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Source: Katy W – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: katy-w-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:33:53
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I'm an alcoholic. My name is Lois. Hi. It isn't easy to be an alcoholic, particularly if you're a woman. People seem to have this idea that being a female-type alcoholic is a dubious distinction at best. But we do exist, and we're here. We're crawling out of our pantries and into AA in ever-increasing numbers. This is one of the reasons that the hand of fellowship that's extended by the men who got to AA first is particularly gratifying to us.
I'm very happy to have the privilege of introducing a speaker who is also a member of the, if you'll pardon the expression, weaker sex, Katie W. of Barrington, Illinois. Katie? How do you do? Katie from Barrington. You're not going to hear a talk or a speech or an oration. You're going to hear a lot of jibber-jabber because I've got sort of a hot scotch brain. I've got a lot of notes. I was going to reread the big book between last week and today, and I didn't make it. So I'm here to tell you what I was like, what I did, and what I'm like now.
I didn't have a hard time becoming an alcoholic. I slid right into it. My family were heavy drinkers, and I was raised in this environment. I'm going to stop shaking now. So it was kind of a way of life. However, I did know the disappointment and the heartbreak of a child raised in a drinking environment. So right from the beginning, with my drinking, I suffered remorse very deep and very, almost like a passion.
I was remorseful over the fact that I drank, but I didn't know any other way. I started drinking at an early age, and I laughed about it, but never from the heart. My friends all drank. I didn't know anybody who didn't drink, and I didn't care to, really. But I always felt that I was a victim of circumstance, that underneath this jazzy kid was this wonderful person with all these wonderful high ideals that was trapped.
So I married a boy who drank as much as I did, and this was the attraction. I don't think anybody who didn't drink would have been attracted to me, nor I to them. It was during the war, and we traveled around together, different stations. He was a pilot for the Navy, and did a lot of drinking. By the end of the war, I had two children. This was, I don't know, 1947, I guess. I was up in Michigan for the summer, still drinking every weekend, still having terrible remorse every Monday, staying in these depressions for two or three days, and then getting ready for the weekend again.
And I hated it. I hated myself, but I didn't know any other way. I was up in Michigan with these children. As I say, the remorse got worse because I was aware of what heavy drinking, what the environment does to children. So I saw an old friend of mine, a girl I hadn't seen for many years, and when I was about 10 or 11 years old, the impressionable age, she was in her late teens, and a real squinter, and I thought she was very glamorous.
She drank heavily, and she rode around in rumbled suits, and had a flask with her monogram on that thing. This, I thought, was it. Really it. Madame Curie, that type of person, bored me. But this type, I loved.
[00:05:10]
Well, during the years that I hadn't seen her, she had joined an organization called Alcoholics Anonymous, and she had not changed too much. She seemed to have a good time. And every weekend at parties, I would corner her, we've all been through this, and say, Bobby, I've got to stop drinking. What can I do? She'd poo-poo it and say, Katie, you don't have an alcoholic problem. It's ridiculous. So we'd go on until the next weekend, and then towards the end of the weekend, I would grab her and corner her again.
Finally, on a Monday, in a wild fit of remorse, I ran down to her house. It was not too far down the road. And just begged her to give me this AA book. I knew there was a book. I don't know why, but I knew there was a book. And she gave it to me. And I went back to my house, and I had summer health, little girl. There's one thing about us alcoholics, we never have good health. They won't put up with us.
I always had health, but I think they always had me, really. Sort of blackmail, I guess. But anyway, I had devoured the book, and could immediately see the handwriting on the wall. I was 24 at the time, and I'm taking my shoes off right now. So anyway, I didn't realize it, but at the time, being an AA gives us 20-20 hindsight. I can look back now and see all the wrong moves I made. But after I finished this book, and I was fascinated with it, and I love those stories in the back, you know. And I could see the handwriting on the wall. I could see my size 7 AA at the time, pointed in that direction, the little toes going this way.
And as I closed the book, I made my first reservation, or took my first reservation. I thought, I'll be smarter than these jokers. I'll get in this organization before I get in any trouble. Well, I found out quite a number of years later, you don't shortcut into AA. You don't come into AA, at least this kid didn't, with the idea that we're going to beat the rats. You have to go through the heartbreak, the loneliness, the unworthiness, all these terrible feelings, the suicidal feelings, all these terrible, terrible feelings, before you can finally accept the isolation.
