The Silence of Being Just Beth – Beth H.

This is like the old days. I got drinks stashed all over the place and I already got somebody else's jewelry. I love Chicago. My name is Beth Hartley, I'm an alcoholic. And because of the grace of God and the steps and fellowship of AA and sponsorship, I've been sober since June 26th, 1988. And you can tell from the rest of the program that they needed a token newcomer. That is me. I never, I remember when I was new, you know Some of the old-timers in the Big Book meeting where I got sober, they were sober longer than God. They had five, six, seven years. I never thought I was going to be Junior Miss at 23 years sober, but that's good. If you see me running for coffee all weekend, you'll know my sponsor has arrived. I'm really glad to be here. I've actually attended Saints on occasion. I got sober in Cincinnati, so it was an easy drive up here. And we were in Harvey a couple of times, and then they moved it to wherever that was downtown. You know, it used to be like, oh, what do they say about you? It's an easy driving while we're stopping at 80 at Harvey. And then one year after it moved up to downtown, we made that drive from 80 the rest of the way in. Oh, my God, never again. I was like, I'll come on an airplane, but that's all. But I'm just glad to be here. it's just been kind of a whirlwind few weeks. My husband and I downsized this year to a smaller house with no stairs. We moved two days before Christmas. Then we had Christmas. My birthday was yesterday. My son turned 30 today. Chuck is in the hospital, and here I am. So he sends his wishes, but there is like no dull moments in the Hartley house lately. I'm a little shell-shocked that I have a 30-year-old. I don't see how that can be, but I know it's true. I was there when he was born. And for those of you who do the math and try to figure things out, I turned 53 yesterday, so you won't miss out on my talk while you're trying to figure out how old I am. 432 ceiling tiles, six lights, so now you can listen. I'm a little punchy. I got up very early. So gosh, well, as my husband often starts out, I used to drink a lot. I, well, actually, I've been going to AA since the 60s. My dad got sober when I was seven years old and I was the kid in the corner at the Friday night open speaker meeting because my parents couldn't afford a sitter all the time. And I knew that AA was full of old guys that, you know, drank coffee and ate donuts and smoked. I'd seen it myself every Friday and you know I knew that being alcoholic meant that you go to AA and you don't drink so I never ever wondered if I was alcoholic because you know you don't I've heard people speak who said that they would sit in the bar and go oh I'm alcoholic who cares and when you have a sober parent you don'T have that luxury. I you know, I knew if I ever said my name and the a word in the same sentence that a big book would just drop out of the sky bartender will hand me a meeting schedule and the AA police would come take me away so I never wondered if I was alcoholic but I just you know I was an only child we always lived next door to big families and I just would go you know make myself part of their family because I couldn't stand being alone even as a kid. It was too, if I was alone in a room it was a very unfriendly place. I had a lot of voices in my head. I still have a lot of voices but back then none of them liked me. You would think my voice is my head, I could have cultivated one friendly voice. Of course I have that talent, maybe some of you guys do this, I can start to argue with my mother when I'm alone in the car and still lose so it's been going on for a long time but I you know I just all these voices in my head would tell me things like you know nobody really likes you and they just play with you because they have to and they're all laughing about when you fell down playing kickball you know three years ago and I mean I just I felt like everything I ever did followed me around like a cloud I know now that self-centeredness. You know, I didn't, I didn't know that's what that was. I made a few passes at AA before it stuck and I would hear people say we were self- centered and I thought that meant being unselfish and you've got, I'm the most loving, giving person I know, just ask me, you know and I, and I felt selfish meant I took the biggest cookie you know? I didn'T know I didn' t really look up selfish in the dictionary until I was 10 years sober and it said totally consumed with one's own affairs, often to the exclusion of all others and i went oh okay yeah i can see that but i didn't know self-centered meant if i can't win i don't want to play and i didn'T KNOW SELF-CENTERED MEANT THAT I THOUGHT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT ME ALL THE TIME AT MORE SPECIFICALLY MAKING FUN OF ME BEHIND MY BACK AND TELLING OTHERS YOU KNOW I DIDN'T KNOW THAT SELFCENTERMENT I CAN'T IF I DON'T DO IT WELL i'm not going to do it at all i won't try anything new in public ever because you might see me fail you know i just it was just on and on and like that and i you know never connected up the dots that people who were good at things might actually practice at them i read a lot as a kid reading was easy it came easy to me so when i got to school school was easy if school had not been easy, I would not have done well at school because of work ethic and I just kind of missed each other somewhere along the way. My husband told me a few years ago that I was type AL. And I had to ask him what that was because I know what a type A is. And he said, well, you know, you're in type A. I have no doubt about that but you're lazy enough that you're not annoying. And that really is true. You know, I got a type type A brain, but I'm offset by enough laziness that I have a lot of good intentions, but nothing really happens. And so consequently, sometimes you hear us referred to as a 50-yard dash person in a five-mile world, and I used to say I was one of those, and really now I think that 50 yards seems like a lot to work too, and I really would rather just sit up my chair at the start line and let you bring me the trophy. If I could have found a gift under here, I wouldn't even be here. But, you know, I just didn't realize all of that. And one of the things, you knows, when I was new, and the book says that our drinking was a symptom. And, you now, academically I got that. But one of things that continues to happen in Alcoholics Anonymous is I've had a lot of things in my life that I've kind of said, okay, God, I don't really get this, but I don' t want to drink, so I'm going to take their word for it and trust that you'll explain it to me later. And, you know, our drinking was a symptom, was one of those things. My kids were four and six when I got sober. And my daughter was four. She had a gleam in her eye. We knew. I mean, Chuck and I used to tell people, you might be saving for college. We are saving for treatment. We just knew. I mean we just knew, and when she was 11, she wanted to be on a swim team. A lot of her friends swam, and so we went and took her to try out for the team. And the coach told her, well, you could be on the team, but she didn't have much experience in the water yet. So he said, you can be on a team, but I'd like you to practice down an age group because you can't keep up with your age group yet. Now this meant as an 11-year-old, he