Transcripción de audio: sin editar

Students and colleagues from Utah School of Medicine College and if you're new or kind of new here and that's all you hear this morning, it's enough. And I didn't think I was ever going to say that, which is why I think it's enough. And thank you for that introduction, Carol, glowing and warm and heartfelt. I thought you were going to talk about that time that we came out of the blackout of the sportsman's on State Street in South Florida. But I guess we'll just keep that to ourselves. I'm kidding. I love that Chris said bianvenidos to our Spanish-speaking friends. And so welcome if you're Spanish and g'day mates to all of our other proper wankers that are here. I love this thing, guys. And let me just get the statistics out of the way.

My sobriety day is the 10th day of October and the year before Lord 19, 184. Which means clap for yourselves because you have the tolerable shenanigans for all of these years. But I crawled into Alcoholics Anonymous at the ripe old age of three, obviously. Kidding, I was 20. And there's one line in our literature that describes my drinking to a tea and I could say no more about it, although I'm going to never fret. And it says, with it goes the annihilation of all things worthwhile in life. And I got a sponsor when I was brand new in here that made me sit down with a big book and a notebook and a pen and a dictionary and a highlighter, one of those sponsors. And he made me look words up, even though I thought I was intellectual enough to know what they meant. And I looked up the word annihilate and it says to reduce to nothing. And that pretty much sums up what I do when I drink beverage alcohol.

I reduce to nothing, everything that matters to me in my life. And I was 20 years old when I came to you guys this time. I had made a couple of pit stops in the A&A before this sobriety date. Always at the request of somebody else, never because I wanted to get sober, always because somebody else thought that I should perhaps want to get sober. So they would send me to Alcoholics Anonymous and I would come in here and I would hear you guys say ridiculous things like, oh my God, can't you have a problem with alcohol. And I would think to myself, if you know the way that I feel when I'm sober, you would never ever tell me that I have a problem with alcohol because I hate me sober. And the only relief that I get from that self-loathing and that self-obsession is Jack Daniel Swisky. And Darren said it perfectly last night. Like alcohol always does precisely what it is biochemically engineered to do for me. And it takes away that sense of self that I seem to be consumed with.

It alleviates my fears and it just fixes everything that I think is broken about me. So I would come into Alcoholics Anonymous and hear people tell me, welcome back, bud. That I have this problem with liquor and I would not understand what they were trying to tell me. And I came in here this time as step one in our 12 and 12 says, under the lash of alcohol. And I love that. Like the end of step one in the 12 and 12 says, under the lash of alcohol we're driven to AA. Doesn't mean we come skipping in here on a Saturday morning at 9. 45. Like I love you guys for getting up so early and coming here at 9. 45 on a Saturday morning.

You're like the last called rinker. Like people that don't show up to this meeting. I don't even know if they're really alcoholic. You know what I mean? Because I want it all. I want every single last drop and I start in the beginning or in the morning and I end at last call and I miss nothing in between. And I love the effect that I get from a drink of liquor. And so I'm driven in here under the lash of alcohol at the ripe old age of 20 with absolutely no intention of getting and staying sober. I came here because I was tired. I came here because I was living in a 1971 MG midget but I used to call my roundabout townhouse.

Because when it would run it would get me roundabout town and when it didn't I would just park it somewhere and that's where I lived. And I didn't consider myself homeless. I thought I was free. Like I don't have rent to pay, no job to show up to, no relationships to try and contend with. I just get to steal liquor from the boys market and sit in my car and drink it. And I have no problem. There's a line in our doctor's opinion that says our alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And to me I thought I set it up that way. And I came in here when I was 23 months after my 20th birthday just to take a break. And I had no intention whatsoever of staying here.

