Willingness Without Action Is Just Praying for a Hole Without Digging – Carrie B.

All right, everybody, I'm Julian. I'm an alcoholic. Let's have an 8-day meeting. Welcome to the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual and our personal stories describes in our own language and from our own point of view the way we establish our relationship with God. These give us a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what's happened in our lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on a bluechipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too, I must have this thing. I was given the privilege of chairing this meeting and introducing our speaker, and I was so thrilled because this woman, this woman is a real shining light in the program and in the whole world, not just in AA. She makes me laugh, she's honest, her integrity is supreme, and I just really like this lady, and you will too, Carrie Bell. That's a lot to live up to. Thank you, Julie. My name is Carrie Bell. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Carrie. Hi, y'all. And isn't it a beautiful night tonight? Yay. Okay. Well, okay. Take a deep breath. And my prayer is that God says through me what you need to hear and doesn't say through me what you really shouldn't hear, which I'm really the queen of doing sometimes, so let's just hope that I can bite my tongue on that. So as I said, my name is Carrie Bell. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is February 2nd, 2008. I do have a sponsor. She's in Africa right now. That doesn't mean I get away with. Murder, though. She's great. She has a sponsor who has a sponsor, and I sponsor a lot of women who I am grateful for every single day. I absolutely love it. That's when my program just really took off is when I began to work with other women. I love it. My home group is the Fifth Tradition, and I love my home group also. I, um... grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and until I was age 12, I was Daddy's princess. My parents were Catholic and unable to have children. For the first 12 years, they were married, and then they had me and they just doted on me, and I milked it for everything it was worth. I was Daddy's little princess, got everything I wanted. Everything was wonderful. Um... I'm going to kind of jump in. I'm going to kind of jump in. I'm going to kind of jump right into it because I'm going to really try to be cognizant of the time, and I try to do this in an organized way, which never really works out for me, but we'll just see how it happens. Um... When I was 12 years old, this is when everything changed in my life. This is actually when I discovered alcohol, too, because I needed it bad at 12. Um... Which is kind of late, I understand, but... You know... You know... Up until that, at that time, I was relatively happy and didn't need a drink. Um... When I was 12 years old, I and nine others of my family... Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay. I and nine others of my family had gone from Key West to the Dry Tortugas, which is 30 miles away from Key West, on a day trip. Coming back from the Dry Tortugas, our boat came down in a wave, and the boat split... the bow split open, and the boat took on water, and in 98 minutes, in three seconds, the boat capsized. And in that time, we had enough time to pull four life jackets out from the hold of the boat. So, this was me and my four little sisters. So, there are five of us, and only eight years between us. We're Catholic. Did I mention that? Um... So, my youngest sister is only eight years younger than I am. So, there are five little girls. There's my mother, who can't swim, my father, his parents, and his baby sister, who was 16. So, we were basically floating in the Gulf of Mexico, 30 miles off Key West, in an area where we happen to know they hold Mako shark fishing tournaments every year. And, um... You know, when something like this happens, your brain doesn't let you take it in. So, I just want to assure you, if you're ever really scared, you're probably not really in danger. I don't... I just want to give you that. Um... This is another story for another day, but we were in that water for 26 hours, which means we were in that water overnight. Um... My mother can't swim. My baby sister couldn't swim. My mother's legs got wrapped up in a Japanese man-of-war. She was in very serious, um... very serious condition. Here's the miracle. I don't... I didn't call it a miracle then. I call it a miracle now. The next day, my father, who was a navigator in the Air Force, he's doing all this kind of stuff, and I don't know what it means, but he sees some islands on the horizon. And those are called the Marquesas. And if anybody's familiar with this area down there, you might know what that is. These are some fishing islands. This is basically