Took a Vow of Obedience but the Only Direction I Ever Followed Was to the Liquor Cabinet — Bea O.

Lauren, I am an alcoholic. Yeah. I really enjoy being sober. And my second observation is, of course, you know that North Vancouver is the sobriety capital of the world. I met Bea in Portland. I loved her then, and I'm certain that I'm going to love her now. So from Orange County, California, Bea. Thank you. My name is Bea, and I'm an alcoholic. And if God were to appear to me now, and I'm not sure that she is going to do that, and were to ask me if I had a choice as to where I would want to be at this moment in time, I think I would say, no thank you, Father. This is exactly where I want to be. I want to thank the committee for inviting me. I want to thank Frank for his patience in my not responding, because I was down under. I was down under in another continent. And I'm so delighted and grateful to see so many wonderful, happy, joyous, and free persons as a result of this blessed program. This blessed program, which was described so beautifully to us this morning, and has made me feel like I had had a drink out of all those little bottles that they finally took away in my room. You know, the natural high that comes from sharing this, this wonderful program with members who have worked the Twelve Steps and who have kept the Twelve Traditions. God bless you, Arbutus. You've given us a wonderful something to leave with, and I'm so grateful to you. Thank you. I feel, when I meet Arbutus, that I feel a kindred soul. We have somewhat of the same heritage and that Irishness in us and that Irish fight that nobody can take away from us, that need that we have. That, by golly, we're not going to surrender. And for somebody like me to come into a program like this, to be told that surrender was the name of my game, it was really difficult. And what I wanted to tell you, coming all this way, was that everything in my life was wonderful until I got to be two. And if you're new here and you're wondering what any of this has to do with any of that, well, just stay on here because my recovery gets exciting. I will never know. I will never know why anybody invites me to share my experience, strength, and hope because my drunkologue is one of the most boring stories I have ever heard. And I am my own best critique. Really, nothing spectacular ever happened except that I was dying ever since I was two. And my parents didn't seem to understand that there was a part about me written in this book we have over here called The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this part that was written, written about me, is on page 62. There's a very offensive paragraph there, and it talks about selfishness and self-centeredness being the root of people like me, that that's the root of our problem. What happened to me when I was two was that my little sister was born. And for some reason, they didn't get my permission to do that. And people continue to do things like that to me. They continue to do things without my permission. And when I got into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was to find out that selfishness and self-centeredness was my problem. I took great exception to that paragraph, but I understand that it's true today. And my parents went on having children every year. They had a baby a year, like, until they got to five. And when I got to be the ripe age of eight years of age, I seemed like I became the mother of all these. They were little ones, and my father was killed in a very serious accident when a tree fell on top of him and killed him outright in the forests in Ireland, which by now you have figured out I was born and raised. And I just didn't know what had happened. And I didn't know about grief. I didn't know about loss. And I didn't know about resentment. And I didn't know about rage. Rage is a God whom I didn't understand. But was taught a lot about. And my mom took me aside one day and she said, Brejean, because that's my name. I noticed you have it on your program. I don't call myself Brejean at most of these AAA things because lots of people don't know how to say it. That's the real reason. It's a Gaelic word and it takes me three weeks to teach to children. You can imagine how long it would take me to teach to alcoholics. So B is my AAA name. And it gets real confusing. Because people will call in my office and ask for B and they'll say, well, we don't have a B here. And I'm the same person who's there. But anyway, my mom took me aside and she said, Brejean, I want you to help me to raise these children. And at that moment, I would love to tell you that I took on the face of being grown up and I did all the things that a grown up person needs to do. And I learned how to cook and clean and babysit. And my mom was a schoolteacher. And I learned how to do lots of schoolteacher things too. And I was a lonely little girl. A little girl with lots and lots of freckles. And there are a lot more of them now than there were about three months ago because I've been in Sydney, Australia during the summer. A little girl with freckles and red hair. Who always felt like Holly Hobby. Now, I don't know if you know who Holly Hobby is up here in Canada, but Holly Hobby used to be this little cute girl whose picture was on cards and mugs and plates and in gift stores, hallmark gift stores. And she always says the sweetest things and she's usually by herself. She looks awfully lonely. And she looks awfully forlorn. And so I grew up to be this little girl who was apart and different and separate and isolated. Only I didn't have any of those names for how I felt then. And I got good at doing what I was taught to do then. And when I got into my teenage years, I did what most people do then. I started to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was something big and large and important and spectacular. And so I decided to become a saint. It always hurts my feelings when somebody like Wendy will stand up here and she'll read from Chapter 5 and she says, We're not saints. That was one of the first things I heard when I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. We are not saints. We're striving for this thing called progress instead of perfection. And I knew somehow if I could get to be perfect through being a saint, that it would all work out. For me. And I did what the only thing I knew then, which is almost a hundred years ago now, it seems, but I did what I knew then. To become a saint, I thought I had to become a nun. Now, in an audience this large, I would imagine that some of you have seen people like me, if you haven't encountered people like me. And there might be at least two of you who may have a resentment against the Catholic Church. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know. But it could happen. And what I need you to know at this moment in time is that I didn't do it to you. Whatever your problem is, I didn't do it to you. I worked with children for many, many years. And one of the things I did best, I think, in my whole life was to be with children. Somebody said to me once, You have the gift of being able to love other people's children. But I got real involved in my life. I did all the nunny things I was supposed to do. And I learned how to pray. And I learned how to be nice to people. And I learned how to people please. And I learned how to become a teacher. And they sent me over to England for further education. And gosh, you know, then you really teach people that you know everything there is about everything. If you're this little Irish girl from the north of Ireland and you want to impress the people in England, you do that really well. If you're like me. And this little alcoholic personality was budding from a very early age. And so I was sent to teach in a little town in the northeast of England. I was teaching second graders. And I loved them. But for some reason, inside of my gut, and I don't even know where that is because I don't belong to the medical profession, but I know I have one. And for some reason, in there there was a little voice, that would go in my head, that would make my gut churn. And the voice would say things like this, and I'm sure you've never heard this voice, but I need to tell you about mine. And the voice would say, if only they would shape up, I would feel better. Some of you have heard the voice, huh? Oh, okay. That puts us on equal footing. And I would get kind of uncomfortable about the way people were doing things. And people come to me, it could be anybody, it could be the people with whom I worked, the people with whom I lived, the people in the environment, the government, anybody. And it seemed to me, if only they would all shape up, I would feel a little bit better. And one day I came home from school, and there was a notice on our bulletin board, and it said a wonderful thing. It said, would any of you sisters like to volunteer and go to California, because we want to start a new place there. Well, I just knew that in California, everybody was waiting for me. I don't know where you were, Sean, then, but I know you were there. And I thought if I could get there, that I'd be close to Hollywood, where Sean comes from, and that they would put me in my rightful place. That is the center of everything there. And it would all work out. And so I volunteered, and I got picked. And my superiors at the time had wonderful taste. Oh, they had wonderful taste. They told me they were going to put me in charge. Now, there's nothing better for a budding alcoholic to hear than to know that they're going to be put in charge. That's really all we ever wanted, was to be put in charge. And I'm good at becoming, being in charge of anything. I mean, I can be in charge of this ballroom, I can be in charge of this whole hotel, this whole city of Vancouver, and whatever. You know, I really, no, my, I didn't have any problem with the relationship with God. I knew God was God, and I was Mrs. God. I was in charge. And for some reason, I knew if I could get to California, that it would all shake up and I'd feel better. And so I got there, and at that time, we were wearing all the nunny clothes. You know what they look like? Some of you have seen them before. Some of you have encountered them before, maybe. And what I was, what's written in that book called The Thorn Birds, you might have read that book, it describes the nun in that book, and it says, she was three pieces of flesh, her face and her two hands. And all of the rest was covered with black serge and white linen starched. And when I arrived in Southern California on the 16th of August, 1964, I was hot. Very hot. But I have to tell you, though, that things did feel better because I had changed my environment, I'd done my little geographic across the world, and things felt better for at least five days. And after the five days were over, I encountered somebody who was to be my arch enemy for many days afterwards, and he was known as the pastor. Now, I didn't have enough sense to know that it would have behooved me to get along with him because he had the money. But I didn't know this because when I was teaching in England, I was paid a handsome sum by Her Majesty the Queen. And I was to come to Southern California to be told that the whole entire system under which I would be working would be different, and that any money that I was paid or my community was paid for our services would be paid by His Majesty the Pastor. That was different from the Queen. Really, different. Number one, he didn't pay as much. And secondly, he had direct supervision of me. And I don't do real well with supervision. For some reason, I have a problem with that kind of thing. I don't like anybody telling me what to do. As a matter of fact, in California, we have these signs on the street, and it says, right lane must turn right. My immediate response to that is, who said so? I don't want to do that. There's one way to do anything, and that's what Bea says. And so this man kind of got this idea kind of fast, and he began testing me and pushing buttons and telling me about things he needed me to do. And he did strange things. He built that school. It wasn't completely built, but it was almost finished. And he did a very strange thing. And some of you may not appreciate this, but I always have to tell it because at least one or two will. He painted those doors orange. And I came from the northern part of Ireland. Boy, anybody with any taste wouldn't do that to a girl from the north of Ireland. Catholic, by the way, you know. And I didn't like the way he did things at all. And I was out to kill this man. Boy, I could have used Al-Anon then. And one day I was in this discomfort, this general array of discomfort. We have different names for it now. We call it free-floating anxiety. We call it all kinds of depression syndromes. We call it all sorts of nice fancy names. But I had this awful, I just knew this impending doom. I knew that I was going to kill this man or he was going to kill me. And somehow I was going to win. You know, I was going to win. And one day this lady came to my office door and said, Oh, this was one of my favorite days. I will never forget her. Her name was Rose. And she was a mom in the school. Her boy was in our school. And she said to me, Would you like to take all the other nuns over to our place this evening and swim? We're experiencing that Santa Ana wind we have, as Sean will tell you sometimes. It was in October. And all of the nuns and myself piled into the station wagon, which is all we used to have in those days. All nuns had station wagons in America. And there were lots of nuns in those days, too. We all piled in and we went over to this lady's swimming pool and we took off our nunny clothes and we got into our swimming clothes and we swam and we had a lovely time. And she came out to the pool deck afterwards and she had this tray and a big, it seemed to me a large pitcher and some glasses. And on the top of the glasses there was salt. Oh! Some of you know what was in the pitcher. I'm kind of surprised sometimes when I find that to be true because when I give this talk in places in England, they don't know what was in the pitcher. And it goes right over their heads because they have never experienced margaritas. And anybody who has not experienced margaritas, now I question your sobriety right now, because I don't know if you're finished. I don't know if you're finished yet. Because I think it's necessary to drink margaritas in order to get to this program. For me it was really necessary. Well, I drank these margaritas that she poured for us and she poured one, of