I didn't want to take the steps. I had no interest in you guys talking to me about some power greater than myself that would solve all of my problems. And I most assuredly was not going to take inventory and you don't tell anybody the things you do because you just never do that. You just deny. And I don't want to look at defects of character because quite frankly they work for me. And I would not want your power to remove those because I use them at appropriate times in my life to get what it is that I think that I need. And never going to make amends because if you wouldn't have done what you did first, I wouldn't have to retaliate in kind. So clearly it was your fault. And my friend, well not my friend, my old sponsor was Bill Kay, Bill Temple. And he used to say as far as the 12 step goes, he came in and you helped me and I'll help one and we'll call it even.

And I love that because I'm a taker by nature. I don't want to give anything back. I don't want to have to contribute to a society of my peers. I just want to come in and get what it is that I need and then leave. And the very last thing that I had no intention of achieving when I got here was a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism. I was not interested in any of that stuff. I just wanted to come in here and be able to eat something and have it stay on my stomach. And I wanted to be able to take a nice hot shower. When I was before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous this time living in that little car, I used to go down to the sand showers in Manhattan Beach. And I would steal some soap with my vodka from the boys market and I would try and wash up in the sand showers when I got a little too offensive for my own nostrils.

And the parents or the parents of my friends that I went to high school with used to roll past me on the bike path and they used to look at me with that look on their face that said, I used to let you spend the night in my home with my daughter and would you look at yourself? Like what happened to you? And I would just look at the ground and I couldn't make eye contact with anybody. I was dirty on the inside and dirty on the outside and I hated the woman that I had become. And the only thing that relieved that was Jack Daniels Whiskey. And when I was a little girl being raised in an upper class middle class beach community in Southern California, I had no idea that Jack Daniels Whiskey was going to fix everything that was broken about me. I was raised in Manhattan Beach by a single mom who loved me more than life itself. I used to say that I used to sit around the dinner table with my brothers and sisters and know that she loved them way more than she loved me. And I'm an only child so that'll give you a peek in the bed. I just think about me all the time.

But my mom worked two and three jobs her entire life to give me absolutely everything that she never had as a little girl. And I would look at the things she provided and the only thing I wanted was what I didn't have. And I paid no attention whatsoever to the sacrifices that she made to try and where is everybody going? Oh my God. Now I have to start all over again. Seriously, Gary. But I was just this broken little girl raised in this beach community. And I went to school with a bunch of little girls that were five feet tall and they all had long flowing blonde hair and sparkly blue eyes and really pretty surfer chick tans. They looked like prepubescent Pamela Anderson's really. I was five foot eight in the seventh grade and I had long stringy reddish hair, buck teeth and freckles.

And I would look at you guys and see Pamela Anderson's perfection. I would look in the mirror and I felt like Pippi Longstalk on crack. Like I was just broke. There was something innately wrong with me on the inside and I had no idea what it was. I went to school. I felt not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough. I didn't fit in. I wasn't a part of it. I didn't know how to do all the things you guys seemed to know how to do naturally. I was just ill at ease in my own skin.

And in the seventh grade my best friend Carrie decided that we were going to cut school and go to her house and drink a scotch. And I didn't have anybody in my life that I could look at the effects that they got from a drink of liquor and realized that it might fix that brokenness on the inside of me. But I just went to Carrie's house and we cracked the paper seal on a fifth of scotch and I took a nice big pole right out of the bottle. We didn't have any glass nor ice nor mixers. We just drank the scotch straight out of the bottle. That nasty crap burnt all the way down and it burnt all the way back up and it burnt when it came flying out. My nose was vile and I hated scotch and I didn't want to drink anymore scotch but I watched my friend Carrie take a drink of scotch and I visibly saw something change in my friend. And her face got a little bit pink and she started giggling. She wasn't worried about getting in trouble for cutting school. So I just took that bottle from her and I don't know where I came up with this idea.

