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Source: Waneta N – CNY Conference at Syracuse (1967) – 1967-05-20.mp3 File: waneta-n-cny-conference-at-syracuse-1967-1967-05-20.mp3 Duration: 00:50:08
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And our next speaker, we're fortunate enough, I just met this lady very briefly, so I won't say anything more than to say that she's one of those wonderful folks from GSO in New York City, and I give you Juanita Ann. Applause Thank you Harry. My name is Juanita N. and I am an alcoholic and privileged to be a staff member at your general service office. I'll tell a little joke on our co-founder Bill.
I went by his office Tuesday and you know on Friday at GSO we have seven staff members and of course a general manager who are alcoholics, all eight of us, and we have a little AA meeting every Friday from 11-15 until 12 o'clock. So if you're ever in New York we'd be very happy to see you at this AA meeting. We laugh and say we have this because so the girls will keep on an even keel and not tear each other's hair out. But really it is an inspirational meeting to all of us and it's real true AA.
Bill said I'll see you Friday and I said oh no I'm going to Syracuse. He said oh you are? Well give all those drunks my love up there. That's our Bill. I'm an alcoholic. How, when or why is not important. I didn't set out to be an alcoholic. There were a lot of things I wanted to be when I was a child but an alcoholic was certainly not one of them. So since I didn't intend to be an alcoholic I feel that now I have no right nor need to be ashamed.
So many women and men too but mostly women are ashamed and I certainly was before who ever approached anyone. I just did not talk about my drinking. I'm from West Virginia and my father was an alcoholic. My father could stay sober for a year or sometimes two. But when he met up with a drink well he was no longer responsible. As the girls sit around and swap stories sometimes my mother says I can swap better stories than any of you because I've lived with two of those things.
My father and myself and she tells a little story about sending my father for a pound of coffee one time. He'd been on the wagon for quite a long time and he came back six months later. So the girls always say well did you bring the coffee? Bless his heart he was sober five years before he died and for this I'm very grateful. I was in show business. I was an only child and I went to New York and went in show business and there must have been some sort of built in instinct about drinking.
Of course my idea of people who drank too much came and was founded on coal mining towns. West Virginia of course as you all know is deals in coal mines and I lived in many coal mining patches we used to call them. On payday night or Saturday night, they're rather small these little patches, the men got drunk and some of the women too and you could hear arguing and fighting all over this little town.
I hated it. I hated arguing and I thought that's something I will never do and of course I associated arguing and fighting with drinking. Sometimes my father was among those who was arguing and fighting. I worked in nightclubs. I've worked around this area by the way and it was at the time when mixing was a vote. I'm sure some of you men and women know about mixing. It was important that I do the show but not nearly as important as sitting with people at tables if they asked because this is one of the ways they sold drink and this disturbed me when I first started in show business.
I was a singer and I felt that, I don't know what I felt but the excuse I gave myself was that if I drank I wouldn't be able to perform and so forth. So I asked one of the girls what to do and she said go see the bartender and he will tell you what to do. He told me that he could give me an orange blossom if I wanted to order that and this is orange juice and then he would throw a little bit of gin on top and just a couple of drops so I would get very little liquor or I could take a shot and take a drink of the whiskey and spit it back into a glass of Coca-Cola.
[00:05:21]
All of that free liquor going to waste. At that time it was wonderful. I went to York to study and was introduced to wine. Of course I didn't like it, I still didn't want to drink and they used to say Juanita gets very aristocratical when she drinks so I stayed away from wine. I did very well there. I did an audition for fascist government and I studied very hard because I wanted to always come up out of the mining town environment.
I did this audition and I was to make my debut in Alessandria, Italy in La Boheme. Then I came back to the United States for a short visit and was caught of course here during the war when the war started. I went back into nightclubs and I also did a strange job, the Hammond Morton Circus. I sang, that was during the war, the beginning of the war they started to add the Star Spangled Banner to every form of entertainment and that's when the circus added the singer.
They told me about the gal who had preceded me. She would carry a bottle of whiskey to her dressing room and always take a big drink of whiskey before she went out to sing. I thought this was terrible, I must meet this girl someday. Anyone who had to have liquor to sing was just a freak to me. Four years later I made the same tour and I carried my bottle. That will tell you how fast I became an alcoholic once I started social drinking.
