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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> My name is Pat Real and I'm an alcoholic and for the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have been sober since August 28th, 1970.

And for that, I will be forever grateful. That's hard because we don't say that in our part of the country. And uh I want to start saying that all the time and all those people in my group are going to say what an ego she has.

But they're going to have to start start to do that because it's real important. And uh we're going to bring that back with us from here and shove it down your throat. Now you may have noticed on the program that that there are two of us from like a pack.

And that's kind of an odd thing. You know, why are there two people from the same place? Well, we happen to be married.

That's why And uh this is kind of unique. Um this is my first time speaking um in in a convention like this. And I'll let you know that from the beginning.

So then you'll be easier on it. Fred and I have been married for oh 10 years. We're an AA marriage and uh we have our problems and our uh solutions and our problems and our inventories that we do on each other and uh you know and it's not an easy road.

I want to tell you we still haven't figured out which one of us is the element but we keep coming and coming to AA because that's our program and uh one of these days we'll figure it out. I have a lot of different, you know, problems. I'm Alanon and um, you know, I could be a gambler.

I haven't gotten into that yet. And recovered smoker. I got all those things.

So, I'm sure I'm an untriggered Alan on many days of my life. Um, before I start my story, I just want to let you know that this is this is a heart's desire that I've had to come to to a convention like this. I I go with Fred.

He's spoken before at different parts of the country and um I go along with him and I get to meet a lot of great people. But for a long time I've wanted this opportunity and I have learned in my sobriety that God gives me my heart's desires, his tongue, not my tongue. And so this is one of my heart's desires.

So what you see up here is a person who has been a good AA member and has turned their will in their life over to the care of God. and has been able to realize our heart's desire today. And there have been many in my sobriety and you will hear that.

Um I'm not funny. I I don't make you laugh. I don't stand up here and make you laugh.

So that's good because this crowd is half asleep anyway. So it doesn't make you laugh this afternoon. And that's why we balance each other off.

He's funny and I'm not. I'm serious. I'm one of those people that uh Jack was talking about last night.

I'm one of those people who walked into a and really had a miserable time with it. I dragged in and wasn't sure I wanted to be here and uh but liked it here, so stuck around, but uh oh god, it was all painful. And uh I'm going to tell you why.

I'm going to start by telling you why. I grew up in Brooklyn. That was the problem to start.

I grew up in a family with three of us, me and two alcoholics. And one was a drug addict. So, it was really not an easy trip.

Um, my father was a periodic, so you really never knew when he was going to be falling down on the floor or functioning very well. My mother was a dexen addict before it was the thing to be a speed freak. And um, she got diet pills in 1942 for uh, for her weight problem and which I never thought she had.

And uh, she used alcohol to come down off those diet pills and that habit went on for 39 years. until she got so sick that that she had to come off the pills and then she was terribly kind. It was a horrible thing.

So, she wasn't really a true personality. I think somewhere back when I was really small, you know, I knew these people for the kind people that they were. And they were kind.

They were kind and they were nice and they really didn't have a lot to do with me other than the way I saw things in life. Um, and the fact that I learned to drink because it was an accepted thing in my family and it was an accepted way to socialize. And so I got programmed that drinking was the thing to do when you got old enough.

Uh the only thing is I wasn't old enough when I started. Uh I began drinking when I was 15 and I took my father's booze from the kitchen table where he kept it when he was on one of his toes if you want to call it. And um I would pour the whiskey in a glass and some orange juice and go into my room and drink.

Now I can't tell you that that's social drinking because I don't think that's social drinking. What was happening to me was there was really nobody to talk to. They were really nice people and they were very good to me and they spoiled me to death and I got everything I wanted but they didn't teach me anything.

So when I had a problem to solve or something that I couldn't work out in my head I was left with myself and um that's a bad place to be even when you're not drunk already. And I I never had the answers for anything. So I would look to you the outside.

I would look for my cues of how to be. You know, if you act in one way, then I would act accordingly. And I spent a lot of time doing that.

I I I spent and I I can study people today pretty well. I guess that's why because I would look to you and I would look at my father and I would always know when he was getting ready to get drunk. And I only learned that a couple of weeks ago with a fellow that Fred was working with that went out um on the slip, whatever you call it, went out and got drunk.

And I know slips my sponsor used to say you wear you don't have. And um I I was looking at this kid and I was watching him and I found myself scrutinizing him and I realized that I had done a lot of that as a kid watching my father to see cuz I adored my father cuz he was pretty cool guy early years and um watching him you know to see is he drinking? Is he drinking?

And I was watching this young guy and I was is is he ready to go? He was angry and anger to me represented a problem. I still have a problem with somebody else's anger, especially a man.

So that's the kind of thing that was going on. I was very uncomfortable and I didn't fit in very well in the place. And so when I was at my high school, my grade school graduation, I took somehow got a drink.

I I'm not quite sure how it happened. I had a I had a sip of alcohol or some alcohol. And I remember and other speakers have described that feeling, you know, that crazy confusion went away and that feeling of watching you to see what you wanted me to do seemed to go away and it felt really nice.

I felt good and that was the beginning. I was to chase that feeling for many many years. Uh in fact it was the focus of my life.