I just knew it. I plugged my nose and I held my breath and I chugged that scotch and just enough of that nasty crap stayed in my stomach for what Dr. Silkworth describes as a sense of ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a drink. And I loved the effect produced by that drink of scotch. And just to fast forward through that afternoon, pardon me, I drank way too much scotch and I threw up all over my friend's living room. My mom came banging on the door because the school had called and I jumped out the bedroom window and climbed over the backyard fence and we were off on Pippie's first grand adventure. I had a blast that afternoon. We climbed the water tower and I was running through backyards and hiding in your dog houses and we were running from the cops and they weren't even chasing us. And about four o'clock that afternoon I knew I couldn't go home because now I'm in trouble so I stole this bicycle from the continuation school. I put my friend's nine year old brother on the handlebars that is stolen bicycle.

I stole a butcher knife from the kitchen and wrapped a chain around my neck for protection and we ran away from home because it seemed like the answer and I told my first sponsor that story and he said, baby boy they called that kidnapping. And I hated sponsorship from that day to this because you guys just have this way of looking at my life that I don't possess. But we ran away from home about ten o'clock that night I peddled us all the way up to East LA and I was doing the Pippie Ghost Chola phase in the seventh grade. I had this red and hair all ratted up in a big old aquanet pitchfork and I was wearing black eyeliner and dickies and crypts lips and running all over the house. I was like, you're not allowed to go to that little girl's house and then in a minute I'm going to be the one and you're not allowed to come to my house anymore. And I didn't get up that morning and decide that I was going to take a drink of scotch and then an alcoholic was going to be born. I had no idea what an alcoholic was and my understanding now is that it's someone that has an abnormal reaction to beverage alcohol and what I know happened after I adjusted that drink that day is that it set off this thing. The doctor Silkworth describes them as an obsession of the mind. Like an all I can think about is when I get to do that again. And I've burned my life to the ground but I can't wait to do that again.

And if I'm not drinking I'm thinking about when I'm drinking and where I'm going to get it and what we're going to do. And then once I take a drink he says I get this thing called a phenomenon of craving which means I have no breaks on my engine and once I put any liquor into my system whatsoever it takes over and I no longer get to call the shots. And I didn't understand that at 12 and 13 years old when I started drinking. And I'm not someone that says I did a lot of drugs because alcohol was hard to get when I was a teenager because I had no problems getting alcohol when I was a teenager. I did a lot of drugs anyway but that's not why. The truth is like I take a drink of liquor and all bets are off. And the question is do you want to and my answer is why yes I do. And that's just the way that that goes. And I drank for eight years I destroyed my education. I took the California high school proficiency exam when I was 16 years old and graduated from high school with a proficiency certificate because I'm kind of smart.

I love the part in the book that says that we think we can float above the rest of you on our brain power alone and alcoholics are often intelligent and able and friendly people. I notice Alonon's never say that. It's only us. But I think I'm able and intelligent and friendly and I graduate from high school when I'm 16. I accidentally enlist in the United States Navy when I'm 17 and I always joke about saying I accidentally woke up in boot camp but the truth is my friend Carrie and I were going to go into the military on the buddy system and I don't know whatever happened to my friend Carrie but I made it into the military and I got to tell you I love serving my country and I was 17 years old when I enlisted in the Navy. I was enlisted to be in naval intelligence which should frighten you guys just a little bit. 17 years old and recruits and processing barracks on the 21st day of December in 1981 and I'm detoxing. I don't know that I'm detoxing nor does the United States government. They just know I'm having anxiety and panic attacks and they have to keep taking me to the emergency room because we have no company that's going to form until after the first of the year because nobody else is stupid enough to go to Orlando Florida four days before Christmas. I was sitting there kind of by myself and I was sick and I didn't understand what was going on with me and my company formed and the youngest kid in there and I'm in trouble all the time which subsequently means you're in trouble all the time and I do something stupid and they scream my last name and you're doing push-ups so I didn't have a lot of friends when I was in boot camp and somebody brought me in a six pack of beer at five weeks enlisted three quarters of the way through boot camp and I drank that beer and I don't know what you do in Navy boot camp when you're provided with beer but I drank beer and I met my first commanding officer I was almost discharged and they took pity on me and let me graduate with my company and I went to A school in Pensacola Florida where I met my second commanding officer for drinking on a duty weekend and leaving base when I wasn't supposed to and I didn't want to do that.

