The Obsession to Drink That Took Three Years to Lift – Connie B.

Wow, this is your 14th anniversary. I think that is absolutely awesome. I think you gave a very good talk on sponsorship in a very short... I have a sponsor. My sponsor is Peg Martin of the Fox Hall Group in Bellevue, Nebraska. She's very good friends with Clancy. They talk on the phone quite a bit. My home group is South Kansas City Group in Kansas City, Missouri. I thank you for having me here. I think it's awesome that you have, excuse me, that this is your anniversary dinner. I'm a little awkward. I feel a little upward. I have a cast on my arm that's actually up to here, and it's not coming off for another three weeks, and I'm not used to being like this. But, you know, I had to laugh, though. When you're talking about sponsorship and doing the robot thing, I thought, you know, definitely, you know, I'm in shape, and I should have just put the Darth Vader glove on, you know? and done, you know, come to the dark side, come to the sponsorship side, get involved, that type of situation. You know, because for some people that's really what it feels like. You know they walk into a group and they're like you got these people doing what? And they're dressed like how and whatnot. But you know I really believe that that's what makes the strength in a fellowship. There's no question in my mind because I've been in groups where they don't celebrate anniversaries. They don't have the fellowship. And you know you can tell where sponsorship is strong. People are staying sober. People are coming back. Stuff's happening and I think it makes a huge difference because in the front of the big book, it talks about create the fellowship that you desire and I've always wanted to do that. I actually got sober in Kansas City and I stayed there for 60 days. I was in the Marine Corps at the time and I stayed there für 60 days and I took off and I went to Memphis, Tennessee And it was really kind of odd how I actually got enlisted in the Marine Corps. I had a slight problem with drinking, and it gave new meaning to taking a trip, not taking a trip, and I had some trouble with that. I had couple of escapades. There was one time when I think I was in eighth grade, and a girlfriend of mine and I, we went down to a park in Kansas City, and we decided we were going to skip school. And what ended up happening was we got down to the park, and мы found these guys, and And they had alcohol and they had other stuff, and we decided this was going to be a free ride for us. So we go down there and we drink, and of course I do what I normally do which is drink and pass out. And I'm in the back of this 63 Impala and where I wake up and I look around in this car and I'm like in a graveyard. And I am like where are these, you know, where's Lisa? Where's this guy? And I'm trying to come, too, and I'm still probably half drunk. But I'm in the back seat of a 63 Impala and realized that I started drinking vodka with these people in the park in Kansas City, Missouri. And I ended up in a graveyard in Denver, Colorado. Taking a trip. I took a trip I was in eighth grade. Think about it. Some of you have children, you know? Can you imagine an eighth grader doing something like that? There was another time when I was a freshman in high school, and I was partying with people from school. And I passed out and woke up in Chicago. And I'm not kidding. I mean, these kinds of things were happening to me at a very, very early age. I'm a firm believer that for this alcoholic, I need to remember a part of my story. We all drank. We all know how we drank. But I remember the first day that I drank. It was July 4th, 1969. and the last day that I took a drink was June 11th, 1983. And I always want to remember my first drink and I always wanna remember my last drink. And what was so significant about my first drunk was that I drank a lot of wine, I drank quite a bit of alcohol, I drank, I drank with a lot of people, I actually blacked out in my first drunk and I woke up and I thought people were telling me that I was doing these things and I though they were lying to me. And what happened the next morning when I got up was my girlfriend's father actually had given us moonshine the day before and the next moment he said you need to have a hair of the dog that bit you the night before. And he gave us alcohol again the very next morning. I'm 12 years old when this is happening. And I got drunk all over again. And then he said if you want a cheap drink water after you've had wine and you'll just get drunk all over again. And that right there describes the kind of drinking and escapades that I went on and had from the time I was 12 years old until I was 26 years old. I knew somewhere around 18 or 19 years old that I had a problem with alcohol, and I wanted to go to college. And I knew that at the end of Vietnam that they were going to discontinue the GI Bill. So what happened was I decided that, you know, my solution was I would go join the military. I'd get something outside of me to discipline me a little bit and maybe it would make a difference. So I went down to the Army recruiting station and the Army, I take their test and they come back and they say you can be a heavy equipment operator. And I'm thinking, that's not what I want to do. And I go down to Navy and I sit down and I don't like the test that I took