The Terror of Step 4, and What Happens When You Do It Anyway – Ethel C.

Next is Marty Mann, New York, at a first anniversary of the Tuesday night group Youngstown, Ohio at the Mahoning Country Club, Girard, Ohio. Tape by Fred Miller, Hubbard, Ohio, member of Central Office Tape Exchange, tape for AAs only. I don't know how humble you can get in this program, but I was certainly, and I feel an an honor to introduce to you Marty M. of New York. Thank you very much. But I'm going to start, as we always do and always have in my home groups. My name is Marty Mann, and I am an alcoholic. And I know I'm east of the Mississippi because there wasn't a roar back from the room, Hi, Marty. A year ago, as some of you know, I fell and fractured my hip. And in the course of that long convalescence, because you don't get up and dance right away afterwards, I spent four months in Tucson, Arizona. I was very unhappy about the whole thing. It had happened on the third day of a six-week promotion tour for my new book, which was just out off the press. I didn't know what it was going to do to it, whether it was gonna lay an egg or be a bomb or what. Furthermore, I am not used to being inactive. Anybody that's ever known me for any length of time could attest to that and I didn t find my enforced inactivity very easy. It seemed a little unfair to me. I didn't see why I should have been struck down with this infirmity at that particular point in my life, or any other point for that matter. So I started doing the only thing that I know to do, the only things that any of us ought to know to do when we get possessed by feelings like that. I started going to meetings. I ended after four months, never having been to less than four in one week, often five or six. Tucson is not a big city. It's not as big as Youngstown. It has a great big winter population, but I'm talking about the year-round people who live there as their home. So AA was not not too terribly big. There were a lot of groups. Now, they kind of specialized in small discussion groups that meet in each other's living room, and there was such a choice of those that a couple of them I never did get to. They have a big meeting Wednesday night in their clubhouse, and that one I never missed, wheelchair and all. But I learned quite a lot about that. I am one of those who has always believed in going to meetings. I've listened when it's been said, and I've said it many times myself, and there are so many reasons, just take the most callous and careless one. If you don't pay your premiums on your insurance, you're going to have that accident when it has just run out. And I feel that going to meetings constitutes the premiums that we have to pay for our sobriety, and it's not very much of a payment. Because I've never met anybody, unless they were on the brink of a slip and in very bad shape mentally and emotionally, who didn't enjoy a meeting. You don't go just to be bored. You do not go just to hear the same people say the same things over and over again. you go because someone sometime during the course of that meeting just might let drop a little pearl of wisdom that you hadn't thought of before and I can say that having been to many thousands of meetings over the many years I've been in AA that has never failed to happen to me I always get something that I didn't have before on the other hand going to meetings has the exact opposite effect and by this I mean for some of us at any rate and I think really for quite a lot but for some it's the only way in which they can show their gratitude to AA because AA isn't a person it isn't it isn' t a place it isn''t a building we can't put a plaque on it saying thank you doesn't want our money we're all limited no matter how much we have in how much we can give there isn't any other way in which we can show our gratitude to AA except by going to meetings I want to tell you how I learned that it's a very important lesson for me it was a lesson I learned from the same man who taught me a great deal more he was my sponsor in AA he had to be my sponsor because there wasn't any other woman just wasn't one his name was Bill we knew him for many years as Bill W and now that he's gone and this was a really hard blow to me we know it was Bill Wilson which most of us knew all the time anyway but when I attended my first meeting I was a patient in a sanitarium in Greenwich, Connecticut the only meeting in the east there was another one in Akron was held every Tuesday night at the home of Bill and Lois Wilson in Brooklyn. Old brown stuff. Well, I guess maybe I'd better go back a little bit if you don't mind my rambling this way. When my doctor had learned about this he had been very open-minded but when he passed the book to me told me to read it I wasn't nearly so open-mind. I liked a lot of the things I read in there there. They made sense to me, but it had too many capital letters in it, that book, and they were all G's. Now, I'd outgrown God at 17. I didn't see any reason in wallowing in that opiate of the people anymore, and I simply told my doctor it was very nice for this group of people, but they were under self-hypnosis, and i didn't feel inclined to get in and wallow with them in their their self-hypnosis. He didn't argue with me, he listened to me for a while and then when my time was up, he'd say, well, go back and read the book. This went on for weeks. I could be very stubborn and I read only barely enough in that book to have ammunition with which to tackle him at my next session. When The Inevitable, I look back on it now, I know it was inevitable, and I don't think it was accidental. But when it happened, it was because of a crisis that had come up in my own life about which I could do absolutely nothing. I couldn't get under it, over it, around it, and i couldn't beat it with my head. There was nothing I could. It involved a man who ran the sanitarium where I was a patient and I was so angry that I learned the truth of a saying that I had always thought was just a literary phrase seeing red I was in my room on the bed and the whole room was in a red haze I learned afterwards questioning some doctors that what happens if you get that angry which very few of us ever do little blood vessels in your eyeball break and you really do see kind of red mist I wanted to kill this guy. Now, this sanitarium was midway between Greenwich and Stamford, a tiny little place called Coscov. Coscob wasn't much of a town, but it did have a couple of liquor stores. I guess one was the drugstore. You can still buy liquor in drugstores in Connecticut. So I lay there on the bed saying, well, I know what I'll do. I'll walk down to Coscob I had complete freedom of movement I'd been there incidentally for almost a year at this point I have complete freedom of movement and I'll go down there and I get two bottles and I drink them both and I bust up this place I'll show them remember that this was