Why Everything Comes Full Circle in Sobriety – Ann P.

Thank you, Ernie. Good evening, everybody. My name is Ann Packard. I'm an alcoholic. There is no place I would rather be than here tonight. Light or no light, I was kind of hoping maybe we would have this bike handle light because I look better the darker it is. I have been sober 28 years, and the reason I tell you that is not with any sense of great pride. A little, but not a whole lot. Too many people sit and listen to a person talk, and they wonder. They're so busy wondering how long the person's been sober, they don't pay any attention to anything that's being said. I also won't tell my age, because you're wondering about that too. I am 66 years old. Now, I know that's hard for you to believe, but that is the truth. It's honest progress, okay? I was raised in the South, born with three stripes against me, red-headed, left-handed, and an only son. My father had great ideas of what I was going to be, a sports writer. All kinds of outdoorsy things like fishing and so forth. My mother wanted me to be a poetess. She wanted me be a nutritionist. She wanted me to have high press force. They kept after me from both ends until I was half dead, trying to keep up with everybody and ended up doing absolutely nothing. So often I think this happens to only children. We just can't seem to measure up and just finally give in and throw the towel. I was educated, however, after a very rough high school. In my day you were not supposed to be tall. Janet Gaynor and Billy Dove were the girls who were in the movies that everyone admired. I was 5'8", unheard of. All the boys in my school had a vitamin deficiency. I could look over the head of every single one of them when I was dancing. It was very disquieting to me, and I never quite recovered. I have so many ulcers to this day from trying to get myself down in a manageable position. I fell in love with a guy who was the captain of the basketball team, and he left me for the police disorder, and I've never went to that church again. I was sent up to Baltimore to college. They didn't have any... I was a perfect pain in the neck as a college student. Whenever the girls would creep out at night for various reasons, Getting beer, staying out a few hours, even spending nights in fraternity houses. I'd go and tell the housemaidens. I was very popular, as you can imagine. I felt it was my duty. I went to doctor, and I never had any dates. Nobody ever asked me to go anywhere. I was perfectly miserable and I was studying so hard And all the other girls were having such a hell of a good time And I went home to my father and I complained I said, how come I'm not having any fun? And all these girls were doing these things And he said, don't you worry little girl Those boys don't have any respect for those girls I want you to know Every one of those girls married a millionaire there. It was my first encounter with how you have to unlearn everything that you're ever taught. I married an alcoholic. I couldn't understand what was the matter with a man. Married to me and running out at night and carrying on, coming home four o'clock in the morning than where I came from in Chapel Hill, when husbands started acting like this, you went home to your daddy. I had a father complex anyway, coupled with a mother fixation. It wasn't until I got into alcoholism that I found out every girl living has got a father conflict coupled with a mother fixedation. But I didn't know it At the time, I took my baby and I went home to my daddy in Chapel Hill. And it was there that I met the Navy. There was a war going on. World War II. Every time I think about the Navy to this day, I get mixed feelings. I realize now I have been uncomfortable my entire life I don't think I have ever ever been comfortable that's the only word I can think of and when I got with a lady and I took the first double step I was comfortable that is to me the most heavenly feeling I have had lots of feelings in my life I have had lots of pleasures, including ice cream sundaes and all that kind of stuff. But that first shot of straight whiskey did something to me, and I never forgot it. And I pursued it from then on. Now, I don't go into a long harangue about every little detail that happened to me. And, you know, you can go crazy listening to a speaker sometimes who gets all mixed up about whether he had a ham sandwich or a cheese sandwich or whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday or no, he believes it was Friday or if it's toasted or untoasted. And you just feel like you're going to lose your mind if he doesn't get on with it. And he gets through about half an hour or so and we still haven't even got him into the booth. He's still back in his childhood somewhere. so I choose a few incidents that will show you the progression of my illness. I don't make a smutty talk either. I feel like that's more exciting to you if you use your imagination. I don' t think you've got to go into a whole lot of dirty details about any names. When I start telling you about my life, you can pretty well put things together, what was going on. Well, I decided that I needed to be of service to others. So many alcoholics get hung up on this when you begin to feel worthless and try to do something for someone else. I went to work in a drawing-out