The Result of Doing It Your Way – Pat Y.

Hi everybody, my name is Pat and I'm an alcoholic. Okay, in case there's somebody in this room I didn't tell about my trip, I'll just do it one more time. I promise this is the last time. I didn'T mind so much the delays for the weather. I understand that. I wasn't even too testy with the delays then when we got to Dallas for the mechanical thing. I was a little upset that I was sitting next to the largest man on the airplane, which meant that I spent the whole trip kind of sitting like that. But I was still kind of okay. But when this very same man sitting next to me decided that everybody on the plane should get free drinks because of this delay, and I didn't hear the whole conversation that went on with the stewardess, but it was bad enough that security boarded the plane to discuss this with him, and they all decided they'd leave him on there, which sort of kept me on alert for the whole flight then. I'm really glad to be here. You know, it's an honor to be asked, and I promise that's the last you're going to hear about my trip. I whine enough. I am glad to being here. I love being sober. I love the way I live my life today. I feel like I'm really the luckiest person in the world, and I certainly didn't feel that way before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous or, in fact, for a long time after I got here. This thing didn't happen magically and fast for me. I whined and sniveled and cried and thought my case was different for a long, long time. But I did what you told me to do. As was talked about in the workshop this morning, I had strong sponsorship, and I did put my sponsor said to do it. I didn't do it with a good attitude, but I did it. And the good news for me and for you too if you're anything at all like me is my attitude doesn't matter because if I take these actions, it's guaranteed that my attitude is going to change, and it has. I drank the first time when I was 13. I drank that particular night because I was at a party. People were drinking. I wanted to fit in. They were my friends. Presumably I did fit in, butI've never felt quite like I did. I've always felt sort of different and out of step. I always felt like you all had some, I don't know, key to social chit-chat certainly that I didn't have. You seemed to be able to talk to each other and I just couldn't do that. I've always felt ill at ease. I'm the kind of a person when I'm having a conversation with you it's hard for me to concentrate on what you're saying because while you're talking I'm busy thinking about what I'm going to say when you pause. So I'm at this party and all this is going on in my head and somebody offered me a rum and coke and I took it to fit in and I drank it and the magic thing happened. Now, I didn't go eureka, I have found it, but essentially that's what happened. I had found it. I relaxed at that party. I could talk and laugh and said funny things that made people laugh and danced. I always say I got up and danced well. I don't know if I danced well or not, but I felt like I did, and that's really all that matters is how I feel. It was great. It was magical stuff. Now,I got drunk that night. I blacked out. I passed out. I woke up in bed the next morning with a Marine that I didn' t know, which was a lot more than I meant to do. Or to dance a little. I felt bad the next day. I felt, you know, guilty and ashamed and embarrassed, and I was terrified that I'd get pregnant. I mean, it just felt terrible. And yet I drank again at the very next possible opportunity without a moment's thought. I was apparently willing to pay the price to drink from the gate. I didn't think any of this through, certainly. But apparently, in retrospect, I can see that that is true because I drank at every opportunity from then forward. For a while, I was a periodic, mostly because I was young and didn't have access to alcohol every day, but I certainly drank it when I could. For a While, that was on weekends. I grew up in Newport Beach, which was kind of a party town. You know, right away, up until the time I drank, I was getting A's in school. I went to church on Sunday. I was very involved in a church youth group. And I did those things because I wanted to do them. I enjoyed doing them. Those things made me feel good. But six or seven months after I had started, had that first drink, I was getting C's and D's in school. I dropped out of that youth group. I wasn't going to church on Sunday except when my mother forced me to. I had a whole new set of friends, and I didn't set out for that to happen, but it happened. We find each other, I think, you know, and I found the other ones in my school, and we started hanging together, and we used to drive up or drive. We used to take the bus up to Long Beach, which was, I don't know, 20 miles away, 15 miles away or something. And there was a place called the Long Beach Pike, which is where the sailors hung out. And we would go there and pick up sailors who were old enough to buy booze and get drunk. And I found myself in a lot of situations that were really scary. I was 13, 14, 15 years old. I was way over my head in all this stuff and woke up in a Lotta Scary Situations. But don't ever remember thinking, gosh, maybe if I didn't drink. You know, I just, I mean, it's amazing to me when I think about it. How stupid can you be? My parents were a little concerned about my behavior. They didn't know the full extent of it, but they knew something was way off. And they sent me away to boarding school for my last couple years of high school, which had the desired effect. It was a very structured environment and there were no boys and very hard to get out. And so I buckled down. I think alcoholics, when they're actually applying themselves to something, do it way better than anybody else. I think we work harder, and I did that. I brought my grades back up and graduated, and I went to a local college, and it was a party school, and that's what I did, and I married the first person who asked. I wasn't... I sort of knew that he wasn't the one, but I remember, I think I was 18 when we got married, so I must have been 17 when he asked me, and I remember the night that he asked me thinking sort of I won't have to worry about that anymore now I'm 17 years old I'm not over the hill by anybody's standards here and I was not without my share of boyfriends and dates and that but but I just um I had no self-worth at all I mean I just I didn't know any of this any insight you hear believe me I didn'T have it at the time I uh any insight came long after I came to a I thought I was gonna get insight into my character and who I am when I took my fourth and fifth step, and that is not the case. And I don't think that's really the point to do that. I think the point of the fourth and sixth step is to get rid of your dirty little secrets. When I started getting insight, it's when I started sponsoring women in Alcoholics Anonymous because I started seeing myself and hearing myself and their stories. But anyway, I totally lost track of where I was there. Oh, I'm getting married. See how easy it is? Well, we were married so short it's easy to forget. And actually, you know when they ask you how many times you've been married, now this is just a personal opinion. I don't think you should have to count anything under six months. That seems fair to me. So, so I married this guy that we're not going to count. And I knew, we had a big church wedding and I knew walking down the aisle that day that I did not love this man the way a bride to be ought to love her husband. I read a lot of books. And in books, brides feel stuff. And I was not feeling any of that. I liked him. He's, you know, he's a nice boy. But I knew I didn't love him the way that I ought to. And I meant to be a person who would grow up and get married and stay married to the same person forever. I really meant to do that. And yet, I walked down that aisle thinking, oh man, this is a mistake. But I did it. A lot of my life has been like I'm an actor and I'm also the audience, you know? It's like I am up here watching me do this stuff. And that was