the same mind that had been too intelligent for the opiate of the people who had given up God when she grew up and here was this great arrogant intelligence lying there saying well I want to kill him so I'm gonna pick up an axe and beat my own brains out terribly intelligent isn't it the way we do it every time that's why we say an alcoholic plus a drunk no an alcoholic plus a resentment equals a drunk. All too often, even after we've been sober for quite a while, take our resentments out not on the person who caused the resentment but on perfectly innocent bystanders who had nothing to do with the drink. And that's what I was proposing to do that day. Well, as I sat up on the bed preparing to go and do my bottle buying, this damn book which I couldn't seem to get away from was lying on the bed it wasn't a proper book incidentally it was a multilith of a manuscript with red cardboard covers put together with those wire links and it was open on the bedroom on the back of the bed and I wasn't looking at it but out of the corner of my eye I saw something without looking In the middle of that book, there were some block letters, jet black and high and very clear. And they said, we cannot live with anger. Why those particular words at that particular time were what was necessary in my case, I don't know. I only know that apparently those words knocked down that longtime wall of resistance I had completely to the point where when I lifted my head, I must have been on my knees beside the bed for a considerable time because the bedspread had a big wet spot in it from my tears. And when I lift my head there was something else. I was free. Utterly and completely and forever and wholly free. Of what? I didn't think of that. I was just free, which is a wonderful sensation. sensation. I knew it was God. I had no doubt whatsoever. All I remember doing was saying, thank you, God. I looked out of the third-story window of the room where I was and I knew I could go out that window and keep right on walking and never fall. I knew it. Then I began to think, well, perhaps I am nuts after all. I thought so for a very long time, as many of us do in the last years of our drinking. I'd better go down and tell Dr. Thiebaud about it. So his office was on the ground floor, and I flew down the stairs and beat on his door. And when he opened the door and saw me, he took one look and he said, come in. And he shuffled another patient out another door. He said, what happened? And I told him. And they asked me a lot of questions. And I said, am I now completely insane? Far from it, said Dr. Thibault. He said, I believe you've had an authentic spiritual experience. There are lots of people that have had them, and there's a book that's about just this kind of thing. It's called Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, a great psychologist. I think you ought to get it and read it. Meanwhile, go back upstairs and read that book. So like a little lamb, I went back upstairs, and I picked the book up, and you know, know, it was a different book. Somebody switched on me. It was the most beautiful book I'd ever seen. I read it through in about two hours, I guess, cover to cover. I hadn't even gone halfway through before. I liked everything in it. This is what had changed my life. I I knew that. I was determined I was going to follow these steps. Oh, it was all fine. But then the next day Dr. Thiebaud said when would you like to go into a meeting? Oh, that's another thing altogether. I didn't want to meet these people. God knows what they might be like. He didn't have any idea because he'd never met any of them so he couldn't tell me. Once again I was able to put off the horrible moment for a few weeks until finally one day he picked up the phone and he called into New York and he said she'll be at your apartment at 7 o'clock tonight he then handed me a card he said take the train in this is where you're going be there at 7 so at 7 I arrived on the doorstep of a small apartment in Sutton Place one of New York's nicer parts I may say I found a man and his wife and a delightful young man best looking man I think I'd ever seen who was my escort court, that I thought, this, you know, these people know what they're doing. This is sensible. And the four of us apparently were going over to Brooklyn to a meeting. And we got on the subway to go to Brooklyn and several people that I was introduced to said afterwards they'd never seen such a wild-eyed dame. I was scared, believe me, I was afraid. I was so scared out of my wits. And when we got to this house in Brooklyn, it looked to me as if there were hundreds of people there. I guess there may have been 25, possibly 30, but I doubt it. I went upstairs to leave my coat and I didn't come down. And I thought, well, maybe I can get away with it just staying up here. I'd done that often enough in my drinking days, except in my drinking days I was usually under the coats. Nobody wanted to see me, and nobody could could have budged me if they'd tried. Anyway, after a while, a very nice woman came up. She put her arms around me and she said, you know, we want you down there. We need you. And everybody's looking forward to meeting you, so come on down. And she took my hand, her name was Lois, and led me down into that room. Then I had my second or third great shock. someone a minute or two after I'd gotten there said when did you take your last drink and without thinking I told him the truth now I'd been covering that up from everybody because all the time I'd been in there I'd be sneaking drinks and here I was telling the truth to somebody I'd never seen before and perfectly comfortable about it what I was introduced to that night was the fellowship of AA. That extraordinary bond that exists between us, even if we never met before, even if were in another country. I remember one night in 1951 or 2 when I was in South Africa and I'd gone to a town not knowing anyone. I'd met some AAs in Johannesburg, that's the only place they had any, and I walked into this hotel and I was being sponsored by the government and and I was giving formal lectures and all that kind of thing. And I looked up, and here was a man and his wife that I had met in Johannesburg. He was an AA. Well, they came over to greet me with outstretched arms. During the course of the evening, another man who was a judge, a local judge, came up to talk to me about AA. He was not one himself, but he was trying to get one started in that particular town. And do you know the four of us sat up till three o'clock in the morning? And it was just like any AA gathering that you've ever sat in on. And yet here it was, the AA that I had met in the hotel lobby was an Afrikaner. English was his second language. He didn't speak it too well. The judge wasn't even an alcoholic, but he'd read enough to know all about AA. And we were having no difficulty whatever in communicating what was really