The Insanity of Choosing Not to Use the Tools – Janeens A.

I have done Joyce and I'm an alcoholic and I want to do all the things that the panel members before us did to impress you only I think they paid attention to the things they did I never do I do this because it looks good so there's my watch I have no idea what time this meeting is supposed to end I asked the chairman and they won't tell me so when you all start twitching and walking out of here I'll know it's time for us to end this when I was first asked to do this um i had asked greg if i could get some panel members from reno to help participate in this uh second annual roundup you know as a chairman i've been told exactly how to chair a meeting and that i'm not supposed to deviate from the format and i'm Not supposed to ask for any responses from the audience that the format doesn't ask me to but as a speaker nobody told me that i couldn't do anything so there's something about this group i that i want to know and I'm going to take about 60 seconds to try to find out. I'd like to see a show of hands of everybody who's here for their first High Desert Roundup. All right, and how many are here for the second? See, I wanted to raise my hand. I never get to raise mine. They do that at these things. And how many have been here for all 14, and then there are two or three old-timers in the crowd who hold up their hand and they get a standing ovation, and I go, God, I've been to 13 of them, but I've never been to all of anything except I've Been to All of These. And I wanted to get in while it's young so that by the time they have 14 of them if I'm not around, I will at least have been to all of them once. But we're a neat group. I sort of expected to see 15 or 20 people here. That's how much faith I have in rural Nevada AA, I guess. And there's certainly more than 15 people out there. I don't know how many there are. This isn't the first time I've ever been asked to speak, and as a rule I get moderately nervous and get through it, and I know how that goes, you know. I know How to Do That and Get Calmed Down Just in Time. Well, I didn't get calmed down just in time tonight, I want to tell you. I was reflecting back on when I asked Greg if I could get some panel members to help participate on this because I was all enthused about getting AA to rural Nevada and getting it exciting out here. And so he said, yes, that between Fred and I and one other Reno person, we could recommend three panel speakers. And I believe we did. I think we helped fill all three of those slots. And he said – and if you want to be real helpful to me, you can be the kickoff speaker. And I thought I'd offered enough to this. I'd already contributed enough. And you may agree with me at the end of this hour or you may not. I want to thank Greg, I guess. At least it'll sound good on tape. you're supposed to thank the committee and I've seen people running around here in committee ribbons and I tell you I've been on committees and I know that these things don't just fall together. That's one of the things I have come to believe, that if we didn't have people like those who are setting up chairs and making coffee and doing the rather mundane things that pull one of these things together then we couldn't get together like this to enjoy the fellowship and I want to thank the whole committee not so much for asking me to share but for putting the thing together so that we could be here to share I don't think enough can be said for the people who do the nuts and bolts work of these sorts of things so if there are any of you out there who aren't doing it volunteer for next year it's an experience I didn't start getting nervous about this assignment until it dawned on me that I've been real focused on my service work lately and where I'm going with that and where I've come. And all through my sobriety, in and out of it, I have been active in general service. And somehow, like in the back of my head where the committee meets, they all got together today. I'd been doing pretty well up until then. And it's real ironic what they're doing. You know, I thought, God, I know those people in Fallon and Fernley and Reno and places wherever they're going to be coming from in Las Vegas. and there's nothing to be worried about. All I have to do is get up there and tell them what I was like and what happened and what I'm like now and then this voice in the back of my head said, yeah, but you know the past trustee's going to be there and the delegate's goingto be there and the upcoming delegate's goingtobe there and they're probably out on a talent search for new delegates and theyre gonna be looking at you and scrutinizing you and talking about you all over the Pacific region about what kind of a person you are. And I thanked it for reporting and told it to shut up and go on away, and he's still with me, whoever that is, talking to me. So I just wanted to share that with you, that I'm off in na-na land here in one part of my head. So I hope this all flows together to make some kind of sense. I was very impressed with the theme from the time that I knew what it was, and I thought, what a broad topic. And so I've been trying to give some focus to what I had come to believe since I had been in Alcoholics Anonymous and what I believed before I ever got here. Because when the theme came to believe, we need to be focusing on some kind of believing or not believing. And really and truly, folks, nothing has come together. So let's hope it starts coming together or I won't talk on the theme one or the other. I think it all relates. you know i think everything that has happened to me what i was like what happened and what i'm like now relates to what i either didn't believe or do believe now and how i have come to believe that um i'd have to go back a few years and i i uh probably am not going to share i'm not going say that every time i say that i'm not going share a lot about what i used to be like i never get out of it but i do want to say that the principles that have been given to me in alcoholics anonymous of honesty and hope and um self-searching and sharing and humility alcoholics anonymous is not the first place that those principles were ever presented to me i come from a rather strange background i have an alcoholic father and a born again christian pentecostal mother and they were both they were those when i got when i I got brought into them and so you've got about a diametrically opposed group of people there as you can get my father well I don't know if he was atheist but he was certainly agnostic wanted nothing to do with what my mother had as a way of life but because she uh she's a good spouse of the south and she managed to start wearing the pants as soon as he started losing them and as his drinking progressed and she could pick up the pieces and go with them she ran the family for a good many years and so I got a lot of indoctrination of the born again Pentecostal Christian upbringing and I'm not here to knock it and those principles were presented to me early in my life now on the other hand I got to witness an active alcoholic father and I'll tell you when you have the choice of sitting up straight in a wooden pew and listening to a dry Bible Baptist minister or doing the kinds of things my daddy was doing, it doesn't take a long time for a good upcoming alcoholic to figure out which one they want to do. And so I was cockeyed all my life. I had one eye on what my mother was taking me to church to learn. I went to church for the first time when I was 10 days old and I had perfect attendance for the time I was 5 years and 10 days. I had 5 years perfect attendance at Sunday school. So no matter where my mother went with us and by that time I had three little sisters, too. That was one of the symptoms of the alcoholism in our family. A baby every nine months. As much as I saw them not speak to each other, I don't know how we got all these kids, but there was something going on there I never knew anything about. And I had one eye on this