the sense I had that day. So we got married and we were going together. It seemed sort of romantic. All our friends were young married couples and they lived in nobody had any money you know and and so they all lived in sort of little garret type places and it seemed so romantic and charming and now we were married and lived in one of those little places and its not romantic and charming at all it's kind of depressing actually and because we didn't have much money we couldn't you know when we were dating he would spend money you now and now were married we don't have much and the bottom line here is we're not drinking much and in retrospect I was restless, irritable, and discontent. I didn't know that, but I certainly was. I might have stayed married to him forever just because I don't like confrontation much. I can't imagine that I ever would have said to him, gosh, you know what, dear? I made a bad mistake here. I'm really sorry, but I just don't love you, and I can' t imagine that I could have ever said such a thing to him. But other things intervened, and I see it as sort of leaving through the back door, which is what I often do. I always saw that as sparing your feelings well that's bs i was sparing my feelings is what i was doing you know but but i saw it a little skewed um we had been married a few months and my um i had one brother growing up and uh he was three years older than me totally my hero and he was in the navy and at the time that i was married and he got injured in an accident on board his ship his ship was in japan at the time and they put him in the hospital in japon and he Was very badly injured and And the Navy Department was writing to my mother every day or telegrams, whatever, and every day updating her on his condition. We were very, very concerned. I was writing him every day and sending him funny cards and just anything to try to cheer him up. About a month had gone by, and we got a telegram. My mother got a Telegram one day that said that he was enough improved that they thought they were going to be able to ship him back to the States soon, and we were pretty excited about that because it meant, you know, that we'd get to see him, although he was still very, had a long recovery to go. But at least we'd be able to see them, and so we're pretty excited about that. Right around that time I had sent him another of many cards intended to be funny. This one on the front said something like, heard you were ailing but not to worry. And then you open it up and on the inside it said, only the good die young. I sent it and he died. And I'll tell you, I couldn't have felt worse if I just shot him. I could not have felt worst. I thought, how could I have done something so stupid and insensitive and cruel? And, I mean, I just couldn't. Of course, I told nobody about this. I felt awful. I remember thinking maybe that card didn't get there. The timing was just such, you know, from the time I sent the card until we heard he died, maybe he died first. And that became my prayer then. God, please, please don't let that card have arrived and been opened. And a week or two went by as belongings came shipped back to my mother and she opened up the trunk, and that card was laying in there, and it had been opened. I took that card when nobody was looking, went in the bathroom. I can remember this like it happened five minutes ago. Stood in the bedroom, ripped it up in little tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet and cried and cried and cried. I never told anyone about that until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and did my fourth and fifth step. I never sold a soul. I never called my parents. I never talked to my husband. I never said the psychiatrist that my mother sent me to some years later because she thought I was crazy, which I guess I was. And that's how I lived my life. I tell you that story because that's how I live my life, I lived my life with secrets that that I could not share with anybody. I remember years later sitting in that psychiatrist office and thinking, gosh, I mean, I'm not stupid. You know, I know the point here is to get better. And I knew that I was in trouble and I wanted to get better. And so I would sit in his office and think I probably should tell him about the business with my stepfather, you know, but I didn't. I couldn't. I couldn' tell anybody anything. My life was filled with horrible big secrets. The secrets from growing up and then the secrets from the bad behavior after I was grown or physically grown anyway. I was actually talking about this husband. So, this terrible thing has happened with my brother. I'm crying all the time because I can't deal with it. I have, you now, I've got, I can' talk to anybody. I can't pull myself together. My poor husband has no idea what to do to help me. And he said to me one day, I don't know how to help you. Maybe you should go stay with your mother for a while until maybe she can help you get through this terrible thing about your brother. He was not, understand, trying to get rid of me. He really was trying to help мне, and it seemed like a good idea. And so I said okay, and I went back to my mother's, and essentially I never went back. See, I kind of left through the back door. I didn't have to look him in the eye and say, I made a mistake. I don' t love you. I just didn' t go back. I didn' т take his calls. I don't know why I thought that would be a kinder thing to do to him. I mean, it's really when you say it out loud, it sounds so clearly this is somebody to whom I owe amends. I didn't see him from that time. I guess I was 19 when that happened. I got sober when I was 30, and I didn'T see him in all that time when I WAS sober about. I don'T remember six, seven, eight months. Maybe I ran into him. I hadn't seen him in all that time, and I thought, wow, this is something. I'm sober in AA, and God puts this guy right in my path. Here he is talking to me. This is an opportunity to make amends. And then I thought I'm not sober all that long, and I'm actually not to that step yet. So I don't want to leap into anything, and so I didn't do it. And I haven't seen Him from that day to this. I really like to tell this story when I talk because I'll tell you what, I'm almost 26 years sober. I really should have done that 25 years ago and didn't, and that's too bad. You know, that's really too bad I can assure you that i'm ready willing and able to make amends to him And i've made some effort to try to find him over the Years since to because I I really um should have taken care of that a long time ago So it's my recommendation if you're new or not so new and these opportunities present themselves Um to make some of these amends. It's it's really my recommendation just to do it I um I stayed with my folks a while, got my sort of financial picture together. I moved up to L.A. about 50 miles away and I got a job and an apartment and I started drinking every single day, started getting drunk every single day. My first job was for a trucking company where I was a secretary and I drank in the bars with these truck drivers and I made a complete ass of myself. I behaved bad. My father was vice president of the trucking country. He was the vice president for the truck company where I was working. He had been a little reluctant to give me a job. He said he was a little uncomfortable about the idea of hiring a family member. He should have listened to his instincts. I totally embarrassed and humiliated him. I knew most of those truck drivers in the biblical sense and just made quite a name for myself there. The deal I had made with him was that I could have the job for a year, and then I would move on. It would give me something solid to put on my resume, I mean, I actually left before the year was up of my own choice because I was too embarrassed and humiliated to stay any longer. And that's why I left every single job I ever had from that day until the day I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I never lost a job. I never got fired from a job, and every time I quit a job in my mind's eye I had really good solid reasons for doing so. For