in our deepest hearts. hearts. And this is the nature, I believe, of that bond that we all have with each other, this extraordinary ability to communicate with each another at a level that goes below words. I don't quite know what it is. I only know that if you go into a meeting and you're saying hello to people and you feel drawn to somebody, you suddenly realize they're not looking quite themselves, and you pull them off to one side, and you sit down and begin talking to them. Sure enough, they're in a terrible spot. They needed someone to talk to. That's why they were at the meeting. But they didn't know how to put their hands out and say, come over and talk to me. I'm in trouble. They didn't have to. Someone else at the meetings got the message. I think we spend a great deal of our times getting the message from each other. and one of the things I believe about meetings is that that's where you go to get the message and that's where you go to give the message both and now I'm leading up to the thing I started to tell about learning the other side of going to express your gratitude or going because you think you ought to or going to pay your insurance premiums I came into AA on my first meeting was April 13, 1939 and I was still in the sanitarium that summer Dr. Thiebaud didn't want to let me out I think I was his guinea pig I turned out to be a good guinea fig and he became AA's first loud and strong supporter Porter. He helped AA in its early years immensely, immeasurably, and he was a trustee of our AA board at the time of his death five or six years ago. But at any rate, he wanted to see what was happening to me. See, I'd been his patient for a long time, and he had gotten to the point of utter discouragement with me. He'd done everything he knew how to do and it wasn't working. I was still getting drunk. He didn't know what else to do. When A.A. Hove on the scene, he grabbed it. Maybe this would do it where he had failed. I'm describing to you a man of more than usual humility, more than unusual benevolence, more more than usual, breadth of mind. He was all those things. But, as I told you, I had all I needed from the book. I finally had gone into the meeting. The meeting was only once a week on Tuesday. Quite a ways from Greenwich to New York. No air conditioning on trains in those days and only the train to go by. No air-conditioning in any of the places we met. As a matter of fact, we had a lot of trouble with finding places to meet the first year I was in AA because Bill and Lois' house in Brooklyn, the mortgage was foreclosed about a month after I came in. And that's where they'd been meeting all that time. So they couldn't meet there anymore. And then one of our members, whose father had been an Englishman, had come to this country with a ready-made tailoring business only for the most expensive hand-cut suits had this beautiful shop on Fifth Avenue up on the second floor. He said, well, I don't know why we can't meet in the shop. Big comfortable leather chairs and soft thick carpets and plenty of ashtrays. So we started meeting in the shops. Well, that went nicely for a few weeks until he was called on the carpet by the Homes Protection Agency, the first floor of that building was occupied by, I think it was Gunther Furze. And they didn't think having a bunch of people march in and out of there on Tuesday nights was a very good idea. So would we please cease and desist our meeting? Well, then Bird had another bright idea. He said, well, we have a different place where we make the suits. It's over on West 45th Street. Doesn't have much furniture in it, but it may suit our purpose. So over we went, and this was the loft, the top floor of an old broken-down building in the West Forties. Have you ever seen a tailor's cutting table? It comes about up to here. See, they stand to do their cutting. Well, what this means is that you can't sit down at these tables because it would hit you about up here, and the only way you can sit on the table is to swing yourself up from the ground and your legs fly free with two or three feet below them. Nothing on God's earth could be more uncomfortable, believe me. Also, this was the top floor of this building. It was one of the worst summers we'd ever had in New York. The temperature was averaging way over 100 day after day after day, and you can imagine what that room was like at night. So two or three weeks of this, and I wasn't too anxious to go into New York on Tuesday. Bill and Lois, by that time, had formed a habit, if they could, if they had a ride or were going up that way, stopping in at the sanitarium where I was and spending the afternoon maybe having dinner with me. And they arrived this afternoon and said, we're picking you up to go to the meeting. And I said, oh, well, I didn't think I'd go to the meet. It was pretty hot in Greenwich, too, but not as bad as New York City. Why? why? I said, well, I'm doing pretty well. You know, I don't think I need a meeting. Bill said, who said you did? Well, I said nobody, but you're looking and acting so peculiarly about my not going. Isn't that what you mean? That's not at all what I mean, he said. You may be perfectly right. You may not need a meaning. I don' t know whether that's true or not. Neither do you. But he said, one thing I do know, you're the only woman member we've you've got. And if you're not there tonight, that'll be the night that some woman will walk in looking for help, and there won't be any woman to introduce her to. Now he said it was hard enough for you, you know that. I'd been in four or five months by now. And he said, don't you think you owe it to some of those women just to be there in case they They come looking. Well, I'd never thought of it that way, that my going to AA was a way of paying my debt of gratitude for what I had received. But I took that to heart. I've never forgotten it. And I think it's an important message that all of us ought to hear and think about and act on. Incidentally, as I travel, I keep being asked, although it's mostly by professional people in the field, not by AA members. And AA doesn't seem to be growing. What's happened? Standing still? Well, I said, I wish I could take you with me. Doesn't look like it's standing still to me. And I was thinking tonight, sitting next to Marion Kennedy, whom I've known, well, practically since I got in this field. Incidentally, my brother-in-law, Ty Miller of Cleveland, Evelyn made the first call on Neil Kennedy, who was the first man in Youngstown. And we're all kind of tied in together and have been for a long, long while. And for many years I came down here very often, usually on Neil's invitation. And I was talking to Marion tonight about old-timers in AA, and she said, you know, I said, I don't suppose you go very often. She said, oh yes, I do. I go quite often. them, but she said, I go to a thing like this and I'm amazed at all the people I don't