upbringing that my mother was trying to present to me which held a whole lot of the values that I have come to believe and become able to apply in my life in Alcoholics Anonymous and the other eye on this absolutely riotous world that my father lived in. And I had no eye on the present. You know, I was going to either be never what I was gonna be at the moment. I was either gonna be a missionary and I figured if I was wanna be a visionary I should go to Africa and deliver little black babies. That was what I thought a good a real good bible baptist pentecostal missionary ought to do and or i wanted to be an actress on stage with the limelight on me and and preferably a comedian because i like to make people laugh my father made people laugh and that looked real attractive to me and the irresponsibility of it all i just loved my dad professed to be a farmer and that gives you a lot latitude, if you're the kind of farmer my father was. It was my mother that I always saw on the tractor and out feeding 3,000 baby turkeys, you know, with a one-month-old baby in the house in the bassinet or carrying a nine-month one that isn't delivered yet. She was the one that ran things. And I tell you, it didn't take me a lot of years. I think by the time I was six years old, I'd made my choice between the role model in my life that I wanted to be like. And as the siblings came along, I was starting to act more like my mother. That was the way I got my strokes from my mother, was to be her right-hand man. And by the time I was 12 years old, I was more adult than I am today. I don't ever want to be that adult again. God forbid that I ever grow up and be like that, because by the time I was 12, I was old. And I had already discovered chemicals by then, and it took them a few years to get me loosened up. No, I was uptight by the time I was in five weeks into the first grade. Life was serious business and I think I knew right about that time that I'd already flunked missionary. By the time i was six or seven years old I'd blown that down the tubes. I was into the chemicals already. I Was into my mother's change purse stealing money and missionaries don't steal money not even a dime for a coke and so i knew that that was over however my mother continued to keep me in perfect attendance in sunday school until i was over 15 years old and one thing i learned well was how to follow directions from my mother whether i wanted to be doing what i was doing or not and that set up in me this silent rebellion that's all i know how what how to call it you know the kind that makes you put your hands behind your back and crack all ten knuckles at one time while you smile and look innocent and wonderful and like the all-American child. And that's what I did. I was phony from the time I realized that I had two ways to go here, and I liked the one and didn't like the other, and yet I would sit in school and make fun of my father with the kids in my class. I didn't come from Cary, and I didn' t come from Carbondale, but I came from their identical twin, Syracuse, Kansas. And it had 1,900 people including dogs and cats. And when you take the kids out of that and shove it into a little school you don't have a lot of people that you're trying to lie to and deceive. And everybody in that town knew how I lived. If the kids didn't know, their parents knew. And I was telling this grandiose tale of how I live in a two-story white house. I was an only child and my parents were rich. And here were three little brown-eyed, brown-haired girls trotting around after me in grade school looking identically like me. And I don't know where I thought that the city thought those people came from. And we proceeded to have four boys who looked just like me too. That didn't stop. They didn't stopped having kids until my dad got sober. And I've always related the two. Sobriety and infertility of some sort. But there was a lot of confusion there, and I don't think I need to keep painting that picture on through the 19 years that I drank and used. It just went like that on and on and On and On. And, of course, I sought solutions. We all do. I believe we all do I was thoroughly confused by the time I started seeking solutions because I had tried spiritual solutions and I certainly had found them wanting. i couldn't speak in tongues and i that was about the only thing i was missing and i thought well if it's there i don't want it because that embarrassed me and all the other concepts and precepts and values that had been placed before me i found very unattractive they looked kind of like page boys and long sleeve dresses that came down to your ankles and a lot of frowns on your face and the women that i knew then that were 29 years old looked 50 and i looked at that and went, I don't want any part of this. My father looked happy and carefree and rather stupid, but I didn't care. And he would come in and hop over a rocking chair on one foot and throw nickels all over the room and I thought that was neat. Now a couple times he came in and picked up the stack of ten plates that sat on the table waiting for dinner and threw them at my mother and I didn' t like that part but I had a real knack for denial too and I would just shove that down and go, well, that only happened once. he was funny 20 times you know i'm just not going to face the fact that there was a little violence and hostility coming into this household and it might possibly have something to do with alcohol not only did i deny my alcoholism i denied his i denied everything about my life that was going on around me um i lived in a fantasy world from as early as i can remember when you live in a two-room tar paper shack and having a baby every year and you're getting shoved out of your fourth of the bed you know when i was first born i had a bed by the time i was a year old i shared it with one person by the two i shared it was three and by the four there were four of us in that bed and that was my room was my fourth of bed and i can see why i started having resentments at an early age even to this day it makes sense it doesn't mean i can have them it just makes sense um had i uh been an assertive type you know there would have been three of us on the floor, and it probably wouldn't have been me. And I can understand that the conflict and the dishonesty, and there went my first goal in life to be a missionary down the tubes real early in my life. And then like I often am now, I had no plan B. I heard an AA speaker say one time that he was aspiring to a goal, I think it was to become a veterinarian after he'd been in college and made D minuses on his transcript. And that's how we are, you know. And he was, he had finally gotten the grades up on his manuscript through some other years of school and was applying to veterinary school in Davis, California. And he had been denied. And so the second year came around and he had applied again and he was waiting. If you got into vet school, you got a big thick envelope with all the things that you had to do to get ready and if you didn't get accepted the envelope was real flat and that's how you knew without ever opening it you knew whether you were in vet school or not and he was just having one anxiety attack after another and waiting for this envelope to arrive and finally ended up in the hospital with what they thought was hepatitis and then they thought it was jaundice and then, they said it was undiagnosable and at the rate he was going he'd be dead within 24 hours And so the priest had come to do last rites, and he had sent for his sponsor. And his sponsor said to him, Tom, you just can't put all your eggs in one basket. This is what you're doing to yourself. And Tom looked up at him and said, What do you do if you only have one egg? That's about the way I felt about my life. I only have 1 egg at a time, and it's in whatever basket it's In. and I have come to learn since then that I don't have to live with only one egg, and I don' t today. But that was the way I felt then, and so I didn' t have a plan B. I didn't