hospital. And also it was a maternity hospital for unreg mothers. and I chose the unwed mothers because I wanted to have nothing to do with alcohol naturally and I was perfectly miserable I couldn't understand why they were in the place they were In and they couldn't understand why I wasn't the safe I was in and we met at Impass and I was fired and I never did another thing for another living soul until I got into I thought, it's nice. I got to even wear them all. After this bitter experience, I decided what I needed was romance. I was 27 and I married a young man, 21, and he never let can forget it. That marriage was the most awful marriage that you can imagine. Every nasty, vile, rotten, stinking thing that you could say to another person was sex. He used to throw me down the steps. He told me that after having had all this experience with an old woman, that he was going to leave me and go down to Florida and become a gigolo. And I said to him, well, if you're going to be a gigolos, you're gonna have to learn how a huge certain point. And he says to me, I worked in battle in the Civil War. It was just one of these things that left a bitter taste in my mouth and I decided to give up moon. I was all the time giving up moons. I started giving up moon when I was about ten years old. I then decided I needed glamour. This shows the progression. And of all places to decide to go to get glamour, I went to Arthur Murray. I became an Arthur Murray dancing teacher. There are very few professions on the face of this earth in which you are in closer contact with the customer than you are at our heart. So every day I had a choice of whether I was going to sink or whether it was going to shake and I used to be reported by my pupils as they would say, I think the teacher has a nervous distortion. I taught at that school and invented a way of dancing they use today in case any of you have seen it. It is called, Let the Pupil Dance Alone to improve his footwork. I would stand as far away from the pupil as possible and tell him to dance toward me so that I could watch his footwork. They are still using it, and I have never gotten a damn sense. I wanted to be discovered. We used to have a big television show on Sunday nights. And I thought maybe somebody would notice me. but the only thing they ever let me show were my feet. Do you remember those feet? If you ever saw the program, those two poor beautiful feet doing the magic step at the beginning of the program. Those are my feet and nobody ever asked me to sign a a contract and I left. I then began to go into hospital. I was getting very ill. I went into a hospital, and I was so depressed and suicidal that the doctor took one look at me and he said, you know what's the matter with you? You've got all kinds of crap in your brain. You have got bad thoughts. You are just a perfect mess and what I'm going to do is just knock them all out of your head. Electric shock was being used in that said. He said, I'm going to give you less shock treatment and by the time I am finished with you, you won't have any of these bad thoughts left. You're going to have a clean seat above the net and we can start all over and see if we can get something going for you. So he gave me 21 shock treatments and he was absolutely right. I did not know my name. I did not know where I was, I didn't know what time it was, I didn t know what in the hell was going on. And he looked very pleased. But then he said to me, What is going on in your mind? And I said, well, I don't know why, but for some strange reason, I feel like I'd like a drink. Absolutely amazing. Everyone that I've ever talked to in the name has said they don't identify with me. They'll come up and they'll say, I don't identify with a lot of the things you say. And I never did any of those things you said. And I always say, well maybe you never had to come. But I'll tell you one thing. Every girl I've ever talked to has always wanted to go to New York. And after I finished with Arthur Murray and the mental hospitals, I took off to New york. in New York, I met an Arab. Now, I'm not talking about some Arabs that sell vegetables in the streets. I'm talking about a real live Arab. One of those ones with the headband that sweeps through the United Nations. You've seen them. They sweep through the Unites Nations. He was with the United Nations and he thought I was really neat. The first time a man had really seemed to care too much about me for a long time, he said that he thought that the United States was too small for me and that he was going to fix that. And so I married him, and we went to a radio. Now I will tell you one place on the face of this earth that a drunken woman has got no business going. I think subconsciously I thought that if I that in a place that was dry enough, maybe I'd dry up too. His family took a very dim view of me. I was drunk whenever possible, and I had one of my experiences there that I thought would be the key. I looked out my window one morning, and there was a bunch a little goat running down the street with a little flowered skirt on it. Well, now you see something like this and you don't tell anybody. And I didn't. I was perfectly miserable and every morning I would look out there and they'd come and they just had a little way of plodding along, you know, and