a mangrove that a few more mangroves grew up. And they call them some fishing islands, but they're not islands, okay? People built docks on them and put boats there. Anyhow, um... A man... So my dad took my sister, my grandmother, and my mother in an igloo cooler that was in the hold in the bottom of the front of the boat. He dove down underneath and pulled it out, if you can imagine that, how much strength that took. And he took the... who were the weakest ones, and he swam for those islands. And he was found by a fisherman, which is just amazing that he was found. Um... Even more amazing, they came back and found us. And we were just bobbing in the water. You know, the life jackets were long gone. They were waterlogged, and the equipment on this boat was not very good. Um... The boat with the igloo cooler gone had sunk. So that's, as I said, a long story. The upshot being that, um... That's when I started drinking. Um... Everybody said that we were blessed by God to have been saved, and it was a miracle, it was a miracle. And in my head, I had only turned 12, just right before this. And I'm thinking, um... If God was with us so much, why did this happen in the first place? You know? I was raised with no religious training, and this was the question that I had. I felt doomed. I felt like somehow I had cheated death, and I became a very, very depressed little girl. Okay? Um... My mother's an alcoholic, and, um... I had learned how to make gin and tonics real well. And, um... So, when that summer was over and we came back to Sarasota, um... at night when I would make her a gin and tonic, I just started making one for me. One. Turvis Tumbler. They make them in Bradenton, Turvis Tumbler. So we had a lot of them. This big. I would make a tur... I would make a gin and tonic for me. And the first time I told my, um... story in AA, I said that the first time that I actually drank was when I was 16. I forgot about those four years that I drank alone from ages 12 to 16. Absolutely forgot. Absolutely forgot about them. They didn't come back to me until later. It's crazy how this works. But I drank totally alone every night in the kitchen. I would make a big deal about how I'll clean up the kitchen because I got extra bonus points from, you know, the Barons. Um... But it's because there was an ice maker in the kitchen and they kept the Tanqueray in the ice maker. You know. And I knew how to make a gin and tonic. And so I was out there just getting drunk every single night. And, you know, I didn't really think about it because it worked so well. Um... For the first few months after the boat wreck, they didn't do therapy. There was no therapy. We were all so glad to be alive and we figured that that was it. And nobody even thought about therapy. Um... I would wake up in the middle of the night convulsing in my bed. And so the solution for that was to chain me to my bed. So for the first year after the boat wreck, I was chained to my bed every night. And, um... God, you know, if you learn to pass out instead of go to sleep, you don't convulse in your sleep. So they figured I was doing much better. And, you know, I figured a way around that. So that was good alcoholic thinking at age 12. I was, you know, doing well. Um... So I learned, um... I learned to turn to alcohol. And, uh, you know, those promises came true. It solved all my problems when I was 12 years of age. And, um... Man, when I first came in, even with my very first sponsor, I didn't even remember that drinking. It just blows me away that I didn't think of that. So... Anyhow, um... Y'all won't believe this, but two years later, the day after I turned 14, we had stopped vacationing. in Key West, Florida. Um... Because none of us would get on a boat. I might have if I was drunk, but nobody thought to ask. Um... So we were in Beach Mountain, North Carolina, doing this brilliant sport called rock sliding, where you basically walk out to the middle of a roaring river, and you sit down on these seaweed-encrusted rocks. Okay? And you let the current kind of... push you down the river, which is really great fun, but if you think that through, there's gotta be an end to that somewhere. And there are a lot of designated places you can do this, but we were told not to go to this one particular area, so we went there. And, um... I was the oldest, and I was... I don't know. I don't think I was the bravest. I think I was just the... Well, I was the alcoholic, so I went right out and did it. And, um... At the very end of this particular one, there was this log that you were supposed to grab to go off to the side, and I hit a bump so that to catch my balance, I kind of instinctively leaned back. And when I leaned back, I went under the log without grabbing it to go off to the side. So I went under this waterfall, and I fell 250 feet into, um... sharp, jaggedy