for the Army and in the middle of the test I just get up and walk out. I don't want to do this, I'm not going to do this and that's another issue of mine that I don' t want to get up so I get up and I walk away. The Air Force was out to lunch and so the default that was left was the United States Marine Corps and I signed my name. They promised me the world and they had great looking blue uniforms and I thought this is kind of cool and that' s exactly what I did. I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. And I wasn't in the Marine Corps two months, and I was getting DWIs, getting arrested on base, getting in trouble. And that just continued, that followed me. And I had a lot of drunk drivings before I ever got in the military. And so I had an history of not being able to control my drinking. And that's one of the things that the book talks about. There's a couple of tests in there, and it says try leaving it alone for a year. Not going to happen. Try limiting the number of drinks. didn't happen I tried to limit it and it wouldn't work you know I tried going to treatment turn myself in the Marine Corps 1982 and said I need you know, I did it for other motives wanted to stay out of trouble. But you know i sent myself to treatment. And that didn't work because i didn't do what they said in treatment. They said go home and get a home group, get a sponsor, work the steps. I didn't do that. Don't drink. I Didn't do That. I went home and started doing the exact same thing. And I went to treatment in September and October of 1982 at the Navy Regional Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. And, I came home and I didn't even stay sober until November. So, I had a couple of months of sobriety. The only other time that I ever had a couple of weeks of sobrieties was when I went to boot camp. Other than that, during that 14-year period, I didn t stay sober. The last week that I drank, I actually had got arrested and I actually got thrown in jail. And I was arrested for trespassing of breaking and entering into a guy's house. And that's where my drinking took me. And here I was. I was in the United States Marine Corps. I'd made it through boot camp. I'd make it through school. I even got arrested for drunk driving in North Carolina on base and got myself, you know, sidestepped that one. And I end up getting arrested, and I go to jail. And I get out of jail that morning, and Iím out of bail on a Sunday morning. And Sunday night, Iím too loaded to go out and get alcohol. On Monday, Iím two hungover because the guy that caught me from breaking and entering split the whole top of my head open, and I had to go get stitches. And when they took me to the hospital, they told me I was too loaded to anesthetize me and they stitched my head out without any anesthesia. That's how loaded I was. Frankly, I'm really amazed that with all that kind of stuff going on and the way that I treated my body that I didn't actually end up dying somewhere along the line. But June 5th, I get out of jail and I can stand here and say I haven't been to jail in the last 22 years haven't been to jail, sober. And there's some people sitting in this room tonight, my driver that can't admit to that. Um, and that's, that's a whole nother story, but we'll decide whether we want to get into that. Anyway, uh, I get out of jail and I'm not even out of jail 48 hours and I am drinking. Not even out of jail, 48 hours. And um, so what ends up happening is I go back to the military and My jaw is broken and my head's split open, and they decide that they're going to send me up to Fort Leavenworth and they're doing an entire work over to find out what's wrong with you. You've been to treatment. What are you doing in your life? Why have you shown up and you're all beat up all over again? And so they take the x-rays and my jaw is cracked and my hair is split open and they decided that what they're gonna do by Wednesday of that week is that they are gonna pull my military ID card And they said, you're going to give us a urinalysis. We want to know what's going on. And I thought, it's it. My career is over. I'm done. I'm facing Fort Leavenworth. And so that's what I do. I go upstairs and I'm like this. And the corpsman that's up there, he's like, Connie, what's going on with you? And I said, I've been doing some stuff I shouldn't be doing. And he said, so what's gonna happen when they test this urine? And I was like, I don't know. And he's going to come back positive. And he says, I hate to do this because I sent you to treatment. But he said, you know, I got to do this. And so I go ahead and I pee in the bottle and I just thought, what's the point? I'm going to jail. I'm gonna go to military jail. It's gonna be even worse this time. And you know the Marine Corps in 1979 tried to tell me I had a problem with alcohol. They warned me and I tried four more years of insanity and drinking. I am in Japan. there's a staff sergeant that approaches me with one of these books one night when I'm on duty and he said we think you have a problem with alcohol and I'm like no I don't everybody in my family drinks like me my friends drink like me I can't possibly have this problem with alcohol so this corpsman you know he takes the he takes your analysis and he and he turns it in and that's on a Wednesday and they give me my ID card back and i drink wednesday and i