their little skirts would just... I was desperate. I needed a drink, something awful, and nobody was coming. These people are morons! They don't drink! Where's he going to get a bottle in Arabia for the love of heaven? But then as so often happens with us, we get a break. I looked out the window, and there was an Englishman, walking carefully. He had a bag under his arm. How do we know these things? I've never seen the guy before. People have such funny ways of describing alcoholics anyway. You know, we're always put to hang on to a lamp post. I have been sober in AA 28 years and lived a long time before that and I have never seen a drunk in a tuxedo hanging on a lamp host in my life. Also, over top of these heads they have hooks. Now what's that supposed to mean? Alcoholics don't hip-hop, throw up. Social drinkers hip-hup. It's because of all that crap they eat when they're drinking. All that good stuff. and they have a funny idea of how we walk. Somebody says, oh here's a drunk person walking down the street and they're following all the furniture and they carry on and they fall down two or three flights of steps. That's the first way we walk, we don't walk that way. And the alcoholic with any sense knows if he shuts one eye he can get through any door in the world. And when we are sober, we walk carefully. We can't take too many chances, you know, especially when we're carrying precious cargo. I approached the gentleman. I said, either way a girl can get a drink around here I'm out in the middle of the desert and he said, yes it just so happens that he had some with him and we retired to a little cave called a cafe of some kind and while we were drinking and I got confidential you know how you get confidential children, Jesus got the secrets in the world. You have two or three drapes and you tell it to the world, you can't find a bartender, you tell it to the nearest person. I said to him, there's something I've got to ask you about. And he said, is it about the goat? Oh, it seems that in Arabia they put stripes on goats to keep them away from each other. The little children run around naked and the goats down. And it's fun to, you know, keep the milk for the families, you know, if the little goats were running around free, people would steal the milk or the baby goats would drink it or something, but you know that wonderful feeling of release, it's like when somebody says your car's out front. You know, there are times in your life when you're drinking and you just gotta have something to keep you going. We left Arabia, my poor husband, the Arab, and he took me over to a country called Somaliland. It's on the east coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean. It's an equator. It's 110 at all times. Just exactly when I needed it. I was approached when I entered that country by a group of young Somali men, aged about 25. They spoke Somali, and they spoke Arabic, and a little Italian. But their country was to get its independence in 1960, and they were very anxious to learn English and learn to speak it and write it. They were highly intelligent, and naturally they picked me, mainly because I was the only American in the country. And I completed. And you know when you are down and out and sick and drunk and somebody asks you to do something like this and you burst into tears because then I knew why I had been put on the earth. You know, to bring a little light into a darkness. And I cried and sobbed and carried on and got very emotional about myself and how worthwhile I was Oh, it was really maudlin. I taught those poor boys for two solid years. You know, I have a southern accent. Oh, in case you hadn't heard it. And when I'm drunk, it's worse. I am the original Magnolia Blossom when I am drunk. And by the time I had finished with those poor boys, for two years they were all speaking English with a drunken sputter after. The British consul flew in too. He had heard about this lovely American woman who was doing so much for these boys and all this stuff. And he came to one of my classes and I was telling him the story of a little red lion in his hood. And they didn't even know what a wolf was. He had a heart attack just from the sheer shock of it when these boys started speaking. In 1960, I was sober by then. I got sober in 57. 60, I'm looking at the television because I want to watch and see about the Somalis getting admitted to the United Nations. I was real interested, and I said to myself, maybe one of my students will have been chosen to go to the U.N. The Somalis had a policy intelligence to have done that. They sent a guy who didn't speak English at all rather than send one of mine boys who would say, you all are impenetrable and God only knows what. I had a wild time in Africa. You know, I always try to hang on to the old traditions of my family. Why is it that the worse we get and the more we sit down with our alcoholism, the more when you become conscious of our family traditions and how things are done in my family and you can't even lift a finger and you're worried about principles. I had to have fried chicken on Sunday because I was from the South. And the temperature was 110 and cooking over charcoal, and I got to have five chickens. And you don't send out for it, you know. So I had a bunch of rotten little bantam chickens sitting out