I can tell you that I was totally figureing ground on alcohol and how I was going to get it when I could excuse it and what it was going to make me feel like. See, cuz there was that big kind of empty hole here in my center. And if I put enough of that booze in there, that hole was going to go away.

And it would temporarily. And the next morning, I would wake up and that hole would still be there. That empty kind of nothingness.

and all this running around in my head and chaos that seemed to be my life and negative thinking and never wanting to start anything or starting something and failing at all that stuff was going on. So, alcohol took all that away. So, I began to drink at 15 years old by taking alcohol into my bedroom and drinking it and then trying to hide it from the people that I hung with because they didn't drink.

They weren't old enough to drink. They didn't think about drinking. And so I had to move on.

I couldn't stay around that group of people. So I misbehaved in Catholic high school and they threw me out. They said, "Stay back and get out." And I said, "I'll get out." And I went to a public high school.

And I have no recollection of more than four events that happened to me when I was in that part of my life. I I really don't have any connection to that. I can look back and remember half of the people, more than half of the people that I graduated from grade school with, but I I really can't remember a lot of things that happened to me in high school.

And I was very, oh, I love this, irritable and discontent. And I went on and quit school, much to my father's dismay, and I went out to work in lower Manhattan. And I drank.

That's why I went out there to to drink the way I wanted to and have the money to drink. And I worked in um a bank and I was gotten that I got that job through a um relative of mine and I drank on lunch hour and I went out after work and I probably did in Muller Manhattan and I got on the subway. You could get on the subway in those years.

Boy, that was you could ride the subway. I'm not going to tell you how long ago that. And I went to work and I and I drank and I came home late at night and I got up in the morning.

I was very resilient and alcohol was the focal point of my life. I went where alcohol was. I met a man in a bar, of course.

Uh we got married, of course. We proceeded to have children right away, of course. Then I couldn't drink the same way.

He was in the service when we got married and he was supposed to send for me and I was supposed to go over to Germany and I got pregnant right away and he wrote me a nice letter. We we had a great great communication for 21 years. Wonderful communication.

the letter. I'll never forget the day I got the letter. I don't think it's a good idea you come across the ocean to Europe because there's no central heating and I wouldn't want the baby born here.

And that was the end of it. And that was the story of my marriage. That was the end of it.

We made a statement. I obeyed and that was the end of it. And I dragged that away for many years.

We had a great communication, he and I. It was wonderful. The only time we communicated was when we were drinking together.

And then he became lovely and I became flirtatious. Then he became angry and that was another whole thing. So we progressed.

The children got bigger. By the way, I forgot to mention I of these crazy parents I had um I stayed in their house till my third child was born. He and I and three children moved out of my mother's house.

So my father had had died an alcoholic death and my mother was very possessive and demanding and she didn't want me to go any place so we stuck around and so she hit him over the head with a candlestick and he pulled a phone out of the wall and we thought it was about time to move. So we went into the sunset together with our three little children and he was in some kind of school at the time and I was free for the first time and I joined the bowling league and started to think that it was time to live away from this mother of mine and I started to have a series of um not so moral, you know, kind of like uh not so uh happy family life interludes. Let's put it that way.

That's a That's a good way to put it. We'll leave it at that. But I had to be drinking to do that.

And I didn't drink every day. My patent had changed. I now was drinking only when I could, which meant you met all your responsibility.

You got all the kids shoes polished. You had this floor shining in and beautiful. You had the uh the furniture waxed.

You had the beds all made. You had the wash all done. And I could go out and you could have a couple of drinks.

Well, I used to think it would be a couple of drinks. It would be 5:00 in the morning before I came home. But it would be a couple of drinks that I would start out with.

And I never drank when I bowled. You see, Thursday was my bowling night. And you couldn't bowl and drink.

So, you had to drink later. So, that made for quite a late evening. So, that's the kind of drinking I was doing.

You see, I grew up with a very strong work ethic. And you did what you were supposed to do. You didn't do a lot, but you did what you committed to do, you did.

And uh what I committed to do was raise a family. And so I was going to see that this family was well taken care of and all the duties and and responsibilities were done before I could pick up a drink because you see I could never predict and I didn't want to predict. When I drank I wanted to be free to drink the way I wanted to drink.

So I did a lot of manipulation and a lot of conning around that and had a lot of special glasses and a lot of special kinds of drinks and all this stuff that goes with control. And I learned very early on that control was the way that I stayed sane. When I wasn't drinking, I had to be in control.

And when I wasn't drinking, I got very angry. So my life was starting to get extremely unmanageable because the relationships that you form under those conditions aren't really good. And so that was the way it was to progress.

Uh it was really bad. There was a lot of rage and anger, a lot of fighting, a lot of drinking together, a lot of changing of uh of kinds of places that we drank. A whole group of in-laws that I won't even go into that were all alcoholic and family parties were really really a trip.

Uh we used to turn tables over on each other and uh hit each other over the head with bottles and it was a fun fun kind of life. But it was great because I like to go out to my mother-in-laws because she always had a case of beer out there on the weekends, two or three or four, and we drink together. We put her in bed and I continue.

So that's the kind of thing that my my life was totally in chaos and I didn't know. I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous because I was told um at 19 that my father needed the program. He was um had a very good friend of his that started the Rockaway group in Long Island and they were uh very close friends for many years and my my father's friend would come to our house for dinner on Thanksgiving and he would try to talk to us about my father's drinking problem and encourage us or my father to go to AA.

