Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00383 – Yvonne N – WEST MISSOURI CONF – 1978-11-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00383-yvonne-n-west-missouri-conf-1978-11-15.mp3 Duration: 01:19:06
============================================================
I was fortunate enough to get to introduce her at Springfield a few years ago. But, you know, this is today, and I asked Mike where she was at. I didn't think I would know her. And I wouldn't have. She's got married since then, I believe. And I'm glad she drove this weekend, because the last time I introduced her, she had come on Ozark Airlines, and she didn't even have on her own clothes. She had to borrow some. I believe I'm right on that.
So, I'm sure that she has a lot to tell you on two sides of the bar. So now I'm going to give you Yvonne. Applause Thank you. My name is Yvonne, and I'm an alcoholic. That's right, what Lucille said. I just now remembered that. I had gone to Springfield, Missouri, and my luggage didn't arrive. And so I was having to borrow clothes from all of the alums and the other AA ladies in order to have something to put on that night in order to speak.
And they took me back to the airport to go back home, and my suitcase was sitting there. Now that takes a lot of patience. I never will forget that trip. I always feel privileged and honored when someone asks me to come to a conference and I go through the mental gymnastics and the emotional spasms and saying, Isn't it wonderful that they've asked me to come up there and tell my story so that I can instill some hope in the lives of the newcomers?
And then a little voice inside me says, No, they just seem to think that you are sufficiently sick enough to instill some hope after you exhibit the kind of life that you've led. We drove up, started yesterday afternoon with full anticipation of getting here last night to hear my good friend Mike. And we must have come the long, circuitous route because we came through the National Park, and it was absolutely beautiful.
And we had a car with a Plexiglas transparent top, and there was a full moon, and it was shining in on us, and we had the FM radio on, and they had some romantic music, and we had two kids in the back seat. We brought two of the brood. We have kind of a cubby now, and it's always a hassle when you're in a car and you bring teenagers along. And I was listening to Patty, and I thought, My heavens, these kids now are so streetwise in comparison to the way it was when I was growing up.
And we always have to chop their arms off because they lean up over the back seat to get that music. And so my son was talking to my husband and I, and I don't know whether you have particularly paid attention to the songs that they play now, that these kids are playing. The music is enough to turn you off, but you have to listen to the words. And you wonder how they're going to survive. Thank God for our team.
Our boy was telling us this one about a very constructive, affirmative philosophy. Keep your eye on your shoulder, and always look back on the count of you have to gain the trust of those that you've lied to so that you can stab them in the back when they turn around. That's Pink Floyd. That's the truth. Or another one is Stone Blue, Stone Blue. Rock and roll will help me through. Stone Blue, walking down the street, I hear my heart beat.
Stone Blue. Now there's no Elizabeth Barrett Browning that's writing these songs, but my favorite is the one about the blood from my brain is going to drip on my lip because my life has been a rip, and my daddy's dead, and my mother's from Skid Row, so don't ask me because I don't know. And you wonder how in God's name they're going to survive. But somehow they keep making it, and they're smarter. And I was just so impressed when I listened to Patty because it just seemed like she had spied in my life, and she had told many of the things that I had felt and the emotions that I had gone through.
And I listened to Doyle this morning, and he had been reading my mail when he gave his Al-Nam talk about having to live with the disease of alcoholism in his family. And I listened to Mike, and Mike and I were laughing before the meeting on the account of our stories are somewhat the same
[00:04:59]
because we were both involved in law enforcement.
[00:05:01]
The only difference is that when I was drinking and I was working in municipal court with the police department, they used to bust all the junkies, and then I'd steal all the drugs that they got from the junkies and had a hard time with convictions, you know, because they didn't have any evidence. But it is amazing, the emotional identification and the stories that we all have. I am suffering from a disease of alcoholism which is irrevocable, incurable, which is permanent, and potentially fatal.
Now, if I had done the things that I was supposed to do in my life, I would have been standing here today before you with 19 and a half years of sobriety. I almost beat Mike. However, I've always been a slow learner, and the result is that I had to go back out after I had attended my first AA meeting when I was 28 years old, and I had to drink for 10 more years because I just couldn't quite accept the fact that I had a disease.
And the things that had happened to you had never happened to me. I don't know, I guess if I were to try to describe to you why I drank, it would have been for four reasons. The first one was that I had an image projected in my life of what I wanted to be, and I knew that I was not, and so I drank in order to fulfill that image, because when I drank, I became the things that I had always dreamed about.
And I drank because I had a void inside me, and when I used drugs or drank alcohol, that void was filled. And I drank to relieve the pain, just the pain in everyday living in sobriety, which to me was absolutely intolerable. And then I drank, paradoxically enough, as is the theme of this conference, the truth shall set you free. I drank in order to be free, because I guess if there was anything that I ever wanted to be when I was growing up, it was to be free.
And I didn't understand until I came to AA that we could have freedom, and yet we could be responsible at the same time, because I always had believed that if you had responsibility, you didn't have freedom. The two could not coexist. And so I drank to be free, and when I drank, I was totally relieved of responsibility, and what small responsibility I had, I could not accept. I had known about Alcoholics Anonymous for many, many years before I finally came to you people.
It wasn't a situation that I read about it in the newspaper or in a magazine or that my neighbor told me about it or that I worked for someone who was in AA, because I was raised in an alcoholic home, just like Mike was and just like Patty, and I had the same feelings that Doyle had when he was talking about not knowing what it was going to be like when he would come home. And we had a fine family.
I was the only child for 13 years, and then my brother came along, my younger brother. We had no problems. I was born in the Depression, and my daddy was just humping along trying to make a living, and he was a deacon in the church, and he was very active, and she put on church plays. And when I was about 14 years old, she started drinking socially because she had gone to work, and the kind of business that she was in I assume she thought required it.