have another choice. But I had something that was attractive to me, and that was how my father was living his life, and that's what I patterned after. Now, I wasn' t conscious of it at the time, and it' s only through retrospective of the steps of this program that I know that that' s what I did, but that' S what I di d. My second solution to my lifestyle, of course, was to get married. When you live in Syracuse, Kansas, and you've got seven brothers and sisters, and now you've Got six of them trying to get in your bed instead of three, it's time to look for a solution. So when I was 15 years old, I started looking for a husband who had no brothers and sister, preferably, and a room of his own. i've been married three times and every time i've been married i've had a room of my own when i want to have because i'm still like that i don't always sleep in it but there's a spare room in our house right now and anytime i want it it's mine um i never want to share a bed with four people again that's probably why i never got into that sort of thing and i found him you know a practicing alcoholic by then i was i think i settled for so less but i could have found anything i went looking for and i found a real villain he was a bad guy and he was six years older than i was and i was a victim and i needed somebody to run my life and that's what he wanted most in the world was to tell somebody how to run their life and so we paired up and it was just wonderful and 10 years later i was almost beat to death because i had stopped deciding it was a great idea to do what anybody told me to do, and he hadn't decided it was a bad idea to stop telling people what to do. And when we got crosswise with each other, I lost. I had two children in the meantime as a solution to my problem, and the end result of that was that I totally fell apart naturally, as we all do if we continue out there long enough. And I'm kind of like the speakers on the panel. It didn't take me forever. I got drug through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time when I was 23 years old. And, uh, I practiced my alcoholism and drug addiction for 19 years. And because I started young, that's the only reason. Um, and part of that time I looked, I was like an ill person, you know, my family nor myself would accept my addiction, especially before the alcohol as, as an addiction. I blamed it on female problems. I blamed it on nervous breakdowns, and therefore I got hospitalized about 55 times in those five years. My husband kept the blue cross and blue shield sheets to remind me, and he'd count them to me. That's how I know that, not because I have a good memory. He'd start his little spiel of one, two, three. You want to know how many times I put you in and out of this hospital? No, but I heard it anyway. And they would bring me flowers and new nighties to wear, and God, I loved those hospitals. I'd ring a buzzer and they'd bring me orange juice And change my sheets every day And I didn't have to tell anybody what to do I just laid there and rang buzzers And it was neat And you can get addicted to hospitals, I know Because I did And into my third and fourth years of sobriety Every time things got rough I wanted to lay in a bed and ring a buzzer You know, I thought There's no step for that, folks And so that's how I got here All my solutions didn't work the values that had been given to me i hadn't been able to apply and i had come to believe that life was not worth living uh and my attempts at suicide hadn't worked and so i had also come to believe that god was a royal son of a bitch that was my opinion and i believe in cleaning your mouth up at the podium i just have to tell you that's what i believed he was this god that i had been exposed to since i was 10 days old was my worst enemy and i took all my bibles and handbooks and i had lots of them lots of the anything i've ever done in my life i've done to access and i studied the bible and read it and and bought other books and handbooks and pamphlets and taught vacation bible school for 11 years and went to christian service camp for 10 and i mean i was on my way and i take all of this stuff and it filled a big aluminum trash can and i sat it on fire and that was my decision i said get out of my life and leave me alone and you know when i came into alcoholics anonymous i believed he had and the first three steps were very very difficult for me because i had put god in a trash can and burned him up and when you do that he doesn't come back that was my opinion and that's what i had come to believe when i went into that mental institution where i thought i was going to stay forever because that's what I've been told. I've been told that if you get institutionalized more than three times, they keep you for life. You know, I also got told if you throw salt over your right shoulder, something happens too, and I believed it all. If you wear garlic around your neck, you don't get pregnant. That's probably the truth. But I didn't know which ones to believe and which ones not to believe, and I entered that hospital hopeless. In the first few days I was there, I thought it was heavenly the Thorazine shuffle was not all that bad and then it started dawning on me that I was really in this place with a lot of nuts and one thing I always knew I wasn't was a nut I'll be a lot things I didn't mind being a prophet I didn' mind being strange I laid on graves and meditated and I thought that was neat and I didn''t see that it did any harm to anybody but they put me in jail for it anyway you know how I tell you how i thought in those days this one i do remember i don't remember a lot of how i fought but i remember this one because i asked the policeman who came up there for the third time to get me off of my favorite grave why i couldn't stay there i said i i for the life of me i do not understand who this is hurting the person in the grave i doubt if they mind if the family members mind and they ask me to leave i'll leave it was a wonderful grave it had a monument in front of it with a spire and a cross, and it was white, and it was right under a tree. And it was really nice. And I liked it. I might even still like it. When I talk about it, I get excited. It was peaceful and tranquil and all those wonderful things. And if I could have just learned not to park my car at the gate of the cemetery, they would have never bothered me. But I am so habitual that I wouldn't leave the car two blocks away and walk into the cemetery. I'd pull it right up in front of the gate, and and you can't even drive up to the gate, but I did. And they'd come in and drag me out, and I asked him one day why they did that, and he said, we're taking you to jail to protect you from yourself. Now, you tell me if that makes sense to you. They're taking me to jail. How are they going to protect me from me if they're taking Me with Me? I don't get it yet. I think I was safer on the grave than I was in jail, And it's a lot less expensive. If I spent a lot of time on that, I'd still get confused. I don't know. Now, I know why they picked me up for prophesying. I also prophesied in the streets of Garden City, Kansas. And we had been... I had this choir robe I really liked. It was white and it was trimmed in royal blue. And they had made me give that up because I had gotten overloaded and drunked up one Saturday night and got up to sing in the choir on Sunday morning, and the choir loft thing was about as high as this table is, only it wasn't nearly as wide. If it had been this wide, I wouldn't have fallen over it. And it got real warm in there, and we were singing, and I felt myself go forward, and I just knew I was a goner, and sure enough, I fell out of the choir lot, and they made me quit singing in the choirs. It didn't make me lose my attraction for the choir robe. It was just one of those things, you know, like your favorite baby blanket. It was that security thing. And I've always got these objects that are my favorite thing. And right now it's my opal ring. And that was my choir robe. And