I Went Back to My Neighbor Instead of the Store – AA Speaker – Carla R.
AA speaker Carla R. shares her journey from homelessness and trauma to 26+ years sober, including how turning to her neighbor instead of drinking became her first turning point in recovery.
Carla R. came to AA after decades of chaos—homelessness, violence, gang involvement, psychiatric hospitals, and a marriage that ended with her losing both her child and her job in one afternoon at a bar. In this AA speaker tape, she walks through how a single decision to go to her neighbor’s door instead of the liquor store became the first left turn of her recovery, and how 26 years of working the steps transformed her life from survival to service.
Carla R. is an AA speaker with 26+ years of sobriety who shares her story of coming to recovery after experiencing homelessness, violence, family trauma, and multiple institutional placements as a teenager. This recovery speaker tape covers her journey from active alcoholism and chaos to finding a home group, working with sponsors, making amends to family, and learning to live spiritually through service and prayer. Carla discusses how early actions like stacking chairs, attending multiple meetings daily, and making one critical decision—going to her neighbor instead of the liquor store—set the foundation for lasting sobriety and a spiritual awakening.
Episode Summary
Carla R.’s story is one of the most raw and honest qualifications on tape. She doesn’t begin with a polished narrative—she begins by saying she’s grateful someone wants to hear her speak at all. That sets the tone for an hour-long dive into a life of searching, chaos, and eventually, surrender.
From childhood, Carla was a seeker. She was placed in mental hospitals, juvenile halls, and treatment centers. She was an enthusiastic kid who needed to do it all, run the fastest, be the best—and by sixth grade, she was tired and needed a drink. At a game of spin the bottle behind a boy’s house, she made a connection that would haunt her for years: alcohol did something for her she couldn’t do for herself. It became her higher power.
What follows is a recounting of years spent running—literally and figuratively. By 14, she and a friend hitched north and ended up in North Beach, San Francisco, where a simple question from two men opened a door to sex work, survival, and a life on the edges. The detail she offers here is neither sensationalized nor glossed over. She was young, she was lost, and she was looking for something. Within a year, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she would spend a year instead of the planned two weeks. She cut her arms, not to die, but to change her reality. She fell in and out of relationships with other patients—the kind of boys who threw chairs through windows. She pressed her face against bay windows longing for what she couldn’t have. She was looking in all the wrong places.
The AA speaker tape then traces her adolescence and young adulthood: a girl’s home, Oregon, her father’s house where she drank from his liquor cabinet while he watched with a broken heart. She ran to Hollywood Boulevard at 18 with nothing but a pint of vodka in her pocket. She met a man, moved in with him that night, didn’t even know his last name. Six weeks later, he asked her to leave—and years into sobriety, she would spend months trying to find him to make amends. She worked as a cocktail waitress. She had a daughter at 16. She married a man, and they settled their arguments with a shotgun. Whoever got to it first wins.
Her first exposure to AA came after a fight left her with black eyes and broken ribs. Her husband took her to the hospital, set her up with a cooler full of beer and a bottle of gin, and left for work. She called a battered woman’s shelter, asked them to fix her life, and the woman on the phone asked if she’d ever been to an AA meeting.
She found a meeting. She went in with everything but readiness. She heard a woman talk about switching to beer, and Carla thought: that’s the answer. She spent another year and a half drinking beer, attending work at a city job, telling herself she could control it. Drinking or thinking about drinking. Drinking or thinking about drinking. Then came the afternoon when she lost both her daughter and her job in one fell swoop—sitting on a bar stool in Arcadia, unable to stop.
This is where the turning point happens. She moved in next door to a woman with five years of sobriety. That woman knocked on her door with a Big Book and a 12 and 12. She told her story. She said yes to recovery, but she didn’t believe it would work. Her sponsor told her to call her. She didn’t. She just stopped buying beer. She got sick. She shook. She saw things. By Tuesday, she was stark raving sober. And then—and this is the title of the talk—she went back to her neighbor instead of the store. That first left turn.
What strikes this AA speaker’s message is how she weaves together the steps, sponsorship, service, and real life. She talks about stacking chairs, about staying close to the fellowship, about learning what self-centeredness really means through its absence. She describes the obsession to drink that didn’t lift until nine months sober, in the middle of her amends. She talks about the rape at five years sober, and how a bigger God, a surrender, and the seven-step prayer became her mantra for forgiveness. She describes the bankruptcy at ten years, the slow realization that doing it perfectly isn’t the goal—showing up is.
She ends by talking about prayer and meditation, about asking God to put her in a position where she’s most useful. She left a 20-year banking career for part-time work at Home Depot and a chance to travel for AA service. She got a 27-cent raise instead of a $25,000 bonus, and she’s learning to ask for an attitude adjustment instead of demanding the world bend to her will.
Throughout, Carla speaks like someone who has lived this. She uses the language of the rooms. She talks about walking the walk and talking the talk to get out, about the torturous cycle of drinking or thinking about drinking, about mountains moved a spoonful at a time. She doesn’t wrap her story up clean. She says it takes time. There are a million stories. She’s here to walk you through until the internal conversion happens.
Her sobriety date is September 25th, 1987. Twenty-six years of choosing to go back to her neighbor instead of the store.
Notable Quotes
Mine is the head I go home with. That’s where these steps came in. They said it’s an inside job.
I came looking for it, I came looking with. What I seek is within me.
At some point, I’ve got to pick this up and do it myself, and it’s going to be messy.
I went back to my neighbor instead of the store. That’s the first left turn I took instead of right.
You can’t save your ass and your face at the same time.
I ask for an attitude adjustment and then I walk out and I act like I’ve had one, and the teacher appears.
When I’m thinking of you, that gaping hole in my soul gets smaller. When I’m thinking of you—getting me off my mind.
We’re not a different species. We have a different condition, but we are human and stuff happens.
Step 5 – Admission
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Forgiveness
Acceptance
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Step 5 – Admission
- Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
- Sponsorship
- Hitting Bottom
- Forgiveness
- Acceptance
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Hi everybody. My name is Carla Ren.
I'm an alcoholic. That was quite an introduction. And I just the way I see it is I'm just glad that somebody wants to see me again.
That's that's a whole different deal. Will you please come to Aspen and speak at our meeting and join us for a weekend of fun and and spirituality? Thank you for having us.
that my husband's here with me and you're going to hear him tomorrow and and I just love uh we know Rich uh and Lauren. We've met them a few times and uh we've met Chris a couple times and I know he's a real enthusiast for AA and um I've never heard Heather so I'm excited about that and and uh just meeting a lot of you and seeing some of you again and and uh um I have a few friends here and um so thank you. Thank you for this opportunity.
I love uh Alcoholics Anonymous and I love I think it's a privilege to do anything in in Alcoholics Anonymous, whether it's stack and chairs. Stacking chairs saved my life. Kept me in a posture of hearing and delivering the message.
You know, they used to say there was a there was another day of sobriety under every chair. And now I knew that that wasn't literal, you know, but but staying there, you know, I get to hear those oneliners. I get to I get to watch the old-timers.
I got to see how this is done day by day by day. And um so I'm just really thrilled to be here and I I love to share I love to share my story. When I was new, I heard a lot of speakers over tape and there were a couple of women that just knocked me out.
You know, they did something for me and they showed me that some things were possible that I didn't know were possible. When I got here, I was surrendered to my disease. I was surrendered even though I didn't know all of what alcoholism was.
I was surrendered to the fact that I was sick and tired and out of ideas. But I didn't know that this was going to be the thing. You know, I didn't know that if this was going to work.
It seemed so pale, you know, your 12 little thinly veiled Sunday school sentences, you know, like how was that? They just seemed like it was just gonna like like water off a duck's back one more time. And I they had tried to help me when I was a kid.
When I was a kid, I was locked up. Mental hospital, juvenile hall, uh rehab, and uh you know, just what's wrong with Carla? Let's find out.
And uh and you know, I I'd get in there and you learn to walk the walk, talk the talk, then I'm up the wall over and out. Walk the walk, talk the talk, up the wall, over and out. And I could do that in here, too.
I could already tell you have a lingo. And you know, you can get out here and look real good. Real good.
You know, you learn, you know, you're not, yeah, I'm stacking chairs and I'm stacking twice as much as you and I'm making coffee and while I'm doing that, I'm driving the newcomers around and holding the book. But after a while, you know what I have to realize is mine is the head I go home with. Mine is the head I go home with.
And that's where these steps came in. They said it's an inside job. And uh and you taught me all about that, too.
But I had to stay real close. I had to stay real close. Like I'd get up and I'd go to work in the morning and then I'd run to my meetings.
And I was going to two and three meetings a day. Uh I'd go to noon. I'd run out for lunch and go to noon uh noon meeting and and uh then I'd get out of work at 5:00 and I'd be in the grocery store buying stir sticks and coffee stuff for the coffee commitment.