I was standing watched in my uniform dressed just perfect with my hair just right in those shoes shine so much you could see your reflection all the way across the room and somebody brought me in a can of something and I drank the can of something because that's just what I do and then once I drink that can of something I need another one. Now I'm off base and civilian clothes getting in trouble when I'm not allowed to be and this time I lost a stripe and half my pay for a little while and spent a couple weeks in the restricted barracks and graduated with the class after mine with a lot of really high level security clearances so that I could do my job and I had my first I look and I love that Navy t-shirt you're wearing. I had my first encounter with Alcoholics Anonymous in Pensacola Florida and I went to the Navy Alcohol Safety Awareness Program where they tried to get across to me the nature of my problem and what I thought was like you know what do you do with a drunken sailor like it's a part of the police. And I just took a rum and coke to my graduation and took everybody to EM club after we finished May Sapp and I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous and they sent me to my first duty station which was Aida Kallaska and I was I know I got I got a little bit of trouble on that island I was assaulted pretty violently and I started drinking not saying that that made me an alcoholic by any stretch of the imagination but I'm so thankful that I knew that a drink of liquor was going to force it into AOE and I started drinking like gloves off on that little island and I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous I'm seeing this little counselor I'm taking an abuse and they're asking me crazy questions like do you ever have complete memory lapses when you drink and I tell him everybody I know has complete memory laps so just Scotch and this little guy said then everybody know is alcoholic and I thought what a stupid little old man you are or they would say things like do you ever wake up in strange places with strange people and not know how you got there and I would tell them I am a United States Navy sailor like duh don't even see a problem with that like join the Navy ride the waves right I set that in front of Mark's mother on the side I'm mortified like he just comes out I can't seem to stop myself and they put me on an abuse and I swear I'm not going to drink and and my best friends on Anabes also go figure and he has a six pack of beer and and I decide to experiment I drank half a beer and I threw it for six solid hours I swear I was going to die and then I was afraid I wasn't like it was absolutely horrible and I swore I was never going to do that again and two weeks later I thought to myself I'm probably acclimated to this an abuse by me and maybe if I have like a cool light which is almost water anyway I would be able to pull it off like left to my own devices I lack the power of choice when it comes to a drink I cannot fathom the idea of staying sober a day let alone the rest of my life 24 hours of the time and and I decide to experiment I go to the EM club where the bartender is one of those little old guys in the A&A meeting and on the way over there I decided I would have a shot of Jack Daniels whiskey just in case I started throwing up so at least I would have the effect produced by the drinking case I got sick and and so I ordered a double shot of Jack Daniels in a poor's life and he just looked at me with that look some of you guys have on your face right now and he pushed the drink across the bar I drank that whiskey I had a seizure and woke up in the emergency room of the Naval Hospital on that little island and was quickly sent to the psychiatric unit in Anchorage anybody else raise your hand liars because when you drink on Anna used the second time the Navy thinks it might be great emotional and mental disorders and I spent two weeks there and left completely observed I can assure you are the recommendation that I be separated from military and I beg for one more shot they sent me to rehab in Philadelphia or I drank on Anna used for the third time at a Sunday Phillies game because I can't not and if you're new or kind of new in Alcoholics Anonymous and you hear somebody say something preposterous like just don't drink no matter what like if that worked we all would have got sober in the 1980s with whoever the first lady was that said just don't drink no matter just say no like who can do that and so I'm in the psychiatric unit they send me to rehab I drink on Anna used to rehab and and I'm discharged from the rehabilitation program and sent over to the Naval Station to wait for my separation and I told this little counselor I was going to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and do whatever it took to stay sober it's going to get this beastly old witch named Alice to be my sponsor from the neighborhood Elano Club in downtown Philly because I was listening to meetings and I was going