Audio
Transcript
Source: May D – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: may-d-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:36:57
============================================================
Many of you are probably wondering who this charming young lady is sitting next to me here. It's Mary D. from Akron, Ohio. She's been associated with and working with the District Nations for a number of years, so I'll turn this meeting over to her directly. Thank you, sir. It is indeed my pleasure, and I want to thank all of you kind people for inviting me here to speak to you this evening. First of all, I want to say that this is a beautiful time of the year for everybody in AA to be happy and healthy and holy like we are in AA and have a wonderful and a happy and holy Christmas.
To me, Christmas is some time in the year when most of us alcoholics, and this is my own meeting, anything I say is my own opinion, I didn't like it for a long time and I was too much of a hurry to get to the bottles I had stashed away or the bottles I had started. I remember very well, it was a good 23 years ago, this coming Christmas, I came home from the hospital with a darling baby boy, which filled our life with joy and should have made a very happy family.
Well, it did, but to an alcoholic, what is happy? What is happiness? To me, happiness then was getting drunk. Before the day was over, I proceeded to get drunk. That was a fine introduction to gift my two darlings with home and to bring home a darling baby boy, healthy through the grace of God, as he was, not through any effort of mine, because during the time I drank, I know I did. This boy was very healthy, very normal, very wonderful boy, and I could have been the cause of his death six weeks later when I started taking him out in the buggy.
I was very much under the influence of alcohol and I fell down the steps, buggy and all, with my darling son. These things make my skin creep now. I mean, here I am, a mother God had blessed with children, a good husband, the average thing anybody would want, and I was thrown it all over the wayside. I went on my merry way, nevertheless, for a little while after that. But this scared me, but not enough to sober me up.
The lady next door called the doctor and he came and stitched my head and what have you. Thank God there was nothing wrong with the boy. This boy has been overseas for two years and he's coming home. He's coming to Chicago to meet me a week from today, God willing. I don't plan anything over 24 hours because this is a wonderful way to build your life. Yesterday's gone and we don't have to worry about it.
And today is our day. Let's smile and be happy and do the best we can with what we have today. Tomorrow's out of our reach, but when it gets here, it'll be our day. But today is our day because it's here. This is what I liked when I was introduced to the AA program. I liked the 24-hour plan. I liked it very much. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of my story. I sometimes do. I haven't anything very exciting to tell except I was a fallen down dead drunk, went to bed clothed and all.
I remember one time I went out and I bought a pretty nice coat and hat, and the next morning I woke up, I still had the coat and hat on in the bed. My daughter says, Mother, I don't want to ever see that coat and hat again. And I said, Why? And she said, Well, you fell, you staggered, you rolled.
[00:05:02]
What didn't I do? But that was me. But thank God, like our gentleman said that read this article here, we are chosen people. How true that is. If each and every one of us could realize how chosen we are. I mean, we go out and we talk to anybody in any walk of life, and if we have a message, the message of AA, to bring those people, they listen. Yes, they listen. Maybe not all the time. Maybe they're not ready.
But don't lose patience, because just remember you and I remember me. Two years before I came in this program, I was introduced to AA by a very, very good friend of mine. And I told him I didn't want any part of it, because it was only for fallen down drunks. And I don't know what I thought I was. I thought I was a big shot drunk. But there are no big shots, thank goodness, in AA. And this is another thing I like about it.
Each and every one that belongs to this program are as good as the other guy, and you're as good as him. You can walk out, hold your head up, talk to anybody at any time. You don't have to humble yourself to anybody, only God. Like this gentleman said in the article he read, God choose a humble man. Let's not pick a wealthy man or an intelligent man. Let's pick a humble man. And who are humble? The AAs.
All over the world. I mean there are a great, great crowd of people. I do a little traveling along the line now in my old age. He said, young lady, but oh boy, you don't know the years I have behind me. And I see that no matter where I go, when I walk into the AA hall, everybody has that smile on their face. Why? Because they speak my language. You, my dear people, are my kind of people, and you don't have to be introduced.