And so I don't know what happened to her. I guess if I were going to try to figure out why I, genetically as an alcoholic, I would say that my great uncle was a drunk and my grandfather on my dad's side was a drunk. I have three practicing alcoholic aunts, I mean uncles right now, one practicing alcoholic aunt, an alcoholic mother, and of descent I am Irish and Indian, so I don't have a chance in hell.
But she crossed over the line sometime, and I don't even know when that happened, or I don't even know that that's important. But I know that as her drinking increased, the domestic problems likewise increased. And we went through the period, as all alcoholic families do,
[00:10:00]
with the fights and the screaming and the yelling and the regular Saturday night divorce. And I used to wake up and I'd listen to them yelling at each other in the bedroom, or my dad had come home and she would have been out drinking, or I would come home and one time I came home from college and she wasn't there and my little brother wasn't there and I was offended because it was a weekend at home and I looked out the window and a police car was driving up and they let her out and we had a big scene and my dad said, you know, why have you been to jail and you took this five-year-old child with you and just the regular routine.
Anything that's happened to you has happened to me in living in that kind of alcoholic surroundings. And then he finally did pack and he did leave and he did file for divorce. And then I had to take care of my little brother and she promised I'll never drink again. Over and over and over she promised. And then my grandmother came to our home and was dying and she had to administer drugs to my grandmother and when she did she never drew a sober breath and she was drunk the entire time she was trying to take care of my grandmother and I had a lot of resentment.
And I didn't like my grandmother either because my grandmother defended her drinking. As a matter of fact, I didn't like anybody in my family. Nobody, even me. And I knew this, that whenever I grew up if there was anything that I was not going to be it was going to be like my mother. Because I wouldn't embarrass my children like she had embarrassed me nor would I humiliate them and when their friends came home from school I would be a good mother.
And I wouldn't have the constant fights and I wouldn't have to go to jail. Because I was going to grow up and be just the opposite. And my resentment grew and I found bottles and my brother and I poured them out and we did everything that every other Al-Anon has done and every other Alating has done. And I've been on both sides of the fence and I know the empty hollowness that a child feels when one of his parents is a drunk.
And moreover I think because my mother was a drunk. The moral pariah. And it's a little worse when you have a mom that's a drunk than it is when your dad is. I took my first drink when I was 17 years old. Up until then I had been quite shy and quite retiring and I used to go to church camp and I remember one time we had a Vesper service and everybody had to go up and kneel and we had to meditate and we had to say silent prayers and I was 16 years old and at church camp and there was a big cross and it was on a cliff and I went up and I kneeled and I cried hysterically and sobbed until they came and picked me up.
And I didn't know what I was crying about but I just felt guilty and dirty and I hadn't done anything. The only commandment that I had violated was that I didn't honor my father and my mother. Oh, I did steal a lipstick from a dime store one day. But I felt guilty then without having been worldly and wise. I think just the fact that I was born made me feel guilty. And then when I was 17 I was exposed to my first drink and it was at that time that all these years, these formative years I said, why does she drink?
Why does she do those things? I can see in my life what she has done to our family and if she loved me she wouldn't drink and if she loved my father and my brother she wouldn't drink. And when I took that drink I found out why she drank. Because that drink did the same thing to me that it did to her. And it made me beautiful and it made me intelligent and I thought that it made me popular and it made me all the things that I wanted to be and I fulfilled that image and it filled that void and it made me free and it relieved the pain of just living at the age of 17 years.
I continued to drink socially thereafter I was in college I had graduated I went on to law school I went to a law school in Washington, D.C. where I think 90% of the people In D.C., where I think 90% of the people are alcoholic anyway, you'd have to qualify, you know, to be elected.
[00:15:04]
That's a great training ground for an alcoholic. But at that point in time, drinking had become a way of life for me. It had become a social lubricant. It had relieved my inhibitions and my anxieties and my fears. And when I went to a cocktail party, I was okay, and I was one of the people. I think, in essence, what alcohol was doing for me at that time in social drinking was it made me feel on the inside like people looked on the outside.
It made me feel normal. Now, I didn't know what being normal was like, but it made me feel like I thought they felt. While I was in law school, I had to study for some final exams, and I sat next to a doctor. I assume he was in law school to defend himself eventually in a malpractice case because he wrote open-ended prescriptions for amphetamine, and it was then that I started taking drugs just to study for finals, and suddenly I found out that the finals were over and I was still taking them.
And like with alcohol, you build up a tolerance, and what five milligrams of amphetamine used to do for me, it took 20 milligrams, and then it took 30. And I started each day with a couple of, dropping a couple of amphetamines and black coffee in order that I could get to work, make it through the day, get to law school, come home and study, and after I'd study, drink, and I would drink until I fell asleep.
Because when you're taking speed, and this was a long time before it became popular with the teenagers, but when you're taking speed, you have to come down, and you either have to come down with barbiturates or you have to come down with booze. Now a real trip, some of you out there are pure alcoholics, they're pretty hard to find nowadays, but a real trip is when you mix the amphetamine and the booze.
That's something you don't want to ever get on because you're crazy and you don't pass out. And you're drunk except that you're still walking around and doing crazy things, and all of the resentment and the hate and all of the emotional sickness just kind of bubbles through. I never was really a very happy drunk, I always would walk in some place and zero in on someone, and within two minutes they'd leave because I'd run them off, you know.
But I can't really remember pleasant drinking. Oh, I'm sure that at one time or another I acted all right, if I'd left soon enough, you know, for a party before I got blasted. But drinking with me was my answer. It made me normal and made me a member of society. I guess I've always had the alcoholic personality. You know, I don't know, and it doesn't matter whether you cross over the line or whether you go from social drinking, but I heard a man say one time it's kind of like taking a box of instant mashed potatoes, and you take the box off of the shelf and all of a sudden you add the liquid and zappo, you've got them.
And that's the way I was, because I had that personality, and then we added the liquid and I was off and running. And yet it was controlled drinking because I was able to graduate from law school and I got one of the finest jobs that was offered back home, and I went to work as the law clerk for the chief judge of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, that means that he's an important dude in the federal bench.