drink thursday and i drink friday and by saturday night which is the last night that i drank in 1983 um which is interesting that was a saturday and this is a saturday uh hmm anyway um the next morning when i got up i said you know there's uh it's one of those deals and people talk about it where the light of reason shines through moment of clarity or whatever um and and i just it was one of those i was sitting on the back porch of a friend's house and it it not what not only went from here but it went to here and what i realized was that if i keep doing what i'm doing i'm going to die and i was honest to goodness more afraid to die and go meet god than to try to live a life that i didn't know how to live i didn' t know how to live so that's how i get sober this is how i get to Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. And this is four and a half years and gone to treatment and everything else. And so I embark on this journey where for the next year at Alcoholics Anonymous I spend 60 days in Kansas City. I go to Memphis, Tennessee for eight months. And then after that, February, March, April, May, June, four or five months after that I go To California. I Go to Southern California. So this is my first year of sobriety. And I'm scared to death and i don't open up my you know i learned real quick my name's connie i'm an alcoholic i pass and that's what i did for a year i didn't get a sponsor i didn'T drink i white knuckled it um it shows me that there's a god that had a plan for me because i didnT do what was really asked in these books beyond admit that i couldn'T drink I didn'T understand that what it meant to have my life be unmanageable had no idea about when it said practice the principles in all or affairs, what do they really mean? How do I tell the truth? You know, there was a piece of me that felt like that someday I was really going to be able to drink again. Even after all of that, I thought I was going to Be able to do it again. And you know, if there's the you know there's I think there was three or four people that said that they that introduced themselves as having less than 30 days of sobriety. It won't change. It isn't going to change. You know people who have problems drinking alcohol don't show up in meetings they don't very few of them i shouldn't say 100 absolute very few people come here and leave without it without recognizing that they end up with they walk away um but you know people who who don't have problems with alcohol don'T HAVE TO COUNT THE NUMBER OF DRINKS THEY DON'T HAVE TO CHANGE WHAT THEY DRANK THEY DONT HAVE TO CHANge WHEN THEY DRINK IT THEY DONOT HAVE TO GO OFF AND WELL LET ME GO TRY AND DO A GEOGRAPHIC here or do this or that like it talks about and more about alcoholism you know and and i believe that you know there was some pitiful incomprehensible demoralization that i hit sitting on that back porch which is what caused me to go from my head to my heart to realize that yeah i've got a problem i don't know how to live i don'T KNOW HOW TO FIX IT BUT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT I got to do well they send me to memphis tennessee and they put me in charge of like 42 44 privates while i went to school to be a helicopter electrician and uh i'm down there and one of the things that i told these girls when i got in there i said you know i'm in charge of this barracks so there's no booze in this barrcks because i haven't drank and i told them what my sobriety date was and i said no boozes and no boys well that went over like you know in a Marine Corps barracks it didn't going to happen and the fun part was when you found the boys in the barracks with the girls and you'd go in there and you do one of these and you'd knock on the door and you sit there and listen and you could hear them scurry and they're trying to hide this and hide that and I had some fun times walking into some of those rooms and finding men in wall lockers and opening the door I mean that was just hilarious and they are standing there in all their glory, and it's like, hmm, where's your ID card? Because I'm thinking you're out of uniform. Your butt's mine, man. I've got it now. I mean, I had a lot of fun, but what I, I did. It was fun, um, but there were some girls down there that had some problems, and you know, here I am, and I've Got 60, 90 days, maybe six months of sobriety at this point time. And I have a girl that comes to me and she tells me that she's got a problem with an eating disorder. And i realized this is Alcoholics Anonymous but the book says that we can take these principles, we can taking them to the mainstream and we can practice them in other areas and that they're useful for all kinds of people. I had another girl that used to knock on my door at 2 and 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning because I told these girls you know this is my sobriety date no booze no boys in the barracks and for the most part they really they really respected um the booze aspect of it but there was a couple of them and they'd come home and they'd be knocking on the door and it was sergeant balcom man private bailey's drunk again you know and i'd get up out of bed and i had opened up and i didn't have a bed i had a rack it was a bunk bed and i opened up the door slide my trash can out there and tell her to you know throw up in the trash can, and I gave big