so I was out in the streets of Garden City with this choir robe on and a wooden staff that they'd been using for the Christmas play, and I was prophesying. And I have no idea what I prophesied, but then they put me in jail for that. I didn't get put in jail för drunken disorderly. I got put in jail for prophesying and I got put in jail for taking a baby out of a nursery that I thought was mine and it wasn't I didn't think my bottom was a whole lot like what I heard around here when I first got here because I had been drunk twice when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I did not come to AA because I had a desire to stop drinking. I just started drinking. You don't have a desire to stop drink generally on your second drunk but my father had a desire for me to stop drinking and the janitor at the nazarene church had a desire for me to stop drinking and so did the minister i had this favorite pane of glass on the on the hymn of jesus garment it was a big piece and they had this huge stained glass window with a robe on it and the bottom right left hand corner of his gown was big enough that if you could break it out you could crawl through and get into the church because they had started locking me out of the nazarine church in garden city and uh So I beat my way through there one night and got in and laid down where it was warm and I was seeking my higher power. And in the process, I evidently had cut myself up pretty badly. And I was warm and peaceful and fine, except that the next morning was Sunday morning and when the choir started singing, it woke me up. And I crawled out from under this altar and just terrified the whole church membership. And I remember them carrying me out of there. So that's my bottom. What can I tell you? I had not yet been arrested for anything. I had just been taken in to protect myself from myself. And, well, whatever. So they were all ready for me to stop drinking. I still owe amends to the Nazarene Church, by the way, for that. I don't know how many times I owe them for that plane of stained glass. And one of these days I'm probably really going to make that amend. I've made the rest of them. But that's my reservation. I'm not going to pay for Jesus' garment in that Nazarenes Church. I think every Nazarenen Church ought to be fully self-supporting through their own contribution. And so I was at that Nazarene church helping clean it, and this was my second attempt at drinking. And I had passed out in the church, and the girl there that had become my friend and was the janitor called my husband, and he said, I'm taking her back to the Larned State Hospital, and that was my third time. And I hadn't told her that. If I ever go back to that state hospital again, they'll never get me out because that's the way it goes. you're institutionalized for life. And then I'd also told her about my father, who was in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, you've got to assume he sobered up because I'm not going to backtrack to tell you about that. Now, he's sober in AA already. Several years, by the way. Seven, five or six, seven years. He sobered out, I think, when I was 14 and I'm 23 now. Then. Not now. And, you know, it was the grace of God, I believe now, that she chose to call my father. My husband wasn't given the choice because I know he would have taken me back to the institution, and she said her dad's in that AAA thing because she's told me about that, so I would think what you would do with her is take her to her father, and somebody did. I was unconscious. I don't remember who did. I just know that the next thing I remember, I was sitting up on a table, as most of us do in Alcoholics Anonymous at our first meeting I was sitting up on a table where I'd been laying down and there was another table in the middle of the room and there were eight men sitting around this table and they were in a real hot conversation about something I have no idea what I think they probably were trying to elect a new group secretary and I looked around and I thought this is interesting and I hadn't found myself in that position too many times. Another obsession I had taken on in the tail end of this being in hospitals a lot was eating, as Lynn said. I did that too. It was about the only thing that I left that I could do and do well. And so I came to that table weighing 230 pounds and I also had no desire to take baths and change my clothes. It took a lot of energy. When you're that wiped out, it's hard work to get the old body in the tub and clean it up and put clean clothes on it. And so I just didn't do that anymore. And I was wearing clothes that I had had on. My mother tells me now, I don't believe this because I wasn't that bad. I know I was bad, but I wasn'T that bad But she says that I hadn't had my clothes off in six weeks and I'd vomited on myself, so I was a little less than desirable. But none of these eight men were trying to put the make on me. I didn't have that problem early in AA. And that was my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I have yet to meet anybody that got to AA the way I did, but nobody has told me that I couldn't stay here because I got here that way. Also, because of getting here thatway, I have absolutely no quarrel with how any of you got here. I could care less if there was somebody laying on this table right here, They're just as welcome to me as the people on the front row, the past trustee and the delegate who I still have yet to see. And I'm glad for that. I'm grateful for that There is an element that that has given me that I wouldn't want to be without. There was a time in my early sobriety that I wished I had a different way of telling how I got to AA and I'd try to figure it out. How could I say it that I got here with a desire to stop drinking without really telling a lie? And there's just not a whole lot of ways to do that. You can just say I came to AA, but I didn't even come to AA. I got carried here. And so I just have to tell it like it happened to me. And as I thought over the theme the last week or two, I thought, what have I come to believe? because I had come to believe that there was nothing to believe in when I got put in that institution for the last time. And I looked at life as something that you survive until you get to die. And to me, death was the pleasant end of life, and that was in my head all the time. Irregardless of having two small children, seven brothers and sisters, a mother and a father, those were not things that I cared to live for. I didn't want them to suffer, and I didn'T want them TO miss me. I didn't want them to be sad if I committed suicide, but I prayed to God that he'd give me cancer so that I could die a death of dignity and that people would cry and they would put flowers on my grave and give me a monument like that nice person in Garden City, Kansas had under a shade tree and it would all be over. And that was my dream. Now you don't have a long way to go. There's not much further down to go than that. So the only place I had to go in AA was up. If I even got the desire to stay alive, i had a blessing and i didn't get that for a while i was a i was a difficult person to come to believe in anything i was trying to think about the first thing that i really did believe in um and i don't know what it was no when it finally started happening to me uh and the shell started chipping away so many things happened that it's not really like there was a first thing it's kind of like when did i cross over the line from whatever i was to alcoholic i don't know i think probably right out of a womb is where there was a line in the nursery room and i crossed over it and that's kind of the way my recovery has been i don'T KNOW WHERE I CROSSED THE LINE FROM COMING TO MEETINGS BECAUSE IT WAS INTERESTING I MEAN WHEN YOU HAVE A CHOICE OF GOING BACK TO THE MENTAL INSTITUTION OR GOING TO AN AA MEETING AA MEETHINGS AREN'T SO BAD THEY WEREN'T FOR ME anyway and um we only had one meeting a week anyway and at the tail end of my uh using in