to do whatever it took and my counselor's name was Jim he goes that's good kid but if you ever want to get sober call Alcoholics Anonymous but you won't die drunk and I was 18 years old just before I turned 19 and and I thought I'm too young to be an alcoholic and I haven't done the things that I hear you guys talking about doing in in AA I haven't wrecked any cars I'm not having DUI I don't have a license so whatever not wrecked any cars not not lost my license not destroyed relationships or lost my children I've never been to jail never lost a job pardon me I don't know what I thought the Navy was it's not just a job it's an adventure but I was discharged in 1983 and I and I spent everything thank you every single day for the next 15 months swearing I wasn't going to drink and then every single day for the next 15 months I thought like maybe I'll just have a wine cooler because I don't like wine and surely that won't do it to me and I put liquor into my system and all bets are off and on the 10th day of October in 1984 I came to in that little 1971 MG Midget and I have a relationship left with anybody in my life and my mom had thrown me out telling me never come back my only child is dead I thought she was overreacting because she came home and caught me robin her house and I put my hands on my little five foot one mom in an inappropriate fashion because I needed a stealer toaster like I don't know I needed her toaster but I was taking the toaster and she caught me I'd climb through the window and and she told me go away and never come back here and that was something I thought I was never going to be able to rectify there's some things that I've done in my life that I thought through playing my song that I thought I was just never going to be able to rectify and every single day for 15 months I was drinking on this particular day I woke up in that little MG Midget with a big 1. 75 liter bottle of cheap vodka I had it sitting in the den and I hadn't even opened the bottle yet but my shoulders dropped a couple inches and that crick in my neck went away and I knew whenever I drank that vodka I was going to be okay for a minute I also knew that when I drank that vodka I was probably going to start my car and drive someplace and I might injure myself or somebody else I might wake up in jail and not remember how I got there or I might wake up with your husband or your wife don't judge you do that to life I just drink and I can't I can't predict my own behavior and I'll do absolutely every and whatever it takes to continue drinking because I'm a party animal too Darren and I said it wrong puffy animal but on this particular day I woke up and I heard that little counselor say like I was sitting in the seat next to me if you ever want to get sober call Alcoholics Anonymous and I put a dime in the payphone and I called the central office in the South Bay and this little guy named Sam answered the phone and he covered the mouthpiece of the phone and he told Eunice who was our central office manager we got a live one I don't know how come you guys knew but he sent me all the way across town to the Southwest Alano club in Hawthorne we call it Birch Street because it's on Birch behind the old Hawthorne mall and I walked into a 5. 30 Wednesday night meeting full of people that were 86 to 132 I weighed 120 sucked up pounds I had just enough bio in my hair to pass as highlights and I have that ad for homeless bench that takes months to wash out of your pores and I walked in and you guys said something ridiculous to me like are you new like I don't know how come you know but you just have me sit down and then you started saying really stupid things to me like you never have to drink again for the rest of your life 24 hours at a time and I remember looking at you and thinking you guys only have three days left it's going to be a piece of cake for you to never drink again for the rest of your life because you're old I am 20 and all I want to do is move out of my car just want to take a hot shower I was suffering from something that was later diagnosed as chronic active heptatitis C with coma whatever the hell that means and my liver was failing and I was 20 years old and I was jaundiced and my eyes were sunk in the back of my head and I was smelly and you guys sat next to me anyway you took turns because I was a little bit offensive and you would rotate through like maybe 10 or 15 minutes at a shot but I never sat alone in meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous and every time I walked in here you guys welcomed me and I can tell you that throughout the course of 41 years in Alcoholics Anonymous I fight this idea of a power I fight the idea of a spiritual awakening or a spiritual experience but I can tell you that I had my very first spiritual experience sitting in that meaning of Alcoholics Anonymous Wednesday night 5 30 October 10th 1984 and it was you and throughout the course of my sobriety you guys have always been my most profound spiritual