books away to people that drank. And I thought, you know, I have not a clue. I'm not drinking, but here's your message. This is the best I can do for you. Let me give you this book. Here's your, here's Your Message. You know, i'm not drinkin', you know? And that's all I know. And you better not be drinkin' around me. Because one of the things that I've learned in this program, and God bless the first woman who, you now, the first two ladies that ever stood me up in this program because Peg has not been my sponsor ever since I got sober and that is I got taught she got sober with Clancy Joanne taught me Joanne and Laurel both taught me that you need to protect your sobriety with your life because it is your life it absolutely is your life and when you say no to something or you decide that this is going to be my solution to one more living problem, one more time to go out and pick up a drink that you have absolutely no idea what you're saying no to. And this girl would knock on my door and knock onmy door and knockonmydoor and I'd give away big books and I didn't have 12 and 12s to give away at that point but that's what I tried to do. I mean, that's all I really could do. And in February of 1984 I ended up in Southern California stationed at El Toro and then got attached to a helicopter squadron in tustin and it was one of the coolest jobs i ever had because when you needed to go take the car to the shop you went out to the flight line and you got on the helicopter and all the little pilots came out and i was the avionics person for the electronics and we'd start up the rotor heads on a ch-46 echo model helicopter and you'd fly from tustan california to san diego and youed fly right down the coastline over the ocean and you would watch the dolphins schools of dolphins that you would pick up flying down to San Diego, and it would just blow your mind. It was just gorgeous. Some days were so smoggy you couldn't see the mountains, but, you know, that's just the way that it went. But I learned from treatment, and I learned through meetings, from listening and whatnot, that one of the things that I needed to do when I got to Southern California was I needed a hold of central office and I needed find out where the meetings were. And I remember when Jennifer was going to move out here, and she wanted a sponsor. I wanted to help her get a sponsor, and there's a large group of women that are sponsored by PEG. We have our own secure website that we use to communicate back and forth with each other. And when Jennifer Was Going to Leave to Move to St. Louis, I sent an email out to, there's 55 of us, and i sent an email out that went out got distributed to my sponsor and 55 of my sister pigeons that are all over the united states and i got one email back and i Got many of them back but i got One back from a lady named pat yo who lives out in southern california she's married to vince and uh she said here's what you do and she gave kimberly's name and i apologize for not remembering your last name, but she sent an email with her telephone number and she said here is somebody in St. Louis and I respect her sobriety. And I got goosebumps when I got the email just like what I have right now because this is what we can do for each other. It is. You can have somebody in California where that connected. This is the fellowship we created where that connected that you can send a message from Kansas City and it can go through electronic email and go to california and it can go throughout the whole united states florida north carolina canada all over and get an email back and she says have her call this lady here's the telephone number i respect her sobriety because my sponsor sponsors her husband and i know they're a class act and if this group is founded on that kind of sponsorship for that basis then you have every right to be have lots of enthusiasm for celebrating a 14-year anniversary there's there's no question about it so to have you know to have something like that going on and see when I got to California that's what I landed into the lady that I got so that that helped sponsor me when when I first got sober she got sponsored with she got sober with Clancy she got sobre with Chuck Chamberlain the people that started you know Elsa Chamberlaine started um Al-Anon in Southern California when they moved down to laguna um the groups that they started in laguna we call it the gucci meeting because they have you know people who actually park your car for you at this meeting down there but it was kind of fun you know i'm not slamming any group but it wasn't it was helpful and and part of it had to do with the fact that parking was limited and there were elderly people down there you know but that's what we do we take care of the young when they come in and we take care of the old, and so I'm out there, and I meet these people, and I go to, so I reach out, and i get a hold of central office, because we're everywhere, and I end up in the garden grove club on my first AA birthday, and I'm sitting in this meeting, and everybody's saying, okay, my name's so-and-so, and I'm an alcoholic, and by this time, I feel like, well, I can finally say something, because I didn't talk in meetings my first year um and i you know it's like my name's connie i'm an alcoholic and i have one year of sobriety today and there was a guy sitting you know like right