The Stinking Thinking That Leads to the Drinking – Dottie S.

I'm an alcoholic and my name is Dottie Shore. Hi! Oh, you know what? This waiting has been just terrible. I don't know. It's nice to be the last speaker because you get so much inspiration from the speakers beforehand. My God, the days go by and your mouth gets drier and your hands get wetter and it's just not working out i'm grateful to god and i'm grateful to all you people for having me here i was born and raised in reno this is my hometown and i've often thought when i was first early sober if they ever invited me back to speak at a high school reunion they'd probably run me out of town if i told them the story but coming back to reno and speaking at any meeting an entirely different ball game there's no doubt of it my grandfather and grandmother came in from maine and homesteaded in renault And my grandfather was a contractor, and he built the courthouse and all the schools. My mother was born here, I was born there, and my children were born here. So I love Reno. And it's funny, I've been away from Reno a long time, living in Southern California. Anybody down there mentions Reno, it makes my heart jump. So I guess you can take me out of Reno, but you can't take Reno out of me. And I love it. I'd like to share with you some things that I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous that were so helpful to me. We do a lot of talking about alcoholism. and we do a lot of talking about the disease but very few people know anything about our disease they know how to put us in jail how to detoxify us how to give us vitamin b and calcium and call us a lot names but they don't know exactly what's wrong with us why are we the ones that are in this room why are alcoholics and why are some people not the institute on alcoholism is the only medical group that i know that's ever done anything on our research of alcoholism and many years ago they put out a paper and i wish they had it out again They took six alcoholics and hospitalized them until by blood count and urinalysis there was no alcohol in their system, and they asked for six non-alcoholic volunteers. Now they took these 12 people and they gave them a pint of whiskey to drink and they waited 24 hours for the last drink. They began testing again. In every one of the non-alkoholics they found it totally out of the body or in the bladder. However, in every one of the alcoholics they found in the spinal fluid. Now they found out that we have what they call a biochemical imbalance. we have a gland that fails to function. They know the pancreas fails in the diabetic, but they don't even know the gland that failed to function in you and I. They call it an X-factor. I've got an X factor here someplace that doesn't work very good. But once that breaks down either by the use of alcohol or never functions, and I don't believe it ever functions in my case, we take alcohol in any form that will not burn up, oxidize, and go through the proper channels. It'll go into the bloodstream, to the spinal fluid, and to the brain. now the first part of our brain is alcoholics it's affected when we drink is the frontal part that contains the eye care factor and so when you and I drink the first thing is killed in turn oh you think that's funny don't you but you see if someone came up here today and shot me in the front of the head here with a novocaine needle and I started doing the crazy things I did when I was drinking no one would call me a no good woman or a drunken bum they would do what they could to take care of me until my brain came back we have a biochemical imbalance, we have a tremendous personality change. We're from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's, and people wonder why. They'll say, gee, she's such a nice person. When she drinks, she's hell on wheels. Did you ever hear that before? So with my brain knocked out, it's no wonder. All right, so we know we have an allergy of the body. An allergy is the one of a better word. An allergic reaction is something you take either in the mouth orally or breathe through nostrils there's a pollen or touch against the skin these are allergic reactions to things your body can't tolerate so they say we are allergic to alcohol if we find out we're alcoholic we come into alcoholics anonymous if we're lucky some people never make it you know some people never have two days back-to-back of sobriety so you who are here today if you've had sobriete since you got up this morning you have a pearl a great price because at least you've got a few hours of sobriety many people that i know have died without even having a few hours and so we come to alcoholics anonymous and they explain to us that we have a second part of our disease and i was very glad because i worked in pharmacy for many years and i used to have diabetic people come to the counter and i would uh they'd be weeping and crying they've been diagnosed as diabetic and i'd help them with their insulin and some of the things we had to tell them to do but in a few days or a week at the most they would accept the fact there are diabetic and go on about their business now what happens to you and i we find out we're allergic we know alcohol is killing us i thought so much about ted last night pancreatitis and vomiting blood and all that and people telling him that now why wasn't that enough for ted why isn't it enough for you and I because we have a second part of our disease that's so mysterious it's called the obsession of the mind now no one that has ever not had an obsession in the mind can understand what the hell we're talking about what are you talking about that's a cop out an obsession of the mind well a book puts it better than i in chapter three it says the great obsession of every abnormal drinker is that somehow some way someday we're going to control and enjoy this the delusion is astonishing many will pursue it at the gates of insanity or death and so we have an allergy of the body coupled with obsession of mind now if we're fortunate we get to alcoholics anonymous and we come out of this terrible shell of loneliness that we've lived in for so long and people love us and they accept us and we go to meetings and maybe we become a circuit speaker and we become a secretary of a group and we empty coffee cups and we take on 12-step calls and everything's wonderful we just seem so happy and then if that's as far as we go the day will come when you'll say to yourself jesus is that all there is to sobriety is that always to aa well if that's all there is let's break out the booze and have a ball you've heard the sick song that Peggy Lee has sung for so long I think she that must have been an alcoholic that wrote that song you know that's how it is let's have a drink let's just break out the boozes and have the ball wow anyhow that's what happens now what makes people come in and learn about their disease as far as the allergy to the body obsession of the mind and lose the enthusiasm and the honeymoon for alcoholics anonymous because there's a third part of our disease my dear friends that i think is so totally neglected and the third part is a spiritual illness please dear ones remember we're not a body walking around we get our body physically dry and we say well i'm fine now and it's it's not what we need many of us come into to a.a and we get uh we go back to school you heard it mentioned in several speakers and we become you know clear in the mind but we're not just a mind walking around our spiritual illness we are body mind and spirit and we get sick in three ways we must be healed in three waves now a lot of people come in and they uh they get it they go to church and read the bible and they get so heavenly minded they're good and i ain't gonna do it either that's not gonna do anything we have always been tilted or lopsided we've never been a total human being somehow an aa if you apply it the way it's supposed to be you will i promise you be a total human being because dear ones if it can happen to me it can happened to you the a book tells me a great deal about the spiritual side it says and i don't like the word spiritual side because it is a spiritual program it says no human power can relieve alcoholism but god can and will if sought it says lack of power is our dilemma all the time i thought booze was my problem what do they mean lack of power they mean brain power no most of us are too damn smart for our own good we really are we're highly emotionally easily upset and very sensitive and i love it now they don't mean physical power that isn't the lack of power they're talking about because there's you know females and males and there's frail people and there are strong people in here so it's not that power what kind of power are they talking about lack of power is our dilemma well lack of power of a contact with a power greater than ourselves that i choose to call god now this will be my opinion and you'll find out i'm terribly opinionated before i get through because all this is my opinion it really isn't because my opinions got me drunk um my opinions that i'll give you today is something i've stolen from everybody else but i believe that when we were born we had no problem with our higher power it's very easy to teach children about god very easy they love to say their prayers and they they love to talk to god and i think they've got an extension cord that's plugged into god but somewhere along the line our parents get a hold of us and a few ministers get ahold of this and the teachers get a whole list and you and i get so disillusioned we just pull our plug out we've got this long extension cord and we're just swinging the plug around here not knowing where the hell to plug it in you know just not knowing all of a sudden you see that bottle of of bourbon or a cutty sark or beer and you just, oh man do we have power now. So people come to me and they'll say I don't believe in that higher power stuff. I'll say oh don't you? You got a higher power called booze. It plays the tune, you do the dance. And all we ask you to do is to take your life out of the destructive power and find a power greater than yourself. It may be your sponsor for a while it may be the group but lack of power is our dilemma and so we have to find a power greater than ourself now the book says there is one who has all power that one is god me yeah i don't know and at the end of our meeting we'll say the lord's prayer and we'll say for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory so we are lacking in power We do not have an outside power that we need. We've gone on guts and willpower until we've lost guts. They say that we have no willpower. My God, what does it take to get up in the morning, a chronic alcoholic, and take five straight shots down and vomit them all up for one little stay? That takes willpower, as far as I'm concerned. We don't have any won't-power, but we sure don't want to have any willpower so we find ourselves in this terrible dilemma And the stigma, the word is a stigma. Alcoholic. I used to say to my sponsor, for God's sake, call me a drunk or a lush, but don't call me that dirty word alcoholic. And it was very difficult for