So I knew about alcohol synonymous. It was kind of planted in the back of my mind that if you have a problem with alcohol, AA is the place to go. And I obviously was having a problem with alcohol.

I mean, there was no question in my mind. There was a problem. There was a question in my mind if I was alcoholic.

Uh, I didn't think I was alcoholic. I didn't look like an alcoholic. I didn't talk like an alcoholic.

I didn't fall off too many bar stools. I didn't fall down in the middle of the of the hallway and embarrass my children or nor did I fall into the bathtub only once on my wedding night. I didn't have broken out face and I didn't blow up like a balloon.

And I would check that very very carefully in the mirror and I didn't let you know that I drank too much because I always waited until you drank too much and then I drank too much. So I didn't have an al I was an alcoholic but I had a problem with alcohol because what my problem was with alcohol is I couldn't control it anymore. I would take three drinks of scotch and be off my on my head or I would be six, seven, eight beers drunk or I could sit and drink a half a bottle with you, a whole bottle with you and be fine and remember everything the next day.

So there was no controlling the outcomes anymore. And one of the things that was very important to me was keep those controls going. I had now gotten myself down to only certain drinks and certain kinds of glasses and certain times of year.

And I know only drank every three days when my body was so crazy and needed to drink so bad that I couldn't hold off anymore. And I would make this big scene around securing this liquor. I would I would plan this big event that I so I could get my boots.

So that was the kind of thing that was starting to fall apart. And that falling apart was the only thing I had because there was nothing going on up here. There were no decisions being made.

Everyone else in my life made those for me. I didn't permit myself to make decisions. I gave you all the power that you needed so I could do exactly what I wanted to do anytime I wanted to do it and justify it.

I had no responsibility. I didn't pay any bills. I didn't know how much money my husband made a year.

All I did was polish shoes, polish furniture, polish floors. And people would say that I had the cleanest house in town. And that would be wonderful because then I didn't have a problem.

But internally, I was coming apart and I didn't like this unpredictable feeling that I had when I would go out to drink because I wouldn't know where I would end up, what time I would get home, what I would say to you. And I was terrified. And in between, I was throwing rages that were uncontrollable.

Now, I figured therapy was the way to go here. Well, my husband cut my hair off in a drunken rage one night. I think maybe we have a problem here in this house.

We split up for about I don't know 3 months maybe. And um I thought we got to do something about this problem. This marriage is our problem.

That's our problem. So, we went to counsel and this very smart lady put me in a group with some alcoholic people and I proceeded to tell him what to do cuz I knew all about that cuz I lived in a house with alcoholics. And um I told this guy what to do with his wife and never throw her booze away.

Never throw her booze away. And I started to get the idea that maybe there was something wrong with me. And this is a very smart lady.

It really she really was. and she suggested to me that um maybe I ought to look at my drinking and I remember they now of course there's a higher power working in the background here or the higher power is putting a bunch of people in my life. Uh we had a friend of ours that gave parties to um for um his alcoholic friends and his sober friends.

And whenever he had a party he had all his AA friends there and all his his drinking friends there. And so I met a bunch of people from AA and I started to ask them all these questions and ask for information of pamphlets and and uh get some things from them and uh I would take that pamphlet home or those pamphlets of information and I would sit with a drink before I went to bed and I would read this literature and I would put it in my nightstand drawer. And then uh one day I was on a picnic in a very hot July um on a very hot July day with my family and I was drinking in the morning with the guys which was my style.

I didn't drink coffee in the morning. I went out with the guys and I had the beers and about 3:00 in the afternoon I was crossing this huge field in Lake Rono Long Island and it was about 102° and we got over to the ladies room my daughter and I and we went into the bathroom and I went into the cubicle. So, I slid over the lock and I fell down and I didn't have enough momentum to get my body off the floor of that bathroom.

And I suddenly realized somewhere in the recesses of my drunken mind that I had now become what I did not want to be. And she was outside there yelling to somebody. And I and I remember this and I was so drunk, but yet I had clarity.

Ma, somebody please come and help me with my mother. And I couldn't get off the floor to get up to open the door. And we got in the car later on that day and I made an absolute fool of myself with a bunch of kids in the car.

And we got home and my pattern was that if I stopped drinking, even if it was in the middle of a of a drinking day, I would not take another drink. And I never drank in the morning because if you drank in the morning, that was it. You were alcoholic.

Nope. So, I went to the refrigerator and I remember putting my hand on the door of the refrigerator when we got home to the house to pull it open to get a beer out and thinking, I don't want this beer. But, see, I had to have that beer.

And that was the first realization that I had that I had to have that beer. And about two weeks later, I found myself behind the wheel of a car in a blackout. And I was picking my husband up at the station.

And I had deliberately gone to my brother-in-laws that afternoon in the middle of the week to drink because he was on vacation and I knew he'd have a bunch of beers up there and we could we could sit and drink together, you know, and I I specifically consciously went there to drink that day with him in the middle of the week. And I was not in caping with the way I was doing things. And when I walked up out of that blackout at the station picking my husband up, he said to me, "I don't believe that you're driving the car like this.

this pompous guy that I was married to. He was a riot. You know, he used to do the most atrocious things when he was drunk, right?