rocks. It wasn't a beautiful pool like you see people falling into waterfalls. It was a gross, sharp, raggedy, you know, batch of rocks. And it continued on, you know, with this waterfall. And a sewer line had opened in it the week before. And, um... If anybody ever wants to hear this story, this is definitely for another day, but the body went this way, and I went that way. And that's a whole other story, but it's pretty cool. Um... So, um... Anyhow, I was rescued, and I'd cut my femoral artery, filleted my thighs, broken my kneecap. I was a mess. I was really a mess. I was in ICU for quite a long time. Um... They were not sure if I would keep my legs, if I would walk again, blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm 14 years old. My will to live is very strong. And I was up and out of there in six weeks. So that's very good news. Um... I was mechanically injured, but the more serious thing was that I had an infection known to mankind running through my body. Um... The real drag was I couldn't get alcohol in there. Um... Fortunately, they had me on a real strong dip of morphine the whole time I was in there. And, um... That was awesome, because they didn't know that I was on alcohol, you know? And they knew that I was hurt, and they really were very liberal with that medication. And, um... I liked it, and I liked it a lot. And they felt very sorry for me. And if I complained, even the teeniest bit, they cranked that sucker up. And, um... I hallucinated, and I did amazing drawings, and, um... Everyone... Everyone thought it was, like, horrible, poor Carrie. And I figured, as long as I'm not losing my legs, this is a good summer, you know? So... That all sounds pretty harrowing, and it kind of is, and it really sets up the rest of my life, which is that I was always seeking God, always, always seeking God, because at 12 and 14, I felt like I had cheated death, and I felt like somehow, like, you know, the Final Destination movies, I really felt like, somehow, like I was on the death list, and I had been overlooked. And I became extremely introverted, and extremely terrified at everything. Naturally, I had PTSD. I had a very heightened startle reaction in school. My God, if somebody dropped a book, I'm like, and, you know, teachers did not know what to do with me. I was terrified of everything. And, um... So I just started drinking more, because that really helped. I mean, that really calmed me down. And nobody knew I was drinking. Nobody knew I was drinking. Here I am. I'm a young girl, and I'm drinking all by myself, and nobody even knows I'm drinking. And I even forgot it for a while. So that just really shows you the insidious nature of this thing. And, um, clearly, you know, I had, I had, I had, um, exchanged one spirit for the spirit that I really needed so, so badly. But I had no spiritual teachers in my life. Um, my parents had basically left the church. I, I had no way to find out about God. And any feelings I had about God were that if He ever found me, He was gonna zap me, because He had overlooked me, you know, after all these tries of trying to get me. Um, and that sounds really silly, but I really felt that way. I really felt like I was living on borrowed time from the time I was fourteen on. When I was sixteen, I was in a very minor car accident, and that just made things worse. Um, so, um, let's see. In my senior year, I met a boy, and, um, he had hair down to his hips, and he used to call me up every night on the phone and play Stairway to Heaven, and I fell in love with him big time. And, um, he also, he also sold drugs at school, and, um, well, he sold joints, and, um, and, uh, yeah. He's actually the father of my child. Anyhow, that happened much later, I assure you. But, um, anyhow, um, he was very, very shy also, and, um, anyhow, we were invited to this party, and, um, this party was the night before the SATs, and, uh, I remember thinking, okay, I'm going to show these people. These people have not known me the whole time I've been in school. They've thought I'm like this quiet little mouse of a girl who won't say boo to a fly. I'm going to go to this party, and I have this boyfriend, and I'm going to show them how cool I am. So I went to this party, and there was this bottle of vodka going around, and like, please, right? Vodka? I've been drinking, like, gin. It's a wonder my nose isn't like this, you know? Um, so the vodka came around to me, and I just said, I'm going to take eight long pulls of this in front of everybody, even if it kills me. So I did, and some people were getting mad, because, like, that was the bottle of vodka. But, um, but some people were very impressed, and, um, and as soon as it was over, I'll tell you what, for about 20 minutes, I turned on this thing I like to call the Carrie Show, which is what I do when I'm