example, if I was at a small company, I would think, you know, I think maybe a big corporate atmosphere might be more suited to my particular talents. And if I was at a big corporate place, I would think to myself, I believe a small intimate company would be maybe better for me. And the truth of the matter is I quit jobs because of my drinking. When I drink, if I'm working here, you're part of it. I drink with you, I work with you. I eat my meals with you I sleep with you or your spouse. I don't care. I mean, it's just a mess. It's a mess, it'a mess. Eventually I must leave and it's like you're all dead. I never speak to you or see you again, which I'm sure is fine with you. And now I'm at my new company, big or small, as the opposite may be, and it starts all over again. I could keep jobs for about a year, and then it just got too – it would start getting uncomfortable about eight or nine months, and I'd hang on, but eventually I'd have to leave. I've quit jobs after office Christmas parties where I didn't even go back to clean out my desk because I knew I could not face those people sober in the light of day. I just knew it. I've drank a lot in blackouts, and I'm grateful for it, to tell you the truth. I remember enough. I went out one night with my boss and some co-workers, and we were bar hopping around downtown L.A., and everybody was drunk. I wasn't the only one who was drunk here, but I was apparently a little drunker than the rest of them because when we wound up in the strip joint, I was the only person in the room. I was probably the only woman who auditioned for a job. Now, I didn't actually intend to do that. Now, if you're sitting in this room and you're an alcoholic, especially an alcoholic woman, you understand how this happened. We're sitting at this table, this round table, and there's about eight or ten of us in the front of the room. The stage is here. The dancers are all up here. We're here. And I excused myself from the table to go to the ladies' room, which is down the hall sort of behind the stage there. And I bumped into the owner of the bar, and I was very drunk, and I Was making derogatory remarks about the caliber of his entertainment out there. You know how these conversations go if you think you're such hot stuff. Well, I apparently did think I was such hot stuff. So, remembering that a moment ago I'd been sitting at the table with my co-workers and my boss dressed sort of like I am now, and now I am out on this stage wearing no clothes. It was a moment when my eyes met my boss's eyes, when he realized who that was up there. Just a moment. This began what I I personally like to refer to it as my show business career. Now, I'm a nice girl from Newport Beach. When I sobered up in the morning, I thought to myself, nice girls do not work as strippers, please. But go-go dancing was kind of at the height of... I can't tell you why I thought go-do dancing was a cut above stripping, but I did. Go-go dance was really at the high of its popularity in California at the time, and I thought, I will get a job as a go-to dancer, and so I did that. I started leading this sort of double life actually I worked during the day as a secretary and then I would get off work at 5 At the time, all the really nice clubs in Hollywood had go-go dancers I did not work in the nice clubs in Hollywood The first place I worked was on Whittier Boulevard in East LA I was the only person there who spoke English And then I moved uptown to a place that was well they spoke English which is, I guess, why I saw it as a step up. It was a horrible dive, Nix was the name of it. It was just a terrible place. I'd get off my day job and I'd go down to Nix. Now, I can't do this job sober, obviously, so I have to have a few drinks while I'm getting ready. And so I would sit in the back room and drink until I was ready. I never was on that stage if I wasn't ready. Excuse me. I'd just stay in the back room and drink until I was ready. But I'm an alcoholic, and I can't control my drinking. And so I often, over the course of the evening, became more than ready, you might say. And that's a problem. Well, it actually wasn't a big problem. The caliber of the places I worked, it wasn't that big a problem I often passed out on stage, just crashed to the ground. Never got fired for it. But I remember at Nick's they had a little back room with a sofa in it, and some of the guys from the front of the audience usually would just pick me up and carry me back there and dump me on the sofa and close the door, and I'd sleep it off. And I can remember coming to back there, it would be really kind of hot and stuffy in that little room. I'd be sweating and the pounding of the beat of the music through the walls, and Iíd splash cold water on my face and kind of pull myself together and come back out on that stage to what seemed to me to be thunderous and enthusiastic applause. I mean, I really felt loved and special. And I met the man who became my second husband there at Nick's. He was a customer. And to say that he was unsuitable would be to understate it. Let me sum this up by saying that we lived together a couple years, eventually did get married. We were married for 11 years, and my parents never met him. They felt so strongly about it. But I should also mention that his family was not all that thrilled to have me around either. By now, I'm really this falling down, disgusting. I don't bring much good to family reunions. You know, his sisters, he had sisters, grown sisters who lived in Los Angeles, and we would go visit them, and it always ended badly. I was always behaving badly or inappropriately. And, you know, I started getting arrested. now I'm married but I'm still acting like I'm single and so now I've got a whole new set of problems we're fighting all the time about what I'm doing and rightly so I was behaving really badly and I started getting arrested and I couldn't believe this was happening to me I still see myself as this nice girl from Newport Beach I was from Newort Beach but I hadn't been a nice girl in a long time my first arrest was on a Thanksgiving night I had been to Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house he of course had not been invited He had gone to something. His boss had had some buffet or something for a party for all the employees where he worked, so he had gone do that, and I went to my folks, and I drank quite a lot there, and I left and stopped a couple of places on the way home and had a drink here and a drink there, and the next thing is I'm getting arrested on Main Street in downtown L.A. for common drunk. That is, I might add, not a direct line from my parents' house in Newport Beach to where I was living. Main Street is Skid Row, and I can't adequately tell you why I was coming out of that particular bar, but I was, and they arrested me and they took me to Sybil Brand which is the women's jail there and they told me that I could make a phone call and I remembered that my husband was at this thing at the boss' house and so I called there and his boss' wife answered the phone and I identified myself and told her that I was in jail could she have my husband come bail me out it didn't occur to me that it might have been nicer just to ask to speak to him it just didn't cross my mind I'll tell you years later when I finally got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I sat in meetings a long time hearing you talk about making amends and I would seriously sit in my chair and think to myself no, I can't think of anybody that I've hurt. Just don't think I did. If I knew you five minutes I'd probably hurt you. The big book describes me perfectly. I'm selfish and self-centered. I care only about me. I don't like that. I don'T like to say it but it's the truth. The good news is that Alcoholics Anonymous has forced me to get out of myself long enough to find out that that really does work. Clancy and Johnny talked about it this morning, about there's a line in the book, when all else fails, working with another alcoholic will save the day, and that's the truth. Boy, that works. It really does. It does work, but anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. My next arrest was in Tijuana for obscene dancing, and that is all I am going to say about that. you get the picture that things were not going smoothly I started drinking at home and for the last several years of my drinking, I mostly drank in a rocking chair in my living room in a purple flannel bathrobe I worked, or I had a job I wouldn't say I actually worked I had it, but I didn't drink I had to have a job and it was a little job it kept getting littler every year and I was barely hanging on to that job by the skin of my teeth and I would try not to drink at lunchtime because when I drink at lunchtime, bad stuff happens. I either go back to work or I don't. Either way, it's not good. Assuming I got through lunch without drinking, I would get home from work. The first thing I would do is walk in the kitchen. You would walk through the living room to the kitchen and pick up a bottle of scotch and just have a swallow. Once I had that first swallow, I'm okay. Now I can take my clothes off, put on my purple flannel bathrobe, get comfortable, settle into the chair and drink until I passed out. My husband was a gambler. He was gone a lot at night at the racetrack, which was just fine with me. I preferred it when he was gone. I would play those sad records over and over and ever again. My all-time personal favorite was Ray Charles' Born to Lose. Play it and cry and feel so sorry for myself. Sometimes I'd call people on the phone. now you know, there's heads nodding you know that this urge to make these phone calls never comes at 7.30 in the evening it's always like 3 in the morning and somebody totally inappropriate like a boyfriend I had when I was 12 of course I have no idea where this poor devil lives now so I've got to wake up 20 other people, we're alcoholics very persistent people, you can wake up everybody say do you know where Danny's living And I found him, and weren't he and his wife happy to hear from me? I'll tell you, if there's one overriding feeling that goes through all the years of my drinking, it's just abject embarrassment. I just embarrass myself all the time. I was always waking up thinking, oh, God, I didn't. But yes, I did. I remember one hot summer day sitting in my apartment watching The Neighbors. We lived in a second-floor apartment. We could see into their backyard, and they were a young couple about my age, which was, I guess, late 20s at the time. And they had two little children, and the children were running and playing in the sprinklers, and the mom and the dad were sitting on the back porch steps watching the kids play and just laughing and talking. And I was drunk up there in my apartment watching them, and I cried that day because that's how I meant to be living my life, how those people next door are. I never meant to be this wretched, awful person, drunk and sweating and crazy up here in my life. I never met to be like this. I meant to married and having kids and going to the PTA and working in the garden. And I don't know how this happened to me. And I knew that day beyond a shadow of a doubt it was not ever going to change. I knew if God just swooped down and handed me their life, I couldn't do it because I had by then long since been trying not to drink. I knew I drank too much. I knew that I was probably an alcoholic, and I knew that nothing good was ever, ever going to happen in my life if I didn't stop drinking. And so I had begun that terrible, terrible business of trying to stop drinking on my own, and I couldn't do it. I'd get up in the morning. You know, I'm not bouncing back so fast in the mornings now. I'm starting to suffer these horrible hangovers. And so, I'd wake up and I'd be just sick and shaking and it would be easy to have that sort of firm resolve in the evening in the early morning. By God, I'm no longer drinking anymore. And I'd go off to work and I'd think, not only am I going to stop drinking, but I'm going to go back to college and finish my education and make something of myself. My last little job before I got sober was as a clerk at a YMCA and I would pull into the parking lot there and I think, I'm gonna take some classes here and get physically fit. I mean, I love the phrase, today's the first day of the rest of your life. Boy, I said it a bazillion times and I meant it every time. My whole life is gonna change. I'm Gonna Do Everything and It's All Gonna Change but I'M AN ALCOHOLIC And before that day was out, I needed a drink. Most often it was as simple as getting home from work and walking in the house and seeing an open bottle of scotch sitting on the kitchen sink and knowing full well there is no way I'm not going to drink tonight with that open bottle sitting here. I'll drink this down. Tomorrow there will be nothing. Then I'll quit. It makes perfect sense. I see heads nodding. Of course it makes sense. Only to people in these rooms, I might add, does that make sense. But it made sense to me except I'm an alcoholic and I get nervous as the level of that bottle goes down. And before that night's out, I'm ordering a new one from the liquor store. I, at the end, ordered in, you know, had a delivery, a bottle and keg liquor on Pico Boulevard delivered to me. I did that not because I had any great issues about drinking and driving, because I didn't. I did it often. But I did It because I was getting very weird and very paranoid and very just odd. I spent a lot of time in that apartment, always had the drapes closed. And I spent A lot of times standing. You don't stand in front of the drapes. You stand where the wall is because they, I don't know who they are, they might see your shadow, and peeking out behind to see what they were doing. I don'T know who They were or what I thought They might be doing, but I was very concerned about them. And so I had the liquor store deliver. I was such a good customer that sometimes, well, I got to at the end where I would come home from work and I would write the checkout This is one of those things I did without really thinking about it. It's the same amount every day, the fifth of scotch, two packs of cigarettes, and a tip for the delivery guy. It is the same amounts every time. I would write that check out as soon as I got home from work and just put it on the table there by the door without really think about what I was doing. Obviously, the reason I was do that is because often by the time he gets there, I'm too drunk to write a check. Sometimes by the times he got there, I'd be already passed out and they'd knock and knock apparently and I wouldn't answer. I was such a good customer of this liquor store. They would leave the bottle on my porch because they knew that I would come down the next morning and pay them, and I did. My lights were off and turned off. Everything was late. You know, all my payments were late, but I never, ever, ever bounced a check at Bottle and Keg Liquor. One night I called Alcoholics Anonymous. I was drunk when I called, and a man named John D. from our group answered the phone at central office and asked me if I was having a problem with alcohol. And I said that I was, and I started to cry. And he stayed on the phone with me a long time and told me a lot about himself and asked me, he said he'd like to have a couple of women come over to my house and talk to me. And I says, oh no, no, I don't think I'm that bad. And he seemed to understand. He said it was a Friday. He said, do you think you could not drink tomorrow and go to a meeting tomorrow night? And I say, sure. Now, I doubt very much that I can not drink tomorrow. I drink every day. But, you know, clearly, sure is the right answer here, so sure. And so he told me where our meeting was and we hung up and of course I drank until I passed out. The next morning I came to you, I remembered making the call and I remembered enough of it and I found myself getting dressed and going to that meeting that night. I was dressed in terrible clothes. We were talking about this earlier. I was stressed in terrible clothes, rubber thongs on my feet and baggy jeans and a knit top that had no knit left in it. You know what I mean? It just