And I continued my drinking and I worked for him for a couple of years, and, yeah, controlled, controlled. I suddenly found myself at the age of 31, and I don't know whether it was because I was enjoying a late puberty or an early menopause, but, you know, I had married, I had, at the age of 34, I had three children, two in diapers and one in the crib. Now, you talk about responsibility in an alcoholic, and a normal person will go crazy.
I had still been the cycle, I was still taking the amphetamines. By then I had graduated to tranquilizers, I had found out what sleeping pills were about. And my entire life was based upon chemicals, and yet I was trying to raise those kids. In the meantime, my mother had found Alcoholics Anonymous. She did when I was 22 years old, right when I was getting out of college.
[00:20:02]
And I remember I used to go home and those crazy old drunks would come over to the house, and they'd sit down and talk, sit around the breakfast table, and they would talk about the allergy of the body coupled with the mental compulsion to drink. And I didn't believe a word they said. Because AA to me, at that time, was only a matter of convenience. You see, when she got sober, my daddy quit fighting.
You know, they still fight now, but, I mean, he didn't leave all the time. And he wasn't always filing, you know, to get a divorce. And things kind of leveled off. There was some domestic tranquility. And I thought AA was wonderful because I could go home and I could take my friends home and she wouldn't come home in a police car. She wouldn't have been in jail. And she wouldn't embarrass and humiliate me.
And if a date picked me up, she was okay. And so AA to me didn't, I didn't understand that it was saving her life. I didn't understand that she had a disease of alcoholism and that she was going to die if she continued to drink. I didn't know that. And back in those days, they didn't have allitine. And in the beginning, they didn't have alanine in Oklahoma City. And so we didn't, we weren't educated in the knowledge that it is a family disease.
All I knew was that she drank because she wanted to drink. And all of a sudden, some crazy people came over and she quit drinking and she was gone to meetings a lot. And my dad never went to an allitine meeting and she never asked me to go to an AA meeting because she was sober and that is all that matters. That's the way I felt. And I had a lot of resentment towards AA. I didn't like any of you people because she used to bring sick, shaking drunks to the house.
And they'd sit on the couch and she would take a watch and they'd watch the clock. And she'd say, can you go five more minutes? Can you go five more minutes? And they'd sit there and they'd say, we'll try. Well, I had had enough drinking in my life. I'd been around enough drunks, I thought. And so I was very jealous of the time that she spent with them and the energy and the effort that was consumed by AA.
And she used to bring one woman in named Ann who, I'm sorry to say, did die drunk. She never made the program, but my mother worked with Ann for ten years. Ann had been a concert pianist. And when my mother found her and tried to help her, she was living on Skid Row under a bridge. And they had put her eventually in the county home and so she'd bring Ann over to the house. And this was a periodic thing.
Each time Ann would come off of a drink. And so I'd go to my mother and I'd say, I think it would be wise if you would scald the dishes that Ann eats out of because I know that she must have a venereal disease. And that was my attitude towards AA people. Because all of you were the same, just a notch beneath me. And the phone calls would come. And friends would call her and there was a guy named Jack and he called every ten minutes.
And I hated this guy. And he'd say, is your mom there? He'd come over to the house sometimes with his sponsor and they would go through dry drunks and Jack would shake and he hadn't been drinking. But Jack had a couple of years' sobriety, but something had happened and he called all the time. And I'd answer that phone and I'd take the receiver and slam it down, trying to break his eardrum. And I'd say, just a minute.
And then I'd say loudly into the phone, Mother, it's Jack again. One day she was gone and Jack's wife called and said, is your mother there? I said, no. And she said, well, when she comes in, would you tell her that Jack died? He had a heart attack this morning, but he was sober. And the thought that ran through my mind was, thank God, I'll never be bothered with his calling again. Alcoholics Anonymous was simply a crutch.
It was something that you'd just shove in the closet. I certainly wasn't proud that she was a member.
[00:25:00]
I didn't want to be seen with any of you and I didn't even want to associate with you, but it was kind of a necessary evil. After I'd had all these kids, we, my husband and I, then we did a geographic. My mom was on my back pretty much because even though she didn't know a lot of the times that I was drinking or drunk, she was aware that I was imbibing heavily, occasionally, but I hid it most of the time.
I tried to anyway. And we moved to California in 1963. We moved back to Oklahoma in 65. We moved back to California in 66. While I was working for this federal judge and I was single, I had been to my AA meeting and it was in Denver, Colorado. And we had gone up there to hold court. And I had gotten drunk the night before in the Brown Palace and I knew that I might be in trouble at work because I had made a scene in the bar.
And so I went to an AA meeting so that I could say, in case I did get in trouble, this is my insurance, hey, I went to an AA meeting and I didn't hear one thing that those people said because they talked about losing jobs and they talked about being in jail and they talked about going to hospitals and none of those things had happened to me. When we were living in California, we were living in the valley and I said to my husband, if you will just move me out of the valley and move me down to Malibu Beach and get me out of this smog, I just want to be a beachcomber.
I said, I'll be better. I had gone to psychiatrists. I had convinced the psychiatrist I weighed 170 pounds. I had convinced them that I had a complex about my obesity and so they gave me diet pills. And then I would call in and say, these are too weak and then I'd call back and get another prescription and say, these are too strong and it was just kind of like Goldilocks and the porridge. And so I would get four or five prescriptions working at the same time from the same doctor and they had no check.
And when we moved down to the beach house, nothing changed. And I continued to drink. Now I knew that alcoholics drank in the morning. And I knew that I had enough knowledge about AA, this is prior to the traditions having been written, that I had enough knowledge that I would never be an alcoholic. I had all of the information on what not to do. And when I lived at the beach house, I found myself drinking at noon and then scooting it back to 11 o'clock and then 10 o'clock and then a Bloody Mary was okay.