chirping and tearing on in a little coop out back. And I treasured them, because it was a sign of my up-spring. And one night a great big snake came and wrapped himself around my kitten troop. A python! They got him over there. And the house boy came running to me and said, And I said, you stop that. Just because I'm living in Africa doesn't mean I have to put up with this kind of thing. And he went away. The Arabs said, he's probably got a whiff of your press. They said he was a Muslim snake. I don't know how I lived through the time. Running away in the bushes. They say, be careful. You know, there are lions there. They've got those short-tailed lions over there. You don't have those ones that you like to have in the zoos with the long tails with the fluff on them. They have mean lions He was a little short-tailed, very ferocious. I'd go out in the bushes anyway. I'd say, I'm an American citizen. He wouldn't say a bite more. How can we be so arrogant? And when I got home over on Limey's bed, I put my foot down on the floor and there's a clock closing. I'd damn near have DTs. I don't know how I used to do it. I really don't. But I did. It's funny now. But I came back to the States, and the first thing that happened to me was that I lost an Arab. And Arabs aren't easy to come by. And a lot of other awful things began to happen to me. I lost the custody of my child. And a lot of other awful things began to happen to me. I lost the custody of my child. My first husband, who was an attorney, had never been in a drying-out place. He'd never had electric shock treatment. He'd ever been picked up for drinking. He never told anybody he was drinking. He went into court and he looked good. I've been a nut-hazard, electric shock running all over the world, married three times, divorced three times and I found out something. A drinking woman hasn't got a ton of experience. You're wrong no matter what. If you have a reputation of being a drunk, I couldn't stand the change, and it just told me that he didn't even think I could have this kind of privilege with his son. And he took him away from me. And my friends, well-meaning probably, and my family thought this will bring her to her knees. They have now taken her child from her, and that is all she has left. But you know how we are. That isn't what got us. I drank worse. Everything was gone. There was no reason for me to continue. I became more and more suicidal and more and less depressed. Now, you know I have always had a terrible time with dressing when I was drinking. It is a very serious problem for alcoholics. I didn't have any elastic in any of my clothes anymore. It was unheard of. I put safety pins everywhere. I'd sometimes have four or five safety pins in my ear, the pins alone. Not to mention my brassiere, what was left of it, on that trip. I mean, I couldn't have gotten to an airport to get on a plane. I was afraid of drones. You know, I'll show you somebody really dumb. An alcoholic who's drinking and wears a pullover sweater. You can get in there and never get out of it as long as you live. They're just coming to find you someday. Caught up in you. You've got to be careful what you're putting on. And then all of a sudden you go in a bar and have a cup of drinks and you get a lady. And get that sexy feeling. And, you know, you sort of start moving around like this. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but you just feel like doing that, you now? And I'm parading around, and there's a couple guys over in the corner just having his shirts. I didn't know if their problem was. And I look down, and my purple sweater and the arms had gotten down to my ankles. I mean, it just looks the way I like it. Also, I found out about blouses. God help a person who bought a blouse with a button down the back. She couldn't wear it, that's all. I always wore a dress that opened all the way down front. At night, I got so good at it, I could take all of my clothes off my dress what was left of my bikini my underpants and my hoes all in one piece just solve it just take it all put it on his chair okay now I got up in the morning and trying to hold onto this little half job I had I couldn't be looking for this and looking for that I gotta have it consolidated like that it was kind of comforting too at night time you know how lonely you get look over there and look kind of like a person kind of talk to it a little you know well one night I know that during the night I knocked over the ashtray, and when I got up in the morning it was all over the floor. I was so sick, I didn't know how I was going to make it. I was a perfect mess. I had forgotten to save a drink. I remember going to the waste paper basket and trying to find a long cigarette butt, but I had dumped some beer cans in there and they had gotten the cigarettes all wet. And I took them out and put them on the radios and tried to get it dried out enough to light them. It was one of those awful mornings when you just sit there, that's all. And the room was in turmoil and my little friend on the chair had fallen off on the floor. So I gathered him up and proceeded to pull it up over my little body and I went out to get on the bus and I won't go into getting on the Bus you know what it's like to get on a bus. You don't know whether to give your hand, or whether to