I carried my bottle and one night I forgot to take a drink and I was standing in the wings ready to go on and I thought well I had a couple of seconds, the dressing room was quite near so I ran back and took my big drink of whiskey and got back to the stage just in time to miss half of the Star Spangled Banner. That's how fast I became an alcoholic and also I never did meet the girl but who would have thought that I would meet her in myself? I certainly didn't. I was really tired of living in a suitcase and at this time I met a new musical arranger.
Now I noticed this man, I liked him very much and I thought we have everything in common, it's time I get married. I noticed that he didn't care about eating very much. He would come to the nightclub and he would play cards with the boys in the band and drink and perhaps eat a sandwich later on but he didn't care too much about eating. We got married on December the 7th and on December the 25th I knew I made a mistake. My husband was working on radio and he brought the star back to the house with him with whom he worked at the time and she liked to drink, she was quite a drinker.
And this night they both got drunk and some little thing came up and they started to argue and almost came to blows and as quite a non-drinker I sat back and surveyed this scene and said, my God, I've married a man, a drinker, let's put it that way, I call people drunkards, I didn't know, a drunk. Because he argued, I identified. Well, I was going to change him, you all know we can do that, can't we ladies? I didn't change him, as you all know, but it wasn't long until I joined him.
After all, drinks were served every night before dinner and I started to drink. I was still singing and I was seen by USO and asked to go overseas. So I went home this night, you see this girl fired him, he thought sure she couldn't get along without him and my husband at that time wouldn't work unless he got top salary. Wasn't a bit like you did. He wouldn't work unless he got top salary, so he didn't work. And I came home this Sunday night, I remember vividly and I said, I've been asked to go overseas and I desperately want to go and would you like to go along, get off the accordion and practice up and go, if you don't I'm going alone.
[00:10:01]
We were married a year at this time. So he went with me and we went back to Italy and this was wonderful because I spoke Italian and I was alone quite a bit during this time and we had of course all Italian bartenders in the enlisted men's clubs and the officers' clubs and they saved cognac for me because I went to see their families and I met some old friends and I gave them all my PX rations, my soap and my chocolate.
And I wasn't interested in keeping clean right at the beginning of my drinking, I guess. They only had, they're very loving people and generous people and the only thing they had to give me was this cognac which was used also at all the enlisted men and officers' clubs. Now this stuff I called 80 octane gasoline, that's exactly what it tasted like, it was underdone a little bit. I never mixed it with grapefruit juice, this should have been a sign, all these tough soldiers would put grapefruit juice in this terrible stuff in the canteen but not me, they called me cast iron stomach.
I drank this cognac and it really treated me well but I began to forget. We had one day off a week and the night before we'd usually dance and have a good time because we're going to get one day off, the next day we can sleep, we don't have to get up and get in any old command car and go here, there and every place over bad roads. But this night I would drink and someone would say during the course of the evening, we don't get a show over here.
There was a good reason they didn't get a show over there, they were too close to the front or they were in a dangerous area. But I would say, oh you don't, well we'll come over tomorrow, it's our day off. I committed eight other people to go on a show on their day off. But I didn't remember saying this, someone, either my husband or someone in the show would remind me, you know what you did again last night, now we have to go do a show.
Finally they got a little tired of this, sometimes instead of eight people I'd wind up with four or just myself. Thank God I always went but I always had to be reminded that I had offered. We came back to the United States and went to the Pacific. Now in the Pacific, the first few weeks, let's say three or four weeks, I didn't know where the body was buried, you know, I didn't know how to get there, the war was just a little different over there.
I soon found out how you did it and I had quite a few blackouts here in the Pacific. In Guam, someone, somewhere, somehow, I don't know how, put the big book in my hand. Must have been a member around. I read this book and I thought, in some of my moments of sobriety I suppose, or half sobriety, and I thought this was the most marvelous thing I had ever read. Just like a novel. It also put into my mind that there was a place someday.
I came back to the United States and here we spent all that nice money we'd been saving. I eventually got out of show business because drinks are wonderful in the beginning. You sing so much better, you have so much more life, and you do remember the words, but a little later on you can't depend on that stuff. I usually forget the words of the song and, well, little by little I got out of show business.
I blamed all of this on my husband, of course, you know, he'd show up drunk where I was working, and he was really my problem. I had some wonderful friends. We used to have little opera sessions and little concert sessions, and they were all ladies, you know, and they'd come to the house. My husband, of course, would go out, who wants to attend a hen party. But I didn't consider it that way. I would say to him, you're driving all of my friends away from me.