course, and what I noticed right away, right away I noticed this. Those little nunny girls that I was with, you know, they're real nice. They hold the glasses very fancy. You know, they hold them with their little fingers and they hang her out, you know, and they're very polite and they sip. I never sip the stuff. I don't know how to sip alcohol. I really don't know how to do that. And I took a few large gulps of this beverage and I swear I was sure that I had died and that I went straight to heaven. I just knew it was going to be okay. And I knew that the mom back in Ireland whom I had grown up resenting because I had been given too much responsibility and from whom I knew that I had not received enough emotional support, I knew it was going to be okay. And that little girl who was my sister, who was born without any freckles and without any red hair, I kind of liked her when I had taken a few gulps of this thing. The pastor didn't seem so bad either. Actually, he didn't seem so bad. And I knew if I could have access to this beverage on a regular basis, it was all going to be okay. Because I worked hard. Now, I have yet to meet alcoholics who haven't worked hard at one time or another. Maybe we don't end up working too hard. But I worked very hard. And when I tell you of the work that I did before I found the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I could literally sit down in this chair and I could take a nap, just telling about myself. Because I did four jobs. I was just like a juggler, juggling them all up and working hard to overcompensate for the way I felt. And I remember this wonderful beverage that I found in this lady's house called Margaritas. I knew that those nuns who worked under me and whose boss I was, I knew they worked too hard too. And I knew that every once in a while they would need just this little thing to help them on with their life. And I would say to them on a regular basis, sisters, you look tired. Are you tired? And they'd say, well, you know, we kind of had a rough week. And I'd say, well, let's celebrate this evening. Let's celebrate. And I would never say, let's all get drunk. That never dawned on me. I thought the word celebration had a kind of a liturgical note. I thought there was a kind of a holy aura about the word celebration. And what I meant by celebration was, let's drink. But I didn't know I meant that because I was in deep denial. And I honestly thought, I sincerely thought that I was helping these people by providing this beverage for them on a regular basis because I was, I was their mother's superior too. I was their school principal and I was their superior. And I was going to take good care of these gals because, boy, when I was their boss, they sure worked hard. And one day I can remember the pastor came over to the convent and he said, do you need anything? Now, he always said that with his tongue in his cheek because I always wanted something, something to fix me. You know, new furniture, new classrooms, overhead projectors, desks, whatever I could think of. I would always think if only I could get that, I think I probably would feel better. And he came over this day and he said, do you need anything? And I said, yes, as a matter of fact, we do. And he said, what's that? And I said, we would like to have a bottle of tequila. I always remember his face. He kind of just went, you know, he opened his mouth wide and he smiled. And I thought, boy, a bottle of tequila is easy. And he brought us a bottle of tequila and then he said to us something which I thought was kind of in good taste and wonderful. He said, you know, we're having a little get together over at the rectory next Sunday. And would you girls like to come over, you know? And I'm telling you this just as an aside. It may mean nothing to most of you, but at this time in the church, at this time, we were going through a big, big over, you know, just a big change over in the church. We had had a pope and he had opened up the Vatican. He opened up the Vatican windows and he said, let's get in some fresh air. And we call this movement, it was called Vatican II. And we thought, you know, Vatican II was grand. We were going to modify our habits and we were going to get out among the people and we were going to be a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more human. That's what Vatican II was calling for and was calling for changing our hearts instead of, you know, the way we looked on the outside and, oh, it's deep stuff. I thought Vatican II meant you could drink. Oh, I thought it was wonderful. I was all for Vatican II. And so when we relaxed these rules and we got to visit people's homes and we got to just be a little bit more casual with people, I thought that was a great idea. I didn't know that that's, that I was connecting all of this with alcohol. I had no idea. I just thought I was working too hard and finally I was getting a little bit of a break in my life. And so, we plotted on here with this Vatican II thing and he invited us over to his home and he had other priests from the area there and we were all there. Oh, when I got over there, gosh, I found out lots of things. He not only had margaritas, but he had other beverages too. He had scotch and bourbon and vodka and gin and wine and, oh, I thought this is wonderful. And I made up my mind that evening. I thought I am going to get friends with him. We do what we do and it takes what it takes. Now, in some parts of the program it talks about seeking lower companions. And I knew if I stayed around people like this that I would have enough lower companions to do what I needed to do. And so my drinking career started. Very gently. Very easily. Very, as Tom said last night, very social. Very lovely. Very warm. And alcohol was the glue that was continuing to keep me together. Alcohol was becoming necessary for me to have on a real regular basis. Now when I say that, I have to tell you, real regular for me did not mean every day. I had to go to school every day. And being from the north of Ireland and having this pride and that added dimension that a lot of you don't have when you come to this program. It's called arrogance. Arrogance means that you will never, ever, I think our beauty says just a wee bit of it. And I love her. I love her so much. You know, boy, we're never going to, we're never going to let that pride go. I would never let it be said of me that I walked into a 400 classroom, a 400 children's school and that I had alcohol on my breath. Or that I drove my car in the city where I was well known. And that I would be arrested for drunk driving. Not I. But I knew how to pick my spots. I knew really well how to pick my spots. We had this friend in our parish. In fact, he was the mortician. And he had a home in Mexico. Just across the border. A little trailer home in Mexico. And he asked us if we would like to use it occasionally. And so I said we'd love to. So when we would have a holiday, a three-day weekend or whatever, we would all pack into that station wagon again and we would go down. And I will always remember the day that he gave me the keys of the little trailer home. And he said, this is the key of the front door. This is the key of the cabana. And this, sister, is the key of the liquor cabinet. And I said, in my heart, praise God from whom all