awakenings and experiences and I'm so incredibly grateful for that and you gave me a coffee a half a cup at a time because you knew in a minute I was going to start shaking and spill it you fed me orange juice and honey and you detox me in your meetings instead of sending me to the way back in and Hawthorne for a seven-day detox that was only guys anyway you would have sent me somewhere else but but you didn't send me to rehab you just sat with me and you detox me and you taught me how to sit on my hands and be still and I used to tell my first sponsor I can't sleep I think I need to go get a prescription and he would say baby girl when you're tired enough you'll sleep and I remember a couple weeks sober well I vaguely remember and then you told me about it a couple weeks sober Monday night speaker meeting my head went dog on the table because I just passed out and my sponsors said we're alone might have snored and slobbered a little bit through the speaker like many of you are doing right now whatever I just sat there man and I came walking in at 30 days sober and I had no idea I had 30 days sober but you did because for the first time in my life I was paying attention to something other than myself and I was letting you pay attention to me and it's somewhere along the line I fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous I remember sitting in an old timers meeting I had six weeks sober it was the Friday night after Thanksgiving and we put all the old timers up on the stage and they're varying stages of decay and I was sitting in the front row with a like fish nets and a mini skirt and hooker heels and a low cut shirt because all my allen on women gave me their teenage daughters clothing that was too offensive for their kids to wear or whatever and um sorry I had no myself and so we put all the old timers up on the stage and they're varying stages of decay and my spobs are sitting there with oxygen and the cigarette hanging out of his mouth I don't know why he was just spontaneous we come plus for Christ sake he's sitting there he had asthma and emphysema and bronchitis and my friend Bob had a prosthetic limb and a walker and my mom had hell and had lost her cheekbone and her eye to cancer so she had a patch on her eye and you guys gave me that tagline if you want what we have and I looked at you and thought off the jump walkers in pain and go hi like I don't want any thing you guys have and sitting there six weeks over I realized I wanted it all and it wasn't Chuck's Cadillac parked outside and it wasn't Frank and Francie Priest's home in Torrance and it wasn't Mike and Norma and some beautiful relationship or Kathy's job at Northrop what I wanted was that sparkle that you guys had in your eyes I would walk in the room and your face would like light up and uh and I wanted the ability to breathe the guy had been holding my breath my whole life and it wasn't till I took a drink at Jack Daniels whiskey but I was able to inhale and I had no idea that I had been holding my breath until I was able to breathe and uh God I just wanted to be with you guys and I have no idea at six weeks over sitting there that you were going to tag me but if I was sitting at a poker table in Las Vegas with a million dollars worth of chips that night I just would have pushed them all into the middle of the table and I can tell you that from that date of this I just left the bet ride the guy that cashed out on alcoholics anonymous even when it gets difficult right I just uh I can tell you that I stay in here and I'm actively sponsored and have been since I was new in alcoholics anonymous um my first sponsor was this old eclectic hippie from the 60s and he was a beast he was very nice before I asked him to sponsor me and I did do my sponsor in terms of the a zit tutorial jackass I got up to the podium one time and I said Tina alcoholic and he stood up from his seat in the front row and said that's all you know sit down now and I was mortified and I was your coffee washer coffee cup washer at this time so I went in the kitchen and I washed the ashtrays in the dirty water and in the water and then I washed your coffee cups in the dirty water after because I'm just gonna show you and um thought I'd report him to New York and yank his sponsor license because clearly he wasn't listening to the Clancy or whatever and um he sponsored me for two years and he saved my life and people used to tell me all the time he can't be your sponsor he's a man and I would go to him and I would say Paul they said you can't sponsor me because you're a guy and he said baby girl if I see lips and hips I can't sponsor you but when I look at you I see alcoholism and I have a solution for you and he took me through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to the absolute best of his ability and I thank goodness for him every single day I came back the way on October 10th of 1986 the day that I have two years sober and I walked into the Alano Club to take my little cake at the