This wasn't true at all, and it took me quite a while to find out what was happening. My friends had mentioned once or twice, oh, did you have a good bit to drink before we got here tonight? And I knew they were catching on, so of course I avoided them, and I was no longer interested in a little opera or a little concert. I was interested in drinking. I got the big book and read it again. That book had changed, you know. It really wasn't the same book.
Of course, I had changed. Of course, I had changed. That was the whole point.
[00:15:01]
I just wasn't seeing quite as clearly as I did that second year of drinking. I thought perhaps, and you've heard this, it's a very old story. I've heard it so many times in AA. I said, ah, ah, there's nothing new. I thought perhaps if I went back to my first love, which was off of work, I wouldn't drink. And I didn't. I got a job for being true alky for $35 a week, file girl, in an insurance company, home office.
And I stayed there one week because I think the first day I set my sights on what I wanted and figured a way to get it. It did involve the fact that I had to go back to school and learn some shorthand, which I did. You know, we can do many things when we want to. We have a great deal of willpower, believe me. The only difference in our willpower is that whether we will to drink or will not to drink, and I would will to drink if I could.
So I ended up very shortly as secretary to the manager of the brokerage department, which is the thing I wanted to do. And for about five months, I didn't drink. I had some of my father's powers at that time. But one night, some of the girls had a birthday, and we went out, and I had five martinis. I went home and went to bed. I didn't eat, needless to say. And I felt wonderful the next day, just absolutely wonderful.
In the sittings, yes. And from then on, I drank. How I ever got by with it, I don't know. It must be that these kind men think that women have so many problems, you know. With a shaky hand, I don't know why I didn't smell my breath, but I worked this way. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, in the home office of an insurance company, you can get by with this. I've had jobs since I couldn't. I'd sort of take it easy and wait until about Wednesday afternoon, and I began to come alive.
And Thursday and Friday, I did all the work for the week, and then, of course, start over. I was getting very sick of this. I knew the first year that I was an alcoholic. I didn't call it that. I was a drunk at that time. It was just a case of trying to find a way out. You had it all the time, but I didn't recognize it. I had to find a way out of this. I was offered another job, and I took it because it paid more money.
I had been worked occasionally, not all the time. We lived way above our means. He used to say to me, housework is new to you. When you come to the cellarette, you can stop and have a drink. And, of course, I was doing this before I even went to work. It's very strange how we learn these things. I often wondered about that before I came to AA, and now I know they're part of the symptoms. But the liquor decanter would go down a little bit too much.
I was hiding my drinking from another alcoholic, and I learned then to buy a pint and pour in what I had had during the day, and I'd have one drink in front of me when he came home, and I would have the rest of the pint. This was great. Next day, see? But I got a little worried about this. Suppose he found a half a pint. So I would drink the rest of it, so he wouldn't find it and be passed out on the couch when he came home.
I've heard that story too, and I think it's just a part of our pattern. I was very unhappy at home, and since I changed jobs, I was very unhappy in my job. My mother was working in Detroit. She worked for some friends in a restaurant. I would wake up these nights crying. No apparent reason. Even when I wasn't drinking, I'd wake up crying. Of course, you know what I thought. I was going crazy, and I was having a nervous breakdown.
I talked about separation, but this didn't get anywhere. I had pity, and I don't know what he thought. But I knew I could never get sober living there, and I wanted to get sober. Or should I say I wanted to want to get sober? One day, I just took off and went to Detroit, supposedly on a visit. I knew I wasn't coming back. It took me, I hadn't been drinking heavily, but it took me 10 days to calm down enough to go out and face people and find a job.
I got a job, very good job. I weighed 175 pounds at the time,
[00:20:00]
and I went to a doctor, and it took me 10 months to take off about 40 pounds. I felt, and I wonder, I am unsure if some women here felt that way, I felt fat, middle-aged, long before my time, and if I only had $2.87 or whatever it was at that time, why do anything about it? Just get another pint, that was the way. That was my attitude when I went to Detroit, and always inside knowing that there was something desperately wrong with me, and this was the wrong thing to do, and not what I had set out to do with my life at all.
And I believe, as Jeff said, I wanted, in those days I would say, why did this happen to me, and why can't I be the girl I was before? Of course, now I'm so happy I'm not that person who cheated and lied and was a very surface person. I hope I'm a little deeper today. In Detroit, my mother quit working, and everything was fine. I had no bills to pay. We used to let our bills pile up on the cellarette.