wanted her to swim with the 9-year olds. And it was okay with her. It would not have been okay with me at 11 to swim and be on an age team or swim with a 9-years-old. I was 7 years sober when that happened and I was having a marginally hard time just being the mother of the 11-year-old swimming with the 9-year olds because how am I going to look if my kid is swimming down an age group? But she was fine with that. She practiced down an edge group. She went to her very first swim meet, you know, a whole two weeks in, and these were USS teams where there's, you knows, they run multiple heats and just post the results. She was 70th out of 72. She went back the next day. I would have been trying to get my parents to relocate. You can't go back there again, you know. And we said, well, Sarah, you didn't win. But you have this baseline time now. And in your next race, even if you don't win that race, if you beat your time, it's a successful race. Now the whole time I was telling her that, I was thinking, oh, right. You know, my parents told me that when I swam. You know, I mean, it's just in the parent handbook on stuff you're supposed to tell your kids. She beat her time. She was happy. Now, the rest of that story is that two years later she was a state AA swimmer. You know? She swam all over the Midwest. And, you know, we started watching her with interest when that happened because we didn't really know what to do with that. But, you know, the thing was that I would have missed out on every bit of that if it had been me the day they told me to practice with the 9-year-olds. I couldn't have done it. Flat out couldn't Have done it And at 11 years old, I had never had a drink And neither had she And so I really saw clearly how differently she and I reacted to life And really what I've come to believe about her is she's one of those odd people who doesn't really react to life. She just lives life, you know. She just makes a decision and does something. And we were watching her with interest after this whole swimming thing. And she got a summer job, and she saved money. And she had the same friends when she graduated from high school that she had in kindergarten. I had to change schools after sixth grade. I thought if you'd had to go to school with all of them for six years, you would hate them all too. She's got the same friends 12 years later. She decided her freshman year that she wanted to be in the military when she graduated high school. She graduated. She went into the military. She's still in the ministry. She got married. She got a baby. Then she had a baby . . . I mean, here's a kid who had a brilliant future in Alcoholics Anonymous just laid out and she blew it. She just blew it when she was about 14. Chuck and I said, you know, there's supposed to be one mature person in the house and we're pretty sure it's you. We're really proud. She's actually in Afghanistan right now. She's about halfway through this tour. So but she's 20 years old and her 10th year in the military. She's married. She's got a 4-year-old daughter, and we're very, very proud of her. She'll actually be home in a couple of weeks for mid-tour leave, so we're excited about that. But, you know, what raising Sarah up, this non-alcoholic, that we're not sure how that happened, but there you have it, it really made me see how off my thinking was long before I took a drink. And I couldn't be alone in a room with myself. My favorite promise in the big book is the one that says we can be alone at perfect peace and ease, because I absolutely couldn't ever. I had to be in the noise. I was just busy, busy, busy. By junior high and high school, it's pep club, yearbook staff, band, cheerleading, you name it, I was doing it. I was Just busy, because if I stopped and it got quiet, it was too noisy. you know and uh and i ended up when i finally got around to drinking at age 15 and i probably did put it off for a while just you know when you have a sober parent you just you get more education than you want but i finally took a drink at 15 and uh god you know i just relaxed i mean i didn't get knee walking drunk a lot of my friends were starting to experiment with alcohol and they were falling down and throwing up and looking bad, and I don't like to look bad. So I just went out and put on a glow, and it was enough. It was enough I took my best friend out the next night to get her drunk so I'd have somebody to drink with. And we didn't make it another year in that friendship because we drank different from the get-go. If I could have gotten alcohol every day, I would have been a daily drinker from then on. The only thing that ever kept me from daily drinking was access. I loved to drink. I just, you know, I didn't know I needed a drink. But looking back, I just needed a drank. You know, and so many of us have said that. We get that drink and we just go, you know, you need a drink, you don't need a drink, and I didn' t need the cheerleading anymore, which is good because I was kicked off cheerleading shortly after that. And I, you know, I didn need the honor society anymore which is good because my grades plunge shortly after that and and I didn't you know all of that stuff in my life of some of it I gave away some of its got taken away and some of it just slid away unnoticed there are whole pieces of my life that I did not know we're missing until I got them back in sobriety because alcoholism is cunning and baffling and powerful and sneaky and you know we often tell you when you're new, if you make a list of what you want when you get here, you're going to short change yourself. And that's been so true for me. You know, I mean, really, when I got here and stayed, um, I really wanted to not get arrested anymore. And I wanted my driver's license back and I wanted to maybe, maybe someday remarry preferably to a guy that had a job this time. And, you know, I never could remember to ask that at last call. It just never came up, and that's where I did most of my dating. So, you Know, it's just easier. You know, if they're still there on Sunday, it' s a relationship, right? I operated my life on two principles. One was that you never, ever, ever admit that you have made a mistake. So one of those little last call romances stretched into a five-year marriage while I was living that one. And I just, you know, that's one of the things I used to say there never should have been a second date. Recently I realized there wasn't. I mean, there wasn'T a second day. We met, I went home, and I just never left. And then, you Know, the other one was that it wasn'T all right not to know. You know, whatever it is, somehow I thought I should already know whatever, anything. how to do anything, you know, how to play the piano. Now I never had a piano lesson in my life, but for some reason I should know how to play. And my friends that could play, I thought, well, how nice for you that you're talented like that. Never put together that those were the same friends that couldn't come out and play because they had piano lessons, you know? When I was seventh grade and we're all trying to wear makeup and I would put on eyeliner and it would look stupid and I would think, well I just don't have one of those faces, you You know, it never occurred to me my friends were putting it on, taking it off, putting it off and taking it on until they got it right. I just, if I couldn't do it