You really, truly can tell them. This friend of mine that's seen me about 24 years now, the man that came to see me when I was turning around, he was in Europe not too long ago, and he was sitting at a table, and he had coffee, and everybody at that table had a drink, only him. And he looked over at the other table, and he saw a guy at the other table, and he had coffee, and everybody at the table had a drink.
So he thought, well, I better say hello because I know he's going to say hello. So one of them said hello, and the other one said hello. Do you belong to that gang? He said, yes, I belong to that coffee gang. Well, I thought that was really cute because here we are drinking coffee now instead of that lousy jigger juice, and that's what I call it, and that's what it is. You don't know what you're doing, where you're going, or why.
I didn't. I didn't know what I was doing, where I was going, or why. And I didn't give a darn. The only thing I wanted was another drink, another drink. Oh, and I think of them miserable days and the miserable heartaches and falling out. Well, there's nobody can tell you. They say, why? Well, why? Is there any why? Uh-uh. There isn't any why. If there was a why, why haven't some of our psychiatrists found it?
There is no why. There is no reason why I drank the way I did. God knows I didn't mean to get drunk because I hated that word. When someone told me I was drunk, I hated it. Nevertheless, when I came in AA and they called me an alcoholic, I kind of liked it because then I was sober enough to see that an alcoholic isn't such a bad thing after all. It's good. First of all, according to our steps, we come in here, we admit we are powerless over alcohol.
Well, right then and there, we make a sort of a decision.
[00:10:04]
We bat that around quite a bit. Any of you people that are here for your first meeting or your second or third, and you're wondering to yourself, are you or aren't you? Like they advertise on the television nowadays, you know, about the dyed hair issue, isn't it? Well, don't kid yourself. If you are honest and you are sincere, and again, I'll say, the only one you have to be honest with is yourself and God.
You don't have to go out and be a real, real honest all your life with everybody else, but you have with yourself and with God. And if you are honest with yourself and God, you won't have no problem. Believe me, you won't have no problem because God put us here for a purpose. And certainly, we are the chosen people. Just think of that. I felt that way after I was in Ohio. I felt that way and it made me feel very, very good because if you have somebody, you don't necessarily go out of your way or give them your money or your car or your home if you have the like.
I didn't have anything to give away. But if you have, you give up yourself. How wonderful this is, to give up yourself. Now, this little lady in Cleveland that I work along with, oh, I just love the ground she walks on. I just wish all you folks here could just meet her just once. She isn't an alcoholic, but she's worked with the alcoholics for 21 years or more. She helped Bill W. and Doc S..
She helped them, I think. Here's a woman that's divinely inspired. She wouldn't like this if she heard me. She doesn't want any praise. She tells me, May, don't say it unless you are absolutely sure. Be correct. Don't be critical. So come in there, and believe me, some of them are a good six feet, and she's only 5'1 1⁄2", and a little 95 pounds. She looks up at them, and they're all jiggered up with this jigger juice, you know, and they'll start telling her all this stuff.
Hey, kid, how about a beer? She just laughs at them. And when she smiles, it is indeed as if God is smiling on her face because those gays, drunk on all of the odds, they'll straighten up. They'll shape up because they do not want to ship out. Very few of them are shipped out. Some of them are, just to get rid of you, ruggedy. We have to ship them out. Usually it's my job to stand at the door in this if I'm there.
Well, poor me, I'm shaking in my shoes standing at the door, but I have to do it. You stand there now, Maymar. Sign them out when you go south. All right, but it's very, very few because mostly everybody loves this. We call her in Cleveland our little angel of A.A. I can see her very well when A.A. started. She was superintendent in Akron, in St. Thomas' Hospital. And Dr. Bob walked past the door with his first pigeon or whatever you want to call it, and he said, Sister, I would like to have a bed.