It was a good place for them, you know. You could always look at them as you took a drink. But now I had no bills, I had no husband, and I'd been on the wagon for a long time, and why couldn't we just serve social drinks? And I saw my mother look kind of strange, the first bottle I brought in, because she knew all about what was happening to me. And with our few friends, we had a few drinks, and the only thing my mother ever said the weekend before I came to AA, she said a long time before I came, and she said, I don't like what you're doing.
And I said, well, someday I'll quit. But that's all a promise. I didn't make a promise then. I never promised her I'd quit drinking. After she retired, she was the oldest gal, so she'd go down to West Virginia, if anybody got a toenail crooked or anything, let's call Molly, and Molly would go. And I would be alone. It was at these times that I would drink and have it catch up with me, the fire built up, and some Saturdays or Sundays, not know I'm in this world, life is much too short.
I knew it then, but I couldn't do anything about it. To have a day go by that you don't know you're here. I called AA a couple of times, too, but I didn't remember too well. And when the time came, my nails weren't done, my hair wasn't done, so forth. I had two drunks in Detroit, I mean real bad ones. I had five days off, and I cleaned up the house the first day. One of the times my mother was away, you weren't going to catch me drinking in a dirty house.
Cleaned up the house, and I don't remember the other four days very well. All I remember is the night before I went back to work, I stayed awake all night, I couldn't close my eyes. I tried to sober up. What a horrible thing to do, in one night, try to sober up from five days drinking. The next day when I went to work, I had a lot of work to do, and things that had to be done on schedule, by noon, payroll.
95 men had to be finished and the checks in the mail. After having been called in at 9 o'clock in the morning, I got through this. And no mistakes on the money. But a week later, I took that payroll out of the file before the accountant got it, and the line. There was no writing. All the figures were right, the names were right in the morning, but as the day went on, and I couldn't get a drink, the liquor went out of my system, and the writing was just up and down.
I'm glad that never went to the union, they'd think we were all crazy there. I couldn't leave, I just couldn't leave that office that night, until everyone had gone, because I was afraid to stand up. I thought, sure, I'd fall flat on my face if I did. After they had all gone, I opened the door and went out, very sick girl, believe me, and next to our office was about a half a lot, with a lot of bushes in it, you know.
And I looked down as I got there, and there was a green snake about this long, on the street, wiggling around, and I took off like a shot down to the end of the block, and looked back, and it was still there. When I told this story in Detroit, I used to say, is there a green snake in Detroit, or was I on the verge of DT's? So I ran home, and I didn't drink for a while.
[00:25:00]
I got over this, I was very sick that night. I got over it to a certain extent, and of course, I didn't know how to say no. I used to say to my father, when the boys pass the drinks around, you see, I wanted to be a missionary, I was a religious little girl, and I made it, didn't I? We're all missionaries, aren't we? But I would say to my father, when the drinks are passed around, can't you say no?
I understood him later on, because I went to dinner with some people, and while I was in the ladies' room, somebody, now this is after about four or five months of not drinking, someone put a Manhattan in front of my place. And when I came back, I said, oh, I didn't want a drink. And somebody reached for it, and I said, no, now that it's here, I'll drink it. I couldn't say no. Thank goodness I can say that now.
That's why I'm here. Well, that passed, and a little later on came the last drums. My mother was away again, and on Saturday I woke up with that feeling that the only reason and the only way I could get out of bed is go to the, in the kitchen and get a drink. I was very sick. And on Sunday, Monday I didn't go to work, and I called up and told a real beaut, I'm telling you, I hadn't missed much work, and I wasn't going to give them the old story of the flu or the cold.
I just said I went to a dentist, and he took a tooth out, and he gave me too much gas. On Tuesday, I was still in bed, and you all know that I was going to pull out of this. I'm kind of glad I didn't, because I may not be here. I pulled out of many drugs, worse ones than this. But on Tuesday, I was in bed with a cigarette. Now, we had a very small apartment, my mother and I. We went into a little hall, and over here was the living room, and then a little kitchen, just about big enough for one, and sometimes the two of us squeezed in there.
And on this side was the bedroom. I was in bed with a cigarette. No drink, thank God. I was trying to come out of this. Pardon me. A key went in the door, and I jumped up and ran into a closet that held about three coats, and my mother walked in, and she said, Babe, where are you? And I said, I'm in the closet. And she said, What are you doing there? And I said, Well, I gave her some excuse. I thought the landlady was coming in, and I didn't want to see her.