me. And she looked in the book one day and she opened it up and she said, you know, Dottie, doesn't say anything in this book. You have to like it. But you damn well better accept it. Now, as I began to accept the fact that I was an alcoholic, I beganto like it, I thought, thank God. Oh, thank god there's a reason why I followed up all my life. Thank god I'm just not a weak, no good mother. and a no-good wife and a good daughter and a friend. I'm a woman who suffers from a killer terminal illness called alcoholism and I can get well in Alcoholics Anonymous. I started my drinking here in Reno. I was full-blown alcoholic when I left. Got down to California and it was going to be different down there, you understand? It was all these people in Reno that did this thing to me. Oh my. I couldn't wait to get away from my mother. my mother was a very dominating matriarch person and i couldn't wait to get away from her and i had a sister two years older than i was and one nine years younger the one that was two years older was a radio singer junior champion skier and a model and adored by my mother and i was caught between these two people and i wanted to get away and so when i got to california i thought it's going to be great when i go to californy i missed my mother so bad i couldn t stand it had to write to her every day in color twice a week on the telephone this was a woman i couldn't wait to get away from so i was just terribly terribly sick i was emotionally crippled i was in a bad way well i drank for 19 years i think it was a long time periodic i never drank alcohol as a beverage i never had a beer on a hot afternoon before dinner i have no idea what a social drinker is i don't think i'd like them anyhow so i'm not going to try and find out um i laughed i heard one of the speakers say something about uh social drinkers I went out to dinner not too long ago with a group of people and the reservations were held up so we had to go to the bar and I had my usual tonic and lime and they were drinking and so when it came time to have our dinner they went to the table and all of them brought their glass to the table and almost immediately served a salad and they set their drink there and I became so fascinated with those lousy drinks that are only half done that I couldn't even eat my salad and I thought what are they going to do with them it was very interesting and they, you know, took a couple of sips and then the salads were taken away and something else came and the waitress said are you through with your drinks? And she's, they said yeah and I wanted to go no, no, oh geez they haven't changed very much all this time but if that's a social drinker you can keep them because I never drank like that so anyhow I finally became a chronic alcoholic and the last four and a half years of my drinking I drank the clock around I was never drunk and I was ever sober I nipped all day now during the Christmas holidays of 1949 and 1950 I came back to Reno. It was the first time I'd come back since I went away, and it was for a Christmas party with my family. And when I got back here, my mother had been writing to me and complaining about my sister, and I thought, thank God she's after her now instead of me. But when I saw my sister I almost dropped dead. My sister was a chronic alcoholic and she was a bar type. And she was an audio singer and a junior champion skier and a model and she beautiful. And developed cirrhosis of the liver to the place where her stomach could swell the size of a nine-month pregnancy. She was wearing dirty blue jeans and maternity jacket, and she was running the streets of Reno like a bum. And I was horrified. And I said to my brother-in-law at that time, my God, can't you do something about her? And he said, well, Dottie, we've tried everything. We've hospitalized her. We're taking her into a psychiatrist. He said, if you don't think I've tried anything, I even called a bunch of people that call themselves Alcoholics Anonymous. And they can't help her because she doesn't want help. Now, dear ones, that's the sum total of anything I ever heard about AA. And certainly it wasn't for me. I was a full-blown alcoholic at that time, but I didn't think I was. And so it terrorized me. And when we got back, we left before New Year's to go back to California. And on the way home, my husband said to me, God, I hope you never get to be like your sister. And I said, don't be silly. I've got too much intelligence to let a thing like that happen to me. But see, it scared me. And so I thought, well, I'll go on my last drunk on New Year'S. Nobody ever gets drunk on sober on new year's when i said that people came up and said i got sober on new year so everything i say you know i can be people can say it's different the month of january of 1950 was the most hell i've ever gone through because i never suffered hangovers i drank the clock around but i tried to withdraw from alcohol and i went into hallucinations and blackouts that terrorized me i was a secret drinker by this time i would hide the bottle i would start to take a drink and i'd see people with their eyes up like this looking in the window. So I'd go around, pull all the window shades down, take a drink, go around and pull them all back up again. I was the tardiest drunk that got to AA, I swear. And then I had hallucinations. I'd see foam coming through the hardwood floors. When they had the space program, you know, where they went into weightlessness, I did that long before they did. Stepped on that foam and I would just bounce off the ceiling and off the side of the walls i was total in weightlessness absolutely terrorized um trying very hard not to drink and i would get through to about three o'clock in the afternoon and then i'd get drunk on february 8th 1950 i came out of a blackout with someone saying north hollywood a clubhouse now dear ones i don't remember if i ever looked it up in the phone book whether i had the operator get it for me i will never tell you because i donno and i asked the lady on the phone how do you know if you're an alcoholic? And she said, is it for you or your husband? I said, it's for my husband, of course. Then I started to blubber and cry as only an alcoholic can blub her and cry. And she says, don't kid me. It's for you, isn't it? And I said yes. And she goes, I'll be right out. And I say, oh, you can't come out. My God, I don't want my husband to know I'm an alcoholic. And she told me later, she thought, she says I got an alcoholic and a ding-a-ling on the other end of that line. So she said I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll come out in the morning on one condition you're not drinking i don't want to talk to a bottle i want to talk to you i said okay so when my husband came home that night i set him in a chair i'm not dramatic you understand i set him in the chair with his back to me and i said now don't look at me i want to tell you something i said to him um i'm an alcoholic and i called out twice anonymous his shoulder started going like that and i thought oh god please don't laugh at me he turned around with tears coming out of his eyes and he said god i'm not laughing he said i was getting the commitment papers for camarillo i thought you were out of your mind so i got i squeaked that far into getting away from camera i think if they'd locked me up i would have gone over the brink there's no doubt about it i was terrorized you ought to see what i did in that little hotel room they gave me that little oversized closet i'm sleeping in almost went across the brinks too in that one but my my higher power helped me with that one anyhow um so i told him i said uh i told about the two children in and i said girls i've got a wonderful thing to tell you i said one week from tonight i'm gonna have a big surprise for you i thought it was going to take one week and you guys would get me all sober and all cleaned up give me a shot or do something i don't know what that you're going to do but i was going gonna give you every chance i remember about 10 days later after i got to a my daughter said to me what was that big surprise you were going to have and i said well i'm not drinking anymore she's always bad all the time i thought this is going to be be a big deal well on february 1950 i went to my first meeting now that was 30 years ago you got to know that i they put me in a doll wheel buggy and wheeled me in i was just a baby alcoholic you see and that was that was thirty years ago and i'm only 39 so i was very young you understand oh i heard some nasty laughs out there and i attended my first meet-up meeting I weighed 82 pounds. I was suffering from malnutrition. My tongue, the taste buds on my tongue stuck up till I couldn't drink coffee from mal-nutrition, from vitamin deficiency. My lips were splitting at the corner and bleeding. They took a long time to heal. And all these bumps under my neck, the doctor said were vitamin deficiency bumps. I looked about 65 years old and I was terrorized, totally terrorized. And that's the way I walked into my first meeting about college synonymous i sat in the front row i saw the birthday cake celebration that night we have birthday cakes i'm sure you do here with your candle for each year of sobriety and i saw the people up there on the podium and god i was so impressed uh my sponsor was three years sober seemed like an eternity when i couldn't go 24 hours without a drink and they had corsages on and they gave him presents and they patted him on the back and i had set in audiences for years and watched my sister Evelyn. I'd watched her get cups for skiing and I'd seen her model and I've seen her sing and my little sick mind said, geez, all I got to do is not drink for a year and I'll be up here getting my cake and you'll be down there looking up at me and I went dry for a years. Now, the man that talked that night talked about sanitariums and jails and 502s and 86 out of a bar and convulsions and losing his family and it terrorized me and I thought, my God, I scared myself into this thing. I'm not like those people. I didn't drink that much that long or do those things. Well, maybe I'm only a little alcoholic. You can't be a little pregnant. You know, if you got it, you got It. But I tried to identify that night with a drinking pattern. And dear ones, I ask you, please, you may take a long time before you hear your pattern, but please identify with the thinking pattern. It's the stinking thinking that leads to our drinking. And I don't care if you're, you know, black, white, young, old. we all think the same that's the ism see most of us have not been booze fighters since we got here we don't fight alcohol anymore but the isim is what you and i work on and that's a stinking thinking the least or drinking so if you identify with people's thinking pattern you're having trouble getting along i've been very fortunate you assigned me a delightful young man the name of gene who's been my driver my transportation man who's gone above and beyond the call of duty to be good to me and yesterday he took me all over reno he took me up to the mountain view cemetery to visit my mother's grave in my sister's grave and uh he and i've talked