very, very frightened in a social situation, but I'm drunk enough to know how to be hilarious. Okay? And that's something I still do in sobriety if I'm too scared. Okay? And I've learned through step work, um, if I emerge remorseful from a social engagement, I have probably put on the Carrie Show, which means that I have relied on myself and not on God for the strength I needed for that engagement. Okay? But I learned to do that that night, and I was hilarious. Well, I thought I was hilarious. What I really was doing was leaned over a VW, puking my guts up in the sand. Um, apparently, vodka works a little differently than alcohol. I did get a bandage in. I got a great score on my essay. I got a great score on my SATs, though. Um, I crept out my first year in college, so I ended up in my, um, sophomore year at the University of Florida at age 17, but nobody ever carded me, and, um, you know, I really need to blow through this because it's 8, 8.30 already. In college, my drinking assumed more serious proportions. Um... The thing I didn't tell you, and I just want to throw this in there, I believe in singleness of purpose, and everybody in this room probably has drugs in their story, okay? I have drugs in my story, but I am a food addict also, and I am ashamed to admit that, but we gotta tell the truth when we're up here, and if this helps even one person, there it is, okay? I wish I were a skinny, thin, little, gorgeous coke addict, okay? And I know there are probably some cocaine addicts out there who probably hate me for saying, you don't know what it's like, you don't know what you're talking about, so I'll take that back because I respect how hard every addiction is, but I'm a food addict, okay? And, um, so, from the time I was 12 until the time I was 14, I also know that I gained 150 pounds, so not only did I turn to alcohol, I also turned to food. So by the time I got to college, both were wildly out of control, and I discovered that Quaaludes definitely helped with the thrill-to-calorie ratio, which was something I always looked for in alcohol. I never liked pop because I had to get so drunk to not have anxiety attacks when I smoked it, you know? I had a roaring case of PTSD, so I had to get really, really drunk to even be able to smoke it. It was such a waste of time. Um, so anyhow, college was really, really fun. My, um, then-boyfriend was a drummer in a band, and we had all these bands come through, so I got to meet a lot of really, really fun people. Unfortunately, I was counted on to be the life of the party, and I knew how to do that very well because I was the Carrie Show. So here I am, 350 pounds, black mohawk, leather everything, pierce, pierce, pierce, pierce, pierce, okay? And I have the attitude that comes with it, alright? But I could only do that when I'm drunk because I was terrified of everybody. But if I got drunk enough, I could do that. And people seemed to like me when I was like that until I started throwing up, and then they wanted me out of there. Um, let's see, I was, um, I was just, I was terrified all the time. I probably should have seen a psychiatrist. Well, no, I'm telling you the truth. I saw a psychiatrist all the time, but I lied to them. I never told them the truth. And when they quit giving me what I wanted, I quit seeing them, so, you know. Um, I stayed in school long enough to get my, um, master's degree in philosophy and my, uh, my bachelor's in philosophy, and I got a master's degree in philosophy, and I got a master's degree in philosophy, and I got a master's degree in comparative theology. And, and, you know, if you think about it, I'm looking for God, right? I want to find God. I'd like to find God, but I don't want him to find me. I'm afraid he's gonna kill me. Um, I was terrified. I was just terrified of God. Um, I ended up getting married to that, um, drummer boy, and, uh, and, um, I mean, things, the day we closed on our first date, our first house, he was diagnosed with cancer. Okay? Can you believe that? We had a baby two months very, very prematurely. Um, those kinds of things will either forge a marriage or they will drive you straight apart. And they drove us apart. And I married the first man I met who told me I was beautiful. Okay? This man told me I was beautiful. I married him two weeks later. Okay? This is how my self-esteem is at this time. There was none. Um, I, at this time, um, I was telling people, I, I was trying not to drink because I had just had a baby. That's, I, I skipped over a lot, obviously. I need to because I'm, I'm trying to stay to this time thing. Had a baby. Um, so I'm trying not to drink for a little while, breastfeeding, blah, blah, blah. Um, so I'm telling people I'm an alcoholic so they won't be offering me drinks. But I fully do not believe I'm an alcoholic. Now that is some good alcoholic