take the change, or whether you give the change. It's just ghastly, just getting on the damn thing. So I got on the bus and I got in the back and I proceeded to have dry teeth. Now there is nothing on earth more wonderful than to be sitting in the bed of a bus having dry teeth and pretending you're coughing. doesn't fool anybody. And in the midst of all this, four perfectly retarded little high school girls got on that bus. Nasty fucking things out of us all. They had on little blue boomers and little blue uniforms, Little blue socks, little two-laces, pencil boxes. It was repulsive. And they became familiar. In fact, they became hysterical. And I'm sitting there in the back of the bus, and I'm saying, Isn't it awful the way the younger generation has no respect for anything? And the more I became aware of these girls, I realized they were looking at my legs. Now my legs aren't that funny. finally, summoning up every ounce of strength I had, I looked down at my legs. And in my holes were cigarette butts, little pieces of paper, objects, burned-out matches. It What is the most ungodly-looking thing you have ever seen? What are you going to do? Take it out on the bus? Proceed to the nearest and different thing again? I found myself in a situation. You know what happened to me? Something snapped right here. I could hear it. It went, pah, just like that. In my brain, I said to myself, you are sitting on a public spot like a human cross badger. This is not your first husband, your second husband, or your third husband. This is the cruel courage who took away your child. This is not your Aunt Jessie, who has made your life so miserable since you've been living with her. This is NOT your boss! This is what alcohol has done to you. And that was my body. You know, I got sober. man. Every time I have a girl come and heap on my shoulder, oh, that's the most horrible experience ever, so humiliating, oh dear, I'll never, I said, good! The most wonderful thing that can happen to a woman is to have a humiliating experience that is so damn humiliating that she'll never recover from it. You know, every time I think about taking a drink, you know what I think of her? That's right. And every time that's when those shitty buses go by, I think about it. That was it for me. Ego deflation, that depth, I suppose, is what they call it. Now, I came in here a year. I haven't had a drink since. It used to be an honor. Now people, when I say I've never had a drunk for 28 years, they go, yuck, as if it was just Prince Tassie who had a record like that. I don't feel that way. It's not my fault I stayed sober. I had a lot of narrow seats. One time I got to liquor store, and they'd just closed the door. So I'm not going to brag about how I just sat and read the big book and stayed sober all those years. But I have a theory. And the longer I've been in A.A., the more convinced I am it's true. For every rotten, stinking, vile thing that's ever happened to you in your drinking, if you stay sober and are ready, every one of those things will come full circle for you. It may not be exactly the way you thought it would happen, but something will happen to make it come full cycle. I'm going to give you a couple of examples to make you see what I mean if you're drunk something will come around the corner to make things right for you and you'll never know it if you are sober it will come along the corner and you will see the connection I'm one of these people when I first got sober after all my horrible experiences I used to paint around in my little apartment and wonder why in hell I got sober what was I going to do with my life my job reputation was finished I'd had three husbands and three divorces lost my child lost my teeth you know I never did know what happened to them I woke up one morning looked in the mirror and didn't have any more teeth It's just one of them I don't know whether somebody knocked them out Whether they fell out Whether I knocked them Out myself on the bed I never found them I looked around I saw five of them Gone forever I saw that but I never smiled It was two years in AA Before I smiled I'll tell you People thought I was a ghost I just didn't have any teeth Didn't have any keys. Couldn't afford to get in. Walkin' round my apartment wonderin' why I'm a same-sex. Callin' the sponsor. Really, Captified. Oh, my God. Really Captified! I hated Captified, Captified made me sick! I still kind of wink when I hear Ray Lee. I got so mad at Chapter 5 and my sponsor for telling me every five minutes to read that thing that I tore the whole damn chapter out of the book. I just ripped it right out and threw it in the trash. And I think I stomped on the chair. And my sponsor said, do you feel better? And I said, yes. And I hate that chapter, and I won't have anything to do with it. In later years, when I tried to get a girl to buy a big book, and she said she didn't have any money, I said, I'll lend you my book. Oh, I don't care for the big books. I'm not much of a reader. I said everything to claim my money, and I said, it's in your mind. You can read it. It won't cost you a penny. And I give the big book away to the girl, and she complains immediately. Why did you swap business with me? I said yeah, I tore it out on purpose. I said that's the chapter where Bill Wilson talks about sex. and