the beginning of my drinking i had run across the state line with a couple of kids that didn't belong to me to take them to visit their father who i shouldn't have been visiting anyway and their mother didn't like it and she'd had me put in jail on a kidnapping charge and it stuck i mean they weren't my kids and they weren t even his kids they were in her custody They were his biologically, but he had no say over them. And I was in his car, which he had stolen from his wife. And I Was In Trouble. And they had finally let... I was facing 15 years to life in prison for kidnapping. And I might have gotten out in six or seven, who knows? But the alternatives that I had, I was let loose in Syracuse, Kansas again with the understanding that I made at least two meetings a week and I wasn't seen on the streets during the sunlight hours of the day. And only through sobriety was I able to live up to that. I didn't end up going back to jail. And so those were the two choices I had other than going to AA. I could go back to Jail, or I could go back the mental institution. And they had both become very unattractive to me. There were times that both Jail and hospitals were very attractive to me, but they had lost their appeal. And so I went to meetings. And that's why I went meetings. And I used to wish I'd come for other reasons, but now I don't care. I don' t care why I came to my first AA meetings. And I didn' t come with good motives. At the place I was, not believing in life, not believing in God and not believing in my fellow man nor myself, I don don't know how I think I was going to come to my 1st meeting and have good motives. You know, it doesn't work that way. If you don't have good motives, stay. It doesn't matter. And so I have everything that I have in my life today is what I have come to believe since I came here. And that's a lot. The first thing I probably came to believe is that at least AA was more comfortable and a more pleasant place to be, whether I believed anything you said, wanted anything you had, or wanted any of you in my wife. The physical presence and atmosphere of any given meeting was a more comfortable place than where I had been. Home was more uncomfortable than home. It was more comfortable in the hospital it was more comfortable than jail wasn't more comfortable than that cemetery but i didn't have the choice of going back there and so i came here and i saw here and I was in a lively group you know those farmers aren't all dull and they were interesting and I got to listen to fishing stories and harvest stories and very little about recovery but they were interested and uh I got through a couple of conferences and found out that we had steps and traditions. And so I taught the group about that. I immediately suffered with an ego problem. I remember sitting in that meeting and them telling me, we have this doctor who was not an alcoholic, but the AA members in Syracuse liked him so much that they made him secretary of the group. And he told the group that I was not an alcoholic because if you gave me my preference of a bottle of pills or a bottle OF booze, I would take the pills and therefore I was not an alcoholic and so they wouldn't call on me at meetings uh they didn't kick me out but they wouldn't let me participate in the meeting and then because i'm an avid reader i found out about the third tradition and if you think i didn't raise hell with those guys we drank out of real cups in those days you know the the kind that you have to wash after you use them and and we had spin not plastic spoons that you stirred them with and i would stir my cream and sugar into my coffee, and then I'd start pounding on the table with my spoon until they would call on me. And then I would read them the third tradition every meeting. I said, you can't kick me out of here because I'm an alcoholic if I say I am. So there, and I'd sit down and cross my arms and sit there all through the meeting. And I had five AA groups in my first year of sobriety because although they can't kick you out, they can make it so miserable that if you stay sober, you want to go. I didn't stay sober for my first two and a half years of sobriety, and that might be an indicator as to why. I remember one time the Alamans had a rumor that I was messing around with one of their husbands, and do you know that up until that time that thought had never occurred to me? I had enough of my Christian upbringing still that it never occurred for me to even make eyes at somebody else's husband. I didn't like my husband. I don't know if I would have thought I wanted anybody else's, but I couldn't get that idea out of my head i thought well god maybe people really do that and besides that if they think i am maybe i should and i don't want them talking about me if i'm not you know if i're not doing what they're saying and so i did a couple of times and uh that'll help you move on to another group too when there's only five or six guys in the group and so I did a lot of group hopping and there were no women in those groups in the first five groups I was in there were no women at that time there are now and I kept asking the guys if they would sponsor me they wouldn't touch me with a 10-foot pole and so I was floundering around here with no sponsorship and again I think God had his hands in my life much more than the fortunate thing for me is even though I burned God up he really never let go of me and finally I did come to believe that And I didn't come to believe it until after I had come to experience it, because there began to be a personality change in me that I didn' t even expect to happen. And that was a declaration to me that something greater than me was changing me, because I was resisting it with everything I had. I didn''t want that personality to change. When you come through the doors of AA with your combat boots and military gear on, you aren't ready to have people start pulling down all those shields that you've spent 23 years learning to live with. And that's the only way I could survive was with all of that stuff up. And all of a sudden here I am crying in an AA meeting, not that anybody could tell because the tears didn't get up and over, they just got there. And I'd think, God, this isn't me. I don't do this. I don'T get touched when people talk about things that's hurting them or when they get excited because they got a promotion at work or somebody had a new baby that wanted one. I just didn't get moved about things like that, and yet here I was. And that softening up began. And if you're here and you're tough as nails and you don't want to get soft, you probably better go because it just happens. And I wasn't even working steps yet. I didn't have anybody giving me a whole lot of guidance at this point. And there was a woman up in Hoxie, Kansas, who was about 200 miles away from where I finally ended up At the end of all these groups that I finally tried out, I found one, finally, and stayed put. And she appointed herself as my sponsor, even though she lived 200 miles away from me. And I'm so grateful, and probably still now, but I know back then, this was 18 years ago, that there were... I mean, this woman had more guts than all those guys put together. And she just said, you know, Sweetie, I'm going to be your sponsor. She didn't stand around waiting for me to get attracted to her. I would have never got attracted to her. She was an egotistical broad as far as I was concerned, and it would have been a long time before I wanted what she had. I remember the first time I was in a meeting of about 200 people, and she was crippled with arthritis, and so she would wait until everybody was sat down and the meeting sort of began before she would come in and sit down so that she didn't get bumped around by the crowd. And she walked in, and at least 199 people turned around and waved at her, And I thought, what an egomaniac. And the other part of me thought, I'll be glad when I get sober that long so I can walk in a room and 199 people will turn around and wave at me. And