thinking. Okay? So this man who told me I was beautiful and who I married two weeks after I met him, he said to me, lovingly, I'm going to prove to you that you're not an alcoholic. And he bought a beer and he said it in front of me. Okay? What happens when people dare us that way? Oh my God. That was the beginning of my last debauch. Um, two more husbands, 30 jobs, 20 residences, um, before I was finally served with emergency custody papers for the child that I had. Um, and rightfully so. Rightfully so by my first husband. I had, I, I had not had a drink for five years and he gave me that drink and I was going to show him. I was just going to have one. And I mean, within a week it was as bad as it ever was. It was insane. It, I, it went downhill so fast. It was terrifying. Um, I would have told you at that time that I would have done anything for my son. I loved my little son so much. He was the only thing in the whole world that was ever really mine. And he was so little. He was born weighing three pounds. And, um, he was like piglet, you know. He was just so, so little and so cute. Um, but, you know, that sounds really beautiful and that is a stone lie because I wouldn't quit drinking for him. I remember that when we went to, um, arbitrators, um, as soon as I was away from my father who was, uh, a divorce attorney and my own divorce attorney, when we got with the arbitrator, I couldn't sign those papers fast enough to get that baby over to his father. Because all I wanted to do was drink. Okay? And that's the truth. And I am so not proud of that. I would have said I would have done anything for that little boy and that's not the truth. I wanted him with his father so I could drink more. I told everybody it was for his best good. And that's bullshit. I just wanted to drink. Um, let's see. Next, I married a 23-year-old man. I was 38 at the time. He was an assistant manager at Waffle House, at, uh, Taco Bell. Everybody thought I was his mother. Um, that didn't end well. He left me for a Waffle House waitress. You cannot make this stuff up. Tinsley, you can have that if you can write something out of it, okay? Um, let's see. My third husband was, um, someone from Canada who needed a green card. That was pretty sad. That one ended pretty quickly. Um, I just kept getting married. Somehow I felt like that was somehow validating. Like, yeah, they like me. I'm pretty. I'm good. You know? I'm back up to 350 pounds. I'm a mess. You know? Um, I realized, well, let's see. Um, so, very quickly, um, I don't know, somewhere in there, it's all such a blur because I was drunk all the time. I was terrified all the time. I couldn't leave. Well, by this time I was living in an extended stay hotel by cigars, okay? I had lost my job. I had, um, an unemployment check. I had enough money to buy wine and cigarettes. And, um, yeah, that's what I had. And, um, I remember on my worst day I got down to 34 cents. One day I got down to $3 away from being kicked out and I had to call my son's father to borrow that and he made me pay for it. And he made me pay him back. Okay? I was angry about that. That's only right, right? What was I thinking? Um, so somewhere in there, there were two runs to Peachford where I had hacked up my arms. Um, and I like to think that I wasn't suicidal, but I used to lay down every night in my room and pray that God would keep me from breathing, pray that God would stop my heart from beating. And they call it suicidal ideation. But I really, really wanted to not be living. I wouldn't kill myself, but I really, really wanted to not wake up. I'd wake up every morning and I'd take a rubber band and just start kind of shooting roaches on the wall. I mean, life was not good. It was, it was horrible. Um, here's the pride that I had, though, and the good alcoholic thinking, okay? I remember being furious at Peachford because I was in there because I was suicidal. Damn it. And they made me go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. How dare they? Okay? Me, with no shoelaces. I couldn't even go get my own food. But they made me go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. But the seeds were planted. Um, once I got out of there, it, it, uh, something, something got through. And, um, I did join a 12-step program. I decided, though, that I would go at, at 350 pounds, I decided I would go to OA because I was in very, very deep denial about alcohol. Okay? I did not think I could live without alcohol. I really didn't. Alright? So I went to Overeaters Anonymous. And I was in Overeaters Anonymous for two years before I came into AA. Um, some good things came out of that. I did not read the big book. Um, although that is their basic text. And if anyone wants to know more, about that, I can tell you about it. I lost a lot of weight in OA. Um, basically, I had a very good food plan with a