know. Anyone who thinks AA isn't growing should sit down and talk with some of us. I get this impression when I go into the three or four groups that I suppose I'm closest to of all the hundreds of groups in New York City. Some nights I walk into Lenox Hill or Rhinelander and look around, can't see a single face I know. know. Well, there are just hundreds of groups now. They may be going to some other ones. But AA is growing. I'm not worried about it and I don't think you should be. And as long as we who are in it do what is recommended for us to do in order to keep our own sobriety, AA will always grow because it is recommended, among other things, that we carry this message to alcoholics in every and any way we can. And it's further recommended, and this came out of the 30th anniversary meeting in Toronto, that we feel responsible about this. I was delighted when that was chosen as the kind of motto for that meeting. I think it's so good for us to feel responsible because I think that one of the worst things about alcoholism was the irresponsible idiots it made us into. And once we're rid of alcoholism, there's no more excuse to be irresponsible. We can then become the kind of decent, responsible people that we always wanted to be with the help of AA. Thank you. this is a tape of ethel macy from barberton ohio originally the first lady alcoholic in Alcoholics Anonymous with Continued Sobriety. This tape was taped at West Virginia State Conference Park in September 1961, and this has been copied from the original by Fred Miller, Hubbard, Ohio, member of Central Office Tape Exchange for AA's Own. the strength to think with them and wisdom to know the difference. Amen. You'll excuse my being pampered to be allowed to sit down. Y'all know it's a little hard for me to stand up. And besides, my knees shake so yet that I couldn't hardly stand up if they weren't crippled up to tell you the truth of the matter but uh i i never get over being nervous about talking and i don't know why because i know you're all my friends and that you'll bear with me but to make you uh in a little more tolerant mood i'd like to tell your little story most of you know that henrietta sirebling was the woman that introduced dr bob and bill and she wasn't an alcoholic you But she came to King's School regularly, and she would wait until all the other... I think probably they could hear me without any of those contraptions. They're having trouble over there. Oh, yeah. And I speak pretty loud. I've still got that foghorn voice. But she used to come to King School regularly. And though she wasn't an alcoholic, she'd wait until everybody was through commenting, and then she'd get up and she'd get going strong on the spiritual things and sometimes they begin to get a little uneasy and wiggly and so forth because she'd really get wound up. Henrietta's a good friend of mine that told her this and she got a bit I don't care. I have the right to talk over there as long as I want to which she did have because she plays such an important part but right in the midst of a long drawn out talk she was giving my husband leaned over and whispered to me so you could hear him all over the room, I'll have to keep your sober letter talk. And I like to tell you that because I feel like you'll bear with me and feel that way toward me whether I say anything that's helpful to somebody else or not. You just think, well, if it keeps the old lady sober, let her talk. Our dear beloved Bill Dotson used to sit by me on stage, and I can hear him yet with that drawl of his and I'd say Bill I am scared to death and he'd say ah don't be scared after all it ain't a paying job they don't want us back they don'T need to ask us again I am Ethel Macy I'm an alcoholic I'm 71 years old and I never tell you how much I weigh I had my last drink on the eighth day of May, 20 years ago. And I'm going into a bit of my story. Since my story's in a big book, I hesitate a little bit, but I feel like I should qualify a little. I just always feel that maybe you've read it and it'll be a bore. But at least it helps me. My father was an alcoholic, I'm sure, and I had a very unhappy childhood through his drinking. I sometimes feel that that's the reason I still have such a terrific inferiority complex, but it does things to me so trying to even talk to you, my good friend. I was always too big and my feet were too big and I was self-conscious and I came in from country school and I didn't have clothes like the others had and I had an unhappy childhood. Then I went to Indiana to visit an aunt of mine, and there I met my husband. He came from a very fine family where they were strict Methodists, and his sister played the organ, had for years in the Methodist church. And he had to go to Sunday school and church whether he wanted to or not. And my aunt told me, she mentioned him and another fellow. She said, now you're young. I was 16. She said, you're young and you can have boyfriends and I want you to feel free to. But there are two boys around town I don't want you today because they drink too much. And she mentioned Roswell Macy and she said that he comes from this very fine family but all the trouble he caused them because he drank too much Well, I married the guy four months later. You know, that's the way it always is. The forbidden fruit. He didn't tell me he'd quit drinking And when you're 16 and in love, I don't think you think too much about things like that. But we had quite a time about it because he continued to drink more and more. We had two girls, little girls, and he just got worse and worse. And finally, we were separated for a year over his drinking. Little did I ever think I'd become addicted to it. But after a year's separation, I still loved him just as much as ever. and he came back and said that he quit drinking. Now, of course, he told me that a lot of times and never did keep his word and I used to think he deliberately lied because after I got in it strong then I knew that he meant it when he said he quit. He just couldn't help himself but I thought he was just a plain ornery that he'd tell me that and then go right off and get drunk but anyhow, he came by and he told him that and he wanted me to take him back and I did and he stayed dry for 13 years dr bob used to say that that was a record as far as he was concerned of a true alcoholic staying dry like that without any help whatever but at the end of the uh 13 years we had moved to barbican and he had uh taken a job with a cybering rubber company and uh one night he went out with a couple of fellows i never i at first i was always thinking that he was going to get drunk again. If he'd be a little bit late, I'd be pacing the floor. And I didn't know anything about alcoholism. I didn'T even know they called it that. So I thought he was cured then when he kept on not drinking and come home and was just fine, and he was a grand person. That was really his main