And then I found myself waking up in the middle of the night and having to have a drink. And then I would become hysterical and my husband would take me up to the Malibu emergency clinic and I made friends with a doctor up there and he would give me shots of morphine to calm me down. And he gave me some kind of medication and to this day I don't know what it was. I call it now an instant lobotomy. But I'd take those pills and I couldn't remember five minutes after that.
And I'd send those kids out to play on the beach and five minutes later I didn't know where they were and I'd say to myself, where are the kids? And I couldn't remember having sent them out there and it's a wonder that they weren't killed. But I continued to live that way. In 1966, I called Santa Monica and I wanted to go to an AA meeting. And my husband took me into the meeting and I went into the bathroom and locked the door and cried for an hour.
And he picked me up and I went home and he said, how did you like the meeting? I said, I'm not a drunk. 1967, I called AA in Santa Monica again and I started talking to them on the phone. We didn't have a phone at that time so I had to go next door and borrow one. And I was drunk and it was 10 in the morning and the people who lived there were aware of the fact that I had been drinking and I said, do you think I'm an alcoholic?
And they said, no, we just think that you have problems because you're frustrated because you're a career woman. And you have these children and you haven't been able to prove yourself. And so I hung up because they gave me the words that I wanted to hear that I was not an alcoholic. I had become involved in about every kind of church all during my life attempting to find the answer to that spiritual void.
I had been raised in the Christian church, transferred to the Baptist, then to the Methodist, then to the Jesuit law school, took instructions to become a Catholic. We moved to the coast and I went to the Science of Mind. And I went to the Science of Mind Church. I tried everything, thinking maybe that God, if He were there, would give me an answer to why I just couldn't be one of the normal people.
[00:30:10]
And I remember one time I said, if life has to be this way, I said, I want them to just drop an atomic bomb and just blow this country up. And I had three little kids, and I said, and kill them, too, because I don't want them to have to grow up and live like this, because it's so painful and so miserable. We moved back into the Valley, and nothing changed. I had graduated to wine. A lot of people say they're winos. I was a winet. And like every alcoholic, I knew that things would get better. Tomorrow it's going to be different.
I've just had a run of bad luck. Tomorrow the big break will occur. The pie in the sky. I want on the merry-go-round with a brass ring, because I'll catch it tomorrow. And tomorrow never came. I was afraid to go to sleep at night, because I was afraid that I would die in my sleep. And yet each morning when I would wake up, I was afraid that I couldn't face the day. There's a saying in Zen that you cannot wash away blood with blood. And that's where I was at. You reach a point where you know that if you drink, you're going to die, and you know that if you don't drink, you're going to die. That drinking is so miserable, and yet sobriety is so painful that you just don't have a choice.
And you drink sometimes because you had problems that you want to forget. And then when you drink and you get drunk, you create problems, and when you sober up, you have to drink in order to forget the results of drinking. Well, there isn't any answer for anyone like that, anyone like me. I had so much hate and hostility and resentment inside me that I knew that my family was holding me back, and if I did not have all these children, that I could accomplish a lot.
And I hated those kids so much that when they would come into the kitchen, I would have to go and close the drawers that contained the knives. Now, I had told my psychiatrist that I had a fear of sharp objects, and I was scared to death of what I might do in some irresistible impulse, even sober. I was afraid that some night I might go in and kill them while they were asleep. Alcohol had failed. Certainly it had not created that image of that thing that I wanted to be. When I first started, it made me the thing that I wanted to be, but before I came to AA in the last-ditch effort, it made me the thing that I didn't want to be.
It no longer filled that void. Alcohol no longer relieved the pain, and God knows it didn't make me free, because I had become a slave to the bottle, bonded to the bondage. In November of 1967, we were living in an apartment, a transient apartment, because we had been evicted from our house on the beach. I walked the floor, and I was drunk, and I said, God, if you are there, help me. And there was no answer, because I guess God knew that I wasn't ready. We then moved into a nice home, and I thought, we had a beautiful swimming pool, and I thought, well, if I can just get out of this apartment, things are going to be OK.
But nothing changed. We didn't have enough money to buy a refrigerator, and so I took the empty wine bottles and washed them out and filled them with milk that belonged to the kids and floated the wine bottles in the pool so the milk wouldn't spoil. Now, that's alcoholic thinking. You can buy the booze, but you can't buy a refrigerator. And you will make the sacrifices in order to be able to obtain the alcohol, and you will justify it in your mind, because I was an absolute expert at justification and rationalizing and compensating.
[00:35:12]
And I am today, because I have an alcoholic mind, and my mind will follow me to my grave, because I am suffering from the disease of alcoholism. I am sober, and my body is free from the chemicals, but it is my emotional problem that I must deal with now. On February the 11th, I assumed that my higher power knew when it was a good time, when I was ready. I was drunk, and I think I had a lucid moment that was greater than one that I had ever had in the last seven or eight years.
I had reached my bottom emotionally. Alcohol had done things for me all of my life, and when you try to take something away from some person and they feel as though they are being deprived of that thing, they are not willing to give it up. And I believe, for me, the point psychologically in my surrender was not that I had to give up something, a friend, but that I was getting rid of an enemy. Now, that is the willingness where you want to be sober more than anything else.
I poured the drink out and I went to the phone and I called AA. I knew that I was calling a bunch of stinking, puking drunks to come and help another stinking, puking drunk. And you came, and there were three of you. You walked in the door, and I had tried the best of my ability to wash my face. I used to drink in a moo-moo, and if I took it off, it would break. I always figured that you would melt if you got in the shower.
And so I had tried to do something with my 170 pounds, and I had put some mascara and lipstick on, and you people came to me, and I was crying, and the mascara was running down my face. And remember, this is February the 11th, and so as you talked to me, I said, but what am I going to do about drinking Christmas at the Christmas party? Now, I hadn't been invited to a Christmas party in five years. And after I went to AA, they told a story which is my favorite, and I think depicts the alcoholic mind, and that is about the woman who weighed 200 pounds, and she went into AA, and she got real slim and trim and neat, and she's laying on a beach in her bikini, and a guy walks by, and he says, hi.