there and i'm like right here and he's you know sporting this tan like he's on this yacht that he's got you know some slip in balboa and he'S got the tan and heS got the cute little white you know deck shoes and shorts and and polo shirt and you know the the suntanned spots on the head with the little white rim because you know he's got the tan of the well-to-do going on and he turned around and he looked at me and he said, well little girl, and that was about 40 pounds and 22, 21 years ago and he says, well, little girl tell us how you stayed sober. And I said, oh, somebody's asked me a question. I don't talk in Alcoholics Anonymous but you've asked me a questions. He said, I go to meetings, I don t drink, say please in the morning, I say thank you at night. he said is that it I said yeah I read a 24-hour day book because we didn't have daily reflections in and he said Is that it? And I said, Yeah. And he said, He said, If you don't he looked at me and it just pierced me one of those deals where he pierced Me. And here I am I'm in this Marine Corps uniform which made me something because I felt like nothing. And uh, he looked at me and he says little girl if you don t get yourself a sponsor you re gonna get drunk. I'm sure he could tell I had never worked the steps. And that meant that I was going to have to face you, I was gonna have to face me, I Was going to ask for help. And I was so afraid of being rejected at that point in time in my life that it scared me though, because I didn't want to drink. I thought it's going to take me back to the life that I wanted to get away from. Because See, for that last year, I hadn't gone to jail. I hadn'T been late for work. I hadn' t been taken out to run 5 or 10 miles to run the drunk off by some mean gunny in the Marine Corps when my punishment when I would get drunk and show up late for work is they'd make me wax concrete floors, put a shine on that concrete, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this. You know, I'd stood in front of colonels and been threatened to take my stripes away because see, when I could stay sober, I could do the work of three people. I could be the one that's going to do it. I could just do the job for two people, and they didn't want to ruin that. And other than my drinking, I had a spotless service record book in the Marine Corps. So that's what happened. I went and I got myself a sponsor, and that just opened up a whole new avenue to me. And that woman stayed in my life until she died when I was 18 years sober, and I'm extremely grateful. I am a different person for that individual having taken time. And if you think about it, we live on this earth with unlimited resources. I have a certain number of days, a certain amount of hours, a certain number minutes. I only get one June 10th of 2005 and to give somebody my personal time, I do it for a couple of reasons. It helps me stay sober. It helps say thanks to God and it helps this other person change their life. And I was the kind of person that I never thought that anything could ever possibly happen to me that would make my life worthwhile. And, uh, I stayed in California until I got out of the Marine Corps. Um, I got Out of the marine Corps on a medical discharge because when I had 13 days of sobriety, I was riding a motorcycle in Kansas city and I got hit by a drunk driver and it wrecked my knees and it wreaked my back. And three and a half years later, I ended up in a medical board down in San Diego, and they said you really need to get out. Now, up to this point, I'm trying to be disciplined. I joined the Marine Corps to discipline some of my drinking, and I eventually hit bottom and I get sober, but I have very little education. I skipped the majority of high school. When they told me to sit down and read the big book, I really didn't have a very—reading comprehension was next to nothing. I had to sit down and try to read with the dictionary. It's not that I didn't ever read, it's just that for a long time I didn'T read after I started drinking. And when I sat down and tried to write correspondence, I couldn't even format paragraphs with proper spelling, proper punctuation. And you could be in the military and do all of those things because the criteria was not set very high. I can honestly say that the standards for the military for education has been set a lot higher than what it was when I went in. But I'm grateful because it allowed me to function. It gave me a purpose, and I think all alcoholics need a purpose. And I think when we come here, that's why we have to stay focused on our primary purpose. Because if you think about it, what does it really say in the preamble? It says Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other so that they can solve their common problems. that's what you do when you help people move. That's what You do when You show up at potlucks. That's What You do when You sit down with people and You work the steps with them or You help them read. I had people give me my books. That was a common problem for me. I had People give me My dictionary so that I could sit down and read the book. They said, When I first got sober, if I couldn't sleep at night, read the stories in the back and You'll find out how other people found God. I did that and the stories did put me to sleep. But when... There's no doubt about that. But, you know, this