so the conflict started for me with her the first time I ever saw her. And she was not the kind of person that I wanted to invite into my life. I can promise you that. But that wasn't an option because she told me what she was going to do. And, you know, at that point I had had enough of Alcoholics Anonymous without sobriety. That was two and a half years in AA by now, and I'm not staying sober yet. And I believe that I made a surrender there that I didn't even know I made. There just wasn't enough fight left in me to tell her to go to hell because I thought, oh, well, let her think she's my sponsor if that's what she wants to think. You don't invite a woman like Olga far enough into your life to let her Think Anything if you don't want her getting things underway. This woman was a powerhouse. I'm here to tell you they don't make sponsors like that today I just don't see them she came from the school of hard knocks and gingus con you for sponsors and she took charge of my life and somewhere down the road I don't know where I crossed that line either I really came to love that woman and the things that she gave me I fired her more times than, you know I would tell Fred I'm going to fire her as soon as I get home we couldn't do it to her face that takes a lot of courage to stand right up against your sponsor and say, I don't want you for my sponsor anymore. So we'd be 200 miles away from home, and I'd tell Fred all the way home what I was going to tell her as soon as I got home and called her back. And by the time I'd get home, I'd think, well, I better not let go of her yet. You know, I Don't have anybody to replace her with, and after all, I am staying sober. Those are the ways that I came to believe in the things that worked in my life, not with a lot Of finesse. There was no finesse in my life for a long time. I didn't want to change the way I dressed. I didn'T want to changed the way looked. I didn' t want to changes the way talked. I just didn' T want to drink. And my sponsor informed me that that would not work. I remember the first time she did have something that I wanted, and that was that she got a lot of phone calls for 12-step work. And I got this desire. That's one of those little things that crept in. And I got this desire to make a 12-step call. It looked kind of like being a missionary, you know, like you could go out and help this soul and probably get a brownie point in heaven. By then I believed in heaven again or was starting to. And I thought that would be neat. And so I got the courage to ask her if I could go with her on her next 12-stepped call. And she said, Of course not. And I said, Why? And she says, I'm not going to take you, Al, to make an 11-step prayer. I'm going to make 12-steps call on a woman when you look worse than she does. And she'd been trying to persuade me to bathe, and I wouldn't do it. And that's why I bathed for the first time after I met her. I mean, I had a bath in those two and a half years, but I just would do it as it got unbearable for me. If it was unbearably for others, I could care less. And she wanted me to do this on a daily basis. And I thought, that's unrealistic. I'll never bathe on a day like that. And I cleaned up that day. and I put on a pair of nylon hoes and that was repulsive to me. And I didn't have anything to wear and she told me that she would loan me a dress and I tell you what, that woman was this big. You know, and I thought, how am I going to look silly slopping around in this big dress of hers and finally I took it in the bedroom and put it on and it was a perfect fit. That had a way of altering my perspective. Those are spiritual things to me, you know. It's not spiritual to me that somebody sat down and very ethically explained to me what I looked like. When my sponsor handed me a size 20 dress to put on and it fit, I got the point that I did not look like I thought I looked. And we began working on all parts of me and physical was one of them, as you can probably tell. Part of me is gone and I thank her for that. And she would make me stand in front of the mirror and tell myself that I was beautiful and that's when I learned that you can lie and Alcoholics Anonymous and it's okay because there's no way that at 200 pounds standing in front of a mirror, you're beautiful. I wasn't, but she made me say that. And I came to believe in her, and I came zu believe that all of the things that she was suggesting that I do were not so that she could look better than me because that's what I thought. I thought that if she can tell me what to do, then she looks good and she looks like the boss. And here she was giving freely of her time, and I'm sure she had a lot more important things to do and drag me through the steps, kicking and screaming all the way. But we don't think like that. You know, I didn't think Like That when I was in my early sobriety. All I could think of was why people were doing unto me. And she stuck with me. And she taught me most of what I know today for the first time through. I don't know a lot more today in sobriete after 15 years of sobrieto than I knew in that first year. It's just that I know it again and again and again and again. That when I get beat against the wall, I know that I have to admit complete defeat, period, end of subject. I don't, I just have to admit complete defeat over anything and everything that I think I have power over. And I've known that for 15 years. I've probably known that for 42 years. And it's new knowledge to me each time and it applies in my life in a different way. I also learned that my recovery depends upon our unity, that I cannot go barging through Alcoholics Anonymous declaring my independence because when I start trying to separate myself from you, I get all screwed up and all that stuff I learned gets distorted. It starts telling me that it isn't necessary anymore and I cannot I can't comprehend and keep that without being reminded without that reflection that I get from you and so I have to have decent relationships with you people and to me that's what unity means I don't know what unity needs I thought it meant standing around holding hands you know united we stand divided we fall so I see the United States with 30,000 people standing in the middle of it to me unity is that I developed livable relationships with the people that I have to live with. And whether I like everyone in Alcoholics Anonymous or not, and I don't in case I look like I would if I looked like that type, that's why I wore my virgin blouse because I asked the girls at work what I should wear tonight because I wanted to look kind of ladylike and this girlfriend Patty of mine said, wear your virgin blouser, that will make a good impression. And so I did. But I do have to have workable, lovable relationships with the people in Alcoholics Anonymous because AlcoholicsAnonymous is where I have to live. I also came to believe that insanity was not what I thought insanity was. I thought sanity was sitting in that mental institution with people stabbing me with forks and accusing me of having affairs with their husband, who was Jesus Christ, and pulling their eyelashes out and burning themselves with cigarettes, and I thought that was insanity, and I never did that. Now, I meditated on graves and I may have pulled a few eyelashes out and I slashed myself up 400 times with a razor blade when I couldn't drink and couldn't work the steps. But that was not insanity to me. And today, insanity tome is to know how to have a way to live my life, to have tools given to me to apply and know that they work because I've worked them before and choose not to do that when I see myself getting in a bind. Now, I can be crazy. You know, I do crazy things. I stay up too late some nights when I have to go to work the next day and look like I know what I'm doing. I think that's crazy. I eat sugar when I know that sugar makes me nuts, and I thinkthat's crazy, but I think it's insane for me to keep on doing that and not pick up the kit of spiritual tools that have been given to me