What kind of room was it? She looked at him, and any of you that ever met Bill, you know who he was, I mean, and Bob and Bill, both of them. Bill, Bob was the tallest. She looked up at him and she said, Why, Doctor, I don't even have a bed. But before many hours had gone by, she had bootlegged him, as they have it in A.A. comes of age, into the flower shop. The first A.A. was ever hospitalized in St. Thomas' Hospital.
Get her going on that, and she's really funny. Usually if I'm in the morning when she's talking to the patients, I'll say, Sister, how about telling them about your young days in Akron? You know, she's only 70-something now. So she goes on to tell about how the other sisters would say, You know how the A.A.s are. I mean, they're all great people, and they want to see someone that helps them. They want to see them again.
So they'd come prancing up the stairs, you know. I thought I'd come prancing up the stairs, you know, and they'd ask for Sister Ignatia, and she'd say, um, one of the sisters would say, well, she's here, she's there, and she was back in a few minutes, and so on and so forth.
[00:15:10]
So she said to me, you know what one sister said to me, and I said, what did she say? She said, she said we had a Mae West on the floor. And Mae West, well, I could very well say this little darling religious person, and she really is a darling. Well, that's partly the story about AA. Of course, we have a lot of hospitals in the country, and they are ran very good. You'd be surprised how many good places we have.
Now, in Atlanta, they have one. I was down there a month ago. In Jacksonville, if any of you folks ever go as far as Jacksonville, all you have to do is buy the Sunday paper, and it's very highly advertised. You get the list of all the meetings, not the speakers, but they do give you the address of the meeting places, which to me is very nice. Of course, I realize you can't do that here, and we don't do it in Cleveland either, and it isn't, I don't know whether it's a good idea or not, but I was very happy when I arrived there and found out that there were so many places you could go.
Because to an alcoholic, you'd be kind of lost, more or less, when you hit those out-of-town places. But if you can find a group, of course, I imagine you have the out-of-town book and everything here, we have that in Cleveland, where they have a list of all these people that are secretaries of the group and what have you, and it is a good thing. Now, this friend of mine that I was telling you about that went to Europe, he was over there not too long ago with some other boys on a business trip, he always says he never goes anywhere except he takes one of the A's with him.
Well, of course, that's kind of steep in some of our pockets, and I said to him, well, I can't afford to do that, but the first thing I do when I get there is look them up. And that's what I did when I came a year ago. Last May I came to Chicago first when my daughter moved up here, and I looked up the one I got the address on Minard Street, which is in Des Plaines, and I went up there, and everybody made me welcome.
And I mean, it's just a grand, grand feeling to think that you are really at home. Well, when I came in first, we had a very large group, and I don't know how you feel about long meetings, but I know that I was kind of sitting on one side of the chair and then on the other praying to God that it shut out. But now, tonight I'm not going to keep you more than three hours. But I used to think about this man who was up leaving the meeting, and oh, heavens, he was a riot.
He took us all through Canada, plus the United States, on a train. And every time he got up to leave, he took us to Canada on the train. But anyway, to make a long story short, he got to Canada and he had no dining car. The got drunk and the forgot to hook up the dining car. But we used to think, well, now why don't he shut up? So, maybe some of you out there are saying, well, why don't that Irish bitty shut up?
Well, I'm not going to shut up. So there, you can sit now, because many a time you told a good little wife that you'd be home, and the devil of home you came, you went in and you had one, and then you had another, and that was the end of your home. You forgot all about it after the fifth. Or maybe you staggered home the next day. We had one man in Cleveland who went out for a loaf of bread and he didn't come back for six months.
Well, the poor kid was mighty hungry by the time he got back, I'll tell you. They could be all dead and buried. So that's the merry-go-round we were on. I don't say I was any angel. I did what you did. Everything you did, I did it. But face it, I wasn't any angel. I was a dickens. Purest kind of a drunk. Mean, lousy, criticized, stick up my face to anybody, hit me if you want. Well, I got hit a couple of times.