is where I was at when they said read the big book. I said, okay. I take this book and I read the first 164 pages of this book while I'm in physical therapy from this motorcycle accident because they had to do three knee surgeries before they finally said you can't stay here anymore. And I read The First 164 Pages and I went back to these two women and said, now what? See, I didn't get it. I didn' t get the keys. I couldn' t unlock the book by myself. and that's a really good thing there were parts of that book that convinced me that i was an alcoholic even though i know in the back of my mind i thought someday i'm going to drink someday i'll be able to drink when i'm 75 i'll smoke cigarettes again maybe um but you know there was always this thing in theback of mymind that said if it ever gets this bad i'll drink but up to that point i'll do what i need to do but when it gets this bad when this dog dies or that person dies or this happens or that happens I know that's what's going to push me over the edge. And that took a long time for that to leave. It took three and a half years for the obsession to drink to actually get lifted from me. And yet when I read in the back of the book and it said that Dr. Bob had several years before his obsession to drink left, I thought, OK, I'm not different. I'm OK. And see, that's What Happened in That Book. I found myself because I always felt so different. I thought I was different. I had all this stuff that ran around in my head, and I found that by coming in here that I got to find out that I'm no different than anybody else. I got the work the steps. I had problems with believing in a God because of the God of my religion, but I put belief in the people that showed up. These two ladies met me at the Thursdays group in Sunset Beach, California every Saturday and Sunday morning. they wrote in the back of my 12 and 12 what my meeting schedule was they told me when to show up and I thought I can do this I'm in the Marine Corps I can follow direction they took the time to give me direction um they showed up on Saturday and Sunday morning first thing in the morning and the reason why they did that I asked them later on why'd you do that I said because if we left you unattended all day Saturday and all day Sunday we knew we were cleaning up a mess on Monday this was a way to help you stay sober and for the first three and a half years almost four years of my sobriety I went to nine or more meetings a week because that's what I needed to do in order to get some sort of foundation these two women took me through the steps and they took me though some of the biggest fears that I ever had they helped me disclose some of the big secrets that I swore I was going to take to my grave they helped me peel away what made me feel like I didn't even deserve to be an Alcoholics Anonymous When I was five years sober, I was still so intimidated of getting up in front of a group of people that I stood up in a club in Long Beach, California. Ann was supposed to talk and I talked for 10 minutes, started having a lot of anxiety and said this is the best I can do and I sat down. My second year of sobriety when I took my chip, I went to the gong show club down in Laguna and I stood like this and the guys and talked. As I talked to the floor, I couldn't look at the people. And one of the guys in the audience said, why don't you come back next year and look at us? You're worth it. You know, that's been, you know, that's what's happened. And so these people help me learn how to take care of myself and how to grow up in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the flip side of that is I get the opportunity to experience another realm of that through sponsorship. and I've mentioned that and I'm really glad that this group is real strong in that. When I think about the power that we actually have in this fellowship of being able to help people recreate their lives and go on and do different things you know there's lots of different things that can be accomplished. When I was by the time I was seven years when I was four years sober I enrolled in college somebody who couldn't really read and write and format paragraphs and I enrolled in college and this is how alcoholic I am, I graduate when I'm seven years sober and I put so much obsession and energy into it. I graduated from college with a four-year degree in two years and eight months with a 3.97 GPA. I got one B. Now what do you think this alcoholic focused on? All those A's or that one B? I kept thinking, what did I not do to get the B out of that class? Later on I thought, man, you really did a good job And I had somebody commend me for that. I've had an awesome opportunity to be able to have a lot of different people come in and out of my life, but I got two stories for you. Founder's Day weekend, which I think is awesome because yesterday was Alcoholics Anonymous' birthday. Founder'S Day weekend there was a group of us from my home group, and we go to Akron, Ohio, and it happened to be on Saturday, June 11th of 1994, and we're at the big meeting in Akron, Ohio in this big huge gymnasium and I'd never been to anything like that before. I mean Cornhuskers is big, Pacific Group is big but going to Founders Day was just it was a whole other experience for me and I'm one of these kind of people that can get a little crazy and sometimes I care