She said, But your cigarette is on the ashtray, and she would have known you were here. A little later, she was going to the store, and she bent over me, and she said, Now I know what's the matter with you. And she just as well had taken a wet towel and slapped me in the face, because that was it. I gave up. I surrendered. And I couldn't get drunk, and I couldn't get well. My mother knew her drunks pretty well.
I stayed home until Friday, and she fed me a little beer around noon, and she was trying to taper me off. But by Friday, I felt I needed the check, so I went to work, and the boss was real kind. He would have brought it over. I didn't have to come to work, and this was all too bad and so forth. And speaking of the typewriter, really gave me a laugh, because this was the first time, Jeff, I was given an electric typewriter.
And if anyone types, you know how fast those things go. And the boss used to say, Why don't you ask for a manual? You're afraid of that thing, and I was. I was scared to death. My fingers used to approach it like this, you know. They would be shaking. Of course, naturally. And I just was scared to death of that typewriter. I went home that night, and now I want to tell you about public information.
Don't ever underestimate public information. Although I had read the two books, I had called when I didn't remember. The one thing I did remember was a show on Sunday afternoon on TV. It was a closed AA meeting, and it was called Mr. Pope. And we don't in GSO too much go along with masks, but I personally go along with masks because I saw absolutely nothing wrong with these people with masks on. I did not think AA was a secret society from this.
I thought it was a wonderful society. And every Sunday at 1 o'clock, Mr. Hope would sit at the head of the table, and everybody would lounge around, about four of them. And the thing that impressed me was the woman being able to pour the coffee. I thought, my goodness, if I ever did that show, that coffee would go right down somebody's back. But she poured the coffee, and I thought this was marvelous.
The only time I didn't want to look at this show was when I was drinking and was kind of half drunk, you know. I thought my mother might identify. Well, it seems she had. This night, we were in the little kitchen with her back to mine. She was cooking, and this Friday night when I came from work, and I was pretty sick, you can imagine, after trying to work that day, and I said, Mom, let's have a drink before dinner, and this will be my last. Why I said that, I don't know. She said, Who is this man, Mr. Hope, and where is his organization? I think I'll send you down there.
[00:30:24]
That's all the push I needed. I said, You won't have to. I'll go myself. Three years later, we were talking about this night, and we were speaking of the weekend, the miracle. I call it a miracle. I don't care what you say. I call it a miracle. We discussed Saturday. Now, you know, after being drunk for a week and going back to work and being so desperately sick, you just don't all of a sudden feel good on the next day, but my mother reminded me that I went shopping. I did all the household shopping, that I bought a couple of dresses. I hate to do that sober, and that I felt perfectly wonderful that day, and I remembered sleeping well that night.
I had made a decision. I was going to do something about it, and my hangover, however much it was mental or physical, left. I had no hangover, but I was exhilarated. Oh, was I excited that I was finally going to go to AA. On Saturday morning, my mother said, Aren't you going to call somebody? Oh, yes, I'm going to call now. I've decided. Let me take my time, and I couldn't look at her. I was very emotional. I was in the bathroom, and as I told you, it was a little bathroom, and I could kind of talk out the door, and I said, Mom, I know something about this alcoholic phenomenon.
If I go there, I will go to meetings, and they go help people, you know, and I'm going to be very busy, and I'll be out a lot. She said, Babe, do you think you've been here? So she said another thing. I would wear, as we used to say in the old days, a calico dress and eat bread and water for the rest of my life if you would stop drinking. Well, this was marvelous. I said, Don't worry. We'll have lots of money if I stop drinking. Of course, we don't, but we have a few things anyway.
I called, and they wanted me to go to a meeting on Saturday. I didn't ask for any of you to come to see me. Well, I missed that somewhere in what I read, but I knew other people went to see people, so no, they couldn't sell me a meeting on Saturday night. I wanted Sunday afternoon because I knew where the place was. It was a half a block from where I had seen the green snake. This was Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock. So, Sunday, we looked at Mr. Hope, and my mother said, Aren't you going anywhere? Do you want me to go with you? I said, Yes, go with me. And then I thought, No, I better not.
She didn't take my hand and lead me down this road, so I will go by myself, but I'll take you later, I told her. So, I finally got dressed and went out, and I couldn't wait. I'd taken all this time, and I could not wait for buses, which are a little slower in Detroit on Sunday. I got a cab, and I couldn't afford that either. I went to the Cass Grand River Group, and it's in a GAR public building, and I stood in the door. Now, none of you jumped up and said, Well, welcome to AA, and I thought, Sure, you'd know I was new. Now, remember, I hadn't had a drink since Friday, and I was dressed in the best dress I had, all fit to kill, you know, to meet you, and I had showered for an hour the night before, and my mother wanted to know what I was doing.
