing God. And perhaps it said best of all in the book of John, if we love one another, God dwelleth in us. I love you.