And that that meeting didn't start till 8:00, but I was in that meeting at 5:05 because I was in the store. I was thinking of you. And that's how I learned about the absence of self-centeredness as well.
Or how I learned about self-centerness anyway was the absence of it for just a few minutes. You said I had to get me off my mind, you know? And I didn't know what what's self-centerness.
Am I doing it now? Is it on me? I don't know.
I had the nerve to say things like, "I can't be self-centered. I'm a mom." Yeah, ask my daughter about that. Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life.
So any way I can contribute, any way that you think it's a contribution, and I and I know by now, too, my sobriety date is September 25th, 1987. And I know by now that what I say is not necessarily what you're going to hear. And that can be, you know, positive or negative.
I don't know. It's just part of our journey. We're never going to be quite this way in on on this day again.
And we're never going to be this age, this way, in this moment ever again. This is it. You know, something very special happens when we all get together like this.
It's the gateway. You know, it's the gateway. When people start talking about steps, what's a step?
What's a step? Work the steps. Traditions.
What's a tradition? Sponsor. What's a sponsor?
And I just fell in. I fell in and it started to work. And I started to say so stay sober at midnight to midnight to midnight.
I'll tell you when I got here I thought it was I was I was a why girl you know I was a real why am I an alcoholic I thought that was still after all of that I was very it was very important for me to try to figure out why I'm an alcoholic is it my crazy dark dramatic violent perverted family if you had my family you'd drink too you know stayed around long enough to find out that that'll give you an inventory didn't make me alcoholic found out that what makes me alcoholic is my relationship to alcohol rich said it last night. You know, when I drink, I I don't know if I'm going to have two or 22. And when I stop for any amount of time, it's all I can think about.
So, I end up in that torturous cycle of alcoholism, drinking or thinking about drinking, drinking or thinking about drinking, drinking or thinking about drinking. And I've been around here long enough now to to see, too. I mean, my husband's one of them.
You know, he he lived a charm childhood. You know, nothing happened in his family that was out of the ordinary. You know, they sang and they laughed together and loved together.
Still to this day, you know, I go over and I visit their family and nobody had to read a book to find out how to love each other, you know, or go to class, how to be a parent, you know, they just did. And yet he sits right next to me in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. So all that, all the rest of that stuff is window dressing.
You know, it's what goes on in here, my relationship with alcohol. And I don't want you to think my childhood was all bad though anyway. I had a great time in elementary school.
Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade were just terrific. Um I I I was an enthusiastic kid. I was one of those kids.
We were the new kids on the block a lot. My mom was a single mother of two girls. And uh so we'd go we were in a new school sometimes twice a year.
And um and so I' I'd go in, you know, what are we going to do now? You know, I'd be a little sad for losing the the last one, but now we're going to go do this. What are we doing?
We're running track. I got to run around running the track. What are we doing?
Playing softball. I got to play softball. School politics.
Okay, sign me up. Academics, sign me up. I wanted to do it all, you know.
And then that's that ego starts to set in, you know, and this isn't necessarily alcoholic either, but boy, you put alcohol on top of this and woo. But, uh, you know, I began to be like the one that needed to be the first around the track and the best at softball and president and know all the answers. And that was a big bunch of fun.
You know, by the time sixth grade was over, I was tired and I needed a drink, you know. Cuz when you're running the world in your 10, that's a big job, you know. And I got my first social resentment behind a game of spin the bottle.
And I know they don't even play that game these days. They just get right down to business, don't they? They I was at my friend Leonard's house and we were a few boys, a few girls, you know, right before seventh grade that summer.
You know, everything's changing. You know, talk about chemical imbalance. prepubescent teenagers, you know, that's chemical imbalance for you.
And few boys, a few girls, and we were passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey. And these weren't the first drinks I ever took, but these were the ones where I really started to make the connection that alcohol would do something for me I couldn't do for myself. You know, alcohol, oh, for me, became my higher power.
Did all the feeling for me. It did all the living for me. It did all the growing up for me.
Was instant cool. Instant smooth the edges off my life. So, we're playing this game and the bottle lands on me and I went off into the bedroom with one of the boys and we were both doing the same thing as far as I could tell.
But when we came back out of that bedroom, they called him a player and me a And I did not think that was fair. I still don't think it's fair if you want to know the truth. Every sponsor I've ever had has told me the fair is in Pomona and it lasts two weeks.
That's all you get. So, so much for fair. And I was just one of I was just one of those kids, you know, that a self-centered mind, you know, it never occurred to me to ask those pertinent questions like, "Do you have a girlfriend?" Why would I want to know that, you know?
So, I boys my age started looking at me funny. So did the girls. And I got a reputation I didn't understand, nor could I take responsibility for in junior high.
And um a reputation like that goes through junior high like wildfire. And again, that separation began to get deeper and wider and deeper and wider. And I'm the kind of kid who will fight for a while and then I start to let go, surrender, let it go.
And I'm also the kind of kid who had a deep wander list from the very, very beginning. I love to go. I want to go.
All it takes really for me is a Willie Nelson song and a long slow train whistle and I am on the road again. You know what I mean? I just I got to go.
I feel that longing, that calling of the road. Hope is that way. You know, hope always that getting out on the road always made me feel like I had a bottle in the glove compartment.
You know, I just didn't even have to have that sucker open before I already felt better, you know. And I'd get out there on the 10 freeway going east and the 101 going north and I'd stick my little thumb out on that on-ramp and I'd crawl in the car or the truck going wherever with whoever and I'd be on my way to somewhere else. And that's where I want to be, somewhere else, somewhere other than hearing somebody other than me.
And I am on my way, well on my way. Consequently, because I was so young and I was out there where I wasn't supposed to be, I started getting picked up and landed in some of the Southern California hot spots like Indo Jail and Riverside Juvenile Hall and LA Central Juvenile Hall. And you know, that whole dance for a while we did and sent me home to mom and home to dad and and uh when I was 14, I found myself in a place called North Beach with a friend of mine.
Uh we got one long ride all the way from Santa Barbara all the way up to uh San Francisco. One ride. The guy dropped us off right in the middle of this party town.
party town called North Beach, right in the middle of San Francisco. And to my left was a Condor Club with Carol Dota on the marquee. And to my right there were hookers and dealers and pimps.
Oh my. We weren't on that street uh 10 minutes before a couple of guys approached us, offered us money for sex, and we said yes and did the next indicated thing. And boom, a whole new career path opened up for us.
And I started living a day at a time in a way I've not had to live in a very, very long time. And our book talks about our alcoholic life seeming the only normal one. And I got to tell you that aggre more aggressively progressively I began to trade away any sign of potential or gift God-given gifts that I had had.
Anything any potential that I'd had traded willingly for the effect that alcohol would produce. And my alcoholic life seemed the only normal one. And it was a year later that I was admitted to a mental hospital.
I was um supposed to be there for two weeks observation and I ended up being there for a year. just sort of made myself at home and moved in. They were not talking to me a lot about alcoholism.
They were talking to me about disorders. I was a very disordered looking child. I was alternately violent and withdrawn and living with a level of frustration down my gut I didn't know how to talk about.
It wasn't until I got to AA that I heard someone talk uh someone say that they felt like a scream looking for a mouth. I thought, "Oh my god." You know, you know, I didn't know back then. And they were treating me with daily nutritional supplements, a thorazine, melaril, Valium, Delmain sleepers.
I suppose they were concerned I wouldn't sleep. And uh I had become intimately familiar with fivepoint restraints. And that's what I looked like at 15.
I didn't know. I got here 15 almost 15 years later. I got to alcoholic synonymous finally sick enough and out of ideas enough and tired enough.
Pick up the tools you handed me and I started to apply them to my life and I started to get better. That's how I know I'm alcoholic. But Father Tom Weston always says you got to be pretty sick and twisted to find us interesting because again seems weak.
Seems weak. You know that happy birthday song. Boy, that'll that'll keep you coming, won't it?
Uh, so I didn't know if you don't want to go crazy in the nut house. And this was a this was not a treatment center. It was a mental hospital.
And I called it the nut house cuz that's I I know what it was like in there. And um I'm I'm sorry I'm at that age where I you know, sweater on, sweater off. You just never know how it's going to go.
But uh wasn't a treatment center. It was a mental hospital. And some of my roommates had real schizophrenia, real manic depression, real stuff.
And untreated, I look a lot like them. They don't know. We don't know.
So, I'm in this hospital and and uh if you don't want to go crazy in the nut house, you got to get busy. And one of my favorite ways to be busy, I've already told you, was the boys. I loved all the boys, but my favorites were those sexy smoldering types.
You know, the kind they just sit back there and simmer and you you just never really knew when they were going to blow, you know? God, I found them so exciting. And today, I know that feeling is fear.
Trouble with guys like that in the nut house, though, is that they're all, you know, they're they're always or usually hiding out from a junior prison sentence. They don't want to go to California Youth Authority. That's where they're going next.