at the new meeting and uh and you guys came out and told me he was gone and I thought I was gonna have to leave Alcoholics Anonymous it was the first safe place that I can remember and I can't tell you how long and he was the noise that would raise above the noise in my head and for whatever reason I was willing to accept advice and follow direction from that man and save my life and there's not a lesson that he taught me in the first two years that I was sober that's not still relevant in the applicable in my life right here right now and uh and when things get difficult all I need to go back all I need to do is go back to the basics of the things that I learned in the first 30, 60, 90 days it be in sober and begin to do those things one more time and what you guys teach me is that they carry me through the difficult times in my life even when I don't think I'm going to be able to walk through the difficult times in my life I just continue to do the things that you guys teach me how to do in here and I get to stay sober one day at a time I forget that whole idea of one day at a time I had a picture come up in my photo memories this morning that was a little bit stinging and um my son was in the hospital some years ago and and it was a picture of me holding his hand with an IV and whatever um and I think back to those moments of sitting at Matthew's hospital bed when everything seems viral and completely out of control and I have this um overwhelming memory of being able to be present right here right now just in this moment right here right now and sitting there in those days it was uh super super relevant for me to just be there in that moment right now but when things aren't spiraling out of control I forget that right because I think about what I need tomorrow and what happened yesterday and um I'm full of what my literature describes as self-centered fear I'm going to be about to front I'm 41 years and a whole bunch of months and a couple of more days and like a minute away from 42 I can hear Clancy go that means 41 kid just want the front don't men never gave them but I just want the front and um I'm 41 years and some and some change sober and I still suffer from this thing called alcoholism I remember in a meeting somebody said I suffer from alcoholism and I may have said it I for sure thought it really loud and it might have leaked out my ears but I thought and maybe said if you're suffering from alcoholism in the middle of alcoholics anonymous you're doing something wrong and today I think what areas what absolute nonsense um I'm 41 years sober and I still have this thing called alcoholism and some days I want to live my life according to failed self-reliance and fancy self-sufficiency put my eyes on the prize and make sure that I'm going to get there so that I could get the thing that I think I need to keep myself satisfied I'm terrified that I'm not going to measure up in a society of my peers I absolutely didn't want to speak here because this used to be my home conference when I lived in Hollister a bunch of years ago and Bill Kay was my sponsor but I was deeply offended that I wasn't asked but I didn't want to but don't ask me I'm just I'm just so conflicted you know what I mean and I still have this thing called alcoholism doesn't go away I'm so thankful that my literature tells me that I have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition I just get one day sober one day for the actions that I take on any given morning and uh and most most days uh I have this personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism and then there are those days when I wake up full of self when I'm on the nightstand waiting for me to wake up because I have some things to talk to me about and like sometimes that happens and and my days spirals and um I oftentimes say like I wish I wasn't so self-reliant and I wish I wish that I could surrender to this thing quicker than I normally do but like I uh I have to come to the end of my own resources before I'm willing to surrender to yours and if I have any any any idea even if it's a bad one I will exercise my own option before I take yours and uh and I'm 41 years sober and I have alcoholism and uh and I come in here on the regular because you remind me when I'm here with you that God is everything and when I'm not in here with you oftentimes my thought is maybe he's a little something something but he's certainly not everything and um I can tell you that uh when I was brand new in here Paul asked me or what he said was do you have any lurking notions or reservations that someday you're going to be able to drink successfully again and if you have on what are they and I remember telling him if anything happens to my mom I'm gonna have to drink and uh I had three weeks sober her birthday was on Halloween so I had 21 days sober and I called her up I hadn't spoken to her in a year and I invited her to take me to dinner for her birthday because I was living in my car and I couldn't afford to