what people think I don't talk for a year but I'm in Founders day in 1994 four. And I decided that I wanted to see if I could make 20,000 people, all these people in this big meeting, can I get them to do the wave? This is no, you know, mamba, let's go for it, you know? So anyway, they said, Connie, it's your birthday. Where do you want to sit? And I said, okay, it is June 11th. I want to seat in section 11 because you go around this room and there is all these different numbers and they were numbered. And I said, it's June 11th. I want to sit in section 11. And so that's what we do. And So before the speaker starts, I go down in front of section 11 on June 11 on, and it happened to be my 11th AA birthday. And i decided to start the wave. And there's a guy sitting in the room that was there when that happened. And he was my driver who went to jail yesterday, by the way. But anyway, I do want to make sure that you understand he did not lose his sobriety. He just was remiss about a few things. So he still has the same sober date as he did when we were in Akron, Ohio. But I'm standing in front of this group and I'm trying to start this wave. And in half a dozen rows up, I hear this Sergeant Balcombe, ma'am. And I'm like, what? And I hear this voice and I'm going, it's Private Bailey. This private from Memphis, Tennessee that used to knock on my door at three o'clock in the morning with the trash can and telling me that Private Bailey is drunk again. Can the sergeant help the private puke? You know, and she's crawling over people and she'S coming down these rows and there she IS and she' s hugging and she''s screaming and she starts crying and she´s like, I can't believe, she said, this is where I live. I live in Akron, Ohio. And she said every year when I celebrate, I talk to them about Sergeant Balcombe, ma'am, that gave me a big book when she had 60 days of sobriety. And I think to myself, you know, if I needed to be convinced that there's something outside of me that causes things to happen because I couldn't plan something like that. And she says, you don't have to do that. She said, you didn't stay sober after we were in Memphis, Tennessee, but I am sober now and I'm coming up on six years of sobrietty and that was in June of 1994. And I just thought, I don't know if she's sober today. We crossed in Memphis in 1983, and we crossed in Akron, Ohio in 1994. And I can't even explain what that feels like. And it's not my power. It's the awesome power that can be found in this program if we work the steps and peel away the things that block us from God. The other story that I want to share with you real quick and then I'm going to close. And I didn't think I deserved anything. The only thing that made me feel like I felt worthwhile were the stripes on my uniform when I enlisted in the Marine Corps because of the things that happened to me before I got sober, the things That Happened to Me After I Got Sober. And I go on and I get my college degree. And one of the Things That Had Been Going On When I Was Working in the Marin Corps Finance Center in Kansas City, I was a private first class, and you never know what's going to happen. But I'm a private first class, and there's a woman down there that could not fit through the aisleways because she had a weight problem. And she couldn't fit throughthe aisleways. When she came to work, she had to go in, and she hadto sidestep sideways. So she sidestepped sideways, and one of the things that I did for her, because I felt really bad, was I went and I got her coffee. I didn't know I was being a service to this woman. I just felt bad for her. She'd always ask me to go get her drinks, and I would do that for her And in fast-forwarding probably 27 years later, I applied for a job, somebody who couldn't read, somebody who wouldn't write, somebody who would not get up in front of people and talk. And I applied to this position with the federal government because of having been in the Marine Corps, I had eligibility for preference to get into this job. And I applied for this position in the Department of Homeland Security. And these are the folks that they stood up from 9-11 when the planes crashed into the towers and the whole nine yards. And this degree that I got was in information technology. And two years ago, when I went to go for this interview, I'm sitting in this room. It's a top secret clearance room with these two people, the director and the deputy, for this agency that I'm applying for this post. position and this lady looks at me and she's flipping through my resume and the director says my goodness I can't believe that you had a 397 GPA and it pierced me and I thought because you know I never really thought about how hard I worked for that and what an accomplishment that was I've just figured it was obsessive alcoholic behavior you know and that's fine it paid off for me you know because some of our worst assets or worst liabilities can be our our best assets but this lady's flipping through my stuff, and she's taking a look at it. And she says, you know, she said, you look really familiar, but there's nothing on here that says anything about a military career. And I said, well, I think on page nine of my resume, there's this one line that says USMC 1976 to 1986. And She said, Oh, yes, that's true. She said Were you ever at the Marine Corps Finance Center. And I