fault because he had a wonderful disposition and was juste a kind, lovely person. so this one night he went to a prize fight with a couple of boys and by that time my youngest daughter was in high school and the other one was married living with us had been married a short time and her husband then had gone out with my husband this prize fight well i looked at the clock and it was getting awfully late and i uh heard noise and i got up and my son-in-law was coming up the steps and he looked very sheepish and i said where's dad and he said he's coming And he was on his hands and knees up the steps. He was terribly drunk, and it was a heartbreaking experience. I still can't tell you just exactly how I felt about it, but I remember telling him that if that was the way he wanted it, the girls were raised, and that's the way we'd have it, because I'd go with him, and I'd drink with him. And I started that, and It wasn't the way I said, because I could drink six times as much as he could, and it had become worse and worse for me. For about five years, we had social drinking, we made a lot of homebrew and thought we were having a good time but it got constantly worse and I realized within myself that it had me in its clutches. I didn't know it was alcoholism. I thought I was doomed to die because it was taking more and more drinking all the time and I couldn't understand why, like the rest of us, We wonder, why do we do this thing that does these terrible things to us? But the answer doesn't seem to be there. And we had lots of funny experiences. Some of you know some of them. But I was thinking this morning about if there was any question in one's mind about whether we're returned to sanity. Some people resent that. They feel it's a terrible thing to say we're insane. And I'll give you one little incident that I think will prove to you that anyone that would do this must be insane. My sister and her family were supposed to stop at our house. We lived in Indiana, and they were coming there for Sunday dinner. And so I, Saturday as usual, got drunk, and I had my own chickens, and I couldn't catch the chickens or kill them. So of course, like we'll say well tomorrow morning and knowing that you're not going to do us. But anyhow, in the morning, we could get drinks on Sunday down the road from us. so Sunday morning here we were and feeling terrible and my husband said well we better go down and get a couple of drinks and then you can dress the chickens now you can imagine that's Sunday morning and they'd probably come by about noon but I knew we wouldn't be back and so why I don't know but I went out and caught three big white chickens and brought them in and he said what in the devil are you doing with those chickens and I said well I want them to know my intentions were good I know I won't be black back. And so I left those, now talk about insanity, I left those chickens shut in the house. And when my sister came, she said there was one roosting on the foot of the bed and one in the lounge chair. And it took me a whole week to clean up that house from having those chickens shut in there. Now if that isn't insanity, I don't know what you'd call insanity. So I have no qualms about our steps that we are returned to sanity. But that was only one of many papers. We did some of the funniest things, both of us being drinking like that. We never threw away each other's drinks and he never even got mad because I took his. We used to each have a bottle and he'd take his in on the damn fork and I'd take mine to bed and he would always pass out and I would go take his and kill my own and then kill his. And I think if he had done that to me I'd have probably killed him as well. But all he'd say was, I'd try to tell him that he drank it. And oh no, he knew he didn't. But he said, so what? We'll just go get some more. It wouldn't make him mad. We'd just go eat some more." And so this drinking went on and got worse and worse. And the only reason my husband had a very good job down in Stuyberling, and the only reasons that he didn' t get fired, and we were always thinking that he certainly would be fired, retired was because he had a bunch of boys working for him that adored him. And he was a wonderful boss, and they knew that I drank. And when there'd be a breakdown, they'd try to cover for him to the best of their ability. But it got so that I'd wake up when we'd been out and awfully drunk, and I'd shake him and try to find out whether he was going to be able to go into work or not. And if I knew without a question that he wasn't, then I'd start talking out loud how it was going to sound when I would call his boss and tell him that I had another awful attack to golf stones and he had to stay home and take care of me. And it was a peculiar thing. It so happened that this man that I had to call, that I sponsored his son later long after I was in AA, it was one of those peculiar things that happened to us. And he's still sober and doing a wonderful job. But anyhow, as I say, I thought I thought it was more hopeless and more hopeless. He never drank when he was in to work, but he would be off several days. And as I say, I'd call him and tell him about my gallstones. I'd get up and answer the phone. Somebody would be on the phone, gallstones and Quincy were my specials. If I was raspy and hoarse, you know, they'd say, do you have a cold? Well, I think I'm getting Quincy. and uh then uh then it got so that that fear was with us constantly those terrible fears that we have that he was going to get fired and uh he'd go in and he'd say well when i take the boy's time up at 10 o'clock i'll call you if everything's okay and so then he would call and i'd be pacing the floor and you can imagine what he would go through having to face that himself and he called call me and he'd say well it's okay once more and how do you think we celebrated to show our appreciation but again he hadn't been fired when i went in after him in the afternoon why one or the other of us one was as bad as the other would say we better go to the liquor store so he'd go to liquor store and that's the way we'd celebrate and start all over but he didn't lose his job which was certainly a fortunate thing i remember when we were talking after the boys come to see us, the AA boys, that we thought he lost at that time for sure because he'd been off two weeks on this horrific drunk we'd been on. And the boys, I remember, I didn't get the gist of it then, but they thought maybe Henrietta Cyburn could intervene if he had lost his job. And they talked about that. But then to get back to our interest in AA, My husband read in the paper that where, what's his name, the ball player had found something to keep him from drinking. And I know he was thinking the same thing I was, but we didn't voice it to each other that that might be something that eventually we could have to help us. But shortly after he had read this, I