instantly, I just figured, oh, well, and I just didn't do It, and then I just pretended like I didn't care that I couldn' t do It. So now I'm drinking, and I am loving life. You know? I could drink a lot from the beginning. I had a huge capacity for alcohol. I drank with the big boys because I could. I was horrified when I came to AA and they said hang out with the women. I just thought, what, you know, women? I mean, I didn't drink with women. Why would I want to hang out with them sober, you know? And oh my God, you know, because in high school the girls giggle and they fall down and they throw up or they wear pink in public and, you know, and later it's very complicated with whose husband is whose. And it just was easier to drink with the guys and uh and i could drink a lot so i just i never was you know i wasn't a falling down drunk i wasn'T a crying drunk i WASN'T a fighting drunk i mostly never fought because i would had a huge fear getting hit back but you know and drinks get spilled when there's fighting but you know I just i would have told you i was a social drinker because the more i drank the more social I got you know hence the last call dating and um you know but I just I could drink a lot and I just was happy if I could have a morning drink why wouldn't I you know what I mean god my day just went better if I Could Start With A Drink and that's just I mean that's just how I lived and I somehow got through high school I went off to college I flunked out of college um hugely high you know top in the country percentile test scores top five percent in the country I'm a test taker so I can you know I do all that entrance exam stuff but when it comes to actually showing up for class the showing up part is where I have problems and and some of it's because I do not know how to have a conversation with anyone after hi my name's Beth you know because I don't know I always felt like if I just said my name is Beth that you were waiting for the rest that you Were unimpressed and so I always had to be Beth the cheerleader Beth the night daughter, Jim and Sally's daughter, Kurt's wife, you know, Chuck's wife whatever. I'd just be in Beth just seemed to leave this big gaping silence and I had to do all that other stuff and do big huge stuff just to take justify my little space and if I did meet you and I say hi my name's Beth and she would say, hi, my name's Taylor. It's my turn to talk, you know? I know I should be saying something. She's looking at me clearly expecting me to say something. Everybody in my head is now arguing about what we should be saying. You're just staring at her. Say something. What are you going to say? What if she hates football? What else is there? I don't know, you Know? And it's like, they're arguing, I'm paralyzed, we've got to go. And so that's how college went. So I went back to Ohio briefly. That was also, I should mention since I really am a Midwestern girl, the day I found out it was warm other places, I would start trying to get my parents to move. And I was born in California, and apparently due to my dad's drinking, they moved to Ohio when I was little. And that was, honest to God, my first resentment was growing up in Ohio. I can remember being in first grade looking at a map of the United States and seeing the oceans and the Gulf and Texas and Florida and California and Ohio. And just now it's six years old. I'm looking at the map thinking you could look at a math and tell that nothing is happening in Ohio Now, what I know now is I was already restless, irritable, and discontent at six years old. And at six year's old, I was looking for an outside solution to an inside problem. If I lived somewhere else, if my mom didn't work, if she had a different job, if I had a brother if i had long straight hair you know i mean because i had wavy hair but i grew up in the brady bunch era where you know all the pretty girls had long strait hair and i'll just you know i'll never know but i think i could have made it if i'd have had hair like marcia brady you know no i had a cowlick and you know it's just over and uh welcome to my brain um So I just, you know, I can't have conversations. I can'T justify my space on the earth. I flunked out of college. I know everybody's looking, so I go back to this little town. I grew up in Oxford, Ohio, where Miami University is, and I got a bank job because it seemed like something respectable after flunking out of collage, and that was a Monday morning job, so that ended quickly. And, you Know, I had a friend who said, I know somebody in Florida we should go, And I said, we should. Now, I had wanted to run away from home since I was 12 years old. And finally, I have my chance. You know, I waited until my parents went to work. I went home. I packed my stuff. I left a sign that I'd left willingly because women were disappearing around in the late 70s. But I mean literally all the way through Kentucky, I was watching the mirror, the rearview mirror expecting a sheriff to come pull us over and make me go home because I'm running away. And I got down to Florida, to Bonita Springs, and I got a job in a convenience store because I worked in one, you know, in Ohio. And I had experience. And it was so transient there that if you went to work three days in a row, you were a manager material. So, you now, by the time I called my mom two weeks later to let her know I was alive and where I was, I said, but, you know, don't worry, I'm assistant manager of this store. And she said, she had that funny Al-Anon thing about thinking there should be consequences for your actions. I never got that. But, you know, she said why didn't you tell us you were moving, which I thought was really a silly question since I ran away from home. But she just, you Know, I heard this silence for a minute and then she said Beth, you're 19, you could have just left. And I just remember thinking what? I mean, I had no idea. I was on the run, you know? I finally make a break for it, and it's like a year after I could have just said, I'm out of here and left. But there were no checks on my drinking in Florida, so within eight months. It was a little town. There were only three bars, so it was a limited dating pool. And by the time eight months was up, I was out of places to work out of people to date and I was going to maybe have to move back to Ohio because it was looking like I couldn't take care of myself. And as luck would have it, a guy moved to town from California and he had everything I was looking for in a man. He had a house, a car, and a job. And that's, you know, he's breathing. That was important. And so we, you know, we started our little dance of death that lasted five years and two children and then we moved to the Keys, and that's a whole other story. But it just was a crazy time, and it wasn't a violent marriage. The only adjective I can ever come up to describe that marriage was stupid. It just was, you know, there just are no other words. And briefly in the Keys we were working at this Great Ocean Front Resort in the Keys. I became Bethanite Auditor when I applied for that job, and they hired me. I found out not only were they going to pay me a lot of money, but I had keys to every bar on the property. That was a great job. You know, it was expensive in the keys, so we had a little home-based business going to supplement our income. And that came to an abrupt end when the