hung. It's very comfortable. Women understand this sort of thing, I know. I actually had two of those, a red and white striped one and a blue and white stripped one I was clean, I would wash I wore them alternately that's kind of what I wore to meetings for a while nobody ever commented ever how I was dressed until one night, two or three months down the road I was running late that day and I didn't have time to go home and change into my meeting clothes so I wore what I was wearing that day which was a very nice pantsuit in a very soft rose color and I went into the meeting and I swear 300 people individually came up to me and said my you look pretty tonight and it made me feel good and I started um dressing better after that to me anyway to go back this first meeting I mean these terrible clothes and I it's a an 8 30 meeting and uh often by 8 30 I'm already passed out and but the man on the phone had said don't drink so I hadn't drank that day so it's eight I don't know 28 when I get there and I need a drink bad I'm sick and shaking I'm in these terrible cloths I'm sweating buckets which was this kind of side effect of drinking that I had. And, um, I went into the room and, uh, there was a man, I remember there was an man at the door put out his hand and said, hello, my name is Clint. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. And it made me feel welcome. I think it is the single most important thing anybody can ever do at a meeting is that right there. I went in the room, and there were pillars like this in the back of the room. I remember I was sort of hovering behind one of those and begging 830 to come, you know. And a man named Claude came up to me and asked me if I was new, and I thought, how did he know that? And there were like 200 or 300 people in the room, and he picked me right out. I acknowledged that I was knew, and it seemed like that. There were about 50 women coming at me, and all just seemed so happy to see me. I remember this woman named Dixie with a big booming laugh sold me my big book, and they got me a seat, and the meeting started, and a guy by the name of Norm A. talked that night, And, you know, I heard him. I laughed. It seems like I remember every word of his talk. Of course I don't. I was new and absolutely out of my mind. I heard it many times after that, and I know that that's what I remember. But I'll tell you what I remembered for sure from that night is that at one point during his talk, I was laughing so hard I could hardly stand it, and I couldn't remember ever having laughed like that. And I was laughter of identification, of course, you now. The meeting was over. I thought these two people on either side of me who squeezed my hands when they said keep them I thought that was so nice and so thoughtful I didn't know that everybody in the room was doing that I thought it was just these two people touched me so hope I didn's spoil that for you if you're new anyway the minute they dropped my hand I am out the door, it is inconceivable that I could stand around here and chat with you I'd have to have a drink to chat with now I stayed up most of the night reading that book and I remember thinking, this sounds pretty good. I'm going to go to that meeting every Saturday night and be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard you say go to a lot of meetings and I thought that every Saturday sounded like quite a lot. I drank on Friday which surprised me. I'm in AA. How could I be drunk? But I was. Back to the meeting Saturday night raised my hand for being under a week again and got some more phone numbers and one of these ladies said you know you might want to actually call one of those numbers. We found that to be very helpful. Of course I hadn't called any of those numbers. What would I say to you? I don't even know you. I called her drunk a couple of days later, and she said, You might want to get a sponsor. You don't seem to be doing too well on your own, and most of us have found sponsors to be real, real helpful. So I asked her to be my sponsor. I had no idea what a sponsor was, which is just as well because I probably wouldn't have done it had I known. I come from a strong sponsorship group, and she just seemed so thrilled to be asked and told me to – She said, Do you have a big book? I said, yeah. She said, you bring it with you tomorrow night and meet me before the meeting at such and such a place. Now, tomorrow night was a Thursday. That's not meeting night, you know, but I kind of sensed that it would be good not to point that out to her. I just said, You betcha I'll be there. And so I went down there and I met her and we sat and we talked about sponsorship and alcohol. The first thing she did is she took my copy of the big book and opened it to the front cover and told me to write that day's date in there. I wrote the date in There. She says, That's your sobriety date. I thought, oh, I shouldn't have done that in ink. Very happy to report that that is my sobriety date, August 28th, 1975. The next thing she did is she took the meeting directory and she circled a meeting for every night of the week. I couldn't believe it. I said, excuse me, I'm married. I would love to go to your meetings every night, but it's just absolute impossibility. My husband would never stand for it. And she said, well, perhaps you can do it on list, but if you want me to be your sponsor, this is what I'm going to expect of you. She said something to the effect of, if you want me to be your sponsor, I assume it's because you want what I have. And if you Want What I Have, I only know one way to get it, and that's to do what I do. That's one of those things, newcomer, that there's just no way around. I remember thinking, you know what it's like when something's on the tip of your tongue? Just give me a second, and I'll think of it. I remember thanking, give me minute. I got an answer here, but there is no answer there. And I found myself agreeing that I would do it, and I think the miracle for me began at that moment. And as I said earlier, I didn't do it happily, and I didn' t do it graciously. Everybody in the meeting knew how I felt about being there for months, but I did it. She told me to go to a meeting every night. I tried to explain to her that my husband wasn't going to like this at all. And she said, you know, it doesn't matter if he likes it. It doesn't if you like it. It just matters that you do it. And so I started coming to these meetings, and he didn't like it at all He thought I was coming to Alcoholics Anonymous to meet men. Hey, that was a good guess. A lot of men here. Some of them look good. I was sort of, I mean, I'd been in that purple flannel bathrobe in the living room for a while, you know, so it's kind of nice to be out and some of you were looking good. Now, none of the men in AA appeared to be interested in me which hurt my feelings a lot and it also really made me mad that he was accusing me of something that I'm not doing right at this minute, no matter that it's not my choice. And so we had a lot of problems there. We fought all the time about... I don't want to give the impression Alcoholics Anonymous was ruining my marriage. We had a terrible marriage. We just now had a new topic that we're fighting about. And so I would get home from work. I'd go to work and I'd get home from work, we'd have dinner and we'd Have The Fight, as I thought of it in capital letters, The Fight. And I would drive to the meeting. My sponsor told me I had to be to meetings an hour early, not 55 minutes early, one hour early. and I had to have commitments like setting up chairs or cookies or coffee or something that requires you to do before the meeting and I was to get there and do whatever it was and then I was just to walk around the room and shake hands with every single person and introduce myself, tell them I was new ask them how they were get the phone numbers of at least three women every night I didn't know how to do this it was like torture that hour was like nurture I would get to the meeting and I'd go in the kitchen and slam the cookies around or whatever I was supposed to be doing back there Did I