And I said, "I'm going to do something about my drinking." He I said, "I'm going to go to AA." I don't really don't know where that came from. And he said to me, "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." And I said, "Oh, no, not this time." So, I went to AA.

I walked down to the Kazi group in Brooklyn and I had my feet on backwards. I was too young. I didn't look like an alcoholic.

I didn't feel like an alcoholic. There was unmanageability. I didn't even know what that word was about at that point.

But there was something I had to do here. And I just was driven to do that and I knew it. And I walked into that meeting and the guy that that I really liked out of that whole crowd, people, you know, that that that guy had to his parties was standing at the bottom of the stairs.

He just happened to be standing at the bottom of the stairs. And he said, "Uh, oh, I'm glad you came. We're waiting for you." And I walked into that room and there was a girl sitting at a table running a second step meeting.

And she was a really young girl. And that first reservation kind of flew out that I was too young. And I walked in that room and something happened to me.

And just for that hour, that one hour, that little part of me that had that hole in it was like ill. And I left that meeting and I went to the next meeting, which was a Thursday night, two days later. And I joined that group and I don't know when it started but I started going out on commitments with these guys.

We would get in cars, six, seven cars and we'd go on commitments and they would take me everywhere where they went and they asked me to come everywhere and then they handed me a a bookers thing one day and they said, "Here, do this." And they handed me a one day and they said, "Do this." And then a lady across the room who I've been looking at for a couple of weeks there, I just started noticing. She came up to me one night with these deep blue eyes and she said to me, "I'm Harriet McSherry and I'm going to be your sponsor because if I don't sponsor you, you're going to die. You're not going to make it." She said, "I have never seen eyes that sad in my life, and you need me." And sitting here today, Harriet died a number of years ago.

Sitting here today, I I thought of her and I thought, "Wow, Harriet, she asked me to speak at 90 days sober at her anniversary at her, I don't know, fifth or sixth anniversary. I don't remember what it was. 90 days sober.

I couldn't I mean, I didn't get thoughts together for 5 years. I could imagine what I could have said at this 90th anniversary, you know, a 90day But she had she had a way about making me feel like I belonged that was like nothing else that had ever happened to me. I have a a girl I'm working with in the program now that I talk to two three times a day and um she'll she'll call me up and I think to myself, God, this is what Harriet went through, you know.

Oh god, you know, and she doesn't break. And it's great because I don't have very good success with spons. I'm not too successful with these young ladies, I have to admit.

And this one does everything I tell her to do. And it's I mean, it's like so refreshing, you know, but that's what I did. I did everything this lady told me to do.

And she told me to always cooperate in the program and never say no. When somebody asked you to do something in AA, never say no. And she taught me to go to meetings when I didn't want to go to meetings and go to meetings when I didn't want to go to meetings and go to meetings when it didn't matter.

Just go to AA meetings. Never say no in the program. And don't ever pick up the phone to call me if you pick up a drink.

I am not interested in talking to you. If you can't call me before you drink, don't call me. And those were the very simple things that I stayed sober on for 14 months in that group.

Those people nurtured me. They made that hole for one hour every time I was with them in my center go away. And that's what brought me back to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous was that feeling that I got in that Kenosi group in Brooklyn.

And I went to a meeting in Long Island last week where Fred spoke and I felt that electricity in that room. There is nothing like New York AA. I'll tell you, they are on fire, those guys.

And I sat there and I started crying at this meeting. The the speakers were hysterical. I mean, they were so funny.

Fred was funny and Leo spoke and he was funny. But the feeling in that room was incredible. And that's the AA I got sober on.

That electric AA that that just everything was the program. You had AA people in your house when you had a party and you went six cars, seven cars, 10 cars to commitments. And in those days, you in, you know, you went a long way sometimes to a commitment.

And you just had those people and they were your life. You grew up with those people in the program. They were your life and they became my life and you still are my life.

I am Alcoholics Anonymous first. Okay? And you'll hear about that in a minute.

But anyway, that's Da. I got here's a gavl. Here's a book report.

You know, and we used to book commitments all the way through. You'd go to the bookers meeting and you'd make the commitments. You'd sit and you'd do three months of commitments at one meeting and those commitments kept me sober.

They used to make me go out and speak then after a while and I they would keep me sober. I had a commitment like 65 70 days down the line and I would have to stay sober. I would have to stay sober because I was going out speaking.

So if I wanted to drink, you know, 35th day, 50 bucks day, I had to go and come in and drink. But that was so important because I wanted to drink all the time. All the time.

See, because I walked in here not looking like an alcoholic and not feeling like an alcoholic and not sure about being an alcoholic. So, I had a bottle in my peripheral vision. See, over here in this corner was a little bottle of vodka.

And I kept that bottle over here. And if that life got tough enough or that head got crazy enough or that husband got nuts enough or those kids got irritating enough, okay? Well, you gave me a problem I couldn't solve.

Well, you know, I didn't look like an alcoholic and I didn't feel like an alcoholic and there was just a little unmanageability here, right? And I fall down and I wasn't dying. So maybe you think I'm tough enough.

Just tough enough. Well, you know, here's that little bottle of vodka over here. And we'll see.

We'll just see. We'll put it off for today and we'll make that commitment on the 65th day and we'll keep that commitment. But we got this bottle over here.