police knocked on the door. And I thought of it as a part-time job, but they thought ofit as sale of a controlled substance, apparently. So, you know, and that was trouble I got in that I thought maybe I wouldn't get out of Because the one kind of overriding factor in my life was that whatever I got into, I skated out of. And, you know, it made my mom crazy because she thought that there should be consequences for your actions. Although she has lately admitted to me that one of the reasons it made her crazy is because she always got caught. So it wasn't all high principle. Some of it was jealousy. but uh but you know i just i have always been like that guy walking down the sidewalk in the cartoon with the safes and the pianos just crashing behind them you know and i would get clipped every now and then but i just never got what i should have had coming and even then you know I mean I should have Had I could have had up to three years in jail but it just we just kind of walked with probation and I wanted out of my marriage but I can't leave you know because if I leave that's violating rule number one, admitting that you made a mistake. So I just drink till he can't stand it and says get out. And he only has to say it once because I've wanted out for a very long time. But if I leave, it's my fault that the marriage failed. If he says get Out now it's his fault. So he said get out and he left for work and I was on the phone with mom like finally, you know, I wanted to relocate in Florida. She wasn't very hip on that idea. So i found myself back in ohio in 1984 with a three-month-old baby and a two-year-old and uh i thought when i moved up there you know okay fine maybe i'll go to aa because i i did when i had that job at that resort in the keys i got fired one day well one night because i'd gone to happy hour at five and i was still there at 11 when i Had to clock in and i was could happen to anybody so they fired me and I went to AA. And it was 1983, I went to the Tuesday night Key Largo group of Alcoholics Anonymous and they were very nice. They were old. You know, I mean some of these people were 50 years old. And uh, it was a discussion meeting in a little circle of chairs and they all related to each other and they're all very friendly and after the meeting was over they invited me to Perkins And I just remember thinking, okay, let me see. I'm 24 years old. I have my own Harley Davidson. It's 930 at night. I'm at an AA meeting and I've just been invited to Perkins. The fun never stops here. And, you know, I just thought my life is over. It's just over. If I'm going to Perkin's at 930, this is the end, you know? And I did call my dad, though, and tell him that I'd been to an AA meeting. Because it's the first time that I ever said, my name is Beth, I'm an alcoholic. Now, periodically when I would visit my dad in Ohio, he'd invite me to go to a meeting with him. I just figured he wanted me to meet his friends, you know. And I would always say, my names Beth, I'm with him because I am not saying the A word. But at this Key Largo meeting, I said I was an alcoholic, And I called my dad the next day and told him that I'd been to an AA meeting and said I was an alcoholic, and within a week I got a box from him. And it had a big book, and at 12 and 12, each day a new beginning, one day at a time, 24 hours a day, a cassette tape of his talk, a few bookmarks. So I don't know how long he'd been throwing it all in the box, but one meeting and it was in the mail. And so I got back to Ohio in 1984, and I thought, okay, fine. Maybe, maybe I should try AA again. And, you know, I really thought if I just quit drinking with bikers, life would calm down a little. But my mom lived in one of those neighborhoods that kind of stepped off the pages of an L.L. Bean, you now, catalog. And I was not very suburban, as you might have guessed. And so, I tried one of her neighborhood bars. And the only guy in the whole place in a Harley shirt sent me a drink. So that experiment failed. And so I go to AA, and in 1984 in Cincinnati, I went to Young People's, and they were on fire over there. I mean, Icky Paw had been there in Cincinnati in 1983. And the Monday night Young People'S meeting was 200 people, and the Friday night live meeting was 150 people. And it was active, enthusiastic, excited, sponsored, structured Alcoholics Anonymous. But I got a big problem when I walk into a big group of people, and that's that the room splits into two groups immediately. All of you and me. You all know each other. You're all talking about that book. And I don't know what to say after my name's Beth. So I gotta go. Can't go back there again. I'm fine walking into a bar by myself. If I got five bucks, I'm good. I know who can drink as much as me, who shoots bull as well as me. Who knows where the party is when the bar closes? And it's better to go by yourself anyway because you never know when true love is going to strike. You've got to be ready to go. But I just, you know, I tried. I mean, I try. I know I gave it a good two weeks. I'm sure of it in AA. And, you Know, people just weren't remembering my name. And I don't know if I really ever told anybody my name. But, you know, because even as a newcomer, I intuitively knew that I did not want to be a newcomor. You know what I mean? I wanted to look cool like I'd already been there. And so I would go. You know how we are. I mean, I'd go right before the meeting started, and I'd duck out the second it was over and go hang out with my good buddies at the bar, drinking Coke and watching them drink. And all this stuff they tell you doesn't work doesn't work, at least not in my experience. But I'm a test taker, so anytime I had to go through treatment to stay out of jail, I can ace treatment every time, you know? I can help the counselors as many of us do. And, you know, within a year of moving back to Cincinnati, I was arrested for child endangerment because my kids were in bed, I had nothing to drink, and I had to drink and i didn't know i had to drink i just knew you know they'd be fine i walked down to the corner bar and got a drink and got another drink and next thing i knew the police were calling me at the corner bar saying that you know maybe i should come home because my son had woke up couldn't find me walked out onto the front porch and couldn't get back in the house because he couldn't it was down a step out the door and he couldn't go back in and thank god he didn't wander off thank god i just stood on the porch and cried and a neighbor heard him and they called the police the police came it didn't take a scientist to figure out where i was my car was parked right out front and there's a bar four doors down so they called me and i came home and i was arrested for child endangerment and my mother got the 2 a.m call that nobody wants to get you know come get your grandchildren your daughter's under arrest and at 51 years old two years younger than i am now her life was turned upside down in the middle of the night and all of a sudden she had a one-year-old and a three-year old and a daughter who hated her for taking them you know i uh i did i was not grateful and i was non-gracious every problem i ever had i laid at her feet starting with being six years old thinking if she didn't laugh so loud if she worked like other moms or whatever i've just always you know another another one of those times