blessings flow. And I knew if I could get myself down to that liquor cabinet on a regular basis and help this man to maintain his trailer down there in Ensenada, that, you know, things would be okay for me. And I could pick my spots. It was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It was beginning to feel like what Dr. Vernon Johnson talks about in his book, I'll Quit Tomorrow, where he says we're like a walking civil war. The dual personality that Arbutus was describing to us this morning. The person who wants to stop and who has a value system and says, I don't want to do this. I don't want to live like this. And the other person who says, I cannot not drink. That's our dilemma. The book calls it lack of power. Our dilemma. And I became really encased and encrusted in what the doctor's opinion calls the phenomenon of craving. Where we have a drink and the message finally gets up to our brain and it has one sentence and one sentence alone. And it says, I want more. I've never met an alcoholic yet who has not identified totally and completely with the phenomenon of craving. We cannot say, oh, you know, I have the flu, so I'll stop drinking. We cannot say, it's wrecking my family, so I'll stop drinking. Or we cannot say, it gives me a headache the next morning, so I'll stop drinking. We cannot not drink. That's our dilemma. And so I knew there was something wrong. And I knew, you see, that I had set out originally to become a saint. And so I knew that if I were working hard at this saint business, which I really tried hard to do and I had tried to pray, I knew that God and I could work this thing out. I just knew. So I made a very big decision to do what a lot of you did too. I decided to pray. I'm sure that most of you have prayed when you're drinking. Now, I decided to do this in a very spectacular way, which I do most of everything. I do everything in a most spectacular way. And so I decided to go to the northern part of California and make a 30-day retreat. And that meant that I was away from all of the activity that I was involved in. I was away from my regular community of people that I lived with. And I was going to separate myself from the whole world. And I was going to pray and fast for 30 days. And at the end of the 30 days that I was going to wake up and I was no longer going to need to drink. Now, I was positive that that's how this was going to work. And about the 15th day of the retreat, we had what was known as the break day. That meant we didn't have to pray that day and we didn't have to fast. We could talk with one another and we could do whatever we wanted, more or less. And so one of the people there said to me, is there anything special you would like to do since you came from the south? And I said, yes. I would like to visit the Napa Valley. Now, some of you know what that is. The Napa Valley is where they have the wineries. Now, I thought that that was just perfectly normal. And I was teaching California history and I was teaching my teachers how to teach California history. And I figured you weren't cultured if you didn't visit the Napa Valley. You know, you did that. It was kind of like visiting the California missions. You know, the Napa Valley was kind of the same thing. You know? Oh, man, how we delude ourselves. And so I went and I visited the Napa Valley and all the wineries and I came back feeling no pain that evening. And I always remember the terrible disillusionment that I experienced after I went back into the retreat situation again, waking up on day 30, and I wanted a drink more than I wanted to do anything else in this world. I thought I'd never get back home to the southern part of California where I could get back into my drinking again. See, I didn't know that I didn't know. I didn't know that I had a disease of my mind, of my body, and of my soul. A disease that was so well described was a disease proposed this morning by our beautist. A disease that had totally taken me over. I didn't know that. I, too, had family members who died of this disease. I had an uncle who was my godfather and who replaced my dad in my life when my father died. And this disease took him and swept him and he died a very, very difficult death at the hands of this disease. And on the morning that I had learned that Uncle John had passed away, and he was in Ireland and I was in California, and I hardly ever talk about this because I can't, but I remember kneeling on my knees in my bedroom, and I said, God, if my Uncle John is anywhere near you, through looking at the way his life had to be, please make it possible for me not to drink. And I stopped drinking for about four months. And after the first week, I was crying and shaking and sweating. And I didn't know what was the matter with me. And I went to the doctor, and of course, like I do most things, I told the doctor what my problem was because I'm in charge, right? So I said to the doctor, I'm having a nervous breakdown. And so he asked me what my schedule was and he knew some of it because my name was in the newspapers for all kinds of good things that I was doing in education. Oh, God be with the days. I was so famous in those days. I just have to laugh at my fame. And he said, you know, sister, you're just stressed out. You're literally stressed out. And so he sent me home with a prescription for Elavil and Stelazine. And he told me to call the pharmacist and have that refilled any time I needed it. And then I went back to him, and then he graduated me into another little thing called Valium and then another one called Librium. So now I was with these four prescriptions that were wonderful because I could get them filled any time I wanted. I didn't know that I could become addicted to these drugs. And for some reason, and I consider it today to be by the grace of God, I didn't become addicted to the drugs. As a matter of fact, I didn't care for the way the drugs made me feel. At all. Alcohol was definitely the drug of my choice. The way the drugs made me feel were like that music that you hear on Twilight Zone. You know, that thing, na-na-na-na-na-na. You know, I felt like, eh, all stretched out. And it was kind of like the lights are on but there's nobody home. You know? I didn't like that. See, I like to be in control. And I felt that alcohol made me feel like I was in control. The drugs didn't. And for God knows what reason, I stopped using the drugs myself and I was going nuts. And just around about that time, after experimenting with all of these, I went home, back to Ireland for my home visit. My mom and I drank together. My mom's still drinking. And when she met me at the front door, she said, honey, what can I fix you? And I said, what have you got? And she said, you name it. And so my mom and I drank that summer away and I came back to California on September the 1st with a firm resolution that I was never going to drink again. Because after all, I hadn't had a drink for four months and I knew I could do it and I was just in charge. And I came back on the 1st of September and you know, when you come back on the 1st of September and you have jet lag and then the kids start moving back, getting back into school and then we get those winds and then we get the heat and oh my heavens and new textbooks and oh dear, life gets hard. And it seemed like that it was just