So I went to step meetings and I went to meetings and I went to We didn't have discussion meetings in those days. We had step meetings and open speakers meetings and big anniversaries. I mean your the conventions we have today are like the anniversaries we have.

People would bring food in. I always had a meeting first and I would travel with these people. I I remember Thanksgiving the first year I was sober.

My sponsor picked up the phone. She called me up. She said, "Get dressed.

We're going to uh a group anniversary tonight in I don't know where it was out in Flatwood someplace." I said, "I'm stuffing the turkey." She said, "Stuff that turkey. Get dressed and come to the anniversary." Well, my husband was not happy with that, you know, but that's what I did. I stuffed the turkey, got dressed once at group anniversary, and to this day, I can remember the feeling I had in that room.

And to this day, I try to make a commitment every year at Thanksgiving just to be with AA people because I had such a warm feeling in that room that night with those AA people and that music and that that meeting and that that food and all of that, all of that. So, I stayed sober on that. I stayed sober on that for 14 months and I went to step meetings and I went to open speakers meetings and I went on commitments and I chaired meetings and I spoke at meetings.

I did everything I was supposed to do and at 14 month sobriety my husband was transferred to New Jersey and he drew an a ring around the map and he said yes you can move anywhere in the circle. That's the marriage we had. That was our communication about moving from Brooklyn, New York to New Jersey.

Here's a circle on the map and anywhere in that circle, you can't go out of that circle. I didn't even know what was out of that circle. All I know is the good alcoholic that I am, I take the furthest most part of that circle.

And I moved from Brooklyn, New York, where you could get a newspaper at at 12:00 in the nighttime or an ice cream cone at 2 o'clock in the morning at the corner at the corner candy store to spot, New Jersey in the northwest corner of New of the the the Tri State area in rural America. And I moved me, three kids, a cat, a dog, and a bird, and a husband. I could not even stand.

Okay. was one car up to this rural America and they didn't have the same kind of AA up there that they had in Brooklyn and you couldn't they didn't even have street lights never mind candy stores and if I want to go out and make a phone call you know out of the house you just went down to the corner made a right went to the drugstore picked up the telephone and the phone book there were there were no paid telephones in Sparta New Jersey in 1971 one and I crashed. I crashed.

No more come with us on commitments. No more. Here's the gavvel.

Here's the bookers report. Let's go out and sex cars. These people were not doing that stuff up there.

There were like five meetings in the whole northwest corner of northern New Jersey in 1971. And you saw the same people all the time. And they all went to the same meetings because there were no meetings.

And we all just kind of met. Monday Sparta, Wednesday, Tuesday Newton, Wednesday, Sparta, Friday Newton, Sunday Newton. And that was the AA.

And when they went out on commitments, they didn't go out for 2 3 4 hours. They went out for 2, three days because there were no commitments to go out there. So you had to go way out of town.

And my husband said to me, "We thought we left this AA thing in the city. We go over a year and a half almost here. Why do you have to still go to these meetings?

What what what is this about? And I don't really want these books laying around anymore." You know, you got these books out. You had this club, you know, and all these friends from the club at all our house parties and all.

But I don't think we need this anymore. We're up now. We got We finally arrived.

You know, corporate America has finally arrived into the house of your life. You know, we'll have to get a second car, of course, cuz we're in rural America. So, we'll have two cars in the garage, and we've arrived at that house that we've worked all our lives for.

The kids hated it. They loved the city. They were all crying.

Nobody wanted to be there. And we started out on our new venture. Well, all the feelings and emotions and all the anger and resentments and all the irritability and discontentment and all the things that I drank away for all of those years started to come up and they hit me right in the face.

Every one of those feelings. I was trying to do things that I did before when I was drinking that I couldn't do in sobriety. And I was trying to hold down the anger because you didn't get angry while you were sober and you didn't do all those rages and rages were happening and people were not patting me on the head in the AA meetings and they weren't even talking the same language up there.

They were talking about honesty. They were talking about willingness. They were talking about a third step.

Some ladies that I met up there told me, "Go take the book and read the third step." They weren't reading the book in the step meetings in New York. They would talk about the steps. They didn't use the books.

These people in in Sussex County and New Jersey were were using books. And I would open the book in the house and I was so lonely and all the people that I knew were in Brooklyn. And I would open the book to the third step and I would try to read.

I couldn't read. I was 14 months. I couldn't concentrate.

I could not read. And I would open the book and I would look at the the first paragraphs and it would say you put the key the key in the the door and the door will open ever so slightly of itself. And I thought I I don't understand.

Today I know the key is willingness. Today I see that word in the words. I didn't understand what the key was and I tried so hard.

I used to sit at the table in the house and spotter and I used to try to write an inventory. I used to try to put assets and liabilities on a piece of paper. I did everything I was told in the program.

Anytime anybody told me to do something, I tried to do it. I did it. I would always be able to do it.

But these people were asking me to do things I couldn't do. And I would put the pen to the page and I would try to write assets. And I didn't even know what the word meant.

I didn't know what an asset meant. I could write a bunch of things that I didn't like about myself. I had a long list of those.

But I couldn't write an essay because I didn't know what I had. And I really got bad. I got real depressed.

And I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. And here's that baby right in my peripheral vision right over here. Right.