And she looks up, and she says, but I can't cook. Now, that's projection. And I was so concerned about staying sober at Christmas that I wasn't willing to listen to what you people were saying to me. And you said amazing things. You don't have to take another drink unless you want to. No one had ever told me that. They said, what time do you start drinking? I said, usually around 9 o'clock, I really hit it. And they said, all right, we'll call. And the next morning at 9 o'clock, on the button, you people started calling me, and you called every 15 minutes. And then you gave me phone numbers, and I called you.
And I wore the paint and the numbers off of that telephone that first day, because I was withdrawing and cold-turkeying at the same time. It's hard to come off drugs and booze, but I couldn't go to a hospital, because that's a disgrace if you're not an alcoholic. And I called constantly, and you called me. And you said, hang in there, you can make it, and we'll pick you up, and we'll take you to a meeting. And this time I went to a meeting, and for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to listen at what someone else might have to say.
Now, that didn't last long, because my arrogance returned. I still didn't want to drink out of the coffee cups that you drank out of. I was highly insulted that I had to carry the ashtrays back. But there was a sign that said, we care, at the North Hollywood Clubhouse.
[00:40:11]
And no one had ever said that to me, either. Everything I did and had done had been in excess. It took me a year and a half on this program to learn that a one-a-day vitamin is a one-a-day vitamin. And when you take two aspirin, you don't take six. I heard a lady say one time, anything worth doing is worth doing in excess. And that was always the story of my life. And I learned that it's not the twelfth drink that gets you drunk, but it's the first drink. It's not the caboose that kills you when you're laying on the train track, it's the engine.
I learned that, it's like in a car wreck, that it is not the fuel that is at fault, but it is the driver. And there was a sudden realization that alcohol was not my problem, that alcohol was my answer. You people were not kind to me. My first impulse was to rewrite the big book, and I said so at a meeting one night. I said, this certainly hasn't won any Pulitzer Prize. I figured that I had a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, and they informed me that that and five bucks would get me some bourbon, and that's where I was at.
They told me, no, that this book hadn't won any prize, and that it was simply written, and the reason that it was written that way is so that run-dumb stoops like me could understand it. They said, if you're so damn smart, how come you're a drunk? They said, you leave your head outside, that's what got you here. And they didn't ask if I were from Yale or jail. They took me as I was, and I was a mess.
I had become compulsive, impulsive, and repulsive. And they started battering the ego, and they started their daily sessions with scalpels and humility. And I went to a minimum of five meetings a week for a year and a half, and I had several sponsors. And I had learned that this was the program of honesty, and I said to them, I have been honest all of my life, because I had always been outspoken, and I thought I'd told people how I felt. And they said, no, you have not been honest, you have been frank, and there is a big difference.
And I didn't follow their instructions, because I was not willing to accept a higher power than myself. I told you I was a slow learner. And they said, you pray in the morning to stay sober, and you give thanks that night. I said, I don't mean it. They said, you do it. And I did. And suddenly it dawned on me at about two months that I hadn't had a drink. And maybe there was something to this. And I wanted to stay sober so badly, and I was willing to go to any lengths that I conjured up gimmicks, because I knew that I would want a drink at five o'clock in the afternoon.
And so I would set my clock back at five, two, three. And then I wouldn't want the drink, and I'd say, I've got two hours before I have to have the drink. And then finally it would go back, and it would be five o'clock, and it would really be seven, and I'd have to go in and take a bath and get ready to go to meeting. And I did that day after day, because sobriety was the most important thing in my life. I wanted to get rid of that enemy. And they said, it is more important than your family. It is more important than your work. It comes first. Because if you ever should go back to work and get a job, you won't have it if you're not sober. And if you don't continue to stay sober, you won't have a family.
So it must come first. Things rocked along for me, and I suddenly began to believe that the program would work. I had seen it work for my mother, but you see, my case was different, and I was unique. And I had such an intellectual talent. And I had such an intellectual perception, I thought, of this program, that I always tried to complicate it.
[00:45:00]
And I said to myself, if I really have all of these character defects, and why isn't it that when I work the Twelve Steps, and I am a whole person again, and I get rid of the defects, why can't I drink again? Because evidently I'm emotionally ill, and that's what they tell me. And if I am emotionally ill, and if I get well, then why can't I drink? And nobody could come up with an answer. And one day I was washing the dishes, and all to myself, this voice says, you dummy, you wouldn't want to drink.
A simple answer, a simple answer. But it seemed that I went around trying to create problems. And I want to say to you, if you are new, that an intellectual understanding is not enough. You've got to keep it simple. Simple, simple, simple. Because if you're crazy as I was crazy, and if you have an alcoholic mind as I have, then you're just going to mess it up when you start trying to rationalize, justify, and compensate.
You people said to me, we admitted that we were powerless. We came to believe. We made a decision. The word I was never used in the program, and it was the group therapy of getting well together. And we had used our mouths to get sick with, and now we used them to get well. And things began to improve, and I sucked my thumb, and I beat my high chair at meetings, and I had my skate key and my baby Ruth in my pocket.
And I raised hell, but you people were kind, and you were patient. And you'd say, this too will pass. And I resisted surrender. Just as a child resists surrender. I had come to you with the body of a 38-year-old woman and the emotions of a child. Somewhere along the line, I had become an emotional cripple. And if a child is playing in the floor, and you try to take a toy away from that child, the child feels deprived.
And the only way that the child can be satisfied is to replace it with something else. And that's what you attempted to do for me. Well, I didn't do the things that I was supposed to do. I'm a slow learner. I took my inventory on a match cover. Then I took it on a three-by-five card. And then I took portions of my fifth step with different people because I didn't want to lay it all on one guy at the same time.