few steps thrown in. But what I had was the fellowship. I finally had some friends for the first time in my life. I was still drinking. I was still drinking. Okay? One Christmas, there was a party and it became very obvious that alcohol needed to come off the approved foods list. Okay? Um, that didn't happen right away. But it became obvious that that needed to happen. Um, shortly after that, um, I met my husband. And we kind of met through, um, we met through A Course in Miracles. Actually, we were, um, we were talking about A Course in Miracles. He had a, um, a sponsee who was interested in A Course in Miracles. And I had studied A Course in Miracles. So we were talking about that. My husband is Robert. And, um, we were talking and talking and we talked for a few weeks and we started smelling better and better to each other. And, um, within about 17 months, we got married. And I remember thinking to myself, alright, I'm moving in with an alcoholic. I don't have to do AA or any of that stuff. I'll just stop drinking because Rob can't drink. So I'll just stop drinking. Okay? Remember, I still didn't think I was an alcoholic. Okay? So here I am. I am married to the man of my dreams. I love him with my heart and my soul. He's the best thing. Okay? I had been married to him for about three months when he did some laundry. And, um, the laundry came out wrinkled. And I went thermonuclear. Okay? Now, I had been going to meetings with Robert, um, except when they were closed when I would dutifully step out into the lobby because I'm not an alcoholic. Um, but I had heard a lot of stories that sounded an awful lot like me. And, um, we got married on September 29th of 2007. And on February 2nd of 2008, I picked up a white chip. I had, I got it through osmosis. I had my ass in the chair. I heard enough stories. And it crept in. And I realized, I realized I was an alcoholic. I really had it. Um, my first sponsor was, um, a lady in, she was a Wednesday nighter. The creatively named Wednesday nighters. I love that. And, um, I remember looking at her and asking over and over, do you really think I'm an alcoholic? Do you really think I'm an alcoholic? And she looked at me and she said, I don't know how you put effort aside. You could ever have thought you weren't an alcoholic. And I blessed her for saying that to me. I blessed her for saying that to me because denial's a real, real thing. And I was lost in denial. Lost in denial. Um, um, my second sponsor, my second sponsor is the one that I finally got to go through the big book with. I would go to her house on Saturday morning and we would read a chapter. And that sponsor taught me so, so much. I learned, um, I learned that my thinking was my alcoholism. My thinking was my alcoholism. I learned that I was self-will-run riot. I learned that all I had to do to begin a relationship with a God that I was terrified of was to be willing to believe in that God. And I felt, I thought whether, I said, I've been willing to believe in God my whole life. All God's ever done is throw bolts at me, you know. You shouldn't sit too close. And, um, but I realized something very important. I had never taken the actions of willingness. I had never taken the actions of willingness. And that was all the difference. You know, if you take a shovel, and you go out into a yard, and you pray for a hole, okay, at some point you've got to start digging or you're not getting a hole. You know? You've got to take the actions of getting a hole. That's what we do here. We pray and we act. Well, I had been doing maybe some prayer, but I had never taken the actions of willingness. Once I started taking the actions of willingness, it all started to drop into place. Weird things started to happen, because that happens for everybody. But my heart started to soften. And I saw that a lot of the things that I had against God were really immature, scared, little girl reactions to life. And that when I was willing to believe in God, God met me right where I was, and I could cry because I finally felt scooped up by a loving Creator. And that sounds corny as it can be, but for somebody who spent 44 years feeling like she was running away from God to save her life, that was very, very comforting. Very comforting. I'll never forget, shortly after we were kind of at that phase in our work, the church that we go to, there was a sermon, and the title of it was, Just because it's uncomfortable and seems unfair doesn't mean it isn't true. And that just hit me the right way. It broke me right open, and I just cried, cried, cried, cried, cried. But I felt like the water was alive. There was something about that that changed me. And I learned a lot of things from her. I learned that I was, even though I would have told you that I was full of shame and I had no ego whatsoever, I learned I was a walking