If they screw up, they're gone, you know, and and that's like junior prison for people under 18. And and it's bad in there, you know. So, they're in the nut house and they're trying to lay low, but you you know they they can't.
Eventually, they blow. And like my first boyfriend, he blew and he threw a big chair through the big plate glass window of the boys unit. And then my next boyfriend, he blew and he threw a a nurse through the big play glass window of the boys unit.
And you know, this is what I'm attracted to. And and uh oh god, I remember one afternoon sitting outside on the smoke break bench watching my boyfriend Terry being cuffed and escorted off by security. And he's he's the one who threw the chair through the window and he's gone.
He's gone. And I'm just I'm heartbroken, you know. I'm heart I can't I mean this was a relationship of I don't know two three weeks and I'm smoking my tragic cigarettes and I'm watching him go channeling Greta Garbo.
And we used to play those sentimental jail house songs like when will I see you again? you know, and press our little faces up against the big bay window and long for what we couldn't have across the way. Boys leaning up against it's their big bay window.
Long for what they could have. Isn't that where we live too? In the longing.
Isn't that where we want it? Right there in the longing. Never in the getting.
You get it? You got to get another one. That's not enough.
Right. It's in that longing. Right there.
Right. So, I'm sitting there, I'm smoking my tragic cigarettes, and just inside the girls unit, I can hear Diana Ross singing at top decel, touch me in the morning, then just walk away, you know, cuz I always thought I should have a soundtrack to my life. It just seemed like the music would swell whenever at the all the appropriate times, you know.
It took me a long time to realize I was brokenhearted and blue before I ever had a real date. because it's the way I see my life. It's what I'm looking with.
You guys told me what I seek is within me. What I seek is within me. What I came looking for, I came looking with and I didn't know it.
I was always looking out there. Looking to you, looking for it, looking out there, you know. And the trouble with that was the eyes I was looking through, you know?
I'd uh I'd always half a bubble off what it was I thought I was seeing anyway. You know what I mean? I'd mistake arrogance for confidence.
I'd mistake sex for love. I'd mistake brute strength for strength of character. I'd get it up in my hot little hands and it would dissolve where I stood because it wasn't it wasn't it.
I had to come to AA to learn that it's when I'm thinking of you my that gaping hole in my soul gets smaller when I'm thinking of you getting me off my mind. Constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs. I didn't know that.
Going about it the best way I know how. Like I said, I told you I was supposed to be there two weeks. I ended up being there for a year.
I went from the girls unit to the co-ed unit to the uh unit where they put the patients they just don't know what to do with anymore. And somewhere along the line I had begun to surrender to to the thought that perhaps maybe I'm just one of those little nutouse lifers that ends up I get to get outside every once in a while. I am always always going to end up back inside.
Always. Always. Every now and then I'd get thirsty enough and I'd find my way over the wall or under the gate or out that out that door.
Stay out for a week or two and then come back in the front door because that's where I live. I live in the nut house. By the time I got to this unit a year later, I was a vision for you.
I um was uh no longer bathing or getting dressed because you don't have to do that to date in the nut house. And uh was cutting my arms. I had casts on my both should both arms up to my shoulders because I'd been cutting.
And that was just a different way to change my reality. It wasn't about suicide. It was just about changing the reality.
Emotional release. No balance. Nothing.
nothing going on inside. Um, I ended up going over the wall with the man of my dreams that I met there on that uh, unit. And, uh, we lasted about two and a half weeks.
And I just have to tell you that the rest of my adolescence went just like that. I was always sitting in front of a judge waiting for placement, waiting for placement, waiting for placement. How do we fix Carla?
How do we help her? How do we help her? and I'd get into a new program and I'd learn the lingo and I get there and I'd walk the walk and talk the talk and be up the wall over and out again.
At the end of that, I'm uh ended up in a girl's home. I'm 17 years old and now we're in this girl's home. It's kind of like a halfway house.
They're trying to teach us how to live out in the world, grocery shop and make our beds and all that stuff. And I wasn't I wasn't a terrible bed maker or any of that stuff. I didn't mind doing that.
It was all right, you know. But uh uh but God, I couldn't stop drinking, you know. I didn't know how to settle this thing inside me and everything I put into my body trying to access that power greater than myself because I believed in God were the very things that were blocking me.
Then I got to AA all those years later and now I find out it's me that's blocking me. That's enough. That's enough.
But here's one where I want to tell you that I've always believed in a power greater than myself since I was a small child. Had those awakenings Rich talked about last night. You know, I knew that there was a God.
God doesn't we don't we don't it it does it doesn't have to be there's no official meeting ground for God. God meets us where we are sometimes. And I could feel it, but I didn't know how to maintain it.
It seemed like I'd get right up in there and feel it and it be snatched away. fear, worship of other things, worldly clamors, mostly those inside myself. And I tried.
I saw it. I'm a seeker. I told you I'm proactive.
I was born into a Southern Baptist family. That religion worked very well for my mother till the day she died four years ago. Worked very well for her.
But I couldn't hear it. I couldn't hear it. Tried being a Catholic for a couple of weeks in the fourth grade.
Uh I'm about as deep as a mud puddle, though. there. You know, if it doesn't work right away, I got to go.
Got to go. Got to go. You know, those little girls in white dresses and burning candles and beads and all that stuff wasn't working.
Tried burning black candles and praying to the other guy for a couple of years, you know? Just hedging my bets really. I just want to be on the side that's winning, you know?
I don't care. Then the television series Kung Fu came out. Some of you might remember that show.
I mean, I'm a seeker, you know, sixth grade watching David Keredine in his in in his starring role in this movie. I mean, I I mean, still to this day, I some of my most uh spiritual uh lessons I remember killing of a man does no one honor. Okay.
But this David Keredine, his character Kane, he was a Buddhist priest and he'd walk he'd walk the Wild West in bare feet. It was amazing. You know, he was tough.
What? Tattoos on his wrist? I didn't know that.
Yeah. But he had a little bag of herbs right here. And I always wanted to know what was in that bag, you know.
But he'd walk from town to town and I'd watch him. He'd walk from town to town and sometimes he'd be and he looked Chinese and kind of Asian looking. And so he'd look different than everybody else.
And those cowboys, they'd meet him and and uh and they'd meet him with great hostility. sometimes whole groups of them and they'd come up to him and they'd just hostily assault him verbally, you know, and then uh and he'd just stand there like he did. Pearls, just a few Buddhist pearls just rolled off his tongue and you'd see the change come over their face and they'd go off to help people.
That's power. There's something going on there. Then he'd walk to another town and they'd beat him with great hostility one more time, whole group of guys.
This time they'd assault him physically. And when they did that, he kicked their butts. And I wanted what he had.
I thought he was strength and serenity epitomized. You know, that's it. Personified, you know.
So, I'm chasing this and I'm reading all I can get and I'm I'm trying to figure out what be here now means exactly. Started meditating at 17 years old. You know what?
It's there. It's there. There's, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears and all this stuff.
But I couldn't touch it. Couldn't touch it because I kept drinking because I was drinking and putting that that layer of cellophane between me and anything good anything good that I could want my in in my in my life in me that I could learn. I kept putting that layer between us.
And I met my roommate and she was on the same page, you know, she was on the same page spiritually as I was. We were seekers, you know, and we sought through I I uh by that time my my uh idea of a higher power had developed into something like uh a combination of what I thought the 60s might have been had I been out there in them. But I was 12 in 1969.
So they were over by the time I got out there. And but I but you know I used to watch TV and I watched them. I mean they marched.
Those people marched. They didn't take crap. They stood up.
They stood up. They sang songs and we will overcome and and they and and they you know it was it was powerful. There was a music of the 60s the Grateful Dead Crosby Stills and Nash blind faith traffic you know those songs that filled your heart and soul with you knew you knew there was something bigger going on.
So my roommate and I were talking to our friends and they said you got to go to Oregon. They're all up there. He said, "Okay." Out the second out the second story window that girl's home down the tree and into Ry's truck and off to Oregon where God might be.
And you know, little by little, you know, we see things, but I can't bring them into my life. I can't I can't uh uh I can't implement them completely because I just I see them. They sound like good ideas, but I can't do it.
I can't do it. So, we get up there and we plant a little garden in the front yard. We're going to go back to the earth.
That's where I learned that in Oregon when they talk about hoen, they meant with a tool. It was just a whole different way of relating. Two things happened while I was up there that I couldn't see.
Certainly, and our book talks about that, too. Most of us showing uh signs and symptoms of alcoholism before long before we're ready, willing, or able to do anything about it. And it was certainly happening for me.
Uh two things would happen. One was we couldn't always drink the way I needed to drink. And when we can't, I've got no steps or fellowship or God in my understanding.
I'm restless, irritable, and discontent. Very hard to get along with. My life quickly becomes your fault.
And when we could drink the way I needed to drink, I was always overshooting the mark. And that was happening again. And still at 17, my friends had had to ask me to leave.
