When Higher Power Was Giving Out Ears I Thought He Said Beers and I Said Two Large Ones 🤣 – Sister M.

About This Speaker Tape

Sister Maurice, a Catholic nun and member of Alcoholics Anonymous with over 39 years of sobriety, shares her story at the 17th Annual Pennsylvania State Convention. She opens with warmth and humor about her Bronx roots and her dual association with the Bronx and the Vatican. She describes herself first and foremost as an alcoholic, emphasizing that this identity is the most important thing about her at any point on a clock. She explains how she came to the Forest Hills group in Queens and was welcomed without hesitation, and how she eventually moved from having to go to AA to choosing to live the AA way of life.

Sister Maurice traces her alcoholism back to the death of her father Maurice on January 5, 1967, when she describes going way inside and coming out with a drink. She was a first grade teacher who found herself unable to resist the craving for alcohol even at 10 in the morning, learning that willpower was futile against the disease. She shares vivid scenes from her active alcoholism: punching her sister in a hospital hallway while visiting their mother, crashing into a parked mail truck on Wall Street, threatening her friend Rose's life over keeping secrets, and driving to the Palisades Parkway contemplating suicide. Through it all, she maintained outward appearances while her values, integrity, and spiritual life died.

Her story reaches its turning point when her sister and friend Rose intervened, bringing her boss to confront her and arrange treatment at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. For 27 and a half days she went through the motions, even becoming an unofficial therapist to other patients while banging her head against her room wall during free time, screaming at Higher Power. On day 27 and a half, something broke through and she truly accepted she was an alcoholic. She describes three conversions in recovery: intellectual, moral, and spiritual. She credits the fellowship with teaching her that spirituality is about relationships, with a higher power, with others, and with herself, and with helping her discover her own inherent goodness rather than the worthlessness she had always believed defined her.

Sister Maurice closes with her belief that the gift of sobriety is an interruption of death, given so that the recipient can carry the message and walk with others. She frames her over 39 years of sobriety not as a guarantee but as a daily reprieve, beginning each morning with the announcement before Higher Power that she is an alcoholic and a prayer for daily bread. Her message is one of gratitude, dignity, and the conviction that no one stays sober alone.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with humor about the Bronx and the Vatican, thanks the convention hosts and committee
• 5:00 Declares being an alcoholic is the most important thing about her at any point on a clock, describes morning ritual of announcing it before Higher Power
• 10:00 Describes the disease taking over her teaching life, unable to resist cravings at 10 AM, running to the convent for drinks between classes
• 17:00 Tells the story of punching her sister at the hospital, the pint of Christian Brothers brandy in her purse, patients flooding the hallway to watch two nuns fighting
• 24:00 Wall Street car accident, waking up in a strange convent, threatening to kill Sister Rose to keep the secret
• 31:00 Boss confrontation after complaints about her drinking, successfully charms the boss into dismissing the concerns through denial
• 37:00 Father Maurice's death from alcoholism at age 58 on January 5, 1967, the beginning of her own drinking, bargaining with Higher Power at night while clutching rosary beads
• 44:00 Intervention by her sister and Rose, sent to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois for 28-day treatment
• 50:00 Day 27 and a half breakthrough acceptance, the Lutheran minister counselor dancing around the room, sober since April 17, 1971
• 56:00 Three conversions in recovery: intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Closes with the belief that sobriety is an interrupted death and a call to carry the message