said, yes, ma'am, I was. And she turned her head sideways and I looked at her and I thought, she looks really familiar. She turned out to be this 300 pound woman that had dropped at least 120 pounds. And there was this woman 27 years later and she said, by the way, thank you for getting my coffee all those years. Now how does that happen? so she becomes my new boss I get the job and in April of 2004 the ombudsman for Department of Homeland Security comes back and decides to go through my cave because he wants to see what kind of IT infrastructure that we have now I still have a dictionary and I had to look up the definition of ombudsman I don't let the dictionary go too far because I still don't have a great vocabulary but I think it's a great tool and I believe in using that tool if you don't understand what the words mean in either one of these books. It helps to get a sponsor and work the steps, but dictionaries do help. So anyway, I have had the privilege of taking this guy and giving him a ride after he tours our facility down to his hotel to give him aride, and we had a nice conversation. And he's asking me what do I think we need to do because we've taken 29 agencies and we've collapsed them into this new government agency, and what do we need to do to make Department of Homeland Security better? And I said you need to rebuild the IT infrastructure so that you can put information where it's needed so thatyou can protect the borders of the United States of America because without that we have absolutely nothing. They've threatened our very livelihood. And he agreed, and about six months later over a million dollars' worth of IT hardware started trickling into my facility, and I had the privilege of upgrading all of the network, all ofthe desktops, all oftheservers, allofthesoftware. So why is that important? I mean, that's the kind of job that coming from where I came from I shouldn't even have today. But what's odd is last week they announced that one of the things that they're going to do is go through an IT consolidation in Department of Homeland Security. And they said they were going to have six regional directors in the United States of America that was going to consolidate the IT infrastructure under Department of Homeland Security. And I got appointed to one of those six regional directors, and I couldn't believe it. I'm sitting in my office, and I'm calling somebody going, oh, my God, I'm scared. And they're like, you know, and Peg's like, be where your hands are. Be where your cast is, you now. Stay in the moment. Don't project too far out into fear. and so that's another awesome opportunity to be able to serve because when they hit when the planes crashed into the twin towers they pulled 11 of the records out of our cave because I work in a cave that's underground that six football fields underground just took over another 28,000 square foot and building another network to go with it and this is from somebody who couldn't understand what was read in the book and it's like we never know where it's going to take us how far down the scale we can actually go but you never know how far up you can actually go again because there's a promise in the back of the big book and it's on page 100 and it talks about that you have to walk with a newcomer day by day and that's absolutely saved me those newcomers have changed some people in my fellowship in my first 100 have changed over the years because people have moved and gone on but what that promise says is that when we look back we realize the things that came to us when we placed ourselves in God's hands turned out to be far better than anything we could have ever planned. If you stay sober and you follow the dictates of a higher power, and this is not a direct quote, but it basically says that you will live in a new and present wonderful world, and there will be remarkable things that can happen for you. I mean, think about it. Everybody sitting in this room thought they could die at one particular point. Every person sitting inthis room, if you're an alcoholic, could not control your drinking. maybe you weren't as bad as I was and you couldn't go for a day I thought people with more than 12 days of sobriety were lying that's a remarkable thing for me to have that problem removed and that's one of the things that it talks about in 10 step problems is that if I've worked the first 9 steps one ofthe benefits that I get is I get the simple fact that this problem gets removed and I don't even have to be cocky about it I believe that one ofthethings that we need to do to keep this alive and keep Alcoholics Anonymous the way they intended, June 10th, 1935, and especially in 1950 when they presented the traditions in Cleveland at the International Convention. To keep this thing the way that it's supposed to be is through how we transmit this, and we do transmit this through sponsorship. I think this has been an awesome opportunity. I've probably gone over time, and I apologize for that, but I get sometimes, see, I can't talk, and then now I talk too long. So you can't shut me up, but I love this program, and that was something that these people gave me. I thank you for having me and for having this group because it is truly by the grace of God, Alcoholics Anonymous and sponsorship. I haven't had a drink since June 11, 1983, and for that I'm truly grateful. Thank you.