And I was asked to leave a lot. You know, just back down to my father's house against his better judgment. We hadn't been together in a while.
And he let me stay. We'd get up at the same time every morning and he'd take off for work and I'd go sit in his den and drink from his liquor cabinet. He never drank a drop and it was full.
I mean, he was a businessman, so he had just this liquor cabinet. It was divine. It was like church.
And I'd sit there and I'd drink Chevvis Regal and all those all those I I mean, I didn't really know understand what I was drinking. I didn't know I had the best, but I'd drink it and he'd come home in the afternoon and see me sitting in the very spot where he left me that morning. And I'd see that brokenhearted look in his eyes and I'd have nothing to say for myself.
You know, when we feel that, I'd feel that when it happens, heart breaks just a little bit and there's nothing I can do. I don't know how to tell him I'm afraid. I don't even know that's what I am.
I don't know how to tell him I don't know how to go out in the world and make a living. I don't know how to tell him I don't know where the last few years of my life had gone. Right before my 18th birthday, he came to me and he said what I know were the hardest words he ever had to say to his oldest daughter, and that's, "I'm not going to watch you die." I'm not going to help you do it.
You got to go. And on my way out the door, all I could remember is that one of the counselors at the rehab had told me I was a great actress. I know today I must have misunderstood cuz uh cuz I ended up on Hollywood Boulevard and uh there's not a lot of auditioning going on out there.
And I was 18 years old. Start my days off with a pint of pop vodka and I would go wherever the day took me and some days it was a party and some days it was surviving. Not a lot of hope about it getting any different.
A few months into that, I met a man walking down Hollywood Boulevard and I saw the light in his eyes and I didn't realize it was Orange Sunshine, but we hit it off and I moved in with him that night and I didn't even know his last name. And six weeks later, he's asking me to leave and I still don't know his last name. But I like to bring him up because years later, he was on my eightstep list.
He was someone that came to mind very quickly and clearly that I owed him amends that there was something to go see him about. And um sometimes we just barely get done writing. We don't even have to finish sometimes before we know.
Oh yeah. Ready, willing, and able. I wanted to make those amends.
I wanted to make that right. I spent the last part of my first year of sobriety looking for him. I had been that tornado, that proverbial tornado that went through his life, spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, every in every way, materially, six weeks.
So, I spent the last part of my first year looking for him, of of year of sobriety, looking for him. And and I went everywhere I knew to look. And then my sponsor finally said, you know, you got to let that go.
You know, if you're supposed to find that guy, you'll find him. But in God's time, you know, now you're starting to spin your wheels. You know, you're chasing your own tail and you got to you got to leave that alone.
Let God breathe. Let let God work. And um but in the meantime, there are some things that you can do to change your own behavior.
You know, start heading in that direction. There's nothing wrong nothing wrong with that. Uh like you can try being a friend to a man in a vertical fashion.
Why don't you start there? you know, little actions, you know, and and I got to and I have to clarify a little bit too. I wasn't like chasing men all over in AA in my first year, but I because I was surrendered that I needed to stop, but I didn't know what to do next.
You know, I needed somebody to be here to tell me what to do next. Right before my 13th uh AA birthday, I had to go give a talk on the other side of town. It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I didn't feel like going and thank God you guys have taught me it's not how I feel it's what I do that matters and I went out and I gave that talk and of course I felt better.
I mean you know showing up is one of the most simple things you guys taught me to do and one of the most uh the biggest payoffs. You know I'm usually wrong about what I think is going to happen or how it's going to be or whatever it's you know who's going to say what or any of that stuff. So that's all wasted energy.
I still try to practice it once in a while but I remember oh yeah that you know that doesn't feel good. Um, but uh I mean I used to think I could blow up a dinner for two and not be missed really. You know what I mean?
I but don't dare not invite me. You know, don't not invite me. I just don't want to go.
So, I went to this meeting. I gave that talk and of course I felt better. And when the thank you line came through at the end of that, this man stopped and he said, "Where were you in 1976?" It was a guy from Hollywood Boulevard standing in front of me with eight and a half years of sobriety and I was almost 13.
Now, for me, only a a very wellorganized, loving God could have made that happen when I and all my efforts to get that done. Couldn't get it done in my time. In my time, and I just like to tell that story because sometimes a road seems a long time.
My sobriety date, September 25th, 1987. So, for 26 years, I've been on this path. And I got to tell you, thank God I don't have to do it perfectly.
I have been, you know, I want to I want to I mean, right around 15, 16, 17 years sober. Boy, did I want to. And nobody else wanted to do it with me.
get a little stiff and brittle around the edges there. She's like spons I don't want to call her. You call her.
I don't want to call her. I love her, but I don't want to talk to her. And you know it we I I don't know.
Have you ever been a member of the correct AA, you know? Yeah, me too. And um I like to tell that story because it reminds me when I can't see that far ahead of me and it gets a little bl, you know, a little blurry, a little foggy, and I can't remember the last time something came together, it just seems so, you know, there's something big going on, you know, it is.
And my friend Rachel used to say, "You're in the middle of a miracle so big you can't see the sides of it." And I think, "Oh, please." But it was true. You know, we can't we don't we don't know what God has in mind. We get one piece of the puzzle every day sort of and and we get up and do uh what looks like we think, you know, God told us to to do.
What's your list for me today? God reporting for duty and get out there and do the best we can. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to make a mistake, you know.
Thank God. Um but I got to make those direct amends to him and and he said, "Oh my god, Carla, that's long forgiven, long forgotten. I just can't believe you're still alive." And uh and he's right.
You know, if we're in this room this morning, we're the lucky ones. We're the lucky ones. Somehow someway, we've managed to slip through that window of grace one more day to come in here and sit together and recharge and regroup and see what we can go back out there and pack into the stream of life.
What we can give instead of take. At some point, I had to start taking actions on my own behalf. I don't know how long you can stay sober on fellowship alone.
I don't know how, we were talking about that earlier today. I don't know how long I can stay sober on your share, on your sobriety, on your experience. At some point, I've got to pick this up and do it myself.
And it's going to be messy. God, I loved it. Vince, you all used to say, you can't you can't be afraid to look bad in Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, the uh the more fun way is to, you know, you can't save your ass and your face at the same time. That's better. I mean, I I identified with that.
But but then I found, you know, making the effort, coming in here, taking these steps and and uh and heading in the direction of being willing to have my mind changed, being willing to be changed, um getting comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable, with the reality of being uncomfortable. And I couldn't schedule AA into my life like some aerobics class. I couldn't do that.
It wasn't optional for me. Not for this alcoholic. I wanted to be so many things and I'd be drinking and I'd see people doing simple things, riding bikes or uh uh or living just living their life, mowing their lawn.
Phil moral and philosophical convictions galore. I can't live up to them. However much I'd like, however much I'd want to.
I want to be that. Got to be this. I want to be there.
Stuck here. I left Hollywood and I I'm the kind of a drunk who sleeps by the side of the road and calls it camping. I've got that soundtrack going on in my life.
I mean, I I you know, Jackson Brown and Bob Dylan singing some of the saddest songs you ever heard, you know, and uh poor me and and uh I hooked up with a guy and and uh we're going to travel the rowdy road together and we've got that uh you know, we've got that idea of the 60s again, flying on the coattails of the 60s. We love the idea of peace and love and all that stuff. We just couldn't stop knocking the hell out of each other really long enough to implement the principles fully of peace and love.
So we beat each other up and down the California coast and pitched a tent in the mountains in southern Oregon. Lived there till the rains came and then we moved into a roofless cabin just north of Grants Pass. 5 miles in off the highway, 5 miles up a mountain.
Found this old burnout cabin, you know, holes in it and everything, no roof, patched it up with some sheetrock mortar we bought with food stamps, I think, and uh put uh some wood on the floor and found an old box spring and threw a plastic tarp over the top of this cabin, called it a skylight, and then the baby came. And we learned to make moonshine up there. You know, we're drinking herbal things, you know, moonshine, organic things, moonshine, homemade wine, homemade beer.
And the the baby was supposed to be the priority. I'm going to be the parent I never was. I'm going to be the parent I never had.
Not was parent I never had. We all know that alcoholism doesn't care who you love. Quickly, priorities changed.
alcohol, then the kid, everything else. She got in the way of one of our fights when she was about 10 months old, and I had to take her on the road where it's going to be better somewhere else. Now we're up in Idaho.
I'm tending bar and cocktail waitressing, my first legitimate work. Never occurred to me not to drink on the job. Why else would you have that job?
Just seemed to me to be most efficient. My kid was one of those kids that you see in her t-shirt and underwear in yesterday's lunch down the front of it because her mom's not paying attention. I can't bring home enough money to pay rent for more than a week at a time.
So, we live in the rent by the week motel up there. And they're not bad places to work. Not bad places to work at all.
Two and three jobs at a time. Normal people. We're doing their deal.