Didn't feel so good the next day, but I didn't feel it then. I remember once I was in a real waning, and my husband decided, which was a great idea, he decided he'd lock me in the house, not let me out for any more to drink. Well, we had a porch, and on the porch was a picture window. And outside there was a glider, and in here was a damper. So I got up and I looked out the window like that. He had a man standing guard at the door, and he was standing beside me just to make sure that I wouldn't go to that door.
He never thought I'd take to the window. So I remember. I can remember that now. That was one of the episodes I remember.
[00:20:02]
By golly, I took off through that window. I was going to show him I was going to get out, and I did get out. Now, how in the world did I not cut the head off? But I didn't. Here I am with the head stitched on or whatever they did to it. I don't know. I only had one cut, and I was here on my bed. I must have just flung at that window and went so hard that I took the pain and all with me. But that taught him a lesson not to lock me in.
If I want to go out, then he'd let me out. Wasn't taking any more chances of me getting killed. I remember once we had this man at the hospital. You know, we can't lose our sense of humor. We have fun, too. We really had fun with this guy, and by the way, he was from your town here. He could be here tonight for all I know. But we got more fun out of this man because he went to that window, and across we have Juvenile Court, which is a great big building with bars, most of the windows.
And I'd be a son of a gun if he didn't have a three-ring circus going in them windows. And he told us, come on. And we're all standing at the window looking out like this. Nobody saw that, only him. Not a living soul saw that, only him. But he saw it, and he tells about it, I understand, in his lead. And this was really true. Now, this guy was hospitalized there. We had another guy who was a real big shot.
When he came in, I knew we were going to have a hell of a time with him. First of all, he wanted the Wall Street Journal. Then he wanted a private room and a television, you know. Of course, we didn't have any of that, no papers, no nothing. So he said to this one big nurse, he said, you give me a drink and I'm going to jump. And she said, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, she said, sir, don't let you be breaking the window.
So she opened the window and she said, now go ahead and jump. Well, he didn't jump and he didn't get the drink. And he's doing a fine job today. But when I think of the things that went on, and we laugh about these. I mean, we had a little colored woman in about six or eight weeks ago. And I was going to have a quiet day home. So I decided to go back to bed. And this friend of my daughter's, she's still a secretary, she said, if I need you, I'll call you when she's leaving.
And I said, don't bother, I won't be available. So about 9 o'clock the phone rings and it's for me. Come down. So I went down and this poor little lady was there. She really was all head up about this racial thing. She saw me come in and she said, well, you lousy so-and-so, you were with them last night. I said, what do you mean I was with them? They're all out there, she said, and they're all trying to get me.
Every one of them. And I know you have a plan to kill me. And she's going on and on and she's getting wilder by the minute. And I thought, oh, any day now, here goes D.'s neck. We had a little powder room, which we called the defrosting room for the women. And wasn't anybody in that place, only myself and her, and I thought any minute now she's going to jump out of the bed and get after me. But she jumped out of the bed and she put on her clothes.
And she was going. She wanted to get out. She wanted to get away from this gang that was after her. So I went out and I made a grand dash. I was in the hall. I thought, oh, my gosh, I'd better get help. So I went out in the hall and I ran smack into Sister. And she looked at me and she says, what's the matter, Meg? And I said, there's nothing the matter with me, I said, but there's something the matter with that woman in there.
And she says, oh, the poor soul. Boy, I felt like heck. Because here's a woman that says the poor soul, and I'm ready to throw her out the window if I could. And I said, well, you come in and talk to her. So she did just that. And do you know that that woman came out of it just like that? And later on she told me, she said, I remember you. I remember talking to you, she said. But she said, I never seen Sister Ignatius.