And I wanted your approval. God knows I wanted it. And so I just divided it up, and I had been sober about two and a half years, and I had been asked to speak at the Top of Texas Tournament, a conference in Amarillo, Texas. And I was out there, and I had to speak on a Saturday afternoon, and on Friday night I knew that I could not get up to the podium and talk because I had been dishonest with you and with myself and that I had not worked these steps to the best of my ability, and I had not taken step four and five, six and seven, and on down.
Oh, I put on a good show, and I was always the first to shake the hand of the newcomer who came to the meeting because I wanted to impress you and make you think that I was working step 12, carrying the message, but I knew that things were not right with me inside. And so I talked with a friend, and the friend suggested that I sit down and that I take my fourth and fifth step, and it was an emergency measure because if I didn't, that I would drink.
And so I did, and he gave me a list of five questions, and I answered those questions, and it took a legal pad, five simple questions. But I thoroughly answered them, and I wrote that much, and I flew to California, and I took my fifth step. And I began for the first time to understand who I was and what I was and why. I had done the things that I had, and that I was sick. I had been very sick. I began to learn about my character defects, and I discovered that I had been a victim of self-pity all of my life.
And I just coveted any situation where I could be the martyr. When I was growing up, there's a guy at home that says, it's poor me, poor me, and then next it's pour me a drink. And I believe that. The reason that I felt self-pity is because I had always felt deprived.
[00:50:02]
Whatever it was that someone else had, if I didn't have it, I was deprived. And all of my life, I had compared myself to other people, and that is what nearly killed me and will nearly kill me today, is the comparison of my life and yours. I compared myself out of AA in 1959, in 1966, and in 1967. If I am comparing myself with you, obviously I will feel deprived in one way or another. I was also a great victim of impatience.
And that's a simple answer. The only time for a child is now. Have you ever heard a child say, take me to the ice cream store next week and get me a cone? I want it now. With my kids, it's yesterday. The impatience, the impatience of the emotional immaturity, the lack of consideration for other people, the total disregard for everyone else, my needs, my comforts. And then I learned about my defect of perfectionism.
I've always been a perfectionist, and I still am. And even when I was drinking, I used to clean my refrigerator and the grills with Q-tips. And I met a lady, and she said that she blew the dust out of her keyholes. I had to be immaculate, just as a housekeeper, fastidious in my own life. Personally, I was not. But the reason I was that way then and the reason that I am that way now is because somehow my computer is geared and it functions that as a perfectionist, I am subconsciously comparing my life to yours again.
And I know that if I set up standards and goals that are high enough for me, that if I should ever reach them, then I'll be better than you. And if I set up standards and goals for other people, which I do today with my family, and they cannot reach those standards and goals, then I find fault with them. Because I want me and mine to be the best. Because I am comparing my life with other people. And I am comparing it because of my feeling of my lack of self-worth.
I feel deprived when I feel sorry for myself because of my feeling of my lack of self-worth. I had to learn about resentments. Still have them. Still work on them. But I think the difference is now that I have the knowledge. I can identify these feelings that come on me. I used to have resentments and I watered them, just like you do animals in a zoo. I'd sit at home, you know, and just like you have rosary beads, and I'd just count those resentments and I'd just feel sorry and I'd get drunk at people.
Feel sorry for myself. Drunk at situations, places and things. And I know now that a resentment is something that I cannot hold on to. I can hold on to it as long as I want to, but when it hurts badly enough, I must let it go. Because an alcoholic cannot live with them. And I'll get drunk. Sometimes I can carry them for two and three days at a time. And all in the world that a resentment is, is just relived anger.
If I get angry now at work and I go home and I sit down and I think about it, the second time I think about it, it is a resentment. And there is a chain reaction, like a nuclear reaction. And it is called anger, resentment, self-pity, drunk. I've done all three, except the last. And somewhere over the last nine and a half years that I have been sober, I have learned to chop it off someplace. And when you have it and it's just so painful that you can't stand it, you have to go back and you have to work the program.
When you wake up and things are absolutely perfect and the birds are singing and the flowers are blooming, you might say a little prayer of gratitude. I might at how wonderful things are, but I do not start my day conscientiously working every step down the line because things are good and you don't have to. It's when things get bad that would create emotions
[00:55:03]
and emotional reactions and circumstances which would ordinarily have made me go out and drink. I have to substitute something for that need and that something is the AA program. And it is the crutch that I must use just as I did alcohol. And that crutch has kept me alive because I have come to believe that alcohol was not my problem. It was my solution. It was my answer. And when you took the alcohol away from me, you left me with raw and knackered emotions that had to have some kind of an answer.
When the pain became so great that I ordinarily would have had to have had an anesthetic, you had to give me something, not drugs and not booze, that would enable me to live in the arena of sobriety without having to do the things that I used to do. We moved back to Oklahoma and I had been sober three and a half years. And I identified today with both of the speakers because they said to me the first night that you came, you said to my husband and to me, you will either grow together on this program or you will grow apart.
And if you are new, please mock those words. It is true. At three and a half years, I had been sober. I had gone back to work. I was in law enforcement. I was assistant attorney general of the state of Oklahoma. And I was putting drunks and dopies in jail and keeping them there. I was doing what I had to do because people who get drunk and drive cars and kill other drivers have to go to jail. You have to protect society against menaces like you and me when we have deadly weapons in our hands.
But things were all okay for a while and then all of a sudden this crisis happened in my personal life and I didn't think that I was going to be able to handle it. And I had a great resentment against the Al-Anons because I thought if he had gone to Al-Anon and those women had done what they should have done and those men, then he would have grown. And you see, Al-Anons were people who could drink and still work our program.
And that was my attitude. Well, the divorce was inevitable. We were feeding each other sicknesses and after it was over, I still had resentments and they came back and I attempted to be both a mother and father for my three children. And I vowed I'll never get involved again with anybody. Mine is not man dependency, it is God dependency. I, about six months after that, went on the bench and I was getting paid for things that I had never been able to do when I was drinking and that's called make decisions.