and apply them in my life. Today, to me, that's the definition of insanity, and it's the defintion I need because if I compare myself to people sitting in a mental institution, I'll never think I'm insane. When I was in there, I didn't think I was insane because I was like everybody else, you know? And so insanity to me, I have come to believe, is a whole different thing than what it was there. And that ties directly for me into the ultimate authority that we have in this fellowship. You know, I used to think I Was the ultimate Authority. When I wasn't, my husband was. I would single out one person and they were it and I would clutch and cling to them and if they were infallible, if they had feet of clay or if they fell apart, I was a goner. There was nothing spiritual about what my authority was. If it was my mother and I wasn t pleasing her, then it was over. And today that s not true. Collectively, you people have something that can govern me. If that's a poor word, I'm sorry, but that's what it does. Today, thank God, I don't have to pick out one single person and make them my ultimate authority and make then my God and fall apart when they fall apart and heap that kind of responsibility on any human being. The program has brought me a way of having a contact with the God that finally worked his way back into my life without me being aware of it. Snuck up on me when I wasn't looking. You know, I still believe that God brought me through the back doors of AA to get me back into a relationship with him because you guys just, when you walked through the doors the first time, or at least for me, this did not look like a spiritual place. It did not looks like I was going to be introduced to a set of spiritual principles that would straighten out my life. My God, I'd been taught you don't smoke, you don' drink coffee, you don cuss and I was in my first meeting and people were doing all three to excess. It didn't look spiritual to me. And I, too, was told, like Floyd was, I had used thee, thou, and thy in my everyday language for a long, long time, and it got me nowhere. And when I saw that third-step prayer in the big book for the first time, that was the only reason I wouldn't say it, because it had those three words in it. And I said, I'm not saying those words. And I didn't know that I could say them differently. And those were my prayers. You know, it was just, hey, God, here I am. Very simple communication. And my sponsor told me the same thing. I learned, I've come to believe that the only requirement I have to have to be an alcoholic synonymous is to be a alcoholic, to have a desire to stop drinking. I didn't have that desire when I came here because I wasn't even convinced I had a drinking problem. And about the same time that I made a decision to turn my will and life over to the care of God as I understood Him, which was a pretty bizarre way, but it worked. It works for me. I also realized that I belong here because I have a desire to stop drinking. That's today. That's why I belong there, not because I've been in general service for parts of 15 years or because I sponsored however many people I've sponsored or because i worked at 12 steps 14 times because I had a desire stop drinking I have the right to be an alcoholic synonymous and if you're here with five minutes past your last drink and you have a desire to stop drinking, you belong in Alcoholics Anonymous if you want to be here. And I thank God for the third tradition as well as the third step. I didn't thank him so much for the next ones, as I had to start looking at myself. I had come to believe that anything I had ever done was nobody's business. And I want you to know that it wasn't long after I got this assertive sponsor, she wasn't assertive, she was aggressive, that I found out that that old idea was going to have to go. and that the only way that I could hope to not keep living is Lynn talked that she lived, and I enjoyed your story so much, Lynn. And it only showed me again that alcoholism is progressive whether we're drinking or not. And that was what my sponsor tried to tell me that I had to take a look at myself. And she sat about with one foot in each bun to help me do that. And I moved accordingly. I remember the very end of this battle that we had over write it down, Joyce, and I wouldn't. I had gotten mixed up with one of the guys that I'd met early in AA, the only slipper that I knew in AA that was a professional slipper, and I liked him best of anybody in our group. And he'd been in AA 17 years, and he'd be sober for 30 days about 399 times. And so he knew everything in Alcoholics Anonymous there was to know, but he couldn't do it. And he would tell me what to do, andI would do it, and I'd stay sober, and he'd get drunk. And so I owed him this debt of gratitude, and I went out to get him one time to take him across the state to get a job, and the son of a bitch got drunk on me. You know, I was giving him all this good information, and I had about a year sober at this time, and my sponsor was trying to get me to write my fourth step, and we ended up at Larnard State Hospital in this stolen car, the same one that I had taken across the statewide with his kids in it. And it was still a hot car. It still belonged to her, and we shouldn't have had it. and I drove him into the Larned State Hospital, and I said, well, I've got a drunk out in the car, and he's nuts, and I want you to get him off my hands. And I was just raging and completely crazy, and they were going to commit me. And they were signing me in, and I called my sponsor, and I says, they're going to put me back in the nut ward. And I'm a year sober. And she said, write it down, Joyce. And I said... Olga, I have a gun in one hand and the telephone in the other, and if you don't come get me, I'm going to kill myself. And she said, Joyce, do me a favor. And I said, sure. And she says, hang up first. And that's how I came to write my fourth step. Right there in the waiting room of the Larned State Hospital. And I did not get committed. And I came back home, and I thought, I'll show her I'm not going to take my fifth step with her. That's the worst thing I think a baby can do to a sponsor. The worst thing I could figure out was don't take your fifth step with her. And so I went and found a minister and did my fifth step. And so, I did my sixth step in rebellion. And it worked anyway. A month later, I took it with her because I wanted her to know about me, how traumatic I was and how dramatic I was and what a case she had on her hands. The ego had not yet even started to diminish. And I found that I have one primary purpose in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, after I looked at myself and saw what I was made of, I know that today I have a primary purpose, and that's to carry my message to the alcoholic who still suffers. I only have my message. I know what I Was Like Before I Got to You. I know What Happened as a Result of Getting Here. I know WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME THE 15 YEARS THAT I HAVE BEEN HERE. And that's all I have to give is my message of recovery. And to me, it is a message of recovery and self-examination and sharing that with two other human beings when one of them was somebody I swore I was never going to share it with, brought me that knowledge. Never before working the steps have I ever known how they're going to work and why. I'm like whichever speaker it was that said, I don't have to know how it's going to look and I don' t have to knoW why it's gong to work. I just have to sit down and do it. You would think after you go through those one time and know that, the next time around you wouldn't do that And not yet have I got to where I'll go, I know what I need to do. I needto tell someone that I've been wrong, promptly admit it, and I'll feel better. I don't do that. I do mental gymnastics for three and a half days before I'll get it, before I get it. But that's what I'm supposed to do." After I did my fifth step, I felt wonderful for about four