never quite the day for me to stop drinking. And what I did was, I was identifying, didn't know I was, but I was identifying with our co-founder here, Bill Wilson, who has a marvelous little paragraph on page 8. If you've never read it, read it. It's wonderful. It says, no words can describe the loneliness. No words can describe the loneliness and the bitter morass of self-pity that he found himself in at that moment when he knew that alcohol had become his master. He felt like he was standing there on the seashore and that quicksand had stretched out in all sides of him and alcohol was now his master. And everywhere he put his foot he would sink. And he was totally, he was beat up. And I had come to that moment and I did not know where to go and I did not know who to tell and I didn't know where to ask questions and I don't know if I were to start over here and go right and talk to each one of you who is an alcoholic and say, how did you die? You would tell me all kinds of different stories. Some of you died in the hospital. Some of you died in your homes and your kitchens. Some of you died in your jobs. Some of you died in mental institutions. Some of you died in prison. But each of us died. We went through our own ignominious death of loneliness and fear and despair. I died in a very shuttered environment. It was called a convent. I lived with very beautiful people. People who prayed every day. People who were kind to me. People who loved me. And people who supported me. And I was standing in my living room dying when I picked up the most marvelous piece of literature I have ever picked up in my entire life. And it was in the form of a little pamphlet which was written for people like me. It was written for sisters and it was called Sisters Today. And at the very last page there was an ad and it said, Sister, are you concerned about your drinking? If so, please call this number. Collect. Now I figured that that was a double miracle because out of the 140,000 sisters in the United States of America, I knew I was the only one who had this unique problem of drinking. And the other miracle was that they said call collect. So nobody would ever know that I made the phone call. And so I called this number back in Massachusetts. And I talked to a lady on the phone and I told her lies. You look like you never told lies, any of you. But I had to tell some lies. And I told her that I was moving into a new job and that part was true. I was moving from, you know, early childhood education and primary education and secondary education and I was moving into working with God's big kids like in bishops and priests and nuns. And I told her that that was going to require a lot of knowledge and that a lot of these people with whom I would be working were drinking. And what would I do? And God bless her. She listened to my story and she led me on and she said, oh, well, you know, there are recovery hospitals and the rehabilitation centers and there's literature and there's a program called Alcoholics Anonymous. And I knew I could never be part of that but anyway, I just knew if she would give me the recipe of what I could do that I was smart enough to read and that I would learn. I would learn how to make the right combinations. I would learn how to do what I wanted to do. I wanted to control and enjoy my drinking. That's all. You know, that meant just little bits, you know, not total abandonment, you know, that I had to give everything up. I didn't mean that at all. But what I discovered was I never could do those two things together. If I controlled my drinking, I couldn't enjoy it. Ever try to control your drinking? You know, little sips. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 91, 92, 93, 92, 93, 94, 95, 100, 100, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 38, 39, but I told the nuns a whole bunch more lies, and I said, I have to go to this meeting way down in a place called Quillier. It's quite a distance from where I live because I was so famous and so well-known that if I went to Alcoholics Anonymous in the area, I knew that I'd meet somebody who knew me or a kid I had taught once, or maybe their mom or dad. Oh, I was petrified. At that time, we were wearing a kind of a modified nunny habit, and I changed from my nunny clothes into regular clothes, and I put on a whole bunch of eye makeup, and I arrived at Serenity Hall in Quillier. I was just wondering if Sean ever was in Serenity Hall in Quillier. God, no, Sean. What a place to go. On a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m., here comes Miss Sanctity, you know, to Serenity Hall, and I sat huddled up in a corner with all this stuff on me and petrified. And the man who was leading the meeting said he would sign quotes, quote cards after the meeting. And I figured I'd have to go out and get a quote card because I didn't know what that meant. I thought that wouldn't keep me in the club. And this gentleman there, he was describing his experience, strength, and hope with us, and he fascinated me. He truly did. He was using words that I used to punish the 8th graders for writing on the bathroom walls. And he kept talking about this one that starts with sh. You probably don't know it up here in British Columbia. But he would say that regularly. And then he moved into it. He graduated into one that started with f. And that's the one that fascinated me because the little kids used to come to my office regularly and they'd say, Sister, Big Tommy in the 8th grade, he said the f word. Now that was bad. That was bad in our school. You didn't talk like that in our school. And this man was using this word in sentences. I was fascinated by him. And not only was he doing that, but he was also, he was also able to use this word in all different parts of speech. He could use it as a verb, an adverb, preposition, conjunction, with ed on the end and ing. And I said, and this is going to be my spiritual leader for the rest of my life, was, I knew I'd never go back. I knew I could never go back. But I got into my car and I was crying. It was in the month of December. And, God, I didn't want to be there. I'm sometimes envious of people who walk into Alcoholics Anonymous and just know they've arrived. I didn't do this for a long time. A long, long time. But I got into my car and I was crying. And by that time, the stuff I'd put in my eyes was rolling down my face. You know, that means, ladies, you understand. And I didn't want this. I didn't want to be an alcoholic. And I said the shift word and the foot word all the way home to the convent. If you promise me you'll never tell anybody because you live a long way away from me, I've been known to say those words a few times since. Now, I've cleaned up my act considerably. First of all, I had to learn how to say them and then I had to learn how not to say them. So, that means I'm not advocating that we ought to do it this way at all, but I'll tell you something, that sometimes there's just no substitutes, right? I didn't know, see, I didn't know what to do. And I started reluctantly to find meetings. Now, I was really reluctant. I didn't go to millions of meetings or anything like that. I was real reluctant about everything. But what I found out consistently, whether I went to women's meetings or step studies or book studies or speakers' meetings