So, of course, we have to leave. We're back down in LA. I'm renting a room for my aunt Kavina.
I've got a job in Hollywood Tendon Bar. One more time. Great job.
Me, I'm the common denominator. My daughter was almost four years old by then. And every afternoon I'd kiss her goodbye and I'd take off for the bar in Hollywood.
Stop at the halfway point which was a bar in Arcadia about halfway there called the first cabin. Stop in there and I'd have my primer drinks. So shots of Corval Gold and Budbacks got me ready to go do my shift then drink with everybody at the bar till the wee hours of the morning.
Crawl home and start all over again. And one afternoon I kissed my girl goodbye and I took off for that bar in Hollywood and I stopped at that same place in Arcadia. Had those same shots of gold and same budbacks.
And to this day, I don't know what was different on that day from the day before, except for 24 hours cuz I didn't hate that job in Hollywood and I didn't love my daughter any less on that day than I love her today. But I sat on that bar stool and I drank those drinks and I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop drinking long enough to get up and go take care of business in either direction.
So I sat on that bar stool and I lost them both in one fell swoop. The kid and the job were gone. And I stayed and I lived off the kindness of strangers there in that little area in Arcadia for about a month until I fell into another job and another dive bar.
I'm going to try it again. Right. Fresh start.
Fresh start. That be I met the man I'd marry. Thought maybe if I made my life look like yours was, it's got to be this business.
If I get off the street, it's got to, you know, change. Get inside the apartment. New life, fresh start.
He and I got married about the time we should have split up and we moved into that apartment. We became the neighborhood entertainment and we settled our arguments with a shotgun. And that's how that worked.
Whoever got to it first wins. My first exposure to AA that I knew. I've told the story for a long time and then I I've thought, you know, over 26 years.
I remember, oh my god, exposed there. Oh my god, heard about AA there. Oh my god, knew somebody in AA there.
Oh my god. And you know, never like water off a duck's back. Never.
So, not me. My first exposure to AA was after one of our fights that I remember and uh we were at the bar where we were drink where we usually drank and we were fighting over whether whether or not I should get off the bar stool and I lost that fight and I ended up with some black eyes and broken ribs. Nobody feeling sorry for me in the bar by then.
Just glad I'm leaving. My husband had to pick me up and take me to the hospital. I can't tell you how many times I put him at cross purposes to having to save my life and try to kill me all at the same time, you know.
Then he got me fixed up and I uh he took me home and I he had to leave for work that weekend and before he did he set me up with a giant ice chest full of beer and a bottle of beef eater gin chilling on top and now I'm drinking gin because tequila had been making me so mean. You understand? So I'm drinking the gin and I'm dialing the phone.
I don't know if we have any other drunk dialers in the room but I don't know all of who I called but I know I know I felt like a battered woman. So, I called a patterned woman's shelter and I asked the woman who answered the phone to fix my life. She asked me if I'd ever been to an AA meeting.
I don't know how she made that leap, but she did. And and again, you know what I heard her say? She'll fix my life.
Go to an AA meeting. Simple. I found a wonderful AA meeting not far from where I live.
Go figure. First time I ever looked. Wonderful meeting there, then.
It was there now. It's still there. I went in there with everything but readiness.
Everything but readiness. And you cannot make me ready. cannot make me ready.
I'm the only one who can do that and I can only do that by taking the walk. And I don't know why that is or how that is or how that works. But I went in and I sat in a perfectly wonderful AA meeting that night feeling very sorry for myself.
And this the woman was a was a a a great speaker. She stood I I know she was a speaker and that one thing I heard her say was that somewhere during her drinking career she switched to beer. So I did.
You know, the representative from Alcoholics Anonymous said she switched to beer because beer's not really drinking anyway, is it? I mean, I think it's more like a breakfast food, you know? It's got those hops and barley and wheat and it's really a whole grain breakfast food if you want to know the truth.
Not sure we shouldn't go without it. Just kidding. If you're new, I'm kidding.
Um, so I drank beer and that uh that allowed me to drink for another year and a half. You know, it gave me the illusion I was controlling my drinking. It allowed me to get a little further into my day before I fell over.
Cases and cases and cases of beer and I still can't manage my life. Can't control it. Can't control my drinking.
It's all falling down around me. I got a little job answering phones for the city. Perfectly wonderful job.
It was about a year before I got sober. Perfectly wonderful job. And you know, fresh start.
I want to do well. I wasn't I didn't want to go out and destroy everything I touched. That wasn't my attention intention.
I uh you know, I wanted to do well. I wanted to have a few, you know, just like just mellow out and have a real job, mow the lawn. Sometimes in the morning, I'd try to get to work without having those morning drinks.
Those drinks that stop the shakes. You know, when I when I could make it to work without taking those drinks, it'd be all I could think about. I'm either drinking or thinking about drinking.
Drinking or thinking about drinking. Maybe I can make it to the break. Maybe I can make it to lunch.
So, it was that torturous, torturous year. One more time, one more Saturday afternoon. And the cops are in the driveway one more time.
The neighbors are peeking out the window. One more time. One more scene.
One more time. Our friend Mickey says it's not so much the yets that bothered him. It was the oh no, not again.
I'd gotten the kid back for better or worse uh for about a year, year and a half. She was almost 10 years old by now. She's standing over in the corner in her mismatch clothes and her unckempt hair.
And she got that look of fear in her eyes one more time. Nothing I can say. I didn't wake up that morning thinking, "Let's do this." Woke up in the morning thinking, "If everybody will just be cool, we can have a good day." My husband left for the last time.
The cops left. They took the gun. Everybody's gone.
It's me and the kid in the booze, and I can't stop drinking. I see my life falling down around me. I'm in a much better financial position position than I've been in a long time.
I'm living indoors on a regular basis. I got a little car out there in the in the garage. I've got this job I'm hanging on to by a thread, but I but you know I'm in kind of the normal world, which was a big goal of mine for a little while.
I don't know why. I don't I I I guess I thought it meant normaly or something. But uh I can't stop drinking.
My first sponsor told me if I wanted to affect a conscious contact with a power greater than myself, I could start by counting the coincidences that happened in my life. One of the first ones I could count was that I had moved in next door to a woman who had five years of sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous. She had seen and heard that whole deal go down.
And a couple days later, she came and knocked on my door and she brought me a big book in 12 and 12. She sat on my couch and she told me her story. She was just a woman properly armed with the facts about herself.
And in her story, I could tell she used to drink like me. And over the last year, I'd seen with my own eyes that she wasn't drinking anymore. What impressed me more about that was it didn't seem to bother her that she wasn't drinking.
Ha. And that got my attention. I don't know how you do that.
And after she talked, you know, I just I I'm I I don't know if this is going to work for me cuz untreated when I've got no steps or fellowship or God of my understanding. I've got no booze. I feel like you've stripped the coating off my wires.
I feel oversensitive and underloved. And I don't know what you meant by that or why you looked at me that way. And my head closes in on me from there.
So much so. So much so when I've got nothing standing in between me and that first one. Even though I look at that drink and I know I know by then on on some level and some intuitive level I can't guarantee if I'm going to have two or 22.
Even though I know that window of relief has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. Even though I know I don't have to invite trouble anymore. It comes to visit unsolicited.
I'm going to have nothing that stands between me and that first one. and I'm going to have to take it and then it's on. So again, I don't know how her 12 little thinly veiled Sunday school sentences are going to have any effect.
And it was about a week and a half later, I just didn't go back and buy any more boobs. The kid was somewhere else and I just didn't move. I just didn't move.
I was in my apartment and I didn't move. And I started to get sick and I got sick and I shook it out and I sweated it out and I saw and heard things that weekend and into Monday and into Tuesday. By Tuesday afternoon, I was stark raving sober.
I went back to my neighbor instead of the store. That's the first left turn I took instead of right. Went back to my neighbor instead of the store and I asked her what to do.
She sent me up to a meeting in Sierra Madre, California, where wasn't far from where I lived at the time. That became my first home group. I went up there and I sat way back by the exit sign by the door just in case.
The hope I heard came in the form of small talk for whatever reason. I don't know why it was, but it touched my heart. You guys seem to care about each other.
You were asking each other dumb questions, you know, like, "How you doing? You need a cup of coffee? Did you get a cup of coffee?
Did you get a big book? Do you have a big book? Do you need a ride?
Didn't you have a job interview yesterday? How'd that go? How's your lawn, Joe?
God, could my life ever be so elegant and simple again as to be concerned about a lawn? You know, the attraction comes in a lot of different ways. That's why we need everybody's window dressing.
We need everybody's story. God talks in those stories. Rich said that last night.
God talks to us in these stories. The secretary did something very nice for me at the end of that meeting that night. She asked me to read that portion of chapter 11 that we read at the end of a lot of meetings in Southern California, a vision for you.
I said yes. I took it from her and I started to read. And as I read, I came into the room just a little bit just like I do every time I say yes to something you asked me to do.