was in a bar. I heard some of these girls say that I was a lone drinker. And I always say to them, I drank alone and with anyone that would drink with me. And then they'd say, well, I drink at home. Well, I drunk at home and abroad. I drank anywhere I could get something to drink and plenty of it. I'm not proud of it, but those are the real facts of the case. So I was in this bar this morning, and I had a terrific hangover. And you just, with your most vivid imagination, you can't imagine how terrible I would look. I am so ashamed of it now, but it's the truth. I'd go into a bar and tell them to heat up some soup. I'd think maybe I can get off this booze if I just eat a few bites. They'd heat up the soup, and then I'd try slop a couple of spoons full down and they'd push it aside and give me a double-headed. tethered and uh that's the way i was and uh i know you who have been afflicted probably haven't gone as far as i had but no i would think if i only and i would uh get off of them a little bit and clean up the house immaculately and clean out myself and wash my hair and i'd say dear god if i could only cleanse my inside of this terrific thing that's got the best of me like i have have cleansed the outside and maybe not. And a half hour after I had everything cleaned up, me cleaned up. I go right to the liquor store and start all over again. Again, we say why? We don't know why, but we know that that's the way we did it. So I was in this bar and I was shaking so badly that I couldn't get a drink to my mouth. And I sipped it from the bar and I was always trying to cover up. I guess we did, and I was so bitterly ashamed. And there was a man standing there, and I said to him, you know, if I don't get off from this, I'm going to have to join that thing that Raul Hemsley did. And he said, sister, if you think you're nuts now, all you have to do is join up with them. He told me that he could get me the password that he knew where they met, and that he should get me the password to get in, but he said they rolled on the floor and hollered and were religious fanatics. And so I said to myself, Ethel, you're nuts now, but you might as well be nuts drunk as nuts sober. And so that, any thought of that was passed up. But finally as time went on, and it got worse and worse and worst, and again I was in another bar, and that happened to be the man's bar that brought the message to us first. And I said, I said that to his wife who was tending the bar, I wish I might never take another drink of this and she said do you really down your heart mean that well we had become perfect nuisance to them uh they only sold beer in line and I'd go get a couple of quarts of gin and take down just to have company to drink my gin well they didn't appreciate that you know they sold beer and wine and I think that they uh would be awfully glad to have gotten rid of us anyhow but she said well I'm going to tell you something uh you often try to buy Jack drinks. And he always told us he had liver trouble. And she said, he drank terrible. We used to run the merry ground and we lost it. And we joined up with some people in Akron and has been dry a year. And then again I thought to myself, that's that crazy bunch the other guy told me about and that's no good. I don't want to get involved in anything like that. But I want to say to you ladies and gentlemen that the day came that I didn't care what I got involved in if they could tell me how to get off the booth. And so after a two-week drop and a terrific one, I got myself out of bed and I drove down there weeping all the way and I said to her, no matter what it is, I've got to have help as Jack can tell us. So he wasn't there. He, by the way, drove for a brewery and besides had this joint that they run, but nevertheless he stayed sober. So she said, I'll send Jack over. And he came over with two cans of beer, and that was on that eighth day of May 20 years ago. And that was the last drink we had. And he said, there's a doctor in Akron. He was so careful about anonymity then that he didn't even say Dr. Smith's name. But he said I'm going in. He said you both of you need hospitalization. You're in a terrible state. Was he telling me? I always thought it was because there was too much of me to shake. But I believe I shook worse than anybody that ever shook. shook. But I didn't know about this hospitalization. When I hear people in A telling like they tell about going to doctors and psychiatrists, you guys ought to have died first because I was sure that they'd send me to the nut house if I went to a doctor in the shape I was in. And so we suffered in silence as far as the doctor was concerned. I used to go to Dr. Taylor sometimes and his nurse told me afterwards, she said, you know, I didn'T you know, you were drinking like that. She'd say, what do you think makes you so nervous? I said, I don't know. I just thought I had the slightest idea. But afterwards she used to keep my cards there and so if anyone came in and needed help badly after I was an A that she could tell them to call on me. But I don' t know how to become a nurse like that and didn' t even know what was the matter with me and the way I looked anyhow. anyhow. But so anyhow, Jack came and he said he'd go in town and talk to this doctor. And it so happened that Dr. and Annie were in Florida. So he didn't know what to do. But he announced it in Akron about us. And I think these guys must have really been dying of curiosity to see what kind of an outfit that was because we were in a terrible state. So they started coming out there I can see one of them has passed on and unfortunately passed on drinking but he sat by the side of my bed as I say how I shook and he had such a fresh innocent look on his face and he said he said out on the edge of the chair and he said and this is my story and he told a story that might aid made my hair stand on then I thought that guy must be lying he never could have drank like that and It looks like he does now. But they kept coming, and maybe some of you probably know George Blair, and he was one of them that was very serious about it. He said that as the boys left to go back to Akron, different ones of them said, well, they've had it. Now they're going to stick to this. So they said to him, he told about it, of course there was only one group then, that was King School, and he told us about that. And he said that to meet him in Akron on Wednesday night, and we would go to this meeting. Well, somebody spoke yesterday about Ku Klux Klan. That's all I could think of because we went down through the valley there to King's School, and I said to him, Ye gods, they may be planning to burn us on the cross, but I guess it won't be any worse than what we've gone through. But we were pretty nervous about that, and we looked terrible. My face was bloated and red, and it didn't have anything decent to wear. but they turned me over to Annabelle Gillum