or participation meetings or lots and lots of meetings like Sean will tell you about, there were loads of meetings in California and there's all kinds of a variety. How can you tell an alcoholic not to drink? And what's more, they were telling me not to drink and it was just before Christmas. Now, I want you folks to know that for somebody in my profession, that Christmas is the only legal time for me to drink. And they were saying, uh-uh, Bea, you don't drink. And I had the misfortune to tell this to one of the ladies in the program and she said, oh, Bea, you know, what we do with this, we don't drink today. We don't do Christmas until the 25th of December and this is only the 11th. Oh, I thought that was brilliant. She said, we do this a day at a time. And so, uh, they were saying don't drink. And then they were saying go to meetings. Now, I didn't know that there was that much at meetings. The meetings I was attending then that was going to get me to feel like the people looked. And that was with that glow. My God, that glow that you see here in abundance. The glow in people's faces. The shininess in their skin. I didn't know that, uh, I might catch some of that, you know, if I could go to meetings. And so I hopped around for meetings and graced you with my presence. And they were telling me strange things. They would say, read the book. What I did with the book was I took it down to the beach one day in December and I corrected it. Well, it looks to me that maybe some of you might have done the same. Now, I didn't care for the way the book was written because, uh, I was an English major when I went to the university. I went to the University of London. And, um, the syntax bothered me. You know, syntax. And, uh, the whole grammatical grouping was awful and I fixed the sentences all around and changed the paragraphs just for your information so that you'd get to know the new edition of The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous if ever it got to be published. And I would go to Serenity Hall occasionally and I would tell these people about my correction of The Big Book and they would look at me sadly and they'd nod their heads and they'd say, Bea, you can just keep coming back here. It was marvelous. I met marvelous compassion in this program because what I know now, I don't have this kind of tolerance myself today for an alcoholic like me. I really don't. With this tremendous Northern Ireland arrogance. I had so much of that. I thought there was some little individual recipe that was going to work for me. That would be different. Would make me a little bit unique. And then they were saying, get a sponsor. Well, I didn't do sponsors real well because sponsors were telling me what to do. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't do directions at all. You know, I took a vow of obedience, incidentally, but I wasn't really to follow directions to do whatever I wanted to do. And these people were telling me real directive kinds of things like, Bea, you need to go to more meetings. Bea, you need to start writing. You know, things like that. They were real, real direct, you know. And you couldn't get around them. And so what I did with some of the ladies, I would interview them and then I would hire them temporarily. And then when I didn't like what they were telling me, I would fire them. And so I bobbed around with sponsors for about a year and a half and was very uncomfortable. I was told also that I should start working the steps. And being the saint I was when I got there, I didn't think it was really neat for me to get really into the steps, especially steps four and five. My God, I've been going to confession for all my life that I could remember. And what else could I do? What else could I have done? You know, my firm opinion and belief is this. Those people who come into the program without any religious background catch on far, far quicker and faster than somebody like me. I almost missed this thing, folks. I almost missed it because I knew too much. I knew too much about this God whom I didn't understand. I had all these preconceived notions and ideas about the way it was supposed to be. And then they were saying, you know, work the steps, work the steps. You know, it's in the working of the steps, and in the new dimension that I've just found in the steps in the last three weeks, if you'll be interested to know. I keep on expanding and understanding that this program just never quits. It never quits. It's one of the, it is the classiest opportunity that I've ever been given. And I have to tell you, I've been given lots of wonderful opportunities in my lifetime. Being part of a fellowship that's called Alcohol Synonymous, whose practice is the 12 steps of this program, is the classiest thing I think I'll ever get to do. It seems to be able to equip me for everything that I will ever, ever have to do. The new dimension that I mentioned a moment ago has to do with this whole business on the promises. I'm baffled when I know now that I didn't catch this until just a few weeks ago, that there are promises given to us after all of the steps. Now, when we talk about the promises in the program, my idea was, you know, the promises at the bottom of page 83 and 84. We will know a new freedom and a new happiness and we won't regret the past. And there are wonderful promises after steps 8 and 9. But what I've discovered is that there are hundreds of other little promises all through the whole book. And all of these promises which I'm beginning to feel, God, I'm beginning to feel them. This little girl with the freckles and the red hair who knew she was doomed and was never going to have any happy days, I've begun to feel these promises. I've begun to understand the promise after steps 1 and 2 where it says that God could and would if he were sought. The three pertinent ideas. And C says, God can be and will. I have a wonderful, I have two wonderful sponsors. I have a man sponsor and a woman sponsor. My man sponsor is called Deke and he has 35 years of sobriety in the world. And my woman sponsor has 10 years or 11 years and her name is Miriam. And for some reason at the hand of these people I have become teachable. And because I've been so dense and because I thought I knew so much and because I have this added deterrent to getting the program called Arrogance and Pride, what was suggested and advised to me was that I would put my own name into that book and that's the only way I've changed it. Because if I read about the, the book out there or it or them or you, I don't catch on. So I have to say, B, guess what? God can and will if you seek him. So I have to put it into the present tense. Fabulous promises on page 63 of the big book. There are 11 of them. I don't know if you ever found them yet, but I'm sure you did. I feel embarrassed even telling you because I know you knew, but I'm only catching on. 11 marvelous promises on page 63. It says that, on page 62 it says, B, this is the how and the why of it, kid. You have to quit playing God because it doesn't work. And hereafter, B, in this drama of life, God is going to be your director. He has to become your new employer. He has to be in charge. That's what it says. And then that marvelous little sentence, B, most good ideas are simple. You don't kiss with these little warnings. It's in here. Most good ideas are simple, B, and you almost missed it, B. And this concept that God was going to be in charge is the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which you, B, are going to pass to freedom. Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is all I ever wanted. And I'm not talking about external freedom. I mean freedom in my soul, freedom in my guts, freedom in my mind. That's all I ever wanted was this internal, internal freedom. This freedom is promised to me after all the steps. And so what it promises me that if I sincerely take this position of letting God take over my life and totally depending on Him, that all sorts of remarkable things are going to happen to me. It's not just like once a year, but continued remarkable things are going to happen to me. A very remarkable thing happened to me in this last month when I got to go to Australia. I was giving a seminar which was totally, totally unrelated to alcoholism. Not related at all in the slightest way. It was to religious people and it was on all kinds of facets of psychology and life and living. And I'm here to tell you that I use the principles of this program and they love me and they want me back because they had up on their, on their walls when they were doing their little processes at their little interims, they were, we are sure that God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. That's what they had, written up. And they've taken pictures and they've sent me all these things that they wrote up as a result of me telling them about how to live life. Because you see, this program is how to live any life. And we've been given this priceless gift. I love that. Priceless gift. The remarkable things are all listed on page 63. You know, we'll enjoy peace of mind. We'll discover we can face life successfully. We'll become more and more conscious of God's presence. We'll be less and less interested in ourselves. We'll be more and more interested in how we can contribute to life. We'll, we'll lose our fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter. And then it talks to us about our resurrection. It says, B, guess what? You will be reborn. You'll be like a newborn baby as a result of letting God take over your life. I didn't catch any of this. You know, none of this. It's marvelous. It's so exciting. It's so, it's so classic. I'm so fascinated that, you know, in moving into the steps, and step four, I heard a speaker talking two weeks ago in Kansas City, and he talks, he talks about picking up the 600-pound pencil. You know, it's so heavy. Oh, it's so hard to do that. And we have to get the right paper. You know, do good handwriting so that somebody will be impressed. Step four, heavy stuff. We get into that material. We get into our resentments and our fear and our sex problems. Everything we'll ever need to know about sex, they say, is on page 69. I don't know that, but that's what they say. Marvelous, the problem. After step four, it says that if we're not doing well with people, it talks about the death sentence, which is called resentment. And then it says, you know, God's going to show you, B, God is going to show you how to get along with people. And how to be kind and tolerant. It promises me that. It promises me that I will outgrow fear. Marvelous. Marvelous. And that speaker that I just mentioned a moment ago said, he talks about the promises after step five when I shared my defective character with another human being. He talks about ten promises on page 75. I never knew about this. He says that if we illuminate all these, nooks and crannies and all of these dark caves of our past, that we will be delighted. It just says, it doesn't mean we'll be comfortable. It says we'll be delighted. We'll be just thrilled. We'll be delighted. And I think the greatest promise of all that has been given to me in this program is, it says, B, you will be able to look the world in the eye. What a wonderful, classy thing for people like us who are so guilt-ridden. Somebody like me in my profession who was overloaded with guilt when I got to this program. Totally down to the ground. I couldn't walk. Today I can hold my head and I can look the world in the eye. It promises me that my fears are going to fall. I can literally feel my fears falling off. And I can move around the universe in peace and ease. On the broad highway with the spirit of the universe. What a fantastic way for people like us to get to live. Who had given up on life, who had given up on one another, who had given up on ourselves, and certainly had given up on God. Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful way for us to get to live. I consider steps six and seven to be what I call the attitude kinds of steps. There's a sort of a readiness, a posture of readiness and willingness that needed to come over me when I got to be as far as step six. Because as I mentioned, I came into this program without any defects of character. So how in God's name would I ever be having God to remove them? You know, how could I ever become entirely ready when I didn't even know I had any? And getting entirely ready for me was awfully hard. When I got to step seven, I had what I consider to be the most fabulous and fantastic spiritual awakening. That I could ever have had either before or since that time. And that was when my God, whom I now understand, appeared to me. And this is what happened. I was kneeling in my room and I was saying the prayer on page 76. By this time I had become willing to follow directions. And I had only become willing to follow directions because somebody in Serenity Hall in Whittier suggested to me that it might be useful for me if I would pray for willingness. So I went home and I prayed for willingness and then I became willing to follow some directions. And so I was following the direction to kneel on my knees and do page 76, which is the seven-step prayer. And the first words, as you probably well know, are, My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. And when I said that and I meant that and I heard myself saying, I had a vision of a Father God who totally and completely accepted me at that moment because I somehow was telling this God that I was accepting myself. I was saying, I'm coming to you, God, just as I am. Now I never knew to do that before because I always thought I had to be good for God. And if you have an Irish Catholic background, like I have, you will also know that you had to be good for God. You had to work hard and you had to pray hard and somehow you had to prove that you could merit God's love and God's grace. And now I know that God is a God of unconditional love. A God who loves me anyway. A God who loves my freckles and my red hair. And a God who loves my Irish temper and my lack of surrender. My God loves me just the way I am. And I venture to tell you people that I would never have been able to hear or understand that God at that moment in time if I had not been accepted and loved and totally unconditionally in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because the people in Alcoholics Anonymous never asked me to be anything except just me. Whether that was crying, which I often was. And Serenity Hall used to call me the crying nun. And so I was doing my seventh step and I heard myself. And then this