looking for some outside fix to to fix this inside problem and telling her butt out and leave me alone and i'm not hurting you and while I'm turning her life upside down because that's the kind of daughter I am with untreated alcoholism. And, you know, long story short, those kids stayed with her for years. I mean, she got custody of them in 1985 and I didn't get sober until 1988. And well, this is the best example I can give you of the kind OF daughter I AM while I am not hurting you. I would periodically take my kids on the weekend. And on Sunday afternoon, I would begin to talk about getting an apartment soon so we could all live together knowing that it wasn't true but knowing they would go home excited and tell grandma and that she would have to be the bad guy and talk them down that's the kind of daughter i am with untreated alcoholism you know how do you make amends for that you know i mean i the stuff we put our families through just staggers me sometimes but i you know so now the kids are with mom i go to treatment so that you Know because somebody said if you if you go to treatment you might not go to jail for six months so that seemed like a good plan I went to treatment I ended up in an all-girl treatment center I don't know how that happened and I was the one that they came to get because I'm a test taker you know and I already had my big book I've underlined a few things if you want to see what I think's important you know case anybody's looking and and I wasn't when they would come get to talk to women who didn't want to leave their children for six weeks and I can say all the right stuff you know better six weeks now than forever later because we can't be parents at all if we're not sober but the big book talks about having a double life the one we want people to see and the one we know is true and the longer I was in that treatment center the more I realized that I did not want my children back I was glad they were at my mother's you know at her house they got dinner every night at dinnertime they slept on clean sheets they got to daycare every day in clean clothes she read them a story every night before they went to bed and I knew I couldn't do any of that and I hated her for doing it but I just you know I mean it it's not the kind of thing you tell people how are you doing Beth well I think I don't want my children how are u you know i mean it's just not the kind of things you bring up and another thing that happened while I was in treatment is that my dad died and I was the only child of divorced parents so I got the insurance money and I got to drink the way I wanted to drink for the next two and a half years you know the kids stayed at my mom's and I drank him did a few other things I am a child of the 70s but I didn't I didn t have that conflict when I got here because you know and in in my experience and it's my experience as the drugs interfered with my drinking they had to go you know I The drugs interfere with my drinking. I had to quit doing drugs because anything that interferes with my drinking has to go, and that was my integrity and my children and my drug use and my employability and a hundred other things because nothing will get between me and a drink. You are either invisible or you are mowed down, and my Children have become invisible around me. What they heard from me all the time was, I love you, go away. I love your go away, no, I don't want to play. And so thank God they went to my mom's, you know. So I blew through the money and by the end of 1987 I was broke and living in an attic. The friend of mine, I used to say I moved into an attic apartment but it came to my attention about 17 years sober that it wasn't really an attic department, it was an attic It wasn't an apartment until I put a bed up there and um you know i just i i said one of those earnest prayers at the end of 1987 one night i just thought i can't live like this anymore and i remembered that my dad had given me that big book all those years before and i'd been in this attic for months but i hadn't really unpacked i just had a path to the couch and the tv in the bed but i found that big book my dad sent me and i read bill's story because i always start on page one you know you go to treatment they tell you the directions are in the book i'd open up to page one because who reads the roman numerals you know and and i would i would okay my design for living the plan is in here war fever ran high in a new england town yeah this is helpful you know and i i just but that's where i would start and and i you know bill's story i just always kind of thought he's old and he's dead who cares but I'll play along with your silly games and treatment you know so um but I found that book my dad sent me I read Bill's story again and that night I identified with it for the first time I got it I just got it. I knew what he meant I knew how he felt and I slept with the big book that night like it was a teddy bear and when I woke up the next day I just felt relief you know I just it had that feeling it had just been lifted now I'd love to tell you I've been sober ever since But I did that day what I always did after a little mini-surrender, you know, that was precipitated by some emergency. I didn't do anything. I didn' t call anybody. I didn''t pray again. I didn ''t read anything else. I didn?'t go to a meeting. And, you now, what I have come to believe is that God did remove the obsession to drink that day, but it's not going to stay gone if I don't stay surrendered. You know, there's a difference between surrendering and staying surrendered. And I love when Harry Thiebaud said, you know, well, he says a couple things I like. One is never underestimate the power of the ego to regenerate itself. Sad but true. And the other thing is that surrender is not an event, it's a discipline. And that makes sense to me. And if I carry that thought over to the big book where it says we alcoholics are undisciplined people, And, you know, we let God discipline us by the program outlined in this book. So the way I stay surrendered is to stay active and Alcoholics Anonymous. But I didn't know all that then, and I didn'T do anything, and the committee convened in my head and decided that we were going to drink sooner or later, and we did. But, you Know, from then until mid-'88, just weird things were happening. You know, I went to the bar the next day. I was drinking in the Dew Drop Inn in Norwood, Ohio, lovely place. and the bartender's talking about getting sober and some guy I'm shooting pool with used to be two years sober in AA. I'm sitting in the dewdrop surrounded by people talking about the big book and 405 Oak Street and AA thinking this is odd, you know. But I didn't drink most of early 88 and then went on a doozy in early June and thought, you now, I've been up here four years and I bet everybody in Florida is going, God, I wish Beth would come back. And so I conveniently forget it. I didn't really remember until I got back from Florida that that thought was prompted by a little hit-and-run incident in a blackout. So I kind of came to the next day, and my car was missing, and somebody said, oh, I think they towed it away. So I had this emergency credit card of my mom's, and going to Florida was an emergency that day. And so I'm back in Florida. I don't get a homecoming parade. Nobody's very excited to see me. I forgot I kind