And that was really cracking on me, before I could finally accept the isolation. I came to AA, as I say, at 24. I was sold on it. I called my husband, I was ecstatic, to announce my decision. He was very bored with the conversation, and he said, I'll see you this weekend. And when he got up on Friday, we were getting dressed for a cocktail party. The big valve always opened on Friday up there, and we drank through Sunday night. And Katie drank earlier in the week, but the rest of his life would wait for the husky, and maybe have one or two drinks before dinner.
I was like Tommy, I should never have taken drink number one, I was right on the order. I had that magic feeling, I was the queen, and then I had to drink. So naturally, I was hooked from the beginning. I didn't get drunk every time I drank, but if it had been my choice, I wouldn't have. Well, to get back, as I said, I've got a hopscotch, mine, and this is what saved my life, because many times I'd be on the verge of suicide, and I'd pick up a copy of Harper's Bazaar, and see a picture of a good-looking outfit, and think, oh well, I'll run into town and shop and kill myself next week.
So I'm going to hopscotch around in my cocktail. Now we're back in Michigan, I've made the decision, the half-hearted decision, but at the time I was sincere. As we were dressing for this cocktail party, my husband had made no reference to the fact that I had called him at six o'clock on Monday morning drunk and hadn't been to bed all night, and then called him at six o'clock Tuesday evening and told him I was going into AA.
[00:10:08]
He ignored it like an illegitimate child. My drinking did not exist. The drinking problem did not exist. So I was waiting for him to tell me how great I was when I made this decision, because he wanted me to drink, but his way. You get drunk when I get drunk, and it's all right. Not when I don't want you to get drunk. So finally I brought it up and I said, what do you think about my decision about going into AA? I found a new word in the book, decision, so I used it.
And he looked at me and he's got little beady eyes. I could feel them burning into my shoulders many times at parties as I was carried away with myself, telling a marvelous story about how glamorous I was, and I could all of a sudden get the feeling. So the beady eyes looked over and he said, you know, I always thought you were kind of nice. And now I know what happened. Now I'm convinced. AA, how ridiculous. So this was the way we started out. I stayed sober the remainder of the summer.
In the meantime, my only contact was the book and my sponsor from New York. About three weeks after my decision, we were at a party, and a tray versus cocktail for being served, and there were two Coca-Colas on one tray, so I grabbed one of the Colas, and it was loaded. Somebody put some booze in it. Well, being an alcoholic and being a negative, my first thought was somebody wants me to drink because I'm so cute, you know. They're not having any fun anymore at the party. Katie, stop drinking.
So I very loudly said, who's the wise guy? Who put the booze in my Coke? And there was a little giggle, and several people were a little embarrassed, and I handed a fresh Coke. Later that night, one of my buddies came over to me and informed me that Bobby, my sponsor, was drinking, and I figured it out immediately that this was part of her reluctance of wanting to take an opinion on me. She was considering leaving the group herself.
But one thing this did for me is that this was my only contact. I had never met her in any way. I had the book, and I had a sponsor who had been sober two and a half years, and had decided she didn't like the bride she was going to bring. However, this didn't shake my faith in any way. This would have been a murder to start. Believe me, I would have loved it later on. I had to really find and search for them, but at the moment, I wanted to not drink more than I wanted to drink.
So, I didn't say anything to her, and she didn't say anything to me, and we played this far south for the rest of the summer, and she, poor dear, had to drink Coke with bourbon in front of me. I felt sorry for her later on, and I wanted to say, why don't you have a regular drink? It's all right. But I didn't know how to treat a slipper. I didn't know how to treat an alcoholic. But one thing this did for me, this 20-20 hindsight, was I found out then that you can't blame anybody else for a slip.
You can't get drunk because Joe got drunk, or the secretary of the troops got drunk, or somebody on the rotating committee got drunk. Uh-uh. If you want to get drunk, you get drunk. If you want to stay sober, you stay drunk. Unfortunately, I drank the first two weeks of the game, so I couldn't blame anybody for my getting drunk. I blamed a lot of other people. I came back to Chicago and had been contacted, the Michigan people contacted, Bobby called a person like Forrest that he knew, called a person in the south side, and the ranks were there.