and he's much younger than i am and yet in 15 minutes we were sharing things that would take 25 years of friendship to share and that's the magic of alcoholics anonymous and i thank you for the gift of gene because i'll always remember him so that's how aaa and i love it well as i got ready to leave the the meeting that night a man yelled at me and he said hey dottie don't forget action is the magic word. I thought he said activity. I almost killed myself that first year. Well, my weight came back on. I looked better. I think the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous was when I walked through the doors that night. Like I said, I looked like death warmed over. Not one of you people came up and said to me, my God, put some weight on. Tone your makeup down. How much money do you have? What kind of a car do you drive? That's what you have to do to belong than the other group, right? They'd have simply put their warm arms around me and they said to me, if you have a problem with alcohol, you're in the right place. And they totally accepted me as I was for the very first time in my life. It was always, if you just would, when you do this, why don't you do that? You know what I'm talking about. Never accepted as we were. Now, I call this the most magical thing in the world. It's called agape love. Spelled A-G-A-P-E. That's God's love. Unconditional. my dear ones unconditional love not as you can be would be or should be but as you are right now oh that's the magic that's what brought that's who brings people back you may have to go out and drink again but you'll never ever in any place in the world ever find the agape love you'll find here of one alcoholic accepting another I don't care what you've done or where you've gone we love you didn't you didn t you just love Annie's talk the other night wasn't she marvelous let's give her a hand i love her so much just so great i think her description of how she you know needed love so badly is the magic of alcoholics anonymous there's unconditional love here and i love that well because i have a gift of gab you know i fell in love with my voice at a very early age and the love affair is still going on and there was very few women who would speak back there in 1950 and so uh when they found out i could speak they put me on the circuit i was a circuit speaker when i was 49 days dry aren't you glad they didn't tape it in those days god and so i spoke from bakersfield to san diego and any place in between and god granted me a gift that is phenomenal it's called a photographic memory and my sponsor was a book woman and she'd quote from the book and everybody was so impressed with her i'd run home memorize the book come back and you know on page 72 as soon as thus and so and everybody was still impressed with me now some of these things i have come up with as my own opinion and you don't have to agree with me but i think alcoholics are split right down the middle and i think this side of our personality is totally inferior and we say we're dumb and we're stupid and if anybody ever finds out about us they're going to kick us out of this group but on the other hand this side of our is totally egocentric and we say god i'm gorgeous i'm the best sponsor ever came across here i don't know how you people all get along without me and the old pendulum swings back and forth till we get totally thrown off balance i say we're egocentrics with inferiority complexes and i believe that's true when it came to you i was totally stuck on the interiority side of my personality i couldn't arrange a hair at my hair by myself buy a dress by myself i could make the simplest decision rather to put a coat or sweater on my children to arrange furniture was a catastrophe so i leaned very heavily on people i remember when i was in california not used to the weather i would make my husband scan the sky and guarantee me it wasn't going to rain because the worst thing i could do is to hang a washout and have have it rain on there then everybody knew how dumb i was i know now i was totally self-obsessed i thought i was total inferior but they have an inferiority complex is ego turned in and i was just a house of mirrors and a ball of self and so it was very very hard for me now as i came to you people and you started telling me how great i was and i started to believe you the pendulum started to swing had it got somewhere in the middle i'd have been fine but it shot to the egocentric side my personality and uh you told me i was great and i agreed with you well i tell you i've been looking for people all my life oh my um it's amazing to me how we can we can flop from one side of our personality to the other i think we've always wanted to uh you know be recognized we've also wanted to stand out a little bit we say we don't but we really do and we do outlandish things sometimes to get it and then pretty soon you come to a bunch of people called alcoholics anonymous and they love you and they feed you and they pet you and the stroke you and if you're not careful dear ones your ego will take over and i believe that eagle will get you drunk faster than the next drink if you read a comes of age you'll read a chapter in there by dr tebow who is a psychiatrist and he said he wondered why alcoholics anonymous was so successful when medical profession wasn't and being around us he had found out that what we have is ego deflation at depth now i said the the only thing wrong with the ego is it doesn't know it's supposed to be dead so you're going around you know minding your own business doing your own thing and the ego comes up like a great big giant shadow behind you and will smash you down because I believed my press I thought I was the greatest thing that ever happened to AA and I didn't do anything about the program I taught it I preached it I read it I recited it I talked about it did everything but work it that's not the name of the game photographic memory and today dear ones i can quote you pages in that book i can give you the parable the 12 steps and then traditions but my book tells me head knowledge alone is not enough and i'll guarantee you the head knowledge alone isnotenough and if you get caught up with your own ego when you think you are something more than you are when you start taking credit for your sobriety or the babies you've worked with you are in dire trouble because i did i would tell everybody the people i worked with that never got drunk, took all the credit for their sobriety. If I had people who didn't make it, I didn't tell them anything about it. I had one girl that kept getting drunk on me and she called North Hollywood and would ask for someone to come out and tell them I was her sponsor. And I went over to her house and threatened to beat the hell out of her if she told anybody I was a sponsor, I wasn't going to have any failures. Terrible. God, can't believe it. Well, the year went by on the wings. I went to work three months after I was sober in pharmacy again. My kids got quite down my husband got off my back uh i went to 365 meetings that first year really more because i went to sunday noon lunches and monday noon brunches i spoke practically every night i worked 40 hours a week i was just the happiest thing you've ever seen the year went by and on february 8 1951 i stood at the podium of north hollywood my god i had a corsage stuck out that big and my family sat in the front row i had rehearsed my acceptance speech for six months it was magnificent you should have heard it and i got more presents i'd ever gotten a needle birthday and i guess i thought i graduated but man you know i really made it i was i was in such a high that uh it was sad now the any book tells me that we're used to three things excitement anxiety and depression peace of mind and a quiet heart we know nothing about i was in a perpetual state of excitement for over a year and when you come down off of that thing You know, you kind of have a hangover. I get real wired when I go on talks like this. And the saddest thing is I have to go home and scrub my kitchen floor and clean my bathroom. Obviously those people there don't know how great I am. You know? Go home and be an old house cleaner. But you do have to come down off of these things. Well, I was really, you know, this year had gone by and now I've got kind of postnatal blues setting in. And I'm an old-timer. So I'm going to sit back now and rest a little bit and let those new people take care of this thing. The first thing I did was break my meeting pattern. I started going on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now, if I went there on Tuesday and Thursday night, came along and it was a good television program or it was too hot or too cold or raining or maybe the Academy Awards, I didn't go. So I'd get back here the following Tuesday. You know something strange? Nobody ran to the door to greet me. Nobody said, where have you been? They're all staying sober without me. I think, my God, they're a bunch of ungrateful bastards. nobody even knew I was gone and I thought you know AA I started thinking AA's like everything else they take you they suck you dry like a lemon and they throw you away I had worked my tail off for 16 months and what are they doing to me well shortly after that I went to a town called Azusa I'm sure you've heard of Azusa rainstorm just coming down couldn't hardly see through the windshield and I got there room about half the size of this and there was a couple old people sitting there. So it comes 8 30 and about six old people are sitting there and I thought how dare they ask the great Dottie Shore to come to speak to six oldpeople. Can you imagine doing that? So he'd call me to speak and I'd screen the group. I'd ask him how big the group was. It was a big group I went. Small group.I sent one of my babies. Can't be bothered with that small-time crap. geez isn't that awful hope I never forget that well I had a bad foundation as you can see with a foundation laid like this it was just a matter of time before something would come across my path and I'd have 12 tools and I wouldn't know one from the other how to work them I remind myself of the two men in the Bible the one who was a foolish man who built his house on sand or was a wise man who built a house on a rock and when the storm came and hit that house the house stood because it was strong but then there was a foolish man who built his house on sand and when this storm hit the house fell and great was the fall of the house and see Dottie sure had built her foundation on sand and the first storm that came across my path I would have no foundation nothing to work on my sponsor told me during this time that I was having resentments and I said I do not have resentments I have justifiable anger couldn't even take the word resentment and buy it I've never taken an inventory I thought booze is my problem I didn't know what my deeper seated problem is I hope that you people out there today aren't sitting there thinking booze as your problem booze has a very sick answer you found to your problem if you don't find out what your problem is you're gonna drink again now if you drink again I'll tell you what will happen and I've seen it happen time and again come in today put the cork in the bottle never touch another drop become a compulsive over-eater all right it's True. All right, suppose when you come in and put the cork in the bottle and you never take another drink or become a compulsive over-eater, you become an addict. Or, God forbid, a compulative gambler. There's many of those. Or you can become sexually promiscuous and you jump in and out of bed trying to find something that's going to make you feel better. You'll have to find some thing because, in my opinion, we are wounded people. We're wounded right here at the center of our being. And, dear ones, we put all kinds of dirty bandages on there. Myself, I put marriage and divorce and kids and booze and cigarettes and money and houses and cars and property and prestige and everything you can think of. For a little while, those dirty bandages would stop the wound and I'd think, ah, now I got it. And within a short time, I was wounded again. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, they ripped the dirty bandage off me and put a clean bandage called AlcoholicsAnonymous. And I started getting well from the inside out. But not before I had to go out and drink again. Not before I have to have this ego deflation at depth. Now, it's all right for us to have good ego where we care about how we look. We care about what people think about us. But when you start to think that you're better than someone else, you better watch out. Today, you know who I'm better than? I am better than Dottie Shore used to be. Because if I compare myself today, I'm either better than you or less than you. But if I compared myself to Dottcie Shore, I am better than. And that's the only judge I've got. Am I better than I was yesterday? Yeah. Will I be better tomorrow than I am today? I pray God I will. So therefore, I don't have to worry about judging myself in comparison to someone else, and it makes it a heck of a lot easier to live that way. Well, on June the 11th, June the 10th, 1951, I went to a meeting. It was a beginner's meeting, and they asked for the beginners to raise their hand. There was about 15 people raised their hand, and the leader said, you are the most important people in the whole room. I thought, like hell they are. Those new drunks get sober or get drunk. you haven't lost anything but you lose an old timer like me now you've really lost and I was angry now I love the meeting before the meeting I like the meeting after the meeting I didn't stay man I split from that meeting that night angry I was so angry I was livid and on the way home my mind says I know what I'll do I'll fix those people I'll get drunk and then they're going to be sorry I went into total fantasy I wasn't going to hide the bottle anymore I was going to put it out there on the coffee table put my feet up on the copy on the table and if my husband didn't like it tell him to go to hell but i could see him going with the phone calling north hollywood oh i'm enjoying this i can't tell you how i'm doing it and he's saying what did you do to her and he said what did we do and he says she's drunk and he was saying oh my god no and they get in a caravan of cars and they come over to my house at 12 stepney and they make amends and i forgive them And then they picked me up in the warm arms and they take me back to Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm a newcomer again. Dear ones, had you kept me around your program patting me on the back telling me how wonderful I was I could have stayed with you for years, very sick. But see my sponsor by this time wouldn't give me two hours of undivided attention on the phone anymore. You people weren't patting be on the bag and telling me that you were a good person and telling you how wonderful i was you were busy working with a newcomor as you should and all this left and I didn't know what my deeper seated problem was I had no other alternative than to go back into a bottle to try and find the comfort I was in such pain I needed instantaneous relief I didn'y have a God of my understanding I didn''t have a program so I had nothing and with a foundation like this you gotta go back you can't stand still if you don't go ahead you gotta do it you gotta get up and go back and so on June the 11th I got up that morning and I cleaned my house because I didn'T want to call any slob you understand. I had everything all fixed. Put my makeup on, my earrings, clean underwear in case something happens. You know, Mother always told me to have clean underwear on. And I walked the liquor store, bought the same old half pint and come tripping home. Now when you're married to an unalcoholic, you know they're real sneaky. They always find your supply and pour it down the sink and you die until the next morning. So about two and a half years before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous trying to find a hiding space one time, I looked up in the cupboard and I saw a vinegar bottle. Now, did you know vinegar and bourbon are the same color? So I poured the vinegar out of the vinegar bottle, poured my whiskey in the vinegar bottle, and I put it right up in the front of the cupboard. Now my dumb old husband would come home and he'd keep sliding the vinegar bottle back and forth looking all over for the bottle. He never found my supply. So instead of drinking out of a nice cocktail glass like some of these ladies, I slurped out of an ice cube. I was a vinegar model for two and a half years. Real fancy drunk, you understand. now i have 16 months and three days circuit speaker wonderful sponsor wonderful member of alcoholics anonymous gonna be different right wrong i went home took the vinegar out of the bottle cupboard poured the vinegar in the sink poured the whiskey in the vinegar bottle and took my first drink out of a vinegar bottle 16 months in three days from the day i was granted this pearl a great price called sobriety you know my birthday was last month and i have a pearl on given to me by one of my groups and this is my pearl of great price friends see a pearl is formed in the shell of an oyster by pain and irritation you take an oyster shell and it gets a crack in it and some sand gets in there and the oyster has to put some kind of a saliva thing out there to seal that over and that's what a pearl has formed and a pearl is formed by pain or irritation now my sobriety has been formed and my alcoholism by pain irritation i now have a pearl of great price and if you have a day sobriety in this room you have apparel a great price for god's sake don't throw it away if we had a pearl i don't know if this is a real one or not makes no difference as a loving gift but if i had a pearl that was as big as my thumbnail i'd cover it by insurance and put in the safe deposit box what would be the difference if you lost that kind of a pearl don't lose your pearl called sobriete because you may not get it back i believe that we all have another drunk in us everybody in this room's got another drunk but none of you know if you have any sobering up time left because see i thought well i'll get drunk get this resentment out they'll be sorry i'll go back to aa the door swings both ways and i'll be fine let me tell you what happened when i took the first drink and it burned to my throat it was the first real realization i had that i had drank it was someone had slapped me in the face and waken me out of a dream that couldn't have been any more violent. And I thought, my God, what did I do? There goes 16 months of sobriety shot to hell. I was mentally drunk three months before I ever took that drink. When I took the drink, that was the last. You get drunk up here, love. This is where you get drunk. You get mentally drunk long before you reach for that drink, and if you don't talk or you don' t ventilate, you don''t tell people how you feel, you''re going to build it up and build it u Before you know it, before you knowit, you''ll be reaching for thatdrink. cunning baffling powerful and oh my god so patient that bottle will sit there until it gets cobwebs and dust on it it'll wait and you just let your guard down and remember that we have a terminal disease we have a progressive disease it gets steadily worse not better even when you're dry it gets worse well when the whiskey burned my throat and i said my god what's happened. What have I done? I stood there terrorized. Nothing happened, and I thought I knew all along I wasn't like those drunks over there, so I walked out in the kitchen to have what I thought was going to be my second drink, and what I tell you now was told to me by my sponsor and my husband. He was an outside salesman at that time, and he knew I was squirreled up. There was no Al-Anon in those days. He decided to break off the territory and come home and see what was going on. He heard me screaming a half a block before I got to the house. When he opened the door and came in, I was on the floor beating my heels and my fist, but I almost broke the bone and my feet. I had dry heaves until I broke a blood vessel into my esophagus, and I'm vomiting blood from my nose and my mouth. When he tried to get me up off the floor, I went totally limp. As my eyes rolled up in my head, there was no whites. It was just red blood slits from the broken blood vessels in my eyes. Now, he was in terror, and he had a car, but he knew that he remembered in his mind there was a medical center a couple blocks from our house. We'd just owned this house a short time. A couple blocks from our house, there wasn't a medical centre, so he just tore out of there. And he ran two blocks, and when he got up to the corner, there were seven doors of doctor suites along the sidewalk and he just kept the very first one that was available office was full of people he went past the receptionist passed the doctor's receptionist into the doctor examining room and he grabbed the doctor and said something like my wife's been sober 16 months and she's drinking I think she's dying will you come now the first of many miracles set forth for me because he didn't say get the rescue squad or my god another drunk or I've got an office full of people do you have hospitalization who recommended you you know they do all this and I'd have been dead by that time he just picked up his bag and left an office full of people and ran the two blocks with my husband do you know why? he was an alcoholic one of seven doctors the only alcoholic in the building the only one that would have come now if you call that a coincidence to me it's a complicated way of spelling God when he got there and put this telescope on my chest he turned to my husband and said all vital signs are gone there's no heartbeat, no pulse, no respiration my husband got hysterical and he said I'll try one last thing he took a long needle out of his bag and he shot me directly into the chest cavity gave me artificial resuscitation and once again, by the grace of God, Dottie Shore started breathing let's take it back supposing Al had been a minute late coming home the doctor hesitated two minutes they would have brought my heart back my brain would have been damaged beyond repair you know how much I had to