I said, well, Sister Ignatius is the one you came out of the jail. Not me. I said, I couldn't do nothing with you. I said, I thought any minute you were going to jump out of the bed and grab me around the neck and I was the end of poor D.. Because she was about six foot and here I am with my size. But them are the kind of things, my dear people, that keep me sober. I have to be active in this. I can't sit down.
I never could sit down. I never have sat down. Because if I get a call or if I'm asked to lead a meeting, I try to get there awfully, awfully hard. Because those are the things that we are supposed to do. They say there is no must in this, but to me there is. It's a must that you lead a meeting. God knows there's no frills or bulbs or flounces on you when you're up here speaking. You're not telling everybody how good you are.
You're telling everybody how lousy you are.
[00:25:02]
How lousy you are. It's just a conversation between you and your neighbor. And your neighbor is close to you because they belong to Alcoholics Anonymous. And them are our dearly beloved neighbors. God said in his commandments, and it's also in the steps, just about the same, read them through and find out where it speaks of your neighbor. This business about first things first, a lot of people get kind of balled up on it and they wonder, well, what is this?
Do I come first? Uh-uh. That doesn't mean that at all. First things first means God. God is love. God is everything in this program. You go to see somebody, you're not on your own steam. Because you put your hand on the knob of that door and you say, walk with me, God, because this I cannot do alone. We don't do anything alone. That's why we of AA were chosen. We were chosen because we were humble drops.
We were down on our knees begging, help me. I was. When I called for help, I said, help me. I needed help. Definitely. I was at the bottom. Anybody that reaches the bottom, and now you don't have to. Believe me. You don't have to go that far. If you know you're an alcoholic and you haven't done some of the things, don't try it again because you'll lose them. Don't try to get a story like the other guy got, because each and every one of us knows our own, and we know where we went wrong.
We know when the boat docked. That was it. That was it for me. I couldn't get off it. My last bench lasted five days. Before that, I did pretty good. I was periodic, and I'd try to do a terrific job, knock myself out, getting everything ready, building up for a big letdown. That's all it was, a big letdown. Because I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. And why? Because I drank too much, too often, and too long.
These were the reasons. Anybody that thinks they're not an alcoholic, don't let anybody tell you that you were through it the way I was. Because this is a very bad thing to do, to have somebody around the holidays, we'll say, say, well, now, don't you think after being on it for so long, say six months, a year, a year and a half, or two, or whatever the situation may be, that you could take at least one?
Well, we know better. We know if we are honest and sincere, and again I repeat, with ourselves. Honest and sincere with ourselves and God. This is where we make our amends. When first things first means the love of your neighbor. And God himself said, if you don't love your neighbor that you see, how can you love me that you didn't see? Unless you do not see. But believe. I believe, I really do. I believe in this power greater than all the world that can turn the world one way or the other.
And I think that this is a godsend to this land, this AA program. Because right now, we're fighting here and fighting there and fighting everywhere. And there's so much going on that if they could just have one little bit, one third of a cup, of the happiness that's in this room tonight or in any other AA group in this town or any other town, how wonderful this life would be when we are willing to give of ourselves to our fellow man.
If that isn't loving thy neighbor as thyself, well then what is? I don't know what I'm talking about then. Now to say that you see anybody leading a meeting is a proof that this thing works. Well, I'll go one better than that. Well, I'll go one better than that. I will tell you that any little gang that you are here, I shouldn't call you little, there's plenty of you here, and myself, that pray together, stay together.
[00:30:13]
We are a family. We are a family in the image and likeness of God, and we pray together, we are bound to stay together, because this is what makes it go around and around and around. People will say, well, what's that crazy thing you belong to? They're all a pack of this and that and blah, blah, blah. You heard that. I know you did. I heard it. So what? Well, let them go. Let them fire away. They can't hurt us. We are our worst enemy, ourselves.