My phone was ringing, and I was carried around, practically placed under a glass bell, because I was 24 years old. This was a long time ago. There were very few people here. A long time ago, there were very few people in AA, still in their 20s, and not in bottle scarves.
[00:15:04]
I didn't have any bottle scarves at the time. I still looked pretty much 24, you know. I didn't look too faggy. Um, so I was sort of a prize, and I loved it. Um, I didn't grow. I didn't do anything. I just ran around getting dressed up and went to meetings. And I talked. I must have given some profound talks. Um, I didn't know the first thing about, I stopped studying, I stopped doing anything except run to meetings.
It was a lot of running. I just replaced the booze and the alcohol, alcohol, with running. And I was getting just as much attention in AA as I'd been getting when I was getting drunk. It was marvelous. Well, after a while, people started taking me for granted. And also, my drinking, who I couldn't give up, you understand, because I'd been raised with them. You know. And I couldn't let them down. So I sat with them.
I sat in the same saloon when I wasn't at an AA meeting. With the same people, with the same values, with a Coke in my hand. I was sitting on a powder keg. Uh, after, uh, about ten months, or nine months of this, I started, uh, getting bored. The old alcohol, like one of the things, the boredom. Um, I started opening the invitations again first instead of the bills. I had switched for a while. Uh, my group, my drinking pals, my buddies, weren't telling me how divine I was anymore.
I wasn't a sensationalist then. The first one of the, of the, uh, the younger drinking set to join AA was all those, Katie's telling me about those stagnant writers and newspaper reporters and so forth that are in this club, you know. They weren't asking me about these things anymore. They couldn't care less. And the AAs were busy too. I mean, they were taking this for granted that I was going to show up at the meetings and I was going to be sober.
And, uh, you know, things were falling into place. The old ego was coming back to them. I wasn't getting as much attention. So, I, uh, stopped going to meetings. And I started drinking. And, uh, I got drunk the first day. On purpose. And, uh, I didn't call anybody in AA. And at that point we were moving from the South Side up to the North Shore. And, uh, I thought, well, I knew I was going to have to go back to AA.
This much I knew. I knew that once you were an alcoholic you didn't drink yourself out of it. But I picked up something real good. I hadn't hit bottom. I heard a lot about bottoms, you know. So, um, I used this a lot, you know. And I thought, well, I'll go up to the North Shore and I'll hit bottom up there. And then I'll, um, look up the proof up there. I had been also in a near North Side group. And, uh, so I knew a lot of near North Side people.
And we moved up to the North Shore. And I drank. And we moved into an area where drinking was, again, a way of life. And, uh, I fit right in. And, as a matter of fact, before long I was the leader. And my husband traveled to this little area we lived in. Most of the fellows down there did not. So they had their little cocktails every night before dinner with their wives. During the week and on Saturday nights they got drunk.
Sunday they had one or two drinks before dinner. And they had dinner. And that was it. So I, of course, when I was real lucky, I had a lot of friends that were divorced and career girls that lived in town. And I could play with them during the week. I remember my father used to say, Katie, why do you always have to bring home the lame duck? Why can't you find normal friends? And, of course, what he didn't realize was that he had the biggest lame duck right under his own roof.
But I had these pals that I could run into town and drink with during the week. And then my husband came home on Friday and I could drink with him on weekends. And it was pretty hard. Very hard. This is the hard part about being an alcoholic.
[00:20:01]
Unfortunately, I wasn't a pantry drinker. I used to think that pantry drinkers were really pretty. You know, that's pretty sad. The longer I'm sober, the more I wish I had been a pantry drinker. I spread myself around. I felt I was so cute and so much fun and so adorable that, you know, why hide? Share yourself with the world. And I did. I promised my husband on Monday morning that I wasn't going to go in town that week.
I was going to be a good girl. And as he'd take off on his week's jaunt, and he would not have the wheels of the car turn four houses from the corner of Willow Road before I was on the phone laying the ground plan. I meant it, however, when I promised him. Sometimes. Not always. I went on like this for a while. And then finally this time I had this terrible feeling in my gut. I hated myself. I didn't like this business of playing hard all week and trying to struggle through the weekend.