Right over here. And I started hanging out with people that I shouldn't be with cuz my husband was still drinking. And we got into that social scene up there with the beach crowd.

And I'm with these people and they're all boozing. And I think I was only recovering alcoholic in Lake Mohawk in in in Sussex County, you know. He said, "I walked into a house party one night and a lady said to me, um, what do you have to drink?" And I said, "Do you have any soda?" She said, "Soda." Well, that was my experience with those nick club.

I tried to get into that because I was trying to make the marriage work and I wanted to do good things because I had a lot of regrets about the past and they were starting to come up. a lot of guilt and remorse. I was feelings of of feeling lousy about myself and trying to sometimes look for things outside myself still to make me happy.

Everything was going to make me happy from the outside, even the way he chewed me to be. And it wasn't working cuz I couldn't drink. And here's this baby right over there in the peripheral vision.

So, I found myself in a place one night with a bunch of people I didn't belong with. And somebody ordered me a bullshot plane. To this day, I have never heard that drink mentioned.

Never. A bullshot is bullion and vodka. Now, that's a terrible combination to start with.

I never would have ordered that to starve. But this guy was a wise guy and he was an alcoholic. And he ordered me this bullshot plane.

And the waiter didn't hear plane and he brought it to the table and I took a sip of it. And the first thing I thought of was, "Wow, that baby has booze and gosh, what I need." And I felt that booze go into my body. And I could feel my electric shocks in my arms start.

And I thought to myself, "Nobody will know. I didn't even order this. And the next thing that came into my mind was, "God, oh no.

God know." I put that drink down and I walked out of that bar and I went home to Brook uh to Spotter and I called my sponsor in Brooklyn and she told me to get my coin in my hand that she gave me and to go up to a meeting in Newton and tell them what happened to me and start to work the program the way the people in Sussex County wanted me to work it. And I know today that I had a moment of truth with the Bose. And I think we all have a moment of truth with the Bose at some point along the way.

Whether it happens in Freman, whether it happens the day we walk into the program, sooner or later, we're going to come face to face. And the big book tells us that that the only defense we're going to have against the first drink is our faith. And that's what happened to me in that bar that night.

I had developed a faith from coming to these rooms and picking up coffee cups. And we did not have paper coffee cups in those days and washing them and mopping the floors. Just like Tally said last night, sweeping them.

We used to sweep the floors. We didn't leave our cups around. We didn't leave our ashtrays around.

We washed our ashtrays and our cups and we swept the floor in the room before we left there and we picked up the chairs and we did and all of those things, those commitments and that bookers report and those three month commitments and all of those things that those people gave me to do in those rooms in Brooklyn paid off for me in that bar in Sussex County because I had gotten a foundation in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had gotten away here. You had taken me and you had nurtured me and loved me into dry time and almost into sobriety.

And when my moment of truth came with the booze, I didn't have to pick up that drink. I came back to this program and I started to understand what the key was. I would search constantly in meetings asking people, "What does it mean to do God's will?

What does it mean?" I wanted to understand everything. And one night at an AA meeting, I heard a guy that I probably wouldn't even talk to any place across the table from me say, "You know you're doing God's will when you have serenity." And I go, "Where has this guy been all of this time?" And I started to hear things. I sat at a meeting one night and I was facing how it works on the on a on a long um tapestry.

And I looked up at that and I was sitting at this meeting. It was an open speakers meeting. And I was reading that tapestry and I thought that's what they mean by honesty.

Me honesty, self honesty, not stealing. And my head started to like open up. It was like a It was like a flower.

That's the truth. I I would hear things and all of a sudden my head would would open and I could understand and I began to learn and I began to understand things about myself and I went and I took a I had to go to somebody to take a fourth and fifth step. I couldn't write at all.

I couldn't write. And I started to what I call peel the onion. And I started to get down into the core of my being.

And I began to forgive myself for all those things I do when I was drinking cuz I didn't do some very nice things. I didn't live the way I was I should be living. I didn't live according to the values that I really wanted to live by.

Alcohol dictated my life for 20 years. It dictated my life. My focus was on the bottle.

I didn't have anything else in my head. I didn't learn anything from the day that I picked up booze in my room from my father's bottle. I didn't learn anything.

I didn't live life. I didn't experience anything. I really know today that information is not integrated into knowledge until I have a feeling attached to it.

Everything that I have in my life today, everything that you see in my person, whatever you're seeing is a direct result of Alcoholics Anonymous. I brought you a body that was acting like the world wanted it to act. And you put a mind to work in this body.

You gave this person an education. My greatest education is in life. It's not out of a college degree.

I have gotten my education in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have gone to school. Since I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't graduate from high school.

I never graduated. I never had a senior prom. I didn't have a big wedding.

I got married on a Friday night to this guy that I met in the bar and he was a nice guy, you know, we just didn't belong together. We have three beautiful children from that marriage. So that was what what it was all about.

Those kids are great kids, okay? They're they're great kids. I'll tell you about them in a minute.

So, there was a reason for he and I to be together, but we were not to go on together because I could not have done the things that I've done in this program with him. There was no way and I had to leave him. And that was very painful.

You're not married to somebody for 21 years and leave them and not go through pain. It was very painful. But I was seven years sober when I left him and I had done a lot of things in this program.

I had gotten to the core of my being. I had gone through the fourth and fifth step. I was beginning to understand what it meant to turn my will in my life over to the care of a higher power, God.