drink that morning? three straight shots of whiskey it's not how much you drink how long you drink what brand with whom whether you're periodic chronic can you guarantee what's going to happen when you take your next drink? I thought I could. I'll get drunk and I'll go back to AA. We all have another drunk dear ones. I have no more sobering up time. For me to drink is to die thank God. I think when we come through the doors of any Alcoholics Anonymous meeting we're presented with some invisible pieces of paper. You have one three, ten I don't know how many you got. i call those pieces of paper sobering up time return tickets you see i punched my last ticket i don't have any more for me to drink is to die literally because on june the 11th 1951 i was pronounced dead of an overdose of a drug called out why i'm here is by the grace of god just imagine just imagine 29 years ago the 11 th of june i would have been dead of alcoholism my sister evelyn the one i told you about that was so talented and so beautiful gene took me to the cemetery yesterday my sister died of alcohol look at that tombstone look at dat date i was three years sober i tried to help my sister she wouldn't listen she didn't have two days back-to-back sobriety she died and she blew apart bled to death from alcoholism to the liver why she's a talented one she was beautiful she was a skier she was a radio singer why'd she die because she fought she kept on fighting the doctor told her if she drank she'd die and he says I'll tell you what you quit drinking and I'll quit drinking I give up and I won and I lived if you fight dear ones you'll die it's the only thing in the world when you come in here you've got to surrender throw in the towel and you win your family said to you as my family said to me for God's sake Dottie don't be a quitter if at first you don't succeed try again keep on fighting keep on pushing in this program you come here and you keep on fighting you keep on pushing and you will die or go insane you throw in the towel get out of the boxing ring hang up the gloves and you will win you know there's a lot of paradoxes in here they'll say easy does it and they'll say action is a magic word oh my god you know and throw you out of your mind but this one thing i ask you to do is surrender at depth quit fighting the book says we cease to fight everything everybody including alcohol the only fight i ever give up was alcohol many times i fight people and things not as much as i used to well the doctor sedated me all night long i can remember coming out of this thing and and taking bitter-tasting medicine and waking up the next morning looking in the mirror not being able to even see the slits in my eyes. My face swelled. You talk about poison, yeah. Alcohol's a poison to me. Went back to the doctor a couple days later and he said, I want you to listen to me, girl. So you can see how long ago that was he called me girl. He said, if you ever drink again, you'll die. Why you're here, I don't know. But you were as dead as any patient I've ever examined. My first thought that went through my mind is why didn't he let me go? Geez, I had my perfect out. I was afraid to kill myself because I was so afraid of God. But I had my perfect out and he brought me back. The next thought that went through my mind, there must be something God wants me to do. There must be a way There must have been about June the 13th, 1951. And I said, all right, Lord, I don't understand how it's your will. But I will do this. I will never be too tired or too busy to answer a call for anyone. Just use me all the days of my life. he's never failed and it's been the easiest commitment i've ever made i drive between a thousand and fifteen hundred miles a month down my way making talks you think that's hard people say how do you do it don't you get tired oh i get beautifully tired i get wonderfully tired i get lovingly tired and i'll tell you this if you hear about me dying you know i didn't rust out i may wear out but i won't rust up i love it i love every minute of but to think that Dottie Shore is not a big blob taking up space anymore. Perhaps this world would be a better place because I came through. And you know, each one in this room today, if you've reached your hand out to help another alcoholic, this world is a better piece because you came across it. How many people die and never leave a hole? Never leave a whole. They just die and they were here and you don't even know they're gone. Oh, let's make it count for us, huh? As long as there's an alcoholic out there who's still suffering and we've got a message, we can do it. It really works beautifully. Well, I went back to AA and the days became months and months became years and years came along and I'm now 29 years and a couple of months sober. You've got to know that's a miracle. I never did anything successful in my life. Never completed anything. Great enthusiast. You know, start out with a bang. Oh, geez, forget it. I started knitting my kids a couple of sweaters the first day of Lent one time and I knitted the day and night for 40 days. Got through and found out I had four left sleeves i don't read instructions that's for those that's for those normsies out there i started to knit a rug about 12 years ago i got about a quarter of it done it's still up in the cupboard i start to clean my house and i you know i have to do everything wash the windows the walls and do everything or i just kind of let it go i'm just uh compulsive i guess but i'm charming and I'm lovable and I am spiritual and I m sober and I M really a very nice person. I will say we got to do it again for him. Shall we do it for him? He s the one that did it all, not me. No human power can relieve alcoholism but God couldn't would have thought now how do you think of God that you're so terrorized of you know I don't think it if you're Catholic and Irish kind of helps you don't have to but I think it kind of helps alcoholism everybody I talk to is either a Jew or a Catholic and everybody they are all scared to death of God I do a lot of work with compulsive overeaters anonymous down in Southern California and that's the Jewish disease and alcoholism is a Gentile disease and 90% of the people in OA are Jews and 90%. of the people in EA are Gentiles but the Jews and the Catholics are the most terrorized of God and it seems like those are the ones that are brought to me now I was terrorized too it's too bad that it has to happen I think God looks down on a Catholic who's been scared to death and kind of takes care of him boy he better put all those priests down here to scare us he's going to have to take care of us too you know so it came time for me to work the program and I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol God you know when you're dying and bleeding to death on the floor that's not hard your life's unmanageable i had trouble with that uh i get a few months sober and then i'm going to go in there and drive my own car you know and smash up and lately and in the past several years i see the first step this way i am powerless over alcohol my emotions the lust of my flesh cigarettes my job my car whatever i'm powerless over and my life's Unmanageble thank god oh thank god do you know what a relief it is not to have to manage this thing anymore now i won't tell you i don't because that'd be a lie and this is an honest program but most of the time i stay out of the management he's done such a magnificent job when i'm just the little office girl and he's the boss i just report for duty what do you want me to do today lord and he's just doing great when he does it that way and my life's become smoother and easier since he's taken over now come to believe that god can restore me the sanity was not hard for me because i thought i was crazy too i didn't think i was an alcoholic i thought i was nuts well i was both but the word sanity if you look in the dictionary says sound reasoning how many of you think you've been in sound reasoning we've been insane most of our life so we come to believe that god can restore us to sound reasoning you and i are sick in the feelings love and our feelings are liars they have no heads and we're always out of the feelings we always say i felt i feel you don't say i think i know the bible says come let us reason together it also says be healed by the renewing of your mind and i like that and i believe that i can't do it but i believe a power greater than myself that i call god can restore me to sanity now listen to the word restore it means somewhere along the line i had some sanity shern hill was a long way back i'll tell you that but I think children have reasoning powers take a child and they watch its mother's mouth or a father's mouth and all of a sudden it learns how to speak and then it watches people walk and it finally puts one foot in front of the other so they reason this out and then they go to school and they reason out that two and two make four all this is reasoning I don't know where we lost the reasoning power but somewhere along the line we lost it so God can restore us to sanity or sound reasoning thank god because then we can reason these things out now the third step came along and i was absolutely totally stopped right there because i couldn't turn my life and my will over to a higher power that's going to grab me by the hair of the head and put me in a pit and burn me forever it's impossible this god was like my mother this god had favoritism this god answered some people's prayers and not others this god did not like me uh he liked everybody else didn't like me never did anything for me now if i turn my life and my will over to him then i have actually let him come in and he's going to zap me so i went to my sponsor and i said i can't work the third step and she said why not and i says because i'm afraid of god she said well tell me about god so i started telling her about him and she says oh my lord stop i'm scared of him too let's run she says you're gonna have to find a new god dottie well that's why i called on your breath for 45 minutes and i'm going to take you back a little bit and tell you that i was born raised roman catholic i'm not talking against the catholic church i don't believe in that i'm talking about a personality and i had the unfortunate privilege of being raised by a practicing alcoholic priest hey there anything worse than that there just isn't anything worse the sober ones are bad enough but boy you get an alcoholic one and that's really bad now this man was a sick very sick man and he used to um you know go through all this ritual we'd have to put our palms on our fingertips just so we'd have to have our nose on the end of our finger he had a book with an elastic band on it and he'd hit that band you'd all have to kneel at the same time god help if you didn't hit that ban you'll have to stand up at the same time you had to say thee and thou i was so mixed up with these and those i didn't know what i was praying for when i got through but at any rate because i was in the impossible position of this older sister and the younger sister my little sick mind says i know what I'll do I'll run away and get married and get out of