ego show. I was a walking Carrie show. I did not know how to act like myself around people because I was so involved in putting on the act to keep you far away from me. And I had to learn how to be vulnerable even if you didn't like me. And the only way that I could do that was with this new found God that I was willing to finally trust. And when I trusted God and just threw the chips in the air and let God figure out where they're going to land, it was easier for me to do that. She also told me something I love. You know, we're taught in the book, it says we can face life successfully. It doesn't say we're going to do successfully, but facing life successfully for a chick who would always cut and run, that was pretty good. That was pretty good, to stick around and face life, you know. And I'll never forget, she told me, you don't have to be elegant. Just do it. Just get it done, you know. We're all like fish. Flop. Flop. Nobody does things elegantly. I thought everything had to look beautiful and be right. And it didn't. It just had to get done. And I feel like that's some of the best things that I can tell the women that I sponsor now. They're so worried about what people are going to think. And I get to tell them, no one's watching you. Just get it done. You know, flop like a fish. Move on. No one's going to think about it. It's wonderful. I was so sure that I knew better, but once I trusted God enough to let down my guard, which was quite well developed at that point, and trust, everything became so much easier. Every single relationship became easier. Because you weren't God in skin out to get me. I became, it became so much easier for me to love people. And it became so much easier for me to trust you. And, you know, I didn't care so much if I walked away looking like an idiot. You know, I just laughed it off. And that, it sounds little, but it was a big, big change for me. And, I know I got to end this up, but I'll tell you, I, I really, out of fear, out of drunkenness, out of not being able to remember anything, out of burning my life to the ground, I had a lot of people that I owed amends to. Um, my parents, I have four little sisters, I had a, a passable ex-husband, um, the IRS, who had neglected to pay for old 14 years or so. Um, I had a lot of amends to be made. And, um, you know, we did the now, be made, never later thing, or later, later never thing. And, um, I just picked up my eight year chip in February. This year, I finally finished paying off the IRS. And that was great. Um, I was with my mother when she took her last breath in 2012. I was with my father in October 2013 when he died. Those are sweet relationships that were restored. Those are relationships that, when they used to see my number on their phones, they didn't want to answer because they didn't know how much money I was going to need. Okay? My sisters were afraid to call me because they didn't know what I was going to need. Um, and I was scary to them. I'm the oldest sister and I was scary to them. They now call me for advice. I, it's, it's unbelievable. Um, friends today know something about me. My integrity, my integrity is worth more to me than anything in the world. And, if you have ever lost your integrity, if you have ever lost your feelings of self-respect, and you have had the grace to recover that, you know how much it's worth to you. Um, I'll speak for me. I know how much it's worth to me. And there is nothing I will do, there is nothing I will do, to put that in jeopardy again. I love being able to look in the mirror and not loathe myself. It's worth, it's worth everything. It's worth everything to wake up in the morning and not be afraid of what the day has ahead of me. It's worth everything in the world to go out to jail a couple times a week and work with women who are in some trouble, but assure them that there is a way out for them. It's worth it to go to the rehabs and say, you know, we've got an answer for you right here. I don't know how you're going to get from A to B, but there is a power greater than us that has that all worked out. You just stick with what we're doing here and you'll get there. You know, that's invaluable. And it sounds like magic, and it would have sounded like crap to me. I would never have believed it if I hadn't lived it. But it really is true. And you know, I said in the beginning that, um, that I, I felt like I was running from God, that I was waiting for the bolts to land, and I felt like I had been overlooked and I was terrified. And, um, there is something I've learned in this program. Every bad thing in my past, God has used for good. Every single thing, every single thing that I'm ashamed to say from the podium, every scary thing in my past that I don't like to bring up, comes up in my work with other women. And, and God uses it to propel them forward