Because I was never the kind of drinker that could drink every day. I ran out of something, you know. And so I'd have to recharge from the day in the bed. And sometimes, you know, he'd come home early, like on Thursday. And this was my day to rest up, get things dry out for the weekend. And I'd have to drink again on Thursday, and it was hard. I wasn't as strong as I was physically. So I got in trouble, you know.
I was always in trouble. I was always overextending myself, breaking promises. Well, I mean, I had help that lied for me. She was nice as far as I was concerned. But she used to worry about me, and she'd always say, Now remember, if he says he's coming home on Thursday, he's coming home on Wednesday. Don't make any plans, you know. She could always get a hold of me any time I left the phone. I was constantly checking in.
And I'd get tired of it, and I'd get trapped. And so I'd go back. I'd plead A-A, you know. And don't hit me, I'm going back to A-A. So I'd go back to A-A. And I usually, you know, really meant it. I really did. I don't think I ever went back without feeling that, you know, maybe this time is it. Maybe this time I'll get the message. Maybe I think I need to go. And I would go to meetings, and I would become active in the group.
And then I would stop going to the meetings. I think in my unconscious mind, I would take the drink about truth before I took it, because I always stopped going to meetings. And then I'd drink. And I involved everybody in my drinking. My friends, the A-As, and my poor husband was absolutely nearly out of his mind. Because I always would work it so that he was the one that suggested that I drink again.
And this was hard work, because when I'd first go back to A-A, I'd say, oh, it's wonderful and it's great, and I'd be real enthusiastic. And then after a certain period of time, then I'd start telling him the horror stories, you know, about people in the group, the things that I knew he didn't want to hear. And I'd say, oh, you know, somebody did this and did that, you know, and was in jail for 25 years for rape and, you know, and isn't it wonderful that they've rehabilitated him.
His eyes are getting bigger and he's saying, I don't want you to go to meetings with people like that, you know. So I knew I was getting warm, you know. It was just a matter of a day or two before he'd say, you're not one of those nuts, Katie. Now, why don't you have a drink and drink the way I tell you to. And this was that. So that when I went back to A-A the next time, I could say, but Alex makes me drink.
He's the one that makes me drink. Well, this went on for eight years. And it was hell, just hell. I was on an emotional rollercoaster and I had Alex out of his mind because before I'd go back to A-A, I'd say to him, you've got to help me. It's half your fault. Don't let me drink, you know, and all right, I'll help you. I'll do what you want. And then I'd work it around so that he would talk me into drinking.
So he was half nuts, too.
[00:25:00]
I've always said, if you're not nuts when you're married to an alcoholic, after you live with one, you're going to be. And I think we were both nuts when we got married. So we just got nuttier. Finally, everything happened to me. I was nearly killed in an automobile accident. And it was very dramatic. And I kept waiting to hit bottom on the North Shore. And I went to all kinds of different groups. And out of those eight or eight and a half years, I sat down and figured one time that I had four years of being dry.
Three months, eight months, nine months, two weeks, you know, that sort of thing. So I stayed dry as long as, you know, how bad, to the degree of my last drunk. Tell me, you know, give me my time. How much more do I have? Oh, my gosh, we better get to it. Well, anyway, I got to A-A. I didn't qualify. I nearly died in an automobile accident. You know, the bottom was sort of, like, damagely sore, you know, over my head.
Each day I'd wake up and I'd think, maybe today I'll hit bottom, you know. But I didn't. I kept drinking. I kept hitting little bottoms, but not the big ones, you know, the surrender ones. So after this accident, I thought, you know, they thought I was going to die for three weeks or two weeks or something. I knew I wasn't going to die. Boy, I knew it. I wasn't going to get out of it this easy. And I've often said it's a good thing I was nearly killed because if I hadn't been killed, Alex would have finished the job.
He was out of town with that. He couldn't come in and hit me in the hospital when I was, you know, everything was broken but my neck. So he was getting very bored with me, and he was no more bored than I was. I had always felt like a displaced person in the world. I could never find where I belonged, you know. We'd go to a party, and no matter what table we were sitting at, that table over there was having more fun than our table.