this situation so when I was 16 years old I ran away and married a boy 17 who didn't have a job I was going to run away from my mother we ended up living with my mother you know I'm not very smart two months after I married this young man I'm pregnant and of course he was a very young man and didn't want this child and I can understand it so the marriage didn't last I went ahead and had the baby and she no more jumped out of the womb than I was praying for our God for her to grow up and get out of my hair I was terrorized of her and I didn't have to leave this young men I just kicked him out because I was home with my mother didn't have to leave i just kicked him out now i had gone with a boy by the name of al when i was 14 he was 17 in real high school and he had left and gone down to california during the depression and he came back during this time and so now i have another goal you know i'm going to marry al and everything's going to be fine but i was outside wheeling the baby up and down now my grandfather built the saint thomas aquinas cathedral and we lived right across the alley on stevenson street and the priest was outside walking up and Down reading his office one day and I'm outside wooing the baby. He comes over to me and he said, when are you going to have your baby baptized? I'm so bright, I said not until I get married again. Can you imagine telling a priest that? And so he says to me, you can't get married again and I said, well I'm going to. He said if you do, you'll be living in adultery and any child of that issue will be illegitimate. And I said I don't care, I want to get married and he pointed his finger at me and he's like, and he says, you are excommunicated. well you know the priest was god so god said to me you're excommunicated now my family didn't investigate it and i didn't investigate it so for the next 19 years i wondered the face of this earth like a lost soul positive i was going to burn in hell positive that i would never had a chance al and i get married we have a daughter and my daughter's sick for the first seven years of her life. Oh, loved ones, do you know how many times I went to funerals in my mind? You know how many times this child was killed by God to punish me? How many funerls I went too? There used to be a mortuary called O'Brien's on Second Street. I used to go with that mortuary in my mine and pick out a little white casket and little gold shoes and a little pink dress, and I milked this neurotic more of an imagination until it almost set me insane oh thank god for alcohol do you know what would have happened to me had i not found a narcotic to ease my pain called alcohol sure you do you're alcoholics those people out there don't understand it but you know what we do when that pain's so great you can't stand it and the terror is so great and so sandy's sick for seven years and the doctors tell me we're not going to ever raise to grow up she has high allergies totally allergic didn't have any antibiotics and any antihistamines in those days and she was allergic to everything put her down on the floor she'd pick up an allergy she'd have bronchial pneumonia we didn't expect her to live and i was terrorized and i drank more and i drink more and I drank more now how am i going to all of a sudden get rid of this crazy old gods up there on a cloud keep the set of books with that long beard and a white gown glowering over there at me saying one more and you had it i was sure this was going to happen how can i possibly dear ones make a decision to turn my life and my will or that kind of god can't do it well i went to north hollywood the only place i've ever gone for answers in any place i ever found answers is with you they say you seek you'll find if you're not going to be open unto you so i wentto aa and the first thing i said to the first man i met that night how do you believe in god said you mean the old man upstairs oh my god that's blasphemy you don't talk about god like that you got to say thee and thou so i left him quick went over and talked to the other person how do we live in god you mean my pal joe oh my God we're all gonna go we're going to go straight down to hell you know talking like that and I'm going around asking somebody and they're telling me all these things and finally a man said to me hey come here and he pulled me aside and he said Dottie you're gonna drive yourself crazy he said you really want to find god i said with all my heart oh god bless that man because he said to me and puts a lump on my throat pray this prayer for one week dotty no other promise i promise you said you say god reveal yourself to me as you really are no other prayer and start looking oh i bet i've told a thousand people or more of this prayer i've never had one person come back to me until it didn't work so i start praying god reveal yourself to me as you really are first thing i saw was that i had tunnel vision i guess all my life i'd always look right out and saw what was in front of me and it was like somebody cleaned my glasses and all of a sudden i could see things and the world got bigger and brighter and lighter and this was only in a couple of days i went to a meeting shortly after that and a man said if you're having trouble finding god take the word good and take one or a lot of it and you have god anything as good as of god he said now if you go outside tomorrow and the sun's hot you're not surprised you don't say gee the sun's cold today he said why don't you say the sun's cold because the sun can't be cold the sun by its very nature is a hot thing it is always hot god by his very nature cannot be good and bad he is always good oh that was so comforting so i went home thinking about this now i think we all have favorites in aa so i started going around following a man all over southern california loved him adored him didn't understand what the hell he was talking about but just felt good sitting been listening to him he was what we called a spiritual speaker whatever the hell that is but i i thought gotta go hear him so i went to hear him this during this week that i'm praying this prayer he talked on the subject he'd never talked on before since he talked about the prodigal son now i've heard the prodigo son story forever he said tonight i'm going to tell you the prodigals done in kind of an a jargon he said you know once there was a young kid who went to his father he wanted to have his inheritance didn't want to wait for the old I had to kick the bucket. So Father very weepingly gave it to him. And he said, He got on a horse and he went to a far country and he spent it on wine, women, and song. He said, I think he was an alcoholic. Never heard that before. Now he ended up totally bankrupt and there was a famine in the country at that time. And he had nothing to eat, no substance, nothing. So he went into the pig master and he said to the pigmaster, Can I feed the pigs? Will you give me some money or something, some substance if I feed them? He said yes, feed the pig and you can eat what's left over. Now this was a deplorable state for this guy me and this kid was a jew and he ended up in the pig pen with the pigs eating corn husks worst a horrible state he could live so he's in there eating on the corn husk and he thinks to himself his father treats servants better than this he gives him a clean bed of straw and something to eat he knew he'd lost the right to be a son but he could be a servant so he said he got up and he shuffled and he stumbled home to the father and i said the father was working out in the field and he saw him a long way off and he dropped everything he was doing and he ran to greet him and he put a cloak on his shoulder now he said the kid stunk he'd been in the a pig pen you didn't tell him to go in and shower and get cleaned up and maybe he was good he'd take him back and how like the alcoholic how many times have you held somebody's head it was vomiting that hadn't bathed in a long time and you loved him so much the prodigal son is really the story of you and i and so he just put the cloak on his shoulder and ring of acceptance on his finger now he said the kid tried to tell him all the rotten things he had done he didn't turn to go out in the back party and cultivate the land for 30 days in penance he said it is enough that my son was lost and now he's found, that he was dead and now he's alive. And it was a great celebration in the killing of the fatted calf over one son who'd been lost and not returned. On the way home I thought surely to God I'm the prodigal child. I had gone to AA and I had claimed my inheritance and I'd thrown it away. I ended up on my own front room floor my own pig pen vomiting blood. Maybe all I had to do was quit out there asking you people how do you believe in God? How do you belief in God and just shuffle up these steps to the best of my ability and maybe the father would see me a long way off and come to greet me. and you know that he did now i had some hang-ups because my mother was a dominating female my father was a loving man but i don't remember much about him because he was just there he's kind of like a faceless figure and i had a hard time trying to identify with a father figure i could identify with another god but oh spare me that you know i didn't want that and so i started to pray and ask god to reveal to me if this was too familiar was i being blasphemous in order to have call him a father well you know today in this the convention has been such a delight because of all the people that are here i was brought back together again with a woman that i was raised next door to we lived together and went to school together and played together and her mother died when she was a very young woman and she was raised a very younger girl she was raised by a grandfather and a grandmother now i'm sure she doesn't even know this story but her she used to call her grandfather daddy dick daddy dick was a kind old man and i was over to her house playing more than i was home many times And a couple, three times, this old man kind of grabbed me, put his arm around me, and he'd say to me, you know, if you ever need anything, Dottie, just ask Daddy Dick. Kindest old man I've ever known, until it came to Alcoholics Anonymous. The only one who really cared, I think. Well, I hadn't thought about this man in how many years since I was a child. And while I'm going through this week of praying, God, reveal yourself to me as you really are, out of my memory bank popped the thought of Daddy Dick, and I thought maybe I could have a Daddy God. Maybe I could climb up in the lap of Daddy God and lay my head on his shoulder. And he would say to me, You know, Dottie, if you ever need anything, just ask Daddy God. And so from that day on, I've had a Daddy God Now, the very last day of the seven days of praying the prayer, God, reveal yourself to me as you really are. I opened the Bible. My sponsor used to say, Open the Bible or open the e-book. Put your finger down and start to read. I thought this was a spiritual thing, so I'll open the Bible I opened it, put my finger down and I read these words you who are human parents full of sin if your children ask you for a piece of