I don't think you're ready for it there are an awful lot of big books sold in my group what happened was that my first husband the father of my son who was a terrible alcoholic went into an alcoholic's person. He never went to a gang. And when he was in a deep depression, he went out in the woods near Bethesda and he blew his brains out. And my son came and wrapped on my door. and at that time I had a place for him to sleep I had enough money to feed him and take care of him it would have been an awful thing if I had been drunk and for the first time in 25 years I went into my bedroom and got on my knees and thanked God for my survival And I have never, since that time, ever wondered why I was bothering these folks. Now, I've been sober about six years now, eh? And I got a call from in the group that a bunch of young ladies in a very fancy school in Roller Park wanted someone to come and speak to them on alcoholism when I take the assignment. And I said, I would speak to you later. I love to talk. I don't know whether you gathered that, but it is. So I went down to this fancy school, And there they were, in their little blue gloomies. And their little blues and their corns and their little socks and their two laces and their pencil boxes. And I was a very serious person when I was in that stage of my life. I didn't laugh much. And I gave them a very stern talk on the physical aspects of alcoholism, and they were bored to death. And I looked down at him, and I couldn't stand another minute when I told him about the trip on the bunker. And one girl in the back said, I had an older sister sell an old bag on a bus like that full circle I began to laugh I hadn't laughed for a long time at my own self and I began to realize that one of the best ways in this world is to laugh I felt better about myself. I went down to Florida one time where the Lord arranged a thing. You know that man who was going to be a gigolo? Tell me, you regret it? I went to Florida on a vacation and by God in my head, I ran into him. He looked good. Somebody had been keeping him up, I'm telling you. I had the most bitter memories about that man. He had destroyed my self-esteem and had humiliated me and busted me up and everything else, and I hated him like poison. I couldn't even mention his name. And when he played Open the Door Richard, his name was Richard, I would just turn the radio off. And he stood there and he looked good. And so did I. I was at my very best, getting ready to go hard like this. And it's funny. I looked at him and we didn't speak because we didn' t hear each other. He was red, I was alright. And I was red, he was alright." And it is so funny sometimes in a sobriety how everything falls away if you had held in your heart this hatred and bitterness so long and you just look at the person and it was gone. I had a lot of other things happen to me that I can consider full circle, but I don't like to go on and on and on. I want to conclude with just one example that is probably the most important. It's about God. I hadn't had much contact. I had become very bitter. I had been turned away at the rail because I was divorced. I had sworn vengeance on God and the Church and everything else. Anyone who ever hurt me in my thinking, I was going to be even worse. And I had a spiritual feeling, because I tried one day to imagine how I could describe the very best I could, the way I feel about alcoholics and animals, and what has happened to me in my life. And it took me back to Africa. I was such a mess, such a pompous mess in Africa. I was so smart and I knew everything. And when we heard an eclipse of the moon, all of the Somali people were standing up on a hill. And they were yelling and shouting and feeling untamed and drawn. And I remember sitting in my smug way and drunk and saying to myself, such ignorance. They were afraid of an eclipse, and tomorrow in English class I'm going to set them free. So I went and dropped it in English Class the next day, and I took a lemon and I took a grapefruit and I began trying to explain to them how you have an eclipse and I got all mixed up about it and I dropped them on the floor and I made a perfect fool of myself. But I did say to them, you see, you don't have to be afraid of anything. This is perfectly natural and if you notice that's the nature you don' t have to go into this carrying on and yelling and screaming. Young man who was the leader of the group turned to me and he said No disrespect. But you are wrong. We are Martians. We believe in God. We were not crying out in fear and anger. we were crying out in great joy because in this minute our experience that God always brings back the light after the darkness if only you asked him thank you so much and rarely have we seen a person Who has so thoroughly delighted an audience on the opening session of our Session by the Sea, and as a little token of our appreciation would like to give you this gift in our gratitude. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's not a dirty question, is it? I don't think so. Now I'd like to ask Bob and Ann to lead us in the Lord's Prayer, close your eyes. in the Lord's prayer. Close the meeting. Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not in temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen keep coming back thank you dear