I had gone into that marriage and I had make made amends to the best of my ability because they were not accepted. But it really didn't matter. Not not one of them, not even the kids in those years accepted those amends.

They really couldn't. They didn't understand. But you know that didn't matter.

And by the time I did that, I knew it didn't matter. It was important that I did that. That was all that was important that I was willing.

The key of willingness such an important part of our program. I don't have to understand anything. I really don't.

All I have to do is be willing. That's such an important thing and so simple. Uh, I left him.

Uh, I had met Fred and we were trying really hard to be good people. I was on a celibate sbatical and he came into my life and um, oh no, I don't want this. Thank you.

And I got the word from somebody I paid a lot of attention to in the program. You love to put out of your life the things that are that are good for you that are maybe the things that are going to make you happy. I wanted to Oh, you know how I just wanted to be so miserable all the time.

I mean, I didn't, you know, this didn't all happen. This was a long haul. What you know, if I smile today, it's a product of like, you know, last few years, right?

I mean I I must have driven the people at AA crazy when I first came. I really I was so negative. I mean everything was a trauma, you know.

I hear this word issues today. I absolutely hate that word issues, you know. I had so many issues, you know.

Thank God we didn't have that word when I was they would have thrown me out of the room. Issues. I had an issue about everything.

You know, it was really something. So my negativity kicked in right away when I met him and I wasn't about to get involved with this guy and well the high power had a different different uh different idea and um I left home and I had graduated from school from nursing school. So you gave me that through the uh 11 step uh and putting some work into my meditation and prayer.

I decided that I should investigate nursing school. Now I don't really like that because all my life I wanted to be a dancer. So I couldn't understand why this god of my understanding is telling me to go see somebody cut up, you know?

I mean that was like really not my choice. But I made a few phone calls about this because I figured you got to do this. See um one of the things I forgot to tell you which is real important is um I spent a lot of time uh trying to get the world um to get in touch with with how I could be in the world without waiting for you to cue me.

And one of the ways I did that was I started to do some real prayer meditation. And um I used to have to go off by myself peri per periodically and kind of I don't mean physically off by myself but emotionally off by myself and get into to to the books and start to read. I did some reading at Emma Fox after I had gone through all the steps and and I used to read and I used to get quiet because I couldn't stand a lot of input, a lot of stress coming in.

I just I just couldn't handle it. I would get out there in the world and I would start to you know to fragment again. So I would have to come back in and um today they probably put me on some you know some Prozac or something really they would have put me away.

They really would have if I had come into AA today I don't know if I would be you know I got I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous from the bottom line. Okay. And I got to tell you, when I hear today that people got to do other things to to get, I get really upset because I was really a mess when I started to come around, when their brains started open up.

Uh, I was in bad shape. And um, so I would have to go off by myself emotionally, kind of eliminate everybody and get get with the higher power and let him give me some. And I I believe uh the words in the book it says that we will be granted a glimpse of the realm of God's reality.

And I have experienced that in my sobriety and that is a gift and at any time at any time that God wants to do that if I make myself quiet enough he will do that for me. And that's why I'm so definite about the program because I had gotten all of that from AA. But anyway, he kind of one of his realities was go to nursing school.

So I investigated and the doors opened of course right away. Boom boom boom. Right now I'm in nursing school.

So now I'm in nursing school. I'm an operating room and I'm saying what am I doing? But anyway, I graduated from nursing school and um I couldn't take the house anymore.

It was just it was just terrible. He was doing some horrible things. I had a lock on my phone.

I was 7 years sober. I had no access to a checkbook. I mean, this man was pathologically frugal.

That's what he was. That was the way he controlled your life was money. And so Fred was kind of proud me a little bit.

You know, maybe you should get out of there. You know what I'm saying? Leave me alone.

I have to do this my way. But anyway, I moved out and um I got a job and um I got some more money for school and I went back to school and I did some more school and I took I lived in a room and I took um I kept saying come and live with me. I should tell you the story about that.

That's an interesting story. I promise I won't bother you anymore if you just move out. And three weeks later was why don't you move in with me?

I said I thought you promised me if I moved out you'd leave me alone. I'll let him I'll let him tell you that Paul maybe he'll be honest from here today and tell you that that's that's quite a story. That's quite a story.

It's not my story. I don't take Fred's inventory. Only only last night when I thought he was a little off base.

Anyway, uh I got a job and I got some money more money for schooling grant and I went to school and I got a degree and I got a a professional certificate and I got what I needed and another door opened here and another door opened there and before you know it, I had a profession. A profession. And I had graduated from nursing school.

So, I got that gift from God. Graduation, graduated. I never graduated from high school.

Didn't know what it felt like to graduate. The one of the biggest joys that I've had in my life was walking down listening to pomp and circumstance. Walking down the that school auditorium a mile getting my degree and I got a job and Fred and I finally Fred finally talked me into moving in with him.

So, I moved in with him. after he stopped coercing me, I moved in with him. See, I knew how to handle the coercing husband and boyfriend, right?

I had had that experience already. So, I wasn't going to have it. We have a problem sometimes in our relationship because there are certain lines that you don't cross with me.

And um I got another degree and um I moved up in my profession and uh we decided Fred's son moved in with us and I was I fought that a lot. I fought I fought that a lot. But that was a real rough experience.