bread would you give them a stone if they ask you for a fish would you gave them a serpent how much more will your heavenly father grant to those who believe in him it was just like he put a package and put the bow on the top of it and from that day to this I've had a daddy God that is so wonderful he's never lied to me never mocked me he's been a good man he's not threatened to burn me in hell forever he's done closer than my breathing nearer than my hands and feet all of you this morning take a big breath that's how close god is he's not up there on that silly cloud anymore you know he's closer than your breathing he's near in your hands and feet and he's walking with you always the only thing stops god from working in your in my life is us he won't violate his free his laws and he gave us the power to choose or reject him now honey if you reject him he won'T come near he won'T smash his way into your life but he can but if you choose him hang on to your hat because he's going to come in he's going to turn you around 180 degrees he's going to give you peace and joy the bible says he came to bring us joy that we may have it more abundantly came to bring us life and you and i've walked with our nose down to the ground thinking if this is all there is to life well let's just break out the booze and have a ball so i believe when you get well spiritually that the physical and the emotion will follow direct quotes from my book as you get well spiritually the physical and the emotion will follow. And if you're not happy in AA, this is my opinion, if you aren't riding along not finger popping, jumping up and down happy but serene with a quiet heart search for your higher power. Pick up the missing link because it's the only thing that's going to make the whole package clean for you. You will then become a total human being. I firmly believe this. The things that my higher power that I choose love to call God has done for me since I've been sober are absolutely miraculous. See, we're all miracles in here. Do you know how many people are called and how many of you are chosen? You people here in this meeting this morning are chosen. You're chosen people. Why aren't you out there strapped down someplace? Why aren'T you out there locked up someplace? Why aren'T you six feet under like my sister? Why aren''t you? Why aren ''t you downstairs saying this is a ball? They look like puppets on you and take the drink could pull the plug. My God. You know, those people downstairs, they don't even know there's anything wrong with them. They're saying, there's nothing wrong with me, wrong with me, I swear. You and I know there is something wrong and we have a chance. Oh, we are so blessed. I wish you'd know that. Well, a lot of things went down when I got sober. If I had to come in today and you told me all these things were going to happen, I just said, screw you, and I would have gone out and got drunk. First thing that went down is I got the notice that my sister died i would send her a literature she called me a religious fanatic and she'd throw it away and my mother said to me honey don't send her that stuff anymore all you're doing is upsetting her and my brother-in-law ate it and abetted in my sister's death and she died blew apart now i had to come home to an irish wake funeral you know what that's like don't you annie everybody gets stoned my sister'S head is swelled to the size of both shoulders her stomachs swell like she's nine months pregnant in a casket and everybody gets drunk that's the way they do in the Irish Catholic religion my mother got so drunk she fell off a chair but I'll tell you what you guys did for me you sent me home with the serenity prayer had an old man come to visit me crippled with arthritis member of AA and he said Dottie I'm going to give you the sereny prayer to take home to your funeral I said oh Ken I know the serency prayer he said yeah but not the way I'm going to get it to you honey he said you go home to that funeral and you say it this way God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change today. Grant me the courage to change the things that can today. Grab me the wisdom to know the difference today. You know, that's a beautiful way of saying the prayer because I can accept today what I can't accept for a lifetime. I can change something today and it'll flop back the same way tomorrow. And I stood there looking at my sister in a casket and I thought the script is wrong. Something was wrong. My talented sister, she should be up here looking at me and old dumb Dottie should be in that casket. What was it? And God revealed to me that my sister kept on fighting and she died. I surrendered and I won. I went back to California after the funeral. The next thing that went down is my oldest daughter became a full-blown addict and alcoholic, and she's smashing her life away. She's married with a small baby. Half the time, I don't know where she is. She's going through marriage and divorces. Finally, when my grandson was 10 years old, i was forced beyond my will to take my grandson from her he was sucking his thumb and wet in the bed his toes had nails had grown at the top of his toes his heels are split and bleeding and he's the product of an alcoholic addict family and so i had to kidnap him i'll never forget this the motion picture mary poppins will live to be a thousand years old i sat in the ground of this chinese theater through five showings of that to stay out of sight so i wouldn't be arrested for kidnapping that boy till they get the papers for guardianship so the following monday the sheriff served my daughter with guardianship papers and she was so stoned she doesn't even remember signing the papers and he told me later that her signature was practically unreadable and when she signed those papers and signed her boy away she walked out of her apartment and she left everything she left her personal belongings her furniture her clothes and disappeared off the face of this earth no dear ones if you don't think that's a hard thing to go through i got news for you well if there's any people in here if you have alan on in reno and i hope you do i salute the al-anon family program to save my sanity and i spoon fed my grandson little bits of this program he finally stopped wetting his bed and sucking his thumb and started getting fixed up and better and you know it's amazing when you spoon feed children the programs you have children you're sober now start giving them little spoonfuls of aa start where they're little now and start to to give them something so when they grow up they've got something to hang on to my grandson was a pathological liar i wonder how i knew that and he'd come home from school and he would be late and he told me some crazy tale about how he beat these kids up and they had taken his bicycle and all this and I knew what he was doing so I said to him you know honey tell me the stories they're wonderful I love to hear them but be sure and tell me that it's a story and I told him about pathological lying and what damage it could do because that was one of my biggest defects with pathological dying and exaggerating and I had to work so hard on it so I went to school to the teacher after he'd been there a short time and I said how's Greg doing and he said well Mrs. Shore he did something that I've never seen done before in school and I thought oh my god he raped a girl in the restroom but he wasn't you know she said you know uh he's very athletically inclined and usually when the recess bell rings he's the first one outside but she said just before we had recess we were talking about Washington D.C. he raised his hand he told about going to the White House and walking in the Rose Garden with the president and he told this beautiful story about all about what he had done but when the bell rang after it was over all the kids ran out and he stayed And he kind of hemmed and hawed around the desk, and he came over and he said, Mrs. Burton, do you remember the story I just told you about the White House? And she said, yeah. He said, well, I'm a pathological liar, but I'm working on it. Oh, my. Then I tried to teach him about what you plant and you reap, you know. The Bible says God will not be mocked. Whatsoever man plants, therefore shall he reap. AA says what goes around comes around. And we think we can get by with that. But I'll tell you this, if you lie, you're going to be lied to. if you steal you're going to be stolen from because once you work this program you got to play it straight so i was telling him you know he was always hitting kids and calling them names and everything i kept telling him i said greg what you plant you reap now stop it you start being good and kind to people and they'll do it to you so old philosopher me you know i'm teaching my grandson how to be a good man so uh i took him to school to the store to buy some clothes to put him in school he didn't have any and typically grandmother like overcompensated bought him everything he wanted and he's this little tiny guy he's got big brown eyes and blonde hair and he wanted to carry all these packages and I said honey you can't do this oh let me try so here he is just weighed down with these packages walking out and we get to the door and he looks at that and he said grandma I must have been planting something great because I sure reaped tonight didn't I it was a joy it was truly a joy to take care of this kid and And so then it comes along and a long time goes by and I'm not hearing a word from my daughter. But I'm trying to accept what I can't change. Well, I picked up an emotionally induced illness. I would wake up at two or three o'clock in the morning like I had a pillow over my face, gasping. I couldn't get my breath. And so I thought, well, I better get the doctor. So I wrote the doctor and he examines me and he says, Dottie, there's nothing wrong with you physically. He said, this is an emotional thing. You better get yourself to a psychiatrist. Oh, how dare he? I've been sober all this time. I know all about me so anyhow I was working with a girl whose husband was an Episcopal priest and loved Father Ken so I dropped over to his office that afternoon and I said Father Ken what do you think is wrong with me and I explained what was going on and he said Dottie I think you're in a panic what are you afraid of I said I'm afraid I'll never see Ann alive again and he says you'll have to accept the fact you may never see her alive again and in my anguish I cried but I can't don't you understand I can accept that he said then go on fighting again that statement from the book we cease to fight everything and everybody including alcohol i never give up any fighting i went home that afternoon i got down on my knees and i said something like this all right lord i don't understand how this can be your will but if it is your will that i never see you in life again please just give me the serenity to go through it and the load fell off my shoulders and i got up and i could breathe deep for the first time in a long time and at night i went to bed and i slept all night without waking up no smothering the next noon the phone rang and it was my daughter isn't