do it so her and her new husband took me out for sushi and she uh drank an entire bottle of saki and then proceeded to tell me every nasty rotten horrible thing that I had ever done to her I had 21 days sober I thought I was gonna make a mess and let her know I was sober yay me and lucky you and uh and that wasn't her idea of the amendment process and uh and she just decimated me at the sushi bar and uh and all I could do was sit there and say you're right mom you're right mom and from the time that I was 21 days sober all the way up until the 22nd day of march of 2022 I got to be her daughter sometimes a super failed one sometimes I made bigger messes sober than I made when I was drinking but I got to show up on the regular and be the daughter that Betty always deserved and um and then around 2018 she started suffering from a little bit of cognitive decline that we suspected to be Louis body dementia but it's a post-mortem diagnosis and and she got to the point where she couldn't live on her own anymore and we made that I say we made the decision but I made the decision because she had turned me into her medical and financial power of attorneys which is bananas to me and I uh I sold her property and my property and we moved back to Hollister and um and I moved in with my little mom and I got to be her caregiver for the last two years of her life and I would take her to the doctor and the doctor would say you need to go to a assisted living like who's going to take care of you and she would look at me and say my daughter right and I say absolutely mom and uh that's how I got to the doctor and I said yeah alcoholics anonymous turned me into safe place for my mom and I had the experience of being outside of the house for a couple of minutes running to safe way and she called me crying and she was afraid and what I realized is when I wasn't in her line of sight she didn't feel safe and that's a gift alcoholics anonymous gave to my mom wasn't one that I gave to her it's something that you guys instilled in me that I was able to and the other big one was if I'm ever blessed with a child and something happens to that baby I won't be able to stay sober and uh some of you guys know and some of you don't um August 28th of 2020 my oldest son was in a motorcycle accident on highway 17 and I was living in Los Angeles and it was uh four days after Clancy passed Clancy was my sponsor for a whole bunch of years and he died on the 24th got Sharon's sponsor me on the 26th and Maddie was in this accident on the 28th and uh September 2nd he turned six years sober in the surgical ICU unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center but I got a call at 4 30 in the morning on Saturday morning when I was supposed to be going to Clancy's Memorial in Las Vegas and uh and what I did was headed north on highway 5 instead and um it's right after the lightning complex fire and uh and Maddie was going back up to Scotts Valley to see whether his house survived the fire when they lifted the evacuation and he was pushed under the rear wheels of a gird hauler and um and he had this decoyment crushing injury of the right leg in the pelvis and he spent the next 69 days in the surgical ICU unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and every single day people in my home group would call me and text me and email me and message me and ask me about Matthew and uh he was my absolute favorite trudgeon buddy and and I got to stay on an air mattress in my younger son's living room and advocate for my child and I got to watch him wake up and I got to remember that my favorite shade of blue is the color of his eyes and I got to watch him tell me that he loved me and I got to be his mom and at the times I didn't think that I could show up for one more minute I got to call my sponsor who just like always grounds me in reality and tells me you might not be able to do it in the afternoon but at 10 o'clock this morning you can do it when you're checking in through security in the middle of covid to go see that boy and uh November 5th of 2020 we had to make the decision to discontinue his life support and I got to tell him a million times how much I loved him and how proud I was to be his mom and the next couple of years were super dark and not a whole heck of a lot of God in them but I would show up to Alcoholics Anonymous, really God like if there's such a thing how could it be that my life looks like this and I just come in here to you guys and you always remind me that God is everything and in the moments that I am the most feared the most disconnected from the power I just come into Alcoholics Anonymous my friend Bill Cleveland Bill C he raised that God exists in this space between me and you if I lived to be a hundred years old and do nothing but serve Alcoholics Anonymous every single day for the rest of my life I could never repay you for the gifts you've given me but I'll spend every single day that I have left trying thank you so much for letting me hear my name.