and I couldn't see her little face yet and she said, why don't you tell me you drank and it didn't turn me away at all it probably might have but I was just that desperate I said yes I did that's what I'm here for and so began a time of great happiness and joy and hope and we never missed a meeting on Wednesday night for a year after that And then my husband was stricken with this heart attack. And we weren't able to go, but they flocked out to our house and stood by. And he was able, again, to get up and go to some meetings. But then he got gradually worse and worse. And that first summer, I like to tell you about this because you know by now how simple my thinking must be. And I had no religious background. sprout. And that summer, we owed everybody that would trust us, even though my husband had this good salary. It all went for booze. And I planted a big garden. And in that garden, I found the God that stands by me now. I was terribly confused about all of this. I didn't understand what it was all about. And if I'd want a drink, I'd think that would be the answer, but I didn' t want to take it, and I'd get the hoe and go to that garden. And I would work, and there I found my God, and then I found how to talk to him in my simple faith. And, I felt that it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, and it proved to be because when the doctor told me that my husband couldn't live, that I could expect at any time, I feel that i had built up uh spiritual strength with my talking with my god in that garden that i was able to stand them not at first i i tried to bargain with this god that i have found and say no not that not that don't do that to me i can't take that but god was good he let him live much longer than they'd expected in fact nearly a year and i learned in that time to know that it was god's well and that I must submit to it. And in all that time, he never once asked me, Mother, you won't drink again. And that explicit face that he had in me that I wouldn't drink again, I think has stood me in good need many times because I feel that if I should be tempted to take a drink, that his face would come between me and that drink and I couldn't do it. And so on Sunday, before he passed away on Tuesday, Dick Stanley came out, and we weren't letting people in to see him, but he had a roll of money on him. And this money was money that our good friends in AA had put together to help us. I had to have a nurse and toward the last, the night nurse. And Dick took it in to him. And he, I stress this, because AA does not fail us. Never. We fail AA, but AA don't fail us, nor do we fail each other if we're sincere and truthful and honest. And my husband said to Dick, Dick, did this hurt anybody? And he said, no, they were all so glad. and my husband shook his head and he said they never failed me, they never let me down and I'm so sure of that, that A does not fail us if there's any failure it's the other way around and I was convinced that I must carry on, that this program was so necessary to me, that there were two women in St. Thomas at that time in a room together and he was buried on on friday that was 18 years ago the 15th and i went up to hospital to see these girls and i felt that that was the thing i must do and i sat down to the side of one of their beds with a good intentions of of helping her and i started to cry and you know i felt so badly about it because i thought here i come to help and how depressing that is to her and you You know, that girl told me afterwards that we don't know how these things are going to react on people. Only God knows. And she said that was the most conclusive proof that this worked. I thought is on Friday you had laid this beloved husband away and on Sunday you were there trying to help me. It certainly was conclusive truth that it worked. And so I still live out in that little house south in my country. and I don't have any certain schedule of prayer. I go to church once in a while, but I'm not a very good church member. But once, to show you how naive and how simple my program is, once when I was talking in Mansfield, a man said, what is your daily program? And I thought he meant, when do you sleep and eat? because I don't pray at a certain time I sell cosmetics I'm out on the road in my car a lot and I pray a lot there and I sometimes sing old fashioned hymns and as I say I don' t ever have just a certain time to pray but I have tried to do the things when those men brought this message to me I said to them, I will do anything within my power if you can show me how to stay sober. No one would have thought that I had any such humility because I was very defiant. When we first moved out there in the country, we lost a lovely home in town and moved to this old place out in the county. And one of the neighbors came to call on me and she evidently had been told how I hung out down at Adams, the bar at the corner below, and in a small community. You know how it is. And she said, you know, people that go to Adams too much are talked about. And so after that I went to Adams more. And I'd come out of Adams store and stand there with defiance in my heart and say, now you so-and-sos, if you don't see that I'm here and drunk, you take a good look. And you don'T know how I hated myself inside for that. But that was it. And I was filled with that defiance. I knew I was helpless. And then when I found this way, this wonderful way, because to me it's pretty easy except doing what I'm doing now. And I suppose that that's one of the reasons that I still do it when I'm asked once in a while, because I said I will do anything within my power if I can just stay sober. her. And I've tried to do that through the years. And God bless you. Every one of you are such a help to me, and I don't know why I'd be nervous. When I step in a room where you all are, I know these are my friends. And may you have long, long, happy, sober years. Thank you. Thank you. A member of our fellowship. Fitz is our delegate from your area to the General Service Conference. And a beloved one. John F. is a Northeast Regional Trustee on the General Service Board. The next lady is very special. She's been here since our beginning. This is Dr. Bob's daughter, Sue Windhoff. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me here and having a lovely dinner and a lot of nice companionship and I'm going to get Dennis one of these days I don't know when but I'll get him and it won't take you long to find out I'm not a public speaker, but I do know I want to congratulate all of you for your 50th anniversary and hope you have another 50 and more. And I just want to say that I know my dad and my mother, and my mom has played an important part in this, and I know that they would be proud of you and of the AA group as a whole. and that's about all I can say. Thank you. You know, as Dennis indicated, we're incredibly blessed to have so many people that were there from our early years still left with us. As you know, we lost Lois and Dr. Jack and Milton Maxwell in the last 12 months So we're very lucky to have people like Sue with us. Ed is our keynote speaker, and you'll hear a little bit more from him a little later. We got a taste of him earlier this afternoon, kind of previews, a little coming attractions. And I just finished introducing the head table, and then we're going to have a few words from our next person I'm going to introduce. Felicia M., if you will stand up on our head table, and she's going to address us in a minute. And finally at the end of the head table is Joe B., some of you heard share this afternoon in our coming attractions, and he's goingto participate sort of near the end of our experience here tonight. I'm gonna ask Felicia after an introduction, This lady is very special. Her story's in the big book. She's given me permission to state the name of it, Stars Don't Fall. It's been my favorite. I knew her inside out long before I met her. I had the good fortune to meet her. Her story speaks to me, even today. She's by far got the longest story in the big book. She didn't know that because I brought it to her attention today. 17 and a half pages. And I understand they cut a lot of that out to get it down to 17. She said she wants to take another shot at adding some of that back. Bill, for example, only had 15 and a halve pages. Most of the others had 9 to 11. But Felicia had a lot to share with us, and nobody dared cut it out. It starts off, I used to have it memorized, but it starts off. My alcoholism didn't begin with my drinking. And wow, light bulbs went off for me when I heard that, because that was true for me. My sanity, everything that I was to ultimately encompass in the word, without my alcoholism, predated my drinking by a long time. time. So anyway, maybe now she can share some of those 17 1⁄2 pages with us. Can you hear me, everybody? Okay. Well, my goodness, I didn't know I was going to speak. speak. I thought I was just going to smile at you, so I am totally unprepared. And if I'd known I was going to talk, I'd have taken my clothes out of mothballs a week ago instead of last night. So if I, uh, you might smell a little camphor, you know, maybe that's appropriate. Somebody my age is appropriate to have a little mothball smell. Gosh. Well, um, I came into AA when there were about a hundred people in all New York, and we knew who everybody was. But the general public didn't know much about AA, and I didn't knows much about it. I'd read the Jack Alexander article with some merry-drinking friends, and we laughed at it. You know, this guard business. Well, I went to a patient psychiatrist and she was dealing with me all the time, either drunk or hungover. And one fine day she said, look, I heard this man Bill address a meeting of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts and these these people have found out how to stop drinking, and I think you ought to go and see this man. And I said, you're just trying to get rid of me. And I wouldn't go. I read the book. She gave me the book, I had a drink in one hand, I read it, I read that the book was about God, forget it, you know, gave it back to her. So then something happened. I began saying, I can't stop. And I'd never said that before. I was drinking in bars down the village, and I was sick as hell in the morning and so forth and so on didn't know how I got back from the bars I was just out of it I was a very bad alcoholic you know and at last I said I just can't stop so she said go down and see Bill and in those days the office was down in BC Street Street and Wall Street. And so I went and saw Bill, and I thought he was going to say, how long have you been drinking? How much do you drink? And instead of that, he said this wonderful thing to me. I've said this often in my talks, and I must repeat it. He just said, do you think you're one of us? And that's the most wonderful thing that's ever been said to me, because I wasn't one one of anything or anybody for the longest time. You know, I was told by my merry drinking friend to not come around when I was drinking. I was so disagreeable. Well, I wasn't. I was always drinking, so my social life was a bar on 8th Street in Greenwich Village. You can imagine that. And so he sent me to see Marty, who became my sponsor, and a lot of you have heard her speak and you know that she did an awful lot about promoting information on alcoholism. She did more than almost anybody, and so she's well-known in the country. And I was sober for eight months, and then I had a slip. I had the well-can't-do-this-to-me slip, you know. called Marty up I had three brandies in the bar and I called her up and I said I'm drinking and I thought she'd say where are you dear I'll come right away you know and I was I was going to tell how awful life was and how badly the world was treating me and make scenes and keep drinking and have an audience and all she said to me was honey what do you expect me to do about it Well, if that wasn't a letdown And that put the brakes on And a wonderful man called John Who had got me to meetings a lot I was staying with people in New York Though I lived out in Nyack And these people were dying to get rid of me You know, this terrible bender I was on And I said, John, the minute my stomach settles down and I'm going right back to the bar in the Greenwich Village, and I am going to get drunk again. And he said the most wonderful thing to me. He said, when are you going to stop? Well, that scared me. When was I going to start? So the brakes were put on some more, and I finally called help, help from above. Somebody come get me. and it was a few days before Thanksgiving and John christened my slip Custer's Last Stand because it was just three is it three days and three nights he held out against the Indians? You who've been to school since I have do you remember? I don't remember but anyway it was Custer'S Last Stand my last slip and thank God that was my last drink And so, Thanksgiving, I helped Bill have been sober for 47 years. Oh, no. Oh, please. There's nothing extraordinary about this. It's just my age. That's all. and a day at a time and the program and my wonderful sponsor, Marty and my friends in AA who've helped me and really trying to understand a power greater than myself which has helped me so much. I didn't believe in a thing when I joined AA I thought I was an atheist and so you who are young even you who aren't just so young You could make it Tuesday just a day at a time, that's all. I didn't have any control. I couldn't stay sober for a week even. So there you are, and thank you so much. And I'm so grateful to be standing up here instead of buried under an oak tree or something because had I gone on drinking, I wouldn't be here. year. And I've had long stretches of wonderful life, and it's all been thanks to AA. Thank you very much.