mention I cried all the way to the meeting because of the fight? I did that. And then I'd do my commitment, and then I would come out, and I would work the room, you know, and just be like, hi, Johnny, how are you? And he would say, fine, Pat, how were you? And I would tell him how I was. Kind of into the drama of it all. You know, great wrenching sobs. It was so sad, Johnny. My husband said, and I said, oh, God, until his eyes would glaze over, you knows. people were always sort of like fleeing from me saying things over their shoulder like keep coming back it gets better day at a time maybe for you it's not for me and I would never carry a pen because it took up time see I'd go up to a woman and I'd say hi I'm Pat I'm new and my sponsor told me I should get some phone numbers and they'd say oh welcome Pat how long are you sober and I tell them and how long Are You Sober and they say something ridiculous like seven months or you know and I'd say could I have your phone number oh yes certainly well I don't have a pen so let me go find one now this gives me something to do see where the clock is ticking that hour is going down I mean it was torture that hour and then I'd get a pen and we do that and now I my conversational skills are over I have nothing left to say to this person well thank you very much and now i go play this whole charade with the next person you know gee I don't have a pen let me go periodically I would go in the ladies room I have a terrible memory um for detail I would be like the worst witness of a crime because I remember nothing um but and so I would periodically I'd have these little handfuls of papers with names and phone numbers so periodically I go in The Ladies Room this also got me out of the crowd for a while and go in a stall and I'd I'd write something on that piece of paper that you gave me with your phone number like um blonde pretty seems nice or brown-haired glasses, what a bitch, or whatever I thought about the person. Like I was going to actually do something with these. I mean, I never called these numbers, but it gave me something to do there. And then I'd stay in the bathroom until I figured they were going to call the paramedics or something, and then I would go back out and do the room a little more. And mercifully, eventually, the meeting would start, and I would get some relief. I went to a lot of speaker meetings, and Iím grateful for it, because hereís what would happen to me in discussion meetings. they're coming around the room towards me and I don't hear any of these people because I'm thinking what am I going to say now it's my turn, I say something now it goes on this one and I think God that was stupid, why did I say that I don' t hear anyof these people in a speaker meeting I could sit and I could hear what that speaker said it seemed often like they were just talking right at me it was such a relief to know that nothing was going to be expected of me for the next 40 minutes or whatever I did everything my sponsor said I didn't do it happily I didn' t have a good time doing it It seemed like everybody else was getting better but me But I did it I took an inventory and I knew right away The first time I heard those steps read I knew what you wanted in that inventory You wanted those big secrets And I had them By the time she told me to start writing an inventory I wanted what you had I'd been here long enough to know that I wanted What you had But I also knew I could never tell those secrets out loud. I remember sitting there thinking about growing up in my house and my stepfather and stuff that went on in my home that shouldn't have been going on. And I tried to imagine myself saying it out loud to my sponsor, and I couldn't. I'll give you a little tip if you're new. If you're trying to write your fourth step, it's a very bad idea to imagine doing your fifth step at the same time. It makes it impossible to write a fourth step in my experience. I finally decided that I would do a fourth step. I would never do a fifth step, and I was not playing a mind game with myself. I really meant it because I knew I could never, but I thought maybe if I write it down, maybe it will somehow be therapeutic and beneficial. I don't know, and so I wrote it, and then the next thing I know, I'm sitting in my sponsor's living room, and she's telling me to read that inventory, and I thought to myself, she doesn't know what's in here. I'm going to just leave those couple of paragraphs out. She will never, how would she know? There's plenty of bad stuff in there. She'll think those are my secrets, and And she said, you know, before we start, why don't we just get on our knees and say a little prayer? Okay. I was kind of embarrassed. I never actually prayed in anyone's living room before. But I got on my knees, and she said something like, dear God, please help Pat be honest tonight. I do that now with people I sponsor. I read the whole thing. And it turned out she had had a very similar experience that she shared with me. And, you know what, I felt driving away from her house was committed to Alcoholics Anonymous, really committed for the first time. I didn't feel like the weight of the world had gone off my shoulders or anything even remotely like that, but I felt like I had earned my seat. I knew that I'd done something that night in her living room that was absolutely impossible for me to do, but somehow with her help I had done it. And it really was, I think, the first night that I felt really honest to God deep down to your toes hope. that maybe this would work for me. When I was about 10 months, you know, I saw the problem as this husband. If you were married to my husband, you'd be unhappy and whining and sniveling all the time too. These problems in my marriage can't be my fault. I'm working a spiritual program, so they must be his fault. That's a little unclear here as to what was actually going on. But with an attitude like this, of course, it was inevitable that I would meet a man in an AA meeting one night who looked good to me. this occasion happened when I was 10 months sober the poor chap in question was about 10 minutes sober and I spotted him when he hit the door and leapt across some chairs to introduce myself to him my sponsor noticed it's like the sponsor pose I can see it so I went over there and she said let's not forget that you're a married woman I remember saying, yeah, but I'm so unhappy. She said, nonetheless, you're married, and as long as you're married, I expect you to act married. I said, I don't see this as a problem. I'll get divorced. And she said, no. This is the royal we now. We in Alcoholics Anonymous don't feel it's a good idea to make any major moves in our first year of sobriety. This is my life we're talking about, and she's given me some group conscience thing. she said I want you to stay married and act married and stay away from this guy well I was obsessed I know you understand obsession if you're sitting in this room why would God get this guy sober in my home group if he did not mean for us to be together this is so clear to me why can't she see that so it began you know how this if you've been here three months you know how this all goes meaningful glances across the room and brushing up against each other in the coffee line. And he's walking me to my car after the meeting, and then I'm parking further and further away from the meeting. It's complicated to arrange these sorts of get-togethers. I'm a married woman. Obviously we're not going to go to my place. He's a newcomer. He doesn't have a place. Does not matter. Doesn't matter. I'm telling you, alcoholics are very resourceful people. We can get anything done. I was working at the time at a record company in Hollywood, and he was very conveniently also working in Hollywood at a porn bookstore. I swear I'm not making this up. I arranged a long lunch hour at work one day for my friend to cover for me, and he didn't have a car either, so I went and picked him up at the bookstore there. We went to a motel on Sunset Boulevard and spent some time together. And I dropped him off at the bookstore later that afternoon, and I was