I mean hope was misery for Fred but it was a real rough experience for me. And um I said to the boy one day, "Do you think u your father and I should get married?" I mean, I wondered what this kid went into high school and told his friends. You know, I live with my father and his, you know, who am I?

You know, I had a diamond on my thing. I made him put the diamond on cuz I got you introduced me to people. I'm an old lady and he introduced me to people.

What do you say, my girlfriend? You know, give me please put then you can say fiance. And that sounded silly.

So, I said, "If this kid doesn't go into school and say, I'm living with my father and his fiance." So, I said, "Well, do do you think your father and I should get married?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Fred, we're going to get married." And Fred said, "What? What? I'm not ready for this yet." So Eric and I, that's Fred's son, Eric and I planned the wedding.

And Fred stayed completely out of it. Completely out of it. One day the boy said to him, "Dad, do you think maybe you could participate in this?" She's trying to pick out invitations.

And um, we had a wedding. We had a real wedding. I mean a wedding, you know, with a lot of people there.

a all a people most of there were a few family but a people and we had a wedding and and it was like I bought a dress and and I you know it was incredible like like another joy you know another heart's desire another thing that I didn't do another thing that I didn't do in my drinking that I got in my sobriety and so it so it goes That's it. That's the way it is. Um, I probably haven't said half of the things that I want to tell you, half of the things that I want to tell you about the program, about the things that have happened to me in AA, but I hope I hope I've given you an overview of what it's like.

If you can take somebody like me who looks okay on the outside and has kind of all of that stuff going on that the world thinks is important like a house and you know and kids and two cars in the garage and and all that stuff that but there's nothing going on in here. No skills for living emotionally. No ability to reason or make decisions or even make commitments.

It looked like I was making commitments always. You know, I teased Fred about the commitment of getting married, but it was just as important for me. My commitment to him emotionally was very difficult.

It wasn't a marriage commitment that I found difficult, but it was an emotional commitment. My ability to reach outside myself to help another human being is a miracle. Because with all of that giving away of the power and all of that dependence on other people, I couldn't think about anybody but myself.

My world was wrapped up in me. So, for me to care enough that you're here today to hear me speak or that some girl picks up the phone and calls me up to ask me something about her sobriety or she says to me, I want what you have is a miracle. It's a miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It is not a miracle of another program. It's a miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything I need to hear to grow and change is here in the books, in the rooms, in you.

This is a gross experience for you. This to be here today. I made up my mind this morning when I got up.

I was getting very nervous. I think the anticipation of this is worse than standing here doing it. You know, I said, "You gave me this gift today.

You gave me my heart's desire today. I'm not going to go and screw that up by some ego that gets in the way of my telling these people what the program's done for me because that's what this is about. It may be a convention, but it's me telling you how I got sto sober at AA.

I went and got baptized again. I was going to go off and speak in tongues. I mean, I have gone through in my sobriety.

I've done many, many things, okay? But I didn't get any of this anywhere else but here in these rooms. I pick up a book and I read something and I understand the answer to a problem.

Somebody said it. Solutions. I loved it last night.

I loved it. Take the problems to the sponsor and bring the solutions to the the rooms. I love that.

I love the simplicity of that. It took me 20 some odd years to understand the simplicity of that because I brought such complications into the sobriety. But each one of those things had happened to me or I couldn't be what I am today.

So we all have a different road that we travel. We all have a different perspective. My perspective from the time I was a little girl was terrible.

I just had awful perspective. I don't have that perspective today and you gave that to me all of you in your talks, in your advice, in your words. I don't think I can add anything more except that since I guess the last few years, I have really been reading Bill W's works.

I I I think Bill W was just the most wonderful writer. I he just had the wave of words. keystone and and anvils and words that you know anvil of our on the anvils of our experience or whatever it is you I don't paraphrase very well the keystone the foundation and I have found something in the Bill Caesar book and and it comes from something else that I would like to read to you to finish up because it epitomizes what I feel I really believe in unity service and recovery I really do I feel that they have to go together.

So the program is an ongoing thing for me. The steps are an ongoing thing. I go back to when I when I'm afraid I feel powerless.

When I feel powerless, the first step works in my life. I have to realize that I'm powerless over something and my life is unmanageable because of that. My sanity is more important to me today than I don't think about picking up a drink too much.

I do, you know, occasionally, but that's my sanity is what I have to hold on to. my sanity. The most precious thing I have is my sanity.

And there is only one way that I can restore myself to sanity is through the higher power and through God. I have to ask God to restore me to sanity because when I'm insane, there is no tool that I know to pick up to do that except that that tool. So I just want to read you something that I found that Billy wrote in a letter in 1950 called Is Happiness the Gold?

And that was what I spent my life looking for from the outside. I don't think happiness or unhappiness is the point. How do we meet the problems we face?

How do we best learn from them and transmit what we have learned to others if they would receive the knowledge? In my view, we of this world are pupils of a great school of life. It is intended that we try to grow and that we try to help our fellow travelers to grow in the kind of love that makes no demands.

In short, we try to move towards the image and likeness of God as we understand him. When pain comes, we are expected to learn from it willingly and help others to learn. When happiness comes, we accept it as a gift and thank God for it.

Thank you. 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.