that odd that's god now she can get well right away but at least it was like god saying hey i'm in charge hang in there i wanted to bring her home and i couldn't i wanted just so much to help her and i can't please remember dear ones you can't help your own oh we know all about it i had how many babies do think i've worked with in all these years how many people have i said a couple of words to and they've gotten sober and my own daughter i try to help and everything i say is wrong i'm mama don't you understand i'm mom that's mama talking you know the old saying please mama do it myself boy that came from the alcoholic it had to she didn't want no part of this well i have to tell you that she did get sober thank god and my daughter i have to hasten because sometimes i forget she's now clean and sober on the program 14 years thank god for that we got together shortly after she got sober and we started comparing things and I told her how upset I was and how I'd been praying and the day that I went home and got on my knees and said alright Lord I don't understand how it can be your will but I surrender Anne even unto death just give me the strength was the day she'd gone to Tijuana, Mexico to get her drugs now you could go into Tijuana and go up to the drugstore counter and you could ask for a thousand second roll and then be told anything you want and they sold it without prescription but the hills angel had been picked up coming across the border so when she went in this time to get her drugs they closed it down tight didn't know what the hell she was talking about now it's not like going to another look supply is cut off and my daughter's burned out you think i looked bad my daughter is about five foot seven she weighed 72 pounds she looked like a skeleton with skin parchment strips across her skin she came back into the valley and she lived in san fernando valley the whole time and she's burnedout and she're tired so she blocked all the doors and all the windows she took an overdose of her drugs she laid down turned the gas on to die in the very afternoon that i surrendered her they turned the glass out for lack of payment my god don't you see don't we get out of god's way what he'll do i surrender her to god even unto death and she turned the guy and they turned the gas out for like a thing isn't that odd that's god i've had this happen a thousand times too numerous to mention of when you get out of god's way what a beautiful job he can do we just stand between god and our problem here was ann here was mama and here was god and when i got out of the way and they got together man he'd do a job now the next thing that happened is that i gave my grandson back to her because she had quite a little time sobriety and he became a full-blown alcoholic you know six months addict and especially his life away and I'm thinking my god I grow these people around me like mushrooms but his mother and his grandmother were attraction in less than a year he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and I have a grandson now that's seven years clean and sober on the AA program how marvelous three generations and we're sober now the next thing you went down is that my husband went into business with an alcoholic partner I begged him not to he said anybody that drinks too much out of you thinks an alcoholic and i said it takes one to know one but he sold the house he took our savings and went into business and less than nine months later we're down the drain total bankruptcy business and personal bankruptcy walked out of the bankruptcy court with seven dollars in an old car lost everything and we're not young people but see i had you people i had alcoholics anonymous and i knew i could only sleep in one bed eat one meal wear one dress so i went back to work but my husband didn't recover he didn't have you he didn t have what i have and he became probably comatose he sat and stared at the wall for almost two weeks little by little i motivated him to get back to work and then when she picked up something that's even worse than what you and i have is called compulsive working and compulsive sleeping you know what a workaholic is you know how they run instead of walk how they work hours instead of of to work in their normal time and so he works and he sleeps and that's all and I stayed eight years I used to go to meetings and he'd be asleep on the couch with his mouth wide open not even undressing or showering and I'd come back from a meeting and he still be there and it went on for about eight years and finally one night I went to a meeting he was asleep on a couch he came back he was still in the same position and I walked over and I came that close to smashing him in the face and I thought that's as far as I go I've loved him too long to hate him I can't spend it anymore and so I walked away and I was divorced after 33 years of marriage now like I said if I'd have got into AA and you told me all these things were going to happen I couldn't have stood it but the most amazing thing about not once during all this time did it ever occur to me that drink would make it better if I can handle these things sober honey I can hand them drunk but the best thing the most wonderful thing is that I'm never alone you're there oh maybe not the same faces but see you're Alcoholics Anonymous, you're my loved ones, you're mine. You're my kinfolk. You're there and you never left me and you stayed with me and everything has come out all right. It's all worked around. I'm a man, so I'm going to hate to be alone but I'll not pick one. If God wants me to be lonely, he'll give me the strength to go through it. In the meantime, I'm having a wonderful time. I'm an active human being. I'm doing things I never thought I could do. I couldn't hold down a job. I couldn' drive a car. Couldn't arrange my hair. Couldn't buy a dress by myself. Couldn't do any of these things. I couldn't ride an elevator or an escalator. Every time I come up that escalator, it may not seem much to you, but when you can't put your foot on an escalater and all of a sudden you get sober and you're so busy yakking that you find yourself halfway up an escalated and you want to yell, Yahoo! I'm on an excavator! Then you know that everything changes. It all becomes so much greater. It's just absolutely fantastic. Well, after I got sober three months I went back to work in pharmacy and I can do everything with prescriptions except dispense it. But it's awfully hard working and waiting on sick people when nine out of every 10 prescriptions will go across the counter for valium or librium and you can't help these people it's just too much so i went into cosmetics and worked cosmetics for a few years and i'm working in there and i'M thinking gee you know when i get to be 65 years old they can retire me you can'T live on social security and i don'T know anything else so i WENT OVER TO HAWAII ONE YEAR TO A CONVENTION i WAS LAYING OUT THERE ON THAT BEAUTIFUL BEACH AND I'M SAYING TO GOD LORD IS THERE ANY WAY THAT i CAN POSSIBLY GET SOME KIND of an education where i can do it i love to do the most that's help people hadn't the foggiest idea what i could do but when i don't know what to do it's easy to turn it over so i turned over to god and i said lord show me if there's a way came back from the convention in hawaii and one of my babies called me and she said daddy they're giving a course at ucla and i think you ought to go and i thought fine except i don t have any money because you've done so much for me let me pay your tuition i said oh i can't do that she said you'd do it for me wouldn't you and i said yeah she didn't pay me back so i went over now i had about this time i had some 20 years of experience practical experience in ea went to a counselor over there and they filled me in on the courses that i needed and i worked 40 hours a week and i went to school for three years at night and i walked out of there with my certificate and i'm now in private practice i'm a private counselor counseling on alcoholism drug addiction migraines ulcers spasticulitis any emotionally induced illness set up my practice almost six years ago doing the thing that i love to do more than anything else and doing the things i'm the best at fantastic oh how great it is to go to bed at night and know that this world's a better place because you're here instead of oh my god what a mess what a waste now to be asked to come and speak like this and especially to come back to reno i wonder if you know do you really know what it means to be back in reno i left here totally defeated i think the only friend i have left in reno is madeline i was raised next to her i don't know anybody in reino i was not friendly i was sick i was crazy come back here and have all these loved ones and all these kin folks i'll take gene and my heart home for the rest of my life and many of the rest w my cup runs over there's no doubt about it and It all happened because I was forced to my knees. I was pushed beyond my will to come to a bunch of drunks that gave me the only love and the only acceptance I've ever known in my lifetime. I love you so much. I love it from the bottom of my heart. Now, you know, we went up to the cemetery yesterday, as I told you. And my sister's epitaph doesn't say Evelyn Singer, Evelyn Junior Champion, Evelyn Model, Evelyn Adored by Her Mother. You know what my mother said when she called me on the phone? Dottie Evelyn died tonight thank God it's over I said yeah thank God she's at rest that's my sister's epitaph we're all going to have one what's yours going to be poor guy he couldn't make it Jean was telling me about a girl that died accidentally killed herself very few people at the funeral is that what's going to look like for you because we're going to have one one day and of course I'm so dramatic you know I had to figure out something really zinging for me. I thought, as long as I stay sober and I should die, my epitaph's going to read, Dottie, well done, oh good and faithful servant, because I sure tried. It can be that way for you. Man, what a great person he was. I'll never forget what he said to me. I'll ever forget what she did. That's what we want to do, and we can have that. We're here for such a very short time. Let's make it count. Let'S make it account for the alcoholic who gets sober you know so many times i've never been at loss for words i'm sure you know that by now but i would like to be able to say words differently than uh i say in my own way and i finally had to get somebody else's words and i found a poem by a man called george elliott he says this and it's the greatest and the closest thing i can come to tell you what you mean to me and it says oh the comfort the inexpressible comfort of being safe with friends of not having to weigh thoughts or measure words but to pour them all out chaff and grain together now the friends who love you will take it and sift it we'll keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness they'll blow the rest away so i ask you dear ones to take what i've said today that's worth keeping and with the breath of goodness just blow the rest away. And please don't ever stop loving me. Thank you very much.