driving back to my office. And it occurred to me that I was 10 months sober, and I was living exactly the way I'd always lived. I've been sitting in meetings for 10 months hearing you say every single night that I was gonna have to change everything about the way I'd live my life or I was surely gonna drink and die. Only reason it hadn't happened before 10 months is nobody had asked, and that's the brutal truth. And I was scared that day in the car because I've never wanted to be this kind of a woman. I always wanted to be a woman people would admire and respect. I never meant to live like this, but wanting doesn't make it so. And I don't see how Alcoholics Anonymous can help me change that. I don'T get it. I just DON'T get it. I was also very afraid to tell my sponsor what I had done because she had been so clear in her direction about this guy. But the bottom line is I don' t want to drink. And so you know how we are. Now I've done this terrible deed and I can hardly let the poor woman get in the meeting hall that night. I'm clinging to her neck. I have to talk to you right now. So I told her what I'd done And she said, Pat, I think you've learned a really good lesson here today I don't think you're a woman who could cheat on her husband and stay sober And you don't have to live that way anymore if you don' t want to Okay, I don' d want to I just finished telling you I've never wanted to I don''t get this I just don'' t see it Here's what I did If you're new, you really got to pay attention Because this goes by really fast A day at a time, I stayed away from that guy That's it turns out the way you stop doing bad stuff is you stop doin' it who knew day at a time I didn't drive by that bookstore, day at a time when he called me at work I didn''t take the call a day at time when I saw him in meetings I shook hands with a locked elbow, do y'all understand what that means it means you never get closer than the entire length of my arm, I would say hello and I would keep moving, I thought that I should, today you'd call it a closing conversation. I thought I should have this conversation where I explained to him what was happening here in my spot. Fortunately I ran this idea by my sponsor and she said oh no I don't think so. I think he'll get the idea and it seemed oh so cruel to me but I really heard that line in the book that half measures avail us nothing. I really heard it for the first time and so I did it 100% my sponsor's way. Now of course the obsession passed. Obsessions always pass but the good news for me is I don' t live that way anymore. Who knew? Who knew that that could happen? Who knew that I could change the way I live my life? Yikes. Where did the time go? I hope that went as fast for you as it did for me. Jeez. I got another good hour here to go. I'm not done. Okay, we're going to condense here. I need water. I need water for the second hour. When I was a year and a half sober, my sponsor drank. There's, I don't know, a better reason in the world to get a new sponsor than that. And so I got a new sponsored. And I got us a woman who was sober a long time, and I wanted what she had, which seemed to be happy joyous sobriety. I wasn't even close. And she said, you know, I've watched you whine and snivel and complain about this husband since the day you walked in here. And she said, I want you a day at a time to act as though you were a kind and loving wife. Just pretend. It didn't seem like a very good idea to me. I tried to explain to her that I probably should leave while I was still young and had my looks. That's how I thought. She said, you owe a lot of amends here, a lot of amens. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is very clear on these kind of aments. It says in there very clearly, you cannot make direct amends when to do so might injure that person or others. That very clearly means that you cannot go home and confess infidelities that they may not know about just to clear your conscience because, in fact, it isn't about clearing your conscience. It's about making things right. I like the way Chuck C. used to put it, but it's about putting things back. Why did I even start that? I can't possibly quote him. But about putting thing back the way they were before you screwed them up, literally in this case, I guess. she said maybe a day at a time if you just act as though you're a kind and loving wife you can make some daily living amends and she said I don't know if your marriage will work or not but if somewhere down the road you do have to walk away from it you will know that you've done everything you can to clean up your side of the street and maybe you can walk away with no guilt if you have to and the no guilt was the part that I heard and so I became willing to try to do this and a day and a time I tried to act as if I were a kind loving wife and it was hard, some days were easier than others But time went by, and I mean, I could talk all night just about that. But time Went by a month, some months, maybe close to a year. And one night I was on my knees saying my prayers, which were very, very short in the morning. I would say, Dear God, please help me stay sober today. And at night I would get on my Knees and say, dear God, thank you for keeping me sober today. And I was On my knees this one night saying that, dear God, Thank you for Keeping me sober today, amen. And I started to get up, and i realized that i was comfortable in that house with that husband. And it hadn't happened that day, and it already happened a long time ago. I didn't even notice it. It's the biggest problem in my life, and I didn'T even notice when it left. It really kind of made a believer out of me, I'll tell you. I got back down on my knees that night, and I thanked God for this feeling that I had about this man. And I said, You know, God, I believe if you mean for me to be married to this man, I could do that and stay sober and have a happy life. Thank you. Not long after that we found out that he had cancer. My first thought is, Boy, I wish this would have happened when I hated him. See, it's always about me, always about how I'm going to feel. I just kept doing what I was doing. I told my sponsor that, you know, that I was feeling that, and she said, You're doing fine. Just keep doing what you're doing, and I did. He was sick for a year and a half, and he did die, and it was the best year and half of our marriage by a bazillion miles over the next best because of what you gave me. You gave me the tools to act like a kind and loving wife until I in fact became a kind of loving wife. The day of his funeral came and a couple hundred people from Alcoholics Anonymous took off from work and showed up there. They didn't know him. You know, they didn't know him. But they came that day because they knew that I needed them. And sitting in that little chapel that day, I realized that what my sponsor had promised me had happened. I felt no guilt. I felt sad, of course, about his death. And, you know, lung cancer is a terrible way to die. And I felt bad about all of that. But I felt clean and right about my part in our relationship. I knew that i had made my amends to him. I was so grateful that day that I had stayed in that marriage when all of my best judgment suggested that I should get out. I am so grateful that I was willing to listen to somebody else. And I'll tell you what else. I'm married today almost 21 years to a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous who I love so much, and I know that I would not be able to have the kind of life and the kindof marriage I have today with this man if I hadn't learned the tools there with my late husband. I think of sponsored direction as having this sort of ripple effect. you take a direction when you're a day sober a month sober, a year sober whatever it is and you incorporate that action into your life and you start doing that I always want the result if I start it today I want the results tomorrow or this afternoon even but it's somewhere down the road somewhere way down the row that not you or your sponsor could even possibly predict if you had told me I was going to fall in love