And things were rocking along pretty well. I built a house and the kids were fine. I was sponsoring girls in AA and I was going to my meetings and I was doing what I was supposed to do. And you people had stepped in and had consumed my life. And there was a gentleman who had practiced law in my court and he was slick. He was really a good attorney and I thought, if I ever grow up, I want to be like that.
I would like to be able to handle a case like he does and have the same composure in the courtroom. And the truth is that he hated me so much sometimes he couldn't stand it, you know, on the account of we'd get in a tiff. And the only thing is I had the leverage because I was the judge. And so I had a Great Dane dog because we lived in the country and I wanted that dog to protect me and so my dog came in heat.
And he had a male dog so I called him up to see if I could get the dogs married and they got married and then we did. And he had four kids. Now you talk about insanity, that was the responsibility of seven and I wanted to be like that. part of the brood. And it kind of started off with a difficult time because his, some of the, his children did not accept me, and it was just a slow process of earning their love, really.
[01:00:07]
And we had to together release them in some situations, and then my children had to go through the adjustment, and I said to him, my sobriety comes first. Now I want you to go to Al-Anon. And he did. And he'd come home and he'd say, I don't think I'm getting anything out of those meetings. You go and you listen. And then about every two months he would absolutely, it was a Jekyll and Hyde situation.
Now I had known that he used to drink heavily, and I had rationalized in my own mind that it was because his wife had been terminally ill for a long time, and then she did die, and I thought, well, now that is past and the drinking is gone and everything is fine and I am Snow White living in the castle. And he never did drink, and he never, even when we went out socially, he never drank, except every two months he'd go crazy.
And he would be vicious and mean, and I felt sorry for myself, and, you know. And I was doing my thing and going off to the AA conferences and loving you and sharing and hugging and kissing and sponsoring girls, and they were calling me up crazy, and I was towing the mark, except I just couldn't handle that situation at home. And when he was good, he was very, very good. And when he was bad, he was a son of a bitch.
And so one morning my son was an Alateen speaker over in Arkansas, and so we were all going to get up in wonderful family style and we were going to go to that Alateen meeting over there and we were going to listen to my kid talk. And I got up and walked in the kitchen and he says, You've been ranting that bad blub-blub-blub five minutes, I could have been at work, work this morning. And I said, Go.
And I got in that car and I took my children and we drove to Arkansas. And I did what the Alunans say to do. I never went to an Alunan meeting, I had just listened to them, talked with them and heard them speak at conferences. And there is a message, the Bible, that they deliver, and they talk about release. And in the car when we were driving over there, I released him like you wouldn't believe. It wasn't detachment, it was severance.
And I said, God, you take him and do with him what you want, because I can't handle it anymore. I am through. And I didn't call him when I was over there, because I really gave him away. And I came back and his clothes were gone. And he was given away for sure then. And there was a note on the bed in drunken scrawling. And do you know that I found out that he was hoping and praying that I would be asked to speak at AA conferences because I would be gone for the weekend and he could get drunk?
And he had been doing this ever since we got married? And he's going on binges like that? And he says that he was even trying to call up the committees and say he'd secretly pay my way if I'd go, just so I'd be gone, so he could do his number. And he gave me this phone number and I called this phone number up and he informed me that, well, he was drunk. This time I caught him. And he had been in a car wreck and he had totaled out a sports car and it had a canvas top and he had turned it over and it had skidded 40 feet on its top as he was moving his clothes.
The clothes were in the ditch and the police found the car and the police were looking for him. And I was the judge. And I knew they'd be knocking at my door, so I said, I'll call you back. So I hung up the phone and I called the Al-Anons. I said, oh, my God, what do I do? Because I was Miss AA and I had all the answers. What do I do? And they said, nothing. And I said, well, he says he hasn't eaten since last Wednesday.
And they said, well, he won't starve, he can go next door and beg some food. And he had gone over to the farm that we had and they said, how much has he had to drink? I said, I don't know. And they said, well, you think he'll convulse?
[01:05:01]
I said, I don't know. And I said, do you think I ought to go over there? And they said, nope. So I called him back and he says, oh, I don't have a car. I don't have any clothes. Oh, I don't have a home. I said, yep. And I'm hungry. I said, go beg some food. And he says, oh, and I got hurt in the rack. And I said, were you scratched? Oh, yeah. Is anything broken? No. And so I said, well, I said, you just go drink some coffee.
And so he complained how ill he was and that was it. He was going to vomit by himself. And so the next morning he called me early and said, oh, I'm so sick. I don't know about going to work. And I said, do you want me to tell him that you won't be in, your law partners? And he said, yes. So I called him up. And in true Al-Anon tradition, I said, my husband is drunk. He's had a car wreck. He's totaled a car and he's drunk on the farm right now and he won't be in.
Because they say you don't protect them. And then I talked to him. He says, oh, why don't you call Ken, why don't you, and these AA members, why don't you call them and tell them? And I said, you call them. He said, oh, I broke my glasses in the rack. I says, I'll look up the numbers and give them to you and you call them. I'm not doing nothing for him. Because whatever the effort was that was made, I knew he had to make it.
Because I cannot work his program, I can't tote him, I can't carry him, and he was on his own and he was in God's hands. So he called me back that night and he was still hungry and I'd made some soup. I said, well, if you take a bath, you can come by and I'll give you a cup of soup. And he did. And he came over. And in the meantime, the insanity of alcoholism, he had called his daughter because the police were coming when I was gone and he was hiding in the woods, so the police couldn't find him.
And she had taken him to the farm and had taken the keys to the truck so he couldn't get in the truck to drive the truck to get any more booze, and so he was going to drive the tractor down Highway 66 into town to the liquor store and park the tractor and get some booze. And I don't know what happened, but he didn't get any. He came by and he says, I think I'll go to AA. I said, fine. And we talked for a little while and he went on his own and he didn't get any help out of me at all because it is the same with him as it was with me, a personal decision.