in this program. There is not one thing that can't be turned to good if I am using it in the service of the God of my understanding. So, I hope, I hope y'all heard something you could use tonight. Thank you for letting me speak. All right. I promised you she was going to give you some light, and she did. Thank you so much, Carrie. Such a great story. Wow. Tim. Or, Em. Everybody, I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic. Carrie, thank you for a wonderful story. Really moving. I really appreciate that very much. I'll go through the chips one time. The white chip is for anybody that doesn't want to drink today. I'm coming in or coming back. I don't want to drink today. And I'm willing to give this a shot. Would anybody like to pick up a white chip? All right. So, red chip is for 30 days. Anybody have 30 days? Red chip for 90 days. Yellow chip for six months. Anybody got six months? Green chip for nine months. And blue chip for one year or multiples thereof. I know we got a couple there. So, I get to give out two wonderful friends chips. I heard when I first came into AA, I don't remember who told me, but I found it to be true. If you look around for a while, in AA, the people that are pulling the wagon are generally doing a lot better than the people who are riding in the wagon. And these two guys pull the wagon every day. And I mean that with all my heart. I met Tim at this meeting nine years ago. That night, we talked a little bit. We got started. And I've never known anybody with total commitment to the program. Just like Tim. I've never known anybody like that. And I don't want to talk a lot. I could get carried away. But he's... You mentioned what can happen as a bump in the road in sobriety. He raises his hand. It's happened. I promise you it's happened to him. And yet he's had an unwavering commitment. He does amazing service work. People all over the country hear of this meeting on the computer. We've got over 250 speakers online, all because of Tim. But the main thing is he just came in and surrendered. And did the deal. I love him. He's an amazing guy. And it's an honor to give him a nine-year trial. That's my sponsor. I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic. Yes. Nine years ago, I came in. And I would have never been here. But my sister dropped in on me that day. And she said, How are you doing? I was like, Not so good. And she goes, What's going on? I said, I can't hear you. She said, I can't hear you. I said, I can't hear you. I said, I can't hear you. I said, I can't hear you. She said, I can't stop drinking. And see, I'd gone a little over a year without drinking white-knuckle in it. And they'd given me a one-year medallion without me ever going to any AA meetings. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I assumed that she was going to send me off to Betty Ford or somewhere. Ridgeview, probably, because we got others that have graced those doors. And she said, I know exactly what we're gonna do. She told me to pack a bag, and she brought a bag Walked me through the doors. Came to this meeting. David C. was telling a story. And I was in his story. I was his high school dope dealer and bootlegger. And he had been sober 12 years. So he could do it. Figured I'd better pick up the light chip. Two weeks later, Tinsley tells this story. I was a big fan. Always. I had no idea that you could do what he does and be sober. I thought I might have a chance after that. So let's hear what Tinsley's got to say. Tinsley, out of respect for anonymity, I'm not going to say what he does if you don't already know. But Tinsley travels all over the country. He has a wonderful family. He's self-employed. But he goes to a meeting pretty much every day somewhere in the country. He sponsors people. He comes to meetings. He comes to meetings regularly. He supports this meeting. And if Tinsley can do the kind of service work he does, there's no excuse for anybody else, me included. It's an honor to give him this. My name is Tinsley. I'm an alcoholic. This is 17 years. I do the same stuff today that I did when I first came in. It was recommended to me. A ton of meetings. A competent sponsor. I sponsor people. I work the steps. I use the steps in my life. I've got to get through the rough times that I go through. And I've got a higher power. And I work with others. You know, when I came in here in 1990, and I was in and out for nine years, and so I can tell you what doesn't work as well. But I'll tell you this, is that I've never once relapsed when I held a service position in Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you for my sobriety. Anybody else have an anniversary or reconsiderations on a white chip? Great day to be sober. Congratulations. Congratulations, my friend. Thank you, one and all, for joining the Blue Chip Speakers meeting tonight.