of left under the cloud of that arrest. And on June 26, 1988, I was in the Fort Myers Airport and I was going to fly, you know, because I got a one-way ticket because I'm running away from home again at 29, you know, and then I get down there and it's clear I have to go back to Ohio and the credit card's tired and I'm tired and I don't even have a dollar, and I'm in the Fort Myers Airport, and I don' t have enough for a drink. Because if I'd had enough for it, if I can get one, I can get two. But I didn' t want to get asked to leave the bar because it would've been obvious I was sitting in there hoping somebody would buy me a drink, and I thought about stealing a purse from a little old lady. There's a lot of retired people down there, and I thought maybe I'll get lucky and score some cash. But I was so hungover. I just knew that I would pick on the little old lady that still did aerobics twice a week she'd run me down and take her purse back and I'd look very bad so I called my mom and told her where I was and what I had done and she said call me later and hung up that wasn't looking good and she called her Alan on Friends and you know thank God she did when I called back she said I booked you a plane ticket but I want you to understand I'm not really flying you home I'm technically flying the children's mother home because we're afraid we'll never see you again if we don't and I got on the plane and I didn't have enough for a drink on the plane either so I I didn' have a drink all day Sunday June 26 1988 and when she picked me up at the airport it was around midnight and I gotten her car and she drove me straight to the county detox I was not amused I wanted to go home with her and because she had talked to her Al-Anon friends she said go in or don't but you can't come home with me I got you back to Ohio that's all I can do you have to do this yourself and she left and again i didn't give a thought to what that cost her for years and years and yours but i'm her only child and that county detox is in a horrible horrible section of town in cincinnati and if i had wandered off into the night down there there's when she drove away that night she didn't know if she'd ever see me again and she drove way anyway because she knew she had to you know but i am not hurting you leave me alone and so i went into detox and the next morning I woke up and I'm kind of trying to come up with a plan you know because we need a plan gotta have Plan B and and I realized I was 29 and a half years old and I never expected to live to be 30 you know I mean I just thought I'd be dead I mixed drugs and alcohol I drove drunk I rode motorcycles drunk I you know i bartend in places where people shot at each other I just I should have been dead over and over and over and here I was 29 1⁄2 years old in detox again distressingly healthy I just you know it was like it's like this voice just said people like you don't die Beth and I just thought oh no you know I mean if you had told me that day Beth if you leave here and get a beer you'll be dead in six months do not doubt me when i say i would have gone and gotten the beer but the only reason i never tried to kill myself is i knew i would live i knew I would live probably be maimed and look bad you know not gonna risk that and uh and that day i knew wasn't gonna die and i knew there's a guy in greensboro north carolina bill c and he says grace is that moment when we see everything exactly as it is and I knew in that moment that no matter how bad it was right then there were levels of bad that I had not even scratched the surface of and that if I kept drinking I would see them all that I was gonna live another 30 40 50 years drinking or not drinking didn't matter I was not gonna be one of the ones who died and I just had this passing thought that you know Whatever those people in AA are doing seems to be working for them, and clearly what you're doing is not working for you. Maybe you should try it their way. And I didn't know that was going to be the door that opened that I stayed. I was in detox five days. I got out of detox on Friday, a 4th of July weekend. I couldn't get my car until Tuesday. I made arrangements to go into a hotel for women. I should have known I surrendered when I said okay to that one. I couldn't do anything for five days, and I knew if I went where I lived, I would drink. I knew that. So I scraped up a little bit of money, and I got a very, very, very cheap hotel room that was right on Redding Road in Cincinnati, and the bus stopped right in front of the hotel. So all I had to do was walk out, get on the bus, ride it down Redding road, get off, walk a block, and I was at the AA clubhouse. And that's what I did because I knew I would drink if I didn't. And I almost didn't go to a meeting that first night out because I'd been going to meetings all week, right? I could take a little break. But one voice in my head said, you know, you skipped meetings before and you drank. Maybe you should just go. So I got on the bus and I went. And I got off the bus and walked up on the porch and came face-to-face with a girl who used to bartend somewhere I drank and we both looked at each other and said, I thought you were dead. And she was two years sober. And I walked in and the girl speaking that night was four years sober and I had met her four years before when I'd pass through. And she told a room full of people that alcoholism, not drinking, but alcoholism had taken her to the place where she didn't want to work. She didn't wanna take care of her daughter. She just wanted to drink. And I had never heard anybody say out loud that they didn't wannna care for their child because that was my secret that I couldn't tell anybody. You know, I would periodically quit drinking for a few days and, you know, a lot of guilt can creep in in 24 hours if you are not drinking with no solution and i my head would be almost to the pillow and then somebody would say yeah but god you know you don't even want your kids beth what is wrong with you you know tell that to your friends and see how long they keep talking to you and i would just you know drink again to shut everybody up but so i'm in this hotel and i you know that girl tells everybody she didn't want to take care of her kids so i got her phone number and the next day it took me about half an hour to call her you know that was back when phones were big and heavy with cords, and I would just be like, you know, and everybody's discussing if we should call her or not. You know, and, like, she's just being nice, you Know. She don't really want you to call, you Now. She's going to say, Beth, who? You Know, and finally I called her, and I just said, this is Beth. I got your number last night. I do not have a clue what to say to you. I am practicing using the phone. and uh and she just laughed and said that's what she had to do too and that's what i tell new people now you know do not worry about having some deep philosophical discussion at three days sober you know i'm 23 years sober i'm not deep yet i keep waiting but you know um just practice because if i don't call you when i don't need to i will never call you when i need to that's What I Realized and so i started calling her and i i went back to the clubhouse the next day saturday and and i got a big book and and uh and i went now already at two days over i'm already feeling a little better