He can't work that program because of me and he had to do it all by himself, just like the little red hen. I'm glad to say that he's sober now, a year and a half. I'm glad to say that things are pretty AA in our family. Out of our seven children, we only had one that had a problem with drugs. And I talked with her about that about two years ago and said, if you need any help, you know where the answer is.
And she now has been in AA for six months. Of course, my mom's still in, you know, 28 years of sobriety. She hadn't been to a meeting in 11 years unless I've asked her to speak. But that's okay, too. And my husband and I try to work our program and, you know, she's working hers and we take her inventory daily and she takes ours, but there's total relief. And we rationalize that by just saying, well, that's mother-in-law problems.
I have come to believe in a power, a power that you have given me, the kind of God that I had known all of my life was on the front seat of the Wednesday night prayer meeting. It was the kind of a God of punishment, because the crime always equals the punishment. It was the kind of God who had allowed his son to be cruelly crucified on a cross and had said to me, Yvonne, if you do not believe this, you will go to hell.
And all of my life I had had a fear of this deity. I had encounters with this God and they were a plea bargaining kind of thing. Get me out this time. And I believe that my spiritual awakening came when I learned that I was no longer God's stepchild and that God loved me, as simple as that.
[01:10:03]
That is my spiritual awakening. And you people talk to me about faith, and I didn't know what faith was. I think you have to make two surrenders in AA in order to make it work. I think the first step is the first surrender, and the second surrender comes with a third step. And I didn't know how to take it, and I didn't know what to do. And I went to a meeting and I would ask, and they would say, oh, if you take your third step, you've got to pack your bags because you travel fast.
I said, to hell with you. How? How? Give me the tools. And so one night I went home, and I was trying so hard. And so when I went to bed, I said a prayer that night, and I said, God, let me make my surrender and turn my life over to you, and by that I mean if it is your choice to take me while I am asleep, do so, and I am willing to die. And I had those little kids to raise, but at that point in my life, I was willing to die if that was God's choice.
And once I could do that, and that's only happened to me one time, but once I did that, then it was so much easier for me to turn my will over. And it's been a periodic thing, and it happens on a daily basis, and it's just kind of like walking up to a cliff with a huge abyss, and there is total blackness and darkness. And they say, jump. That to me is the third step. A faith which is a complete and undoubting trust, a trust that a child has in his parents.
When he is sick, he knows his parents will nurse him to health. Whatever his problems are, he knows his parents will take care of him. And that's the kind of a faith or a trust that I have tried to have, because I don't know the answers, and I'm going to run the show as long as I can run it. And when the time comes that I have to get out of the driver's seat, and the pain becomes so great, then I have to turn it over.
And I do that sometimes, six and seven times an hour, on account of it is my nature to take the reins back. I have come to believe that this higher power is not the kind of a God where you have to earn love, because the only conception that I had ever had of love is when you're small and when you're good, you're rewarded. And when you are good, your parents love you, and when you're bad, they don't.
And that's the kind of love that I had always believed that God had, because I had to be good in order to be loved. And that's not what the God is that I have found is all about now. And it is only through you people that you have taught me the kind of God that cares, that will protect, and that will love me regardless, regardless. I believe that the Kingdom of Heaven now is here within me. Prior to AA, I had always believed that the Kingdom of God is when you died, and you had to go to St. Peter, and at the pearly gates they had the keys and they let you in.
I don't believe that now, because I think that the messages that were written over 2,000 years ago said, I have come to proclaim the establishment of my Father's Kingdom, and that was then, in present tense. Or the hour of my Father's Kingdom has come, and that was then, in present tense. Or until you shall enter as a little child, you will not enter the Kingdom of God, which is just a simple faith and an undoubting trust.
And I think that the Kingdom of God is within me. The Kingdom of God is within me, and I believe that when I am doing God's will, then and only then can I enter that kingdom. This has been a difficult program for me to work, because it is totally foreign to everything
[01:15:02]
that I have ever been. In the Bible it talks about the carpenter having healed the ten lepers, and of the ten lepers only one came back and thanked him, and he said, where are the other nine? And there isn't any answer in the Bible, but I think if we tried to figure as alcoholics what those answers might have been, they would have been, well, I'm too busy to give gratitude now that I'm well, or well, they owed it to me all along, the healing was owed to me because of who I am, or if I go back and give thanks to the carpenter, I might have to give involved, I might have to give of myself, or I might be seen doing it, or it might cost me some money, or I am well now and that is over with and it is a chapter that is closed, or I can't do that because I'm having too much fun, or I'm too depressed.
I've been one of the nine lepers many, many times, because there are times when I have not felt gratitude, and I haven't wanted to go to meetings, and I haven't been glad that I was a recovering alcoholic, and the reason is because there is a paragraph in that book which says that I am that way, and it is a sentence, and it says, no one among us has maintained anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. I have learned that reality is not painful, that it is only my effort to resist it, and that when I am in the midst of reality, this program can handle it, but when I am at a distance and I am resisting things and changes and people in my life, that is when reality is painful. I'd like to close with the allegory of the ten midgets who had arms about this long, and they were starving, and they were normal people and they put them in a banquet room, but they made one commitment, and that was that they had to eat with the utensils that were in that banquet room, and there was screaming and yelling and crying, and they opened the doors and they went in, and the utensils were forks, and they were this long, and the people could not lift the forks because their arms were not long enough and placed the food in their mouth. And then they took the alcoholics and they put them in another banquet room, and they had short arms, and they were given long forks, and they listened at the door and there was no sound, and as they entered they found that the alcoholics who were starving were feeding each other, feeding each other, because we share, and we have taken this adversity that we have, this disease, and we have turned it into a benefit, like an oyster turns a grain of sand into a pearl. All that I can do is try to be a link in the chain of sobriety and pass on to others that which you have given to me. Thank you very much.