I come into the room just a little bit. And when I come into the room, I get to hear the message again. I'm in a posture of hearing and delivering the message.
I never know who's going to be walking past me with that one liner. is going to set me right again. I never know who's walking behind me who's going to say, "God, if Carla can do it, maybe I can, too." I got a sponsor and the only requirement for that sponsor was the fact that she hadn't had a drink in 12 years.
And I don't know how you do that. I could get an idea about 20, 30 days and stuff. Even as difficult as that was, but does this thing work for 12 years, 22 years, 30 years?
Does it really and she took me under her wing and I started to take the steps with her and and I was going to two and three meetings a day. I just felt safe with you, you know. I just felt safe.
I didn't know how to do it. I was I was showing up for work every day and I was doing all that stuff, but I didn't I didn't know I didn't know if I was just going to, you know, my friend Cia says I didn't know if it if I was going to drink behind my own back, you know, it was just going to slip in there, you know, and and that horrible obsession to uh to drink didn't leave me till I was about nine months sober and in the middle of my amends. Know, I saw a lot of people come in here and say, "Oh, the obsession to drink has been lifted." Oh, good.
But I'd wake up in the morning. You guys taught me how to get from the bed to the coffee pot or the bed to prayer first upon awakening. But then to the coffee pot and then to the shower and then to the car little by little by little, baby steps, one by one by one.
That's how we get from here to there. One by one by one, step by step by step. And I was one of those, you know, I'm not stupid, but I needed it real simple.
I was foggy. It just seemed like I was always afraid that if I got sober, I would OD on over awareness. You know what I mean?
Like It's too much. I didn't have to know all of what God meant. I didn't have to learn how to define him or describe him.
I just had to turn my attention in that direction and be willing, willing to believe. I knew there was something. And I was willing to relinquish whatever stood in the way.
I didn't know all that stood in the way. I didn't have to I didn't have to be any more than I was when I got here. I didn't have to know any more than I knew.
God met me where I was through you. I made that first round of amends to my family when I was about nine months sober. And I got to tell you that to this day, there's not a member of my family who'll stand in the doorway and say, "Please don't go to the meeting." Never happens in my family.
And they are the first texts I get and first phone calls and cards and everything that I get on my uh sober anniversary every year. After a while, other women started asking me to sponsor them. And I got to tell you, the only fifth step I like better than mine is yours.
Cuz in your eyes, I see redemption. And I see forgivability and I see lovability. And I see hope where I don't always see it on myself.
I see growth where I don't always see it on myself. I think something very special happens when two alcoholics share at that level. It's a reminder when the light comes on in you.
It burns brighter in me. And I'm a big believer you got to give it away to get it. After a couple of years, I had had you guys and busy being wonderful in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Two and three meetings a day. You know, it's where I felt safe. I'm showing up.
I'm paying rent for more than a month in a row. You know, we're still living indoors. Things are good.
My daughter was almost 12 years old, starting to come home at all hours of the night, beat up and bloody. She'd been jumped into a gang and starting to find her sense of family and camaraderie out in the street. And I was getting scared for her.
It was time for me right up and see this. I didn't know until until you know, right up front on page 19 in our book doesn't wait till the end says right up front on page 19, a more important demonstration of our principles happens in our homes, occupations, and affairs. And if I'm only doing it in these rooms, I'm only half doing it.
So I had to stop going to two and three meetings a day, go to one meeting a day, go to work, go home and be a mom to that kid, even though I didn't know how to do that. And I had a lot of help in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I had to come and tell you that I was still hitting her.
I was still controlling her by hitting her. I was I was at least the parent that I had always had, if not worse. Stone cold sober.
And I didn't know how to do it. and he didn't throw me away. He taught me how to do it differently.
So I had to put her in a treatment center. She was in this there was this experimental thing going on for kids who were going through the things that she was going through and there as well as adolescent alcoholics and and drug addicts. And she was there for six months and it was for me to show up.
It was for me to show up and offer her my availability whether she wanted it or not. Whether she ever wanted to have a long lasting relationship with me or not, it was for me to make those amends. It was for me to offer that to her.
And uh she was there for about six months and then she got out and she wanted to go live with her dad for a while. And it was for me to step back and go pick her up on my weekends and shut up about what I thought of him. And we got better.
We started to get better little by little. You guys taught me mountains are moved a spoonful at a time. Every day I get up and give it my best spoonful.
She got out and and now she's living with her dad. And you know, I got to tell you that I had to discover in Alcoholics Anonymous that just because I'm working 12 Golden Steps doesn't doesn't uh exempt me from the uh trials and tribulations of a regular life. We're not a different species.
We have a different condition, but we are not we are human and stuff happens. Stuff happens to people who never drink. They get cancer.
They get sick. They fall off things. They get in car accidents.
They get killed. Things happen. Five years of sobriety.
had come home from the gym one night and I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night and and uh there was a man standing over my bed with a knife to my neck and his hand over my mouth and he said, "Don't say a word or I'll cut your head off." And he took the telephone cord and he tied my hands behind my back and he raped me and he robbed me that night in my room. And I'm five years sober and by that time I had a much bigger god than I got here with. I got to tell you, I got to simplify when I got here.
I told you about all those disjointed ideas about God that I'd had. However true or good that they might have been, I couldn't get a hold of them, you know, till I got here. When I got here, I told this lady, Susan, about my ideas, and she said, "Why don't you just call him God and let him get as big as he needs to be in your life?
Why don't you start there?" And then I saw in the in the uh the book where it's talking about the second step, the chap chapter to the agnostics, and it says uh what was our choice to be? Is God everything or is he nothing? If God's everything, there's nothing else.
There's no place in the world that I am that God is not. No place in the world where God is not. So, in the middle of the night, there's a man on my back and I don't know how this is going to go.
And I know deep inside that things are as they should be. They're going to go as they should be, even if I don't like them. But I know I get to trust and I got to and I have to surrender it.
I to this day, anything I don't like, anything I don't understand, it's got to be surrendered. has got to be given up cuz I don't know. I don't know.
I got to say a prayer for my daughter that if something happened to me, maybe somebody will be with her when she asked to hear the news. And I realized a couple weeks later that was only Alcoholics Anonymous that would fit me to be of the presence of mine to say a prayer like that at a time like that. It just wasn't um in me at that time or before that.
and he was there in my house for or in my apartment for a a few hours and then he finally left out the same window he'd come in and it turned out that I knew him. I'd watched him get sober 30 days before I did. I watched him get his life, his wife, his kids and everything back and then I watched him join the church and leave a behind.
And when he went out, he went out like that. And what I chose to learn from that is that while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right, this is where I learned the terms and conditions of my alcoholism. This is where I learn that I'm not one of those people who can go home after a Sunday sermon and have a glass of wine.
I come here and I remember that and then I go anywhere I want to and worship in addition to but not instead of Alcoholics Anonymous for me. He was caught a couple weeks later and there was a trial that followed and I up until that time I'd had a I'd had a man for a sponsor. There was uh my first sponsor left and joined the church when I was about two years sober.
And if she hadn't told me that I got to have my own higher power, my own concept of a higher power. If she hadn't told me that, maybe I might have followed her out. Maybe I would have said, "Yeah, okay.
I'll go with you now." But she didn't. She taught me the steps and she did what she did and I got to stay and do what I do. I don't know if she's still sober or not.
I haven't heard from her. I mean, I it they don't necessarily, you know, have to go drink, but I don't want to take that chance. This is where I found it.
This is where I came alive. My whole life, my whole being, everything I have and am and do today and get to see is based on a foundation of alcoholic synonymous. And at first glance, that might sound a little bit limited to you, but for me, it's brought everything.
I was ineffective and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't be I couldn't do anything twice in a row on purpose.
So, I had this guy Lee Lee E, who was my sponsor. He was just a just a good old boy. He'd say things like, "Well, that's going to feel a whole lot better as soon as it quits hurting." He said, you know, he's just take it easy kind of guy, you know.
He never stepped over any inappropriate lines. He never he never We were Alcoholics Anonymous. And then when it was time after this rape happened, he came in and he put double locks on my windows in my apartment so I could feel okay in my room.
And then we found a um we found a bunch of evidence and he went to the police department with me and and we said, you know, we don't know if this will do any do anything or not, but we found it and they took it and we went over this whole thing and then he helped me. He walked me up to Margarite who we both knew that it was time for me to get a woman's sponsor and and I asked Margarite and she um introduced me to my soul. That's all I can say is that uh my you know she just um and she said you know you're going to have to forgive this guy.
And I know she's right. I know by 5 years of sobriety that we're people who can't handle even seemingly justifiable resentments. The guy had scared me.
I had scared me. And at 5 years of sobriety my favorite response to fear was still anger. You know anger is has a special kind of momentum.