so i don't want to look new you know but i and if you're sitting back we know you're new right but if i sit in the front row i'm gonna have to talk to somebody so i chose the second row on the end there's a wall here perfect i'm only gonna haveto talk to one person maybe so i go through the meeting speaker meeting listen blah blah stand up time to say the lord's prayer i got a wall here what a loser can't even say the Lord's Prayer right everybody's in full meeting again about this new development everybody can see nobody likes you you have no hand to hold you should just leave now you know so i hung my heads tucked my thumb in my pocket to say The Lord's prayer and somebody from the front row turned around and took my hand. And I couldn't believe it, you know, that somebody would take a minute to look. And I never have found out who that was from that day to this. But they're the reason that I came back on Sunday. You know, in one, we talk a lot about 12-stepping sometimes and sponsorship. And, you Know, I think sometimes we get the idea that we should be, that 12-step work is only, you now, dragging wet drunks out of the street and sponsoring 800 people. But I'll tell you what, what that person, whoever they were, what they did that night was 12-step work. Without saying a word, they gave me a message at Alcoholics Anonymous, which is you are not alone anymore. You do not have to do this by yourself. And I came back because of them. And that is 12-stepped work too, holding the hand of a newcomer, 12-steps work. Remember in their name, 12 steps work. God, I just wanted you to know who I was. And I can't even ask for that because I didn't know that's what I wanted. I thought I didn'T care. I'm a biker, for God's sake. I don't need you, you know? I don'T like you. I don'T need you. Why aren't you talking to me? Because that's how we are, you knOw? It's no wonder we can't ever live comfortably. I mean, how many people in here have a huge fear of being alone, but we don't really like people much? You know, I mean you just, it's hard to be comfortable when you're balancing back. I saw a t-shirt one day that said, I know what balance is, that's what I blow past on my way from extreme to extreme, and it's like, I can relate to that, you know? So I just started showing up, and I went to a big book meeting because they had one. I knew from my many trips through treatment that you should read your big book every day, and I thought a daily big book meeting would count so I wouldn't have to read at home. Because quite frankly, when I read at Home, I could retain nothing. My brain was sawdust. And if I read At Home, I either was 20 minutes in on the same paragraph or else I was 40 pages in. I had no idea what I read because I can read and think at the same time. And even in the big book meet-up, I'd be in there and but you know in my head reading along while you read out loud it's like rarely have we seen a person fail who is thoroughly I wonder what it's gonna cost to get my car out of impound I better call that guy later you know and then the page would turn and I would come back that it counted I was reading every day and I was going to a meeting every day in my days free at one o'clock this is awesome you know but God has a great say and the the biggest thing was they read a whole chapter at a time so they read preface and four words It's one day, doctor's opinion the next, chapters 1 through 11 start over. So every 13 days I was here in that book. I was hearing the book. I was hearin' the book, and there was time for discussion because they didn't read all the how it works and everything at the beginning since they read a whole chapter. And so I was hearin' the books instead of, excuse me, I know this will step on some toes, but instead of hearing 30 people pontificate about two sentences in the book I was here in the book and here in the book. And the people in that meeting were sober, and they were happy. And I didn't know that my laziness had plopped me down into the middle of some of those active people in Cincinnati Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, that was the big joke on me, was people who go to Big Book meetings tend to read it and do what it says. And that's where I plop myself down. And yeah, my day was free by one, but by four I remembered I had no wife, so I was back at six for the 830 meeting, you know? And hearing the book started sinking in. I was answering the phone at my mom's office because I was essentially unemployable. So I would go answer phones for a couple hours, go to the noon meeting and go back. And I was about three weeks sober on my way back to her office and I stopped in Walgreens to run an errand and I popped in to see what everybody was talking about because they meet without me and I just don't go up there much anymore. But I popped up to see whatever everybody was taking about and somebody in my head was going, that was so cool what Guy said at the meeting today And somebody else goes, I know. I didn't even know that was in the book. And somebody is going, I don't know. I know, I didn' t either. And I just remember thinking, oh my God, the voices in my head are getting sober. You know what I mean? It's like... They're up there discussing the meeting without me. This is a good sign, you know? And I just kept showing up at that meeting and I kept showingup at that meaning and I, you now, I just got, by three weeks sober somebody said Beth you've been around before why don't you just write an inventory and I thought okay I didn't know I could say I wasn't ready so I you know I sat down with the big book and I wrote a four column inventory as it's laid out in the book and I that girl who didn't want to take care of her kids either became my sponsor and heard my fist up and I never looked back I am so grateful that I didnít have somebody telling me whoa whoa whoa you know. I am so grateful that i was with the people who read the book where it says if you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it you are ready to take certain steps and i was just ready and i worked the steps and my life took off and i stayed active in that group i brought my kids to meetings with me not out of you know wanting to share my recovery with them but because i knew that i would yell at him all weekend if we didn't have some diversion so So my kids came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, my biggest fear was that I wouldn't even know how to love them. I wasn't sure if alcoholism had just killed that gene off in me. And I brought them to meetings, and I learned how to talk to them watching you guys talk to them because, like I said, all they got from me was I love you, go away. But I brought him to meetings. And you guys called him by name. And you knew they played soccer. And you colored with them. And you had them help you carry coffee cups. And my children became less and less invisible. and their gaze came up off the floor and they began to look the world in the eye and we did that together when I was a year sober my mom and I talked and determined that there was really no greater good served by them coming to live with me yet because when I Was A Year Sober they had been at her house for four years she lived in a blue ribbon school district in a safe suburban neighborhood and I was in a 10th floor efficiency in Cincinnati Public and it just you know to