God appeared in my mind. It was a big God. It was a roomy God. It was an expansive God. And it was a Daddy God. A Daddy that I never knew. I grew up without one. And this Father God was saying, Oh, Bee, are you sure? Are you sure that it's okay for you to give yourself to me, good or bad, because I love you anyhow. It's okay. And at that moment, I understood a self-acceptance that by the grace of God, I have never lost. And I found this marvelous, all-embracing Father God. And I understood the kinds of things that I used to teach other people. I understood in my heart that God had, yes, God had carved my name on the palm of His hand. And that God loved me so much that He would store up my tears and He would put them in a little bottle. I used to tell other people that. I used to interpret Scripture for people and say, you know, God loves you so much that He stores up your tears and He would put them in a little bottle. And God loves you so much that He has carved your name on the palm of His hand. And as I told all the people that before I got sober, I would say, but He didn't carve Bee's name on the palm of His hand because I always felt orphaned and left out and different. And I just knew that I wasn't good enough for God to do that for me. When I took my seventh step, I knew I was. And I knew that God loved me unconditionally. I experienced the freedoms and the promises that we experience after taking steps eight and nine where we do our list of all the people we have harmed and we make amends. And every single one of those promises on page 83 and 84 I have experienced. A new freedom and a new happiness and not regretting the past and not wanting to shut the door on it. And I would know, I would know in my innermost self what serenity means and I would know peace. Oh, God. I would know peace. I never knew peace. I was always churning. And if there wasn't a crisis, I was inventing one. Or I was remembering one. If you're Irish, you'll do that naturally. Anyhow. You know, really. We're moving into one crisis and I just finished one. We're moving into another one. We always have to be living on the bridge of disaster. It's part of our heritage. You know? God. And all those promises. And the last one. Oh, I love it. We will suddenly realize. And suddenly for me happens all the time. I'm having all these little suddenlies. You know. I'm suddenly realizing that God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. Are these extravagant promises? No, no, no. We think not. And they're happening all the time. You know, one condition at the very end of that paragraph is if we work for them. If we work for them. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that I was given the maintenance steps. Step 10, 11, and 12. And the promise is after step 10 that I continue. I continue to search out for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Four things. The four things that can make me uncomfortable. That's all. If I'm uncomfortable inside, it has to be one of those four things or a combination thereof. Page 84 tells me that. And it tells me exactly what I'm supposed to do. And I love this part. I love this part. In step 10, it says to be from the north, the violence says, you know what, B, guess what? You're going to stop fighting. You're going to stop fighting, B. You're not going to have blood and bones and skin all over the place. You're going to stop arguing and you're going to stop retaliating. And you're going to find yourself. This is beautiful. In a position of neutrality. What a wonderful word. In a position of neutrality. And my own opinion is not only about alcohol, not only about whether to drink or not to drink, not only about that, but about everything about which I would want to fight. And that's everything, folks. Everything. I naturally am a fighter. And this program promises me a position of neutrality. Faith and protected. What a beautiful, what a beautiful promise for us. And the promise of continued prayer and meditation for we, you know, somebody like me and you come into the program and you think, well, what could they ever tell me about prayer and meditation? I taught people how to do that. And I come in here to learn about this simple way of being in God's consciousness all the time. All the time. And that what used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of my mind. What a wonderful gift. Wonderful gift. And the gift that's given to us in page 88 and the promise that if I turn my will and my life over to God and if I constantly remind myself that I'm not in it as God anymore, then I'm not in charge. If I say this over and over again, God, you're in charge. You know, your will, not mine, be done. What's going to happen to Bea is that she won't be angry. She'll not be worried. She'll not be frustrated. She'll not be depressed. And it says, and you know what, Bea? You'll become more efficient. I always wanted to become efficient. And you won't become so tired. You won't be tired because you won't be burning up energy foolishly. Wonderful, wonderful way for us to go. Oh, I'm so grateful to God for the promises of this program that I have, I've touched the ice. I've just touched the top of it all. Just touching it. Just now, touching it. And the promises in step 12 that when we start working with other people, that we'll see their loneliness vanish. Have you ever seen people's loneliness vanish? God, isn't that wonderful? And that working with other people will be the bright spot in our life. Don't tell me this is, this, being with you, isn't a bright spot in my life. When I get home to my convent tonight, my nuns will be there and they'll be saying, well, tell us some good AA stories. I'll say, poor dears, you know, they didn't get to, don't get to do what I get to do. It's wonderful. Coming to the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver. Gorgeous room. Beautiful basket of fruit. And I get them. I lay it on. I'm, you know, telling them all the stuff that I get. It's a beautiful treatment, you know? Yeah, boy, I just tell it all. I say, you know, I can't understand why you don't put little bottles of shampoo in my room for me all the time. You know, this is a classy way for us to go. I'm in love with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I say that, I'm reminded of the story, and I'll finish with this, the story of the little prince. I'm sure some of you have read that story where the little prince and the fox meet each other. And the fox says, to the little prince, will you tame me? And the little prince says, tame? What is that? I venture to say that when we come into Alcoholics Anonymous, we come in somehow to become tamed through these 12 steps. And the story goes on to say how the little prince tamed the fox. And every day he would meet the fox and he would come a little closer every day. And the fox would look out at the corner of his eye at the little prince and he would just get a little bit more confidence every time. And the day came when they had to say goodbye. And the fox says, and now I'm going to tell you a very precious secret. And this is what he told him. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. We, in this blessed program of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, we get to see with our hearts. May God bless all of you and thank you.