Makes me feel purposeful and makes me feel like you can't hurt me. If I relinquish that, then ego says, "If I die, you die." They're going to walk all over you. Yet, I know I need to forgive.
I know I need to relinquish it. I know I I know how resentment colors the present. I know how resentment of the past colors my present moment.
I know. So, I got to get from here to there. I The only way I know is that sevenstep prayer became my mantra.
that sevenstep attitude, the the six the 12 and 12 lays that out so beautifully as well, you know, but it changed my heart. I was ready for a change and I just didn't know how. And I didn't have to know how.
I was just shown, you know, I ask for an attitude adjustment and then I walk out and I act like I've had one and uh and the teacher appears. And it took a little while. There was a trial that followed and as part of the defense they had a lot of the guys I'd known years before get up and testify as to who I used to be, including my ex-husband.
And that's the that's the mark I'd left on him was the fact that he was more inclined to testify on behalf of the rapist than he was for me. He's never been interested in any of my amends. And that has to be okay now, but um at least for now.
So, we had to get a character witness for me. And by that time, I was five years sober working at a big downtown investment bank. Um, it's a place I never even would have walked in the front doors of years before, but had no business being there.
It's a fancy place. People like Henry Kissinger walked the halls there. He was on the board, board of directors, and and now I walk undetected.
I've been walking undetected through those halls and doing my job for a while, about almost three years by that time. the division head, the department head there volunteered to come and testify on my behalf as to who I was at 5 years of sobriety and they told him all about who I used to be. He said, "Yeah, but she shows up early and she stays late and she was where she said she was." See, that's alcoholic synonymous speaking for itself.
He didn't have to be coached. He just got up and told the truth as he'd experienced it through me. Then it was my turn to testify and you know, like I said, I've been looking for this window of forgiveness, looking for this thing.
Watch, you know, when's it? how how God you know when I stopped asking why and started asking how when I got here I started to do a whole lot better and um so I sat in the witness stand and I looked out and I saw him sitting at the defense table and that's a place where I've sat before and I could sit again and it occurred to me it occurred to me in that moment that if I were to take a drink I could sit in his very spot and there's a little recipe for forgiveness in our book on page 67 and I'm a page quoter I'm not going to make you chase it page 67 Seven though we didn't like the way their symptoms manifest. He like me was perhaps spiritually sick.
He like me. Not me from a spiritual hilltop. Not me because I'm so wonderful and he's such a scumbag.
It's he's like me. And just like a crack of light under the doorway, just like a little crack of the light under the doorway, it was there. It was the willingness came and I began to be able to relinquish bit by bit by bit the fear and all the stuff that had me all tied up and it took about a year and a half for the nightmares and all of that stuff to dissipate but they did and I didn't have to look at a man in front of me through the experience that I had had with him.
um he was sentenced to 20 years and he did 17 and he's not been able to stay out of prison as far as I know because I keep getting the letters when he's being released you know so I find out oh again again and I know it works in prison because I've had the privilege of going up into those prisons and talking to those guys and the women in county jail and it's a little different boy a little different tone you go up into prison and talk to those lifers you know some of them are uh have been sober several more years than I And they found a way through Alcoholics Anonymous to be available to each other and to the people that they've harmed. And it's magnificent. They walk spiritually free inside those walls.
Not that they wouldn't trade places with us if they could, but physically, but spiritually they walk free. And I don't know which is which impresses me more that or the fact that when I go to county and I and I take a panel in there, take a meeting in there that after the meeting's over, some of the women will come up and go, you know, I used to be secretary of that group over there. I used to sponsor 15 women.
I used to I used to used to um made a lot of mistakes in sobriety, you know, a couple years later hooked up with a guy six months to get him in and two years to get me get him out. You know, that kind of boyfriend. And uh you know, I had a lot to learn in here.
You know, I I I thought all I heard somebody say was that like it's um you know, it's probably going to be somebody completely different than you're used to. So, he was all spiffed up in his suits and ties and I didn't know that other women had bought him all of that stuff. I didn't know that.
I just And I didn't know that he was coming to me for his next bill, you know? I didn't know. But I thought all I knew is that I wanted to work real hard and uh and and the the more stuff and and uh you know, I don't know.
I I felt like I came by it honestly, but I thought the more established, the more money I make, the more power I get, the more uh uh if I buy a house, if I look legit, I think that was it. I wanted to look legit. And uh you know again sometimes that perception you know that promise of the 11st step the one that says sometimes we're going to do some absurd things thinking that we know what God's will is.
Um you know so I went into business with him and and by 10 years sober I was bankrupt and I had to pay a whole bunch of money back and let him go. And you know my first 10 years of uh trying to date in sobriety was way different than the second 10 years. And I don't know if that gives you any hope or not, but um it seemed like in my first year of sobriety, everybody got a year, met the love of their life, and went to law school.
You know, I it seemed like the AA fasttrack or something. You know what I mean? And at first glance, I thought, "Oh, okay.
I'll do that." But, you know, I can't do that because it took me four years to pay for the divorce. So, you know, I'd almost forgot I was married for a little while. And um in my second 10 years of of sobriety with dating life, boy, I had people I had friends who were married and divorced more times than I'd had cups of coffee with people.
You know what I mean? Because I didn't want to settle. I didn't want to settle.
I've had to start all over in Alcoholics Anonymous without drinking, you know, just do it again. I I uh have been a strong member of I'm on my now fourth home group. I'm a supporter of the others.
I'm still involved, still with all of them. Doug and I uh I uh ran into to Doug at a conference in Arizona. We we uh go to a lot of the same meetings we had for many years.
12 uh about 10 or 11 or 12 years we'd known each other and then at 21 years sober and 51 years old. We were speaking at a conference in Arizona and uh and we ran into each other and just started talking and that was a conversation that hadn't stopped yet. you know, uh we were married a couple years ago and and uh so glad that I didn't get here and start tapping my foot, you know, waiting for that one to happen.
You know what I mean? 21 years. And if you're new, you know, I just want to tell you that, you know, it's easy from this podium.
We wrap this story up in an hour or so, you know, like some bad chapter of law and order. You know, we got the law and order and boom, we're good. But, uh, you know, all this stuff takes time.
I mean, and there are a million stories. I could talk about one thing for an hour and you know, you don't want that. But, um, that's what the fellowship is for.
We're here just to walk you through till that internal conversion happens while we're going through I've had a lot of awakenings, you know, and I love it. I love uh I sometimes I I just crack up a little bit and I love I'm so grateful for Bill Wilson. He was somebody who knew who he's somebody who did it.
You know, he he has the same we have the same potential in us, but he did it. You know, he was homeless like he and Lois lived in on other people's couches. Every two weeks they moved for two years.
Would you like that? Wouldn't it somewhere? Have you ever Have you ever done this?
I didn't get sober to for this. Have you ever heard that? I didn't get sober for this, but they did it, you know.
So, I love Bill Wilson, but sometimes I thought he, you know, overspoke a little, just a tiny little bit. You know, he'd uh he'd say things like, "God comes to most men suddenly. I mean, most men slowly, but it came to me quickly." And um you know, I was reading that with a with a newcomer I was working with.
She was about, I don't know, 89 or 90 days sober, something like that. And she she read that and she said, "No, he didn't. We just got through reading Bill's story.
you just said what was all those years you know and no not s suddenly you realize but um I'm just saying you know I just and if you can rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves I don't think you've been talking to enough people in Alcoholics Anonymous I I just we read it with a little bit of a light hand sometimes um I uh I I I got to tell you that my dad doesn't have to sit up nights anymore watching the news to make sure his daughter's name isn't on the list of the victims of the serial killers of the day. He sleeps well and he knows why. You know, he uh he loves Alcoholics Anonymous.
And um I uh I come from a family where my my baby sister died of suicide at 17. My baby brother died of drug addiction at 30 years old. And uh my last remaining sibling lives in Wisconsin and she's drinking herself to death.
She can't stop. She just had a double mastctomy. So, she has every reason in the world that any normal heavy drinker might decide, oh, you know, I can't heal very well if I still drink.
And she can't stop drinking. She can't stop drinking. And so, she feels alone and she can't call.
She can't return my calls. Even though I don't call her and say anything anymore about Alcoholics Anonymous, I call her and I ask her how she's doing and she can't call me back. And my dad was talking the other day.
He said, "Yeah, I talked to she'll call him once in a while and and she he was telling me that she felt scared. She told she she told him she felt scared and the chill went down my spine." He said, "I don't understand what she means by she feels scared. She's got all the doctors and the cancer's gone.
You know, they're doing radiation and chemo now, but can't the cancer is supposed to be gone. I don't understand why she's scared." And see, if you're an alcoholic, like I'm an alcoholic, you know why she's scared because she's she's met that moment. She's met that moment where she doesn't know if she can't live with it or without it.
She's met that moment and she's scared. Those are the last words my brother, baby brother said to me laying on his deathbed. I'm scared, sis.