drag them out of everything they knew to come cram in that efficiency with me just didn't make sense. And so we agreed that they would stay on with her and I would take an increasingly active role in their life, but that I would catch up to them in their neighborhood because they were doing what they – I was the disruption. You know, they were dealing with what they were supposed to do. And so they stayed with her and I started going back to school and I stayed active in AA. And, you know, we just had a lot of experiences when I took them to a picnic at a year around a year sober. And every time we go somewhere like that, I'd say, if you guys want to go play, go ahead. And they never would. But when I was a year sober, you know, we got there and I said, if You want to Go play, Go ahead. About half an hour later, my son was tugging on my on my leg. And, and he said, Well, Mom, I just wanted you to know that if you need us, we're over here playing. And what I realized was, you know, every now and then is that grace thing again, where I get to see what's really going on and what I realized was they knew they could let me out of their sight that day and I would be there when they got back and that was huge you know I love them probably talks about great events have come to pass because that was a big deal and I always say this to give the newcomers hope at 15 months over I had a car a driver's license and insurance all at the same time that was a big deal. And so by Thanksgiving of 89, now I'm coming up on a year and a half sober, and I'm starting to worry about my son a little because he's seven and a half, and he's got just all these women in his life, you know? I mean, my mom and his sister and me, and a little guy that age really needs some male influence, and for his sake, I should probably start looking around. You laugh, you That is the kind of loving, giving mom I am. So I start looking around, but meanwhile we go to the Thanksgiving spread at 405 Oak Street. That was a local clubhouse and I went to the noon big book meeting because that's what I do if there's a noon big book meeting. And at one o'clock I came out and I couldn't find Robbie and my friend said oh they're all across the street. And there was a schoolyard across the Street and there was my seven and a half year old son and another little boy and four of the guys from oak street playing football and i just remember thinking well where else should a seven-year-old boy be on thanksgiving day except playing football with a bunch of guys but the grace in that moment was realizing that i didn't do anything to make that happen except go to newton big book and that if i did what i needed to do his needs would get met too so i called off the manhunt briefly and actually met my husband i didn't know he was going to be my husband but about a month later this guy came and talked at oak street oak street had this monday night thing called all group gratitude where different groups would come in and chair one of their members would speak and i already told you i wasn't very suburban and i tended to think of the suburban discussion meetings as dry and boring and you know and it was mount washington night so i'm thinking oh great you know, but I stayed because I went to a meeting every night. And this guy gets up and talks, and he just gave this great talk. You know, I never forgot his name after that. I always tell him that, you know. He talked, and I just remember thinking, I want what he has, and I'm willing to go to any lengths to get it. That's my husband, Chuck. actually we we crossed paths after that but we didn't start to date for about another year and then when we dated we dated. We're both getting you know we date we invited our sponsors into our relationship and as a result of that you know, we kept our clothes on and we got to know each other because you know my sponsor told me dating and sex were not the same. Now who knew who knew that? You know and I mean I came from the school like well you start with sex and if it's any good then you think about the relationship you know apparently it works better the other way around and his sponsor is telling him okay chuck ask her out ahead of time go to the door walk her to the car open the car chuck be sure she's in the car before you close the door we did aa dating you know coffee before the meeting coffee after the meeting and you're never really sure if you should kiss goodnight or say the Lord's Prayer. But we were married a year and a half after we started to date and actually went to an AA convention at the end of our honeymoon because why wouldn't we? We went to the Atlanta Roundup in 1992 at the End of Our Honeymoon, And this year, 2012, our 20-year wedding anniversary, we actually get to go speak at the Atlanta Roundup. So, yeah, is that cool? I mean, I never saw that coming. So, you know, I mean that's a long way from the do drop in. You know what I mean? You just cannot get there from here without the help of God. And, you now, I found God through the steps just like the steps tell me I'm going to. You know, the steps say that I've had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps. And the book says a spiritual awaking is awareness of the presence of God. So that's, you know, I mean, I became aware of the presence of god in my life as a result of these steps. And it's become an ever deepening and widening presence in my life. I always tell new people there's good news and bad news. You know the bad news is it really is all about god here. But the good news is it really is all about god here you know and the book says the purpose of the book is to help you find the power which will solve your problem that's a pretty sizable promise you know and uh so we are coming up on 20 years married those little kids that were four and six one of them turned 30 today and the other ones turning 28 at the end of the month we did get custody had kids back. We bought a house in their neighborhood after we got married, and they came home to live with us in fifth and seventh grade, you know? And they walked out the front door of fifth and sixth grade at a mom and dad's house like everybody else. And a couple years later when our son was a teenager, we're looking at each other going, you wanted him back. No, you want him back. You wanted him back! We had some just horrible years with that boy while he was a teenager um there there was a time when we didn't know if we'd ever all sit in the same room again but we kept god in the middle and we kept alcoholics anonymous in the middle and you know 10 years later when he got out of the army we had relocated to north carolina and he bought a house four miles from us you know families will be reunited that's just what it says and we don't always get the family family back but you know i just aa just always strikes me as being this big, giant family reunion of the children of God. And all that time I was trying to be Beth the night auditor and Jim and Sally's daughter and whatever. What I was looking for the whole time was Beth Hartley, child of God, you know? And this is where I found it. And if you're new, especially if you are new this weekend, stick around because, like I said, I am the newcomer here. I think Mary might be next closest to me, and she's got about 15 years on me. So you are just in for a fabulous weekend. and I'm honored to be here. Thank you.