When we go out and reach and take that drink, we're the ones that's digging the grave. Believe me, in my time I have seen many a one, many a one of my dear loved friends that I loved for the dead, and they went, and they went beyond repose. They went to their Maker. I do think, though, I do believe, that anybody that has a taste of this program and stays on it long enough, that they will be able to say the serenity prayer, or any little prayer that you can pick out of thousands of them.
We have thousands of prayers. Thousands and thousands of prayers. Those prayers we don't put a price on. They're free. They're free in books. They're free all over. Say, Francis's prayer is in the book. It's in the Apocalypse book. And this is free. And his prayer is, love rather than be loved. Give rather than receive. Because it is by giving that you are forgiven. And it is by dying you arise to eternal life. It's by dying.
So I do think, myself, that anybody that has this, just those few words and says it, that God will be merciful to them in their end. It is awfully hard when you have somebody real close to you. And I had, I had this very, very good friend about ten years ago. I had sponsored her a little while previous to that, but she'd gone off again and she came to this other friend of ours, to her house. And the other friend called me and she said, May, will you come down tonight? I want to get this woman down in Rosary Hall. Would you come down and sit with her and call up Rosary Hall? So that I did. I called Sister and I made arrangements for her to go in on a wedding tonight, and this was Tuesday night.
And I went down and she said, Could I have my doctor? And I said, Well, you better call your husband. Now at this time this woman was reasonably sober and had drank some soup with us. And we gave her a bath and prepared her to go to the hospital in the morning. And I was elected to sit with her, which was a horrible experience. The next morning at six o'clock I woke up, and I didn't wake up, I was awake. I looked over at the couch and she was closer to me than that there. I was sitting on a chair. And I didn't like what I saw. I went over and I picked her hand up and I went… So here I was. I had a body. I couldn't take a body into the hospital.
These are the things that really and truly get you down. I mean, that really got me down. I felt off the bed. I had to call her husband, I had to call the doctor, I had to call the police. Well, the other woman helped me and her husband. But it was a terrible thing because we didn't look for this. So you never know. You never know. And just like I heard a man say in Indiana once, in Elkhart, he was leading a meeting and he said, I'd hate to be the one that give anybody their last drink. Just think of that. I mean, people will beg for it. And God knows, do we know if we're doing the right thing by giving it to them or not? We don't. We really don't when you come to think of it.
And that I often thought of. And I thought, how many times have people come to my house and they say, D., I'm a drinker. I'm dying. I was on a binge and I don't know the price. Well, I'd say, now, there's a saloon across the street. Here, you just go in peace. And I'd send them to the saloon because I will not pour anybody a drink after that. She didn't have anything to drink for my one down that day because she had come from a tavern. But just think how awful it would be to pour somebody their last drink. I mean, this would really be a terrible thing to happen.
[00:35:15]
Another time I got a call from this friend of mine. She was going to Canada with her husband and she said, my brother's in pretty bad shape. There have been times when the men sponsor the women and the women sponsor the men. Mine sponsored a man. God bless his soul. And she said, could you do anything with my brother? And I called the club. We had a club like you have here and someone was there all the time around. And this man came over and we took him to the hospital. And I still can hear his wife say, he was only 34 years of age, May, if I get the last chance, if God will only give me this chance, I'll never do it again.
Well, he didn't get that chance. This may sound morbid, but it's true, my dear friend. That's one thing you'll get on an A, meaning you'll get the truth. Hit you where it will, let the chips fall where they will, but you'll get the truth. And the truth can be blamed, but it cannot be shamed. Remember that. When you tell the truth, it can be blamed. A lot of people will blame you for telling the truth. In regards to something that you may have done, if you come forward and tell the truth, they will blame you. But never, never let anybody tell you that it can be shamed because it can't.
Well, it's almost 15 after, so I know we have a bed-calling to run, so I think I gabbed long enough. I can go on for another two hours if you want, but that's all right. Do we say the Lord's Prayer now or later? No, we'll wait. Okay. We'll wait a minute. Thank you. The End