with Vince and marry him I would have said oh don't be silly that's Vince he's my friend who knew that you could fall in love with a friend i never did that before i you know um we have such a good life today such a which is not to say that life is without problems we've had plenty of problems uh we've had lots and lots of money and we've Had no money we've been through a lot of things and had heart attacks and bypass surgery and you know terrible business problems and and all kind life life is what has happened to us and um and we we've gone you know we've walked through it It's amazing to me when I talk about it. I never think about it when I'm going through it. When I talk About it, then I, through all of that, Never once has the thought of taking a drink Seemed like a good idea to me. I'm an alcoholic, and never once during all of those things Has taking a Drink sounded good to me, Or even crossed my mind. You know, how lucky am I? You know? I sponsor a lot of women, And I'm grateful for it most of the time. when I was newer all my peers in AA started sponsoring women and nobody was asking me and it hurt my feelings and and I worried about it a lot and I said god and I talked about it a lot doesn't anybody want what I have and the answer is apparently no it's just that simple and and so I started praying and I asked God to send me somebody to sponsor and so he did he sent me this woman that everybody in the group had sponsored at one time or another. She was just so wretched, and then I thought, okay, God, I get it. I don't actually want to sponsor people. I mean, I don't want to actually talk to her on the phone or help her with the steps or be a part of her life. What I really want is on Wednesday night at my home group meeting when she takes her cake to get up there and say how she couldn't have done it without me. That's the only part I really wanted. And so when I realized that about myself. I sort of relaxed about the whole idea and then before I knew it, I was this always happens once you relax about it. The next thing I knew, I'm sponsoring a town of women. That line in the book that I mentioned before that when all else fails working with another alcoholic, it is so true. I think that all the steps are of equal importance. I believe totally that they're divinely inspired. There is no way that people with as little sobriety as Bill had could have written those steps. You couldn't have known. So I don't think getting one step is more important than the other, but I think that the 12th step is the one that keeps me sane and relatively serene no matter what's going on. When Vince had his first heart attack, he was in cardiac intensive care, which meant that I was living in cardiac extensive care there for a while. I remember the first day I called. We have a little business, so I called for messages and was going to return these calls and try to act like we were still there doing business. And I had this little scrap of paper that I was going to write down any, you know, phone numbers and there were 27 messages from people in Alcoholics Anonymous. He hadn't been in that hospital an hour. And there were 27 messages for people in Alcoholic Anonymous calling to, you now, offer help and prayers and whatever. And a sponsor women and there are a lot of messages from them. They're mostly women who are sober a while and because I travel some they all have somebody else that they talk to if I'm not around and so all of their messages were of the kind of we love you you're in our prayers absolutely anything I can do I'm here for you call me but one girl I had just started sponsoring three days before she was three days sober I met her at my Monday night meeting she was smelled of alcohol that night it was so exciting you know you hardly ever get people in meetings people come through hospitals and treatment centers now which is great however you get here is great but it was really exciting to have an honest to God almost drunk person right there in the room we weren't kind of fighting over her actually and i won so i'm sponsoring her so now i'm in the hospital corridor i'm calling from and there she is and she says in a little whiny voice because that's what newcomers do it's what i did hi i'm sorry to bother you at such a terrible time i know you're going through a bad thing yourself but i think i might drink because and then it would be whatever it was and you know her boss did something her imaginary boyfriend did something whatever you know the word imaginary is mine he did not know they were in a relationship you know how that goes and i would think i'd listen to the message and i think well i have to call her and so i'd call her back and i'd talk to her for a few minutes and i give her a little simple direction and you know read this page in the book get on your knees do whatever you knows and we'd hang up and i go back and be in the room with my husband and couple hours later come out call for messages again and there should be again and I'd call her back, and, you know, Vince got batteries out of the hospital. We're back in meetings, and this girl would have been 35 days sober, and she called and left a message saying, thanks for all your help, but Alcoholics Anonymous is much too hard, and I'm not coming back. And I thought, you ungrateful so-and-so after all I did for you. I stood in that hospital corridor calling you while my husband was maybe dying in the next room worrying about your petty little stuff. I can't believe I'm working up a steam over this until it occurred to me that God picked the best 35 days out of my entire sobriety to give me that girl. For 35 days, three or four times a day there, I got to think about who I really am out loud. You know, I am that girl on the other end of the phone. I'm Pat. I'm an alcoholic. I can't stay sober. My imaginary boyfriends will make me drink. My boss's cruel, seemingly cruel marks will make be drink. I am That Girl, and I got remember that out loud again and again and And again, when I was going through such a terrible time. You know, what a gift. I hope that girl gets sober again someday. But whether she does or not, she saved my life. There's no doubt in my mind about it. If you are new, I welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I hope you stay here. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I recommend that you do three things if you have not already done so. One is get a home group, a place where you are the coffee maker or the person who slams the cookies around in the kitchen. The second thing I recommend you do is get a sponsor. I don't know how anybody would do this without a sponsor And the third thing I recommend you do is make a friend, somebody around your own length of sobriety you can hang out with and talk to. My friend's name was Betty, and I told her everything before I told my sponsor. You know, when you're new, it's nice to hear how it's going to sound out loud before you. So I'd call Betty and say, okay, here's what I'm thinking, or here's What I've Done worse. And she mostly – sometimes she'd say what I hoped was, oh, yeah, sounds good. But mostly she'd saying, oh man, you better call your sponsor. That's a really good kind of friend to have. When we were 10 years sober, Betty went out. When I turned 25 last September, she called me and came over. She had a little present for me, and she sat in my living room and we talked. And I think she was three days sober that day, and I haven't seen her since then. And, you know, in those 15, 16 years, it's not like she just went away and had a great life. She's either been drunk or in an AA meeting trying to get sober or in jail. I'm not a better person than Betty. I'm no more deserving, as near as I can tell. The only difference is that I have done what I've been asked to do in Alcoholics Anonymous, whether I wanted to, especially when I didn't want to. I just have done it. I have down it your way regardless of my better ideas, which I always have. If you're new, I hope that you stay here. AlcoholicsAnonymous is the best thing that ever happened to me. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.