months. And I must have thought that there were five steps in the program because I remember going back to meetings And, boy, I thought people got stupid boring and glum again. All of a sudden the key janglers got on my nerves. The old fart that wouldn't rotate out of the position of GSR when he'd been there for seven years irritated me beyond belief. And it was funny because prior to that he hadn't bothered me. And I went to my sponsor and asked her. I said, God, what's going on for me? I'm beginning to hate Alcoholics Anonymous. It's irritating me. You know, I'm going to move on to a bigger and better group because these seven guys are driving me nuts. And she reminded me that I wasn't through the steps yet and that there were a few defects of character in my life that probably needed to be looked at and removed. And I had looked at them in my fourth step and burned it and promptly forgot that I had defects of characteristic. It's hard to remember you have defects of characteristics when you're feeling so wonderful. And I was feeling good. And I got thoroughly confused and thought that I Had to pull myself up by the pantyhose and get my act together. And I became the big I. I have got to stop talking like this. I have Got to Stop Talking So Long When I Get Called On. I Have Got To Stop Eating So Much. I Have Gotta Start Getting To Bed On Time. I, I, Till I Drove Myself Nuts. And Never One Time Did I See In The Steps That All I Had To Do Is Be Willing To Have These Defects Of Character Removed And Humbly Ask. What A Battle We Fight. I Wore Myself Out. Physically, Mentally, And Spiritually removing my own defects of character i was totally exhausted i had no choice by the time i got to the end of that to just say god please whatever there is in me that creates this kind of anxiety with people that makes me compare myself to you and feel less than with three and four and five years of sobriety are things i don't want in my life anymore and i can't get them out and humbly ask some of them he's removed and some of them he hasn't and i take the cop-out way they say the ones he hasn t removed yet i must still meet to motivate me they've all been tempered they're all modified from what they used to be my sponsor taught me too that self-support equals self-esteem and i was beginning to get some self- esteem by then and to feel a little more highly about myself and be able to stand myself It was as a result of being taught these things that I was able to look people straight in the eye and say, I did harm to you, and I owe you amends. Amends to me, early on, meant walking up to somebody and saying I'm sorry and doing as I damn well pleased the minute I turned my back and walked away. And I would always use the cop-out that if I screw somebody up today, I always have an amends step. And I abused that step to death. and today I feel like if I keep my life amended on a constant basis it means treating people in a manner that I would prefer to be treated the person that I owe amends to most I believe in my life was my son my second son who I didn't want from the time I got pregnant with him and I didn' t want him until he was 13 years old and he knew that because when I was drinking and in my early days of sobriety I said it at least once a day and he's 23 years old today and I've been blessed with 10 years of my life that I've be able to give back to him and to include him in my life and to be there and say you know, I want you to stay at home I want to help direct you talk to me and he does and a year ago he went to a meeting where I spoke and he came up to me after the meeting and he said Mom, I fell in love with you tonight at that meeting and he's still in love with me. And I couldn't have accomplished that by walking up to him and saying, Hey, son, you know, I screwed up and messed your life up and I'm sorry and so long. It's taken some perseverance and today it's not a task to be in his life. But I want to tell you that there were days he was damn difficult to be with even if he was a result of what I had done to him partly. And that's without a lot of guilt. It's just facts. and he's getting married next weekend, two weekends from now. And his wedding day was supposed to be tomorrow and he postponed his wedding because I was speaking at this meeting. And that's something that I've been given. You know, talk about relationships. That's somethingthat I'vebeen given as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA and this sort of thing is important to him also. And he said, Mom, I can get married any day and you can't be there any day and I want you to go and be there. And the wonderful thing about it is I would have been willing to give this up to be at his wedding, and there were days that I couldn't have done that. And so through the practicing of the principles that's been given to me here and the things that I have come to believe in, I have those kinds of relationships with the people that are the most difficult to get back together with. You know, the ones that I had destroyed the most I'm the closest to today. And I have a daughter who's six years sober in AA who annually tried to kill herself because she didn't want to live any more than I had. And she says to me today, you know, she said, Mom, you're the worst person I ever knew in my life and you'rethe best person I've ever known. And if Alcoholics Anonymous can work for you, it can workfor me. And I carried her to AlcoholicsAnonymous just like my father carried me. Only I had to get her drunk to get here. She wouldn't get drunk enough for me to carry her in, so I got her drunk and brought her. And four years later, she came back and stayed. and i believe that that's all a gift and had i not come to believe the things that i believe here i couldn't have stayed here long enough to have these things happen to me and that's what i continue to practice on a daily basis are those sorts of things and none of them are complex they're just simple principles you know if you live in a household with a husband and a child get up and say good morning that's God's will for my life is not to get up and bitch and moan and complain and be a drag and kick people in the teeth and do that sort of thing. I don't really get all complicated today about what God wants me to continue to practice in my life because he's letting me practice things that work and I've practiced things that don't work and I have the sobriety and the sanity to discern the difference and that's all I have to do is pick between the two and if I miss the mark and I bite somebody's head off I have tools to turn that around right now and change it and have a life that I can live and practice that on a daily basis. And that is the conscious contact that I've developed with a higher power, whether it be extremely spiritual or not, as I learned as a child spiritual things are, I believe it is. And I can look into the eyes of my loved ones and want them there and know that they want me there. And so I think the message that comes out of all of what has happened to me is that you can get here from there. If you have the staying power and you can stick it out long enough to recover from everything that's wrong with us, you really can get her from there and today I don't look at life as something that I have to survive until I die. My life is full and it's full of wonderful people and wonderful things and even on my worst day there's that hope and I can say well this is a plug in a long day today and we're just going to have to hang in here until things take hold again. And I didn't have that when I came here. But I just want to thank you all, and I thank my son for giving me this night because I wouldn't have been here this weekend without him having that kind of an unselfishness to let me be here, that I could be here and share with you the experience, strength, and hope that's been given to me. If there's anybody sitting here feeling like it's hopeless, I hope that you don't walk out of the room feeling that way and I thank you for being here