And I went through life like this. If I could, this group was the right group for me, but I couldn't. I was out there, and I was still Katie. And Katie didn't have any identity. Katie had no conviction. She didn't have any courage to have convictions up if she had convictions. So I was really sort of a big nothing, and I had to be approved of. I had to have everybody like me. The fact that I might not like them didn't matter at all.
They had to like me. And if I heard they didn't like me, I couldn't understand it, you know. They don't know me. That's why they don't like me. Because there was really nothing not to like, you know. I'd be anything you wanted me to be if you'd just give me a clue. It was sort of like not liking water, you know. What is there about water you can dislike? I went through ups and downs. I had the, you know, half the time I felt unworthy, and the other half of the time I felt shit.
I was split right down the middle, and I still am kind of. I find myself buying sort of a risque card, and they're writing a little spiritual message on the inside. When I finally surrendered, nothing really dramatic had happened. Everything dramatic had happened. There was nothing left. I just didn't like me anymore, and I couldn't believe my lies anymore. This was pretty bad. I'd run out of alibis.
All of a sudden, all of the things I'd heard through the years of the AA program started to fall into place, and I thought, my God. You know, this is that pit. That's the moment of truth. And what do you do? Well, you don't do anything. You go back to AA, thank God they haven't made any new rules. And I really didn't want to live. I really, really, really didn't want to live. And I couldn't stop. And I used to say often to my husband when I knew I was going to get it, I might as well be dead.
And he'd say, well, you're not, so get up off your ass and get going. So, it was really getting pretty rough. He was drinking all right along with me, too. He was drinking all right along with me, too. That's what was so mean about Bowling, but he could get up and go to work, you know, he could operate.
[00:30:02]
Old Mugsy here couldn't make it. So, uh, I went back to AA, they hadn't changed any rules, and I finally started learning something about alcoholism and something about Katie. And I found out that there was a good Katie and a bad Katie. And when I come into AA, it was because I was sick of the bad Katie, and I would try to get too good too soon, and by Wednesday I was sick of the good Katie. She bored me.
So what I had to do was I had to take some of the bad things out of the bad Katie, the real bad bad, and the good, out of the good Katie, and sort of mix it all up. And I've got, you know, a, what? Sort of a mixture. But I'm blending, and I'm working little by little at it. I finally got rid of thinking about Katie all the time, thank God. Oh, this is great. Not having to worry. I didn't really care if people liked me anymore, isn't that amazing?
I went to meetings, I got as fanatical about AA, I hope to God I didn't scare anybody away forever, because I certainly frightened a lot of people, I know. But I became just as crazy about AA as I had been about prison. But fortunately, the pendulum does swing back in the middle. And I go to at least one meeting a week and a half for the last 11 years. And this is the only form of discipline in my life, I think, to this day, is those meetings.
I sit and listen to other people talk. And I do make them. I do a lot of call to death work. And I'm still trying to get well. I don't think about yesterday anymore. I can't. I can't. If I sat and dwelled about what damage I had done when I drank, I would leave right here, right now, and going into prison. I can't do it. This is what's so wonderful. AA gives us this 24-hour program. I found an AA. Honest to God, I found here what I was looking for in the bottom of the bottle.
And it took us a long time to get here. And I love it. It's a labor of love with me. I love all the people. And I'll never cease to be grateful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Katie. Well done. I think you're the first alcoholic I ever heard say that they kept trying to hit bottom. Most of us spend years hanging by our fingernails trying to stay off that bottom. And it isn't only all the poor husbands that we've driven half crazy that make remarks about AA.
I'll never forget sometime before I actually came on the program, I mentioned to my very closest friend that I was concerned about my drinking and I was seriously considering AA. And she looked at me with the most complete look of horror I think I've ever seen. And she said to me, Lois, what do you want to get mixed up with that kind of people for? Naturally, I couldn't destroy her illusion by telling her I thought I was one of those people.
Please don't forget the literature on the back tables. And that will be a 15-minute coffee break. That has been wonderful. You know, I had a friend of mine when I was with her from Michigan that I was staying with. And when I told her I was one of those people.