And sometimes I think God's just good enough to just let him go home. Let him go home and start again. My mom was a was one of the hardest.
You know, she uh about 2 years before I got sober, my baby sister committed suicide, like I told you, and and it took her all weekend to die. And while she would lay on life support in a West Cabina hospital, the family gathered in the waiting room and and we'd uh I'd go out to the to the parking lot in the van where the booze was and I'd drink and I'd go back into the waiting room and I'd just rake my mother across the coals and talk to her in a way a daughter should never talk to her mother, especially when her baby lay dying in the next room. And I don't know how you make amends for that except that I started by calling her once a week and trying when I got sober and trying to find out how I might add to her life instead of take.
And she lived out of state. So I had to make a a concerted effort to try to get me and the kids and the grandkid up. And oh yeah, my daughter had a had a kid when she was 16.
she and her boyfriend came home and and uh they looked at me with that funny look and I told them they were pregnant and they nodded and uh I got to be present at the birth of my first grandson and now I've got two and we just sent that oldest grandson off to college and and um but um my mom and I got real close over the over the next few months and and it didn't take long, but my mom wanted to be real forgiving and and uh she she never knew she never knew her condition. and she died four years ago of endstage liver disease and she never saw it coming. The doctor was her friend.
The doctor was her favorite higher power. I got some of my best dope from her medicine cabinet and she never knew it. She never knew it.
She could she couldn't hear it. The doctors give them to me. The doctors gave that to me.
I got to tell you, man. Um when she uh after she died, I asked my stepfather who had become the love of her life. She she met finally met the third time was a charm and she'd met this man and and uh and I asked him I said was there anything my mom said to you that I had left undone.
I really need to know. And uh he said absolutely not. She was just so thrilled.
She was so thrilled with the way things were with you guys when she died. And um and she got to go quickly. Thank God at the at the end.
and and he said, "In fact, I know that uh I know that you and Doug are are uh walking down toward the walking down the road toward matrimony and and I know that she left you all her jewelry and and uh including her wedding ring. And I think what I'd like to do, if you don't mind, is I'd like to shine mine up and give mine to Doug so the rings will be together again." And so those are the rings we exchanged at our wedding two years ago. And I got to tell you something, man.
How do I how how much does God love us? You know, that I would get a gift like this man. The first face I want to see in the morning and the last face I want to see before I go to sleep at night.
No, we're best friends and and we laugh and our house is built on love. Our home is love. We have an AA home.
We started a group up here in our community up where we live and and it's beginning to flourish and have a life of its own. And um and life is good. I'm going to end with this.
Um I got to I got to pray and meditate more than ever. More than ever. Prayer and meditation an unshakable foundation for life.
I've got to I've got to spend that. I used to and you can start on a very very simple level. I've done I've done everything from the very beginning.
It was it was I needed to do something with my body too. I'd lift weights, lift weights. The repetition was very very very soothing.
Got my body out of the way then the head could rest you know um on awakening saying those prayers making that conscious contact. If conscious separation is my is my problem conscious contact. Conscious contact you know I wake up upon awakening.
I'm not a knee prayer. didn't I'd never felt the need to pray on my knees but on awakening as soon as my eyes open making that conscious contact and I've done everything from surfing to uh uh or falling more falling in the water is what I did and uh rollerblading you know at me and the dolphins and the ocean you know you don't argue with the curb the curb exists you lift your foot still the mind you know then the sitting meditation sitting sitting I uh I left that that uh I I was in that investment banking career for about 20 years and uh and I walked away walked away the world was in a mess and I knew I wasn't educated enough to fix it and I couldn't be a part of it anymore I just knew as we grow we begin to see the things that we need to relinquish that are in the way in the way what's in the way of my a better relationship with you God what is stands in my way of a better relationship with And I went in there and I resigned and it sent me on an adventure, you know, and just because, you know, we think that we're going to do this big grand thing. I mean, it didn't feel like a big grand thing.
It was a very quiet letter of resignation and I walked away. And I did no big drama, but uh um you know, you kind of feel like, okay, I'm going to trust God and like a in a couple of weeks I'll have a job. And it wasn't like that, you know.
It was a was a long road of adventure. I mean, I drove a limo and I and I uh sold insurance. I was that girl, you know, for a little while.
And um so anyway, and now I'm working part-time at Home Depot. Complete. Oh my god.
Fell into place. What hours do you want to work? I work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
So I get to travel for Alcoholics Anonymous and work with others on the days that I'm not. I got four whole days to do that. No.
Put me in a position. Always put me in a position, God, where I'm most useful. And even though And I did not like it.
So this is I told you all that. I mean, I didn't like the way it felt. It seemed to me like it was wrong.
This is not what I meant in my orange shirt. You know, the year that I left, they called me into the office in at the investment bank and they said, uh, "God, we love having you." You know, it's for my review. God, we love having you on our team.
You're doing a great job. You know, blah, blah, blah. All this.
Give me a check, a big old bonus, $25,000. I never that used to be like I don't know what that used to never used to be like that. Wow.
So then left that now I'm at Home Depot. Same thing. Last year's review.
Call me in the office. Boy, we love having you on our team. You're doing a great job.
We love it. We'd like to give you a um She pointed to the number um 27 cents an hour raise. And I said, "Oh, thank you." Cuz I've asked for an attitude adjustment, you know.
I've asked to be changed, you know, and I know this is in my intellectually it sounds right, but I don't like it. You know what I mean? I don't like it.
There are mice running out underneath that thing and spiders and stuff. And anyway, so I said all that to say it scared me. I was up at 2:30 in the morning not getting any sleep.
Scared me. Scared me. I'm in a dark place.
Dark dark place. Alcoholics don't need to be in this dark place for long. You know, whenever I get in that place of where I'm feeling spiritually unfit, things start to, you know, I don't know.
So, I got to make that deeper effort, bigger effort. The awakening has to continue. And thank God Bill kept writing.
You know what I mean? language of the heart. Uh, emotional sobriety, the next frontier practice step 11, he says, with more fervor than ever going into his 20 years, right into that decade.
More than ever. More fervor than ever. So, I promise I'm going to be done in a minute.
Um, so I uh so I had to practice start with the sitting meditation again. Sitting just sitting quietly 20 minutes in the morning, then I had to add the 20 minutes in the afternoon. And it started to ch I started to change.
I started not to believe the delusions first that were going on in my head and then the delusions stopped coming, you know, and then and now they come less often. And um I don't mean they didn't come period ever again, but I mean, you know, with that intensity and uh and things began to change and I began to be able to be part of this team and be happy about it and uh um and to start to enjoy my life and to see, you know, this is where I get to be so that I can be places like Aspen. Um, on the weekend, you know, when I make that conscious contact in the morning, I get to be I get to feel that joy of living.
The joy of living like my little pitbull puppy, our little pitbull puppy used to feel when she'd she'd get up in the morning, you know, anybody dog got dog people in here. I know we do. I got I know we got them walking around here this weekend, but um but I wake up in the morning, you know, and I I when we had her, we fostered her for about six months.
And I wake up in the morning, I go get her food, you know, and I'd set down the food in front of her. You know, it was the same food kind of food she saw last night and yesterday and the day before that, day before that. Same food.
Same food, right? And she'd look at it and look at me and look at it and look at me and she'd be like, we're going to eat. Then she'd finish eating.
She'd run into the bedroom where Doug and I were, and she'd see, look at him, and look at me, and look at him, and look at me. And same faces she saw last night, yesterday, and the day before that. same faces, you know, JUST BE LIKE, "IT'S YOU." And then she'd love us for a minute and then she'd run out out the doggy door out into the backyard and you'd see her jetting around the backyard in circles, you know, just like, "Oo, it's my yard." You know, goldfish mentality.
Oo, a castle. Woo! A castle.
Oh, a castle. Just like that. The joy of living in this moment.
This moment. The moment I never wanted to be in before. I always wanted to be a moment from now or a moment ago.
Not this moment. Can't be here. Too big, too bright, too vulnerable, too much.
Now it's the only place. It's where the God is. Where the God is.
And when I do that, upon awakening, I make that conscious contact. I get to I get to get up and walk into my life and embrace my life. Ask God for his list for me instead of giving him mine.
And I get to experience not doofus goofy joy, you know what I mean? Not stupid, but but that thing that we know that, you know, that we know potential like what if this goes well? You know, that was not my first thought for a long long time.
What if this goes well? When I don't and I blow past that little prayer in the morning, that little conscious contact, when I blow past that and I go straight for the coffee pot, I walk around and I'm thinking of my list for God instead of asking for God's list for me. Before I know it, I am sitting in front of Facebook looking for a fight.
You know what I mean? Deffriend, the joy of living, the theme of our 12th step. And that happens after we do a follow a few simple rules.
The first 11, right? If you're new, I hope you stay around. And if you've been around a while, I hope you up the Annie a little bit.
You know, the awakening continues. It has to. Thank you for my life.
Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.