I was sitting in the bathroom, and I said, I am brainwashing myself. I felt dirty and crawly, as I always did after a drink. Well, I got to the door, and nothing happened. I saw a lot of men sitting, shall I place them over here, with their backs to me, and I looked for a woman, but I didn't see anybody, and I thought, Gee, should I go in, or should I go out? What should I do? I knew myself this well. If I ever walked back out that door, I may never get there again. So I started what I call my last mile, and way around by the coffee urn, I saw a woman. She was pouring the coffee. She now works in the central office in Detroit. Mary was around there, and I thought, Well, I'll go around there. She certainly will know I'm new.
I don't know where I got the idea that you jump up and welcome everybody, and you're supposed to know they're new. About halfway around the room, I turned and looked at these men, and they were all from skid row. Some asleep, some laying on the chair, some awake, drinking coffee, all perfectly horrible.
[00:35:10]
And I said, Is this AA? My God, what have I gotten myself into? And my God answered me. The thought went through my mind that if you took away the dress, and you gave me a couple of bottles, and you put me in a room where I was used to doing my heavy drinking, how long could I support what I call this habit? Not very long, because I had never lost a job, but I knew after that week that I was on the verge of doing so. I couldn't hide it anymore.
And then, that was the answer. So I went around to Mary, and she didn't know I was new, but she said, You're going to hear, I told her I was new, and she said, You're going to hear the most wonderful man today. And dear old Jack loved me. I can use his name, his bank account, his family, and so forth. That's the only real sponsor I had besides every one of you, and everyone in Detroit, and every AA I've ever met around the world.
That day, I sat all to myself. We'll move our men over here, and I'm sitting over here. Everything that Jack said was perfectly understandable. It either hit me or my ex-husband. He would get serious, and I'd cry, and he would get humorous, and I'd laugh. So I sat there, and I laughed, and I cried all afternoon. I was so happy to have finally come to AA that if they had said to me, Your AA consists of coming here every Sunday afternoon and sitting in that chair, I would have done it.
I surrendered like a child. Anything they told me to do, I had not stopped believing in God. I didn't quite know how to pray. I went from church to church. I was really scared. I was trying to find something, and really what I was trying to find, outside of sobriety and a million beautiful other things we have here, was how to live today. And I didn't want to go to church on Sunday and leave it there. I found that here, and to live it only today.
Those boys became my friends. I was chairman after I was in AA about a year. I was chairman down there for a month on end because nobody wanted to go down there in the afternoon where they were asleep and so forth. And one time they wanted to take the coffee away, and I said, No. I'll pay for it myself. And then they explained why they wanted to. Of course, I was pretty new. But they were wonderful. They used to say, Well, Juanita, I'll never forget the first day you came in. You gave us the best show we ever had.
That was AA, and of course, I went to other groups. But Jack said something that day. He said, Welcome home, Juanita. And I was definitely home. And I was like Jeff. I never had any desire to drink, but I did have a desire once to get drunk. This happened after about a year and a half, and I've hung on to that for nearly ten years. June 30th will be ten years. Something happened in the office, as it will, and I got a flash of anger. I work every day on anger because I can get very angry and blast off at anybody, and then I'm very sorry.
So I'm trying day by day to control this with everything I can learn from every one of you and a few people outside, too. I got angry, and I went back to my office, and I said to myself, I would like to get drunk in this past, just like that, and I said, That's what I'll hang on to from now on. When the beautiful commercials come on, I won't say I'd like to have a drink because, as Jeff said, I didn't want a drink. I'd rather have none if I could only have one.
So I don't want to get drunk. Have a beautiful conference, everybody, and I'd like to say that today I pray that I shall ever be mindful of what I am, of what I was, and of what I may become again if I do not follow this way of life. Thank you. Thank you very much, Juanita.
[00:40:06]
Well, I was about to say this is the typical AA open meeting, but with the folks from all over and these two wonderful speakers, I think that would be a bit of an understatement. It's a truly remarkable program, this AA, alcoholics and endless. If there's anybody who is experiencing their first meeting tonight, I'm sure they're very puzzled about many things, particularly if there is anybody in the room tonight who is concerned about his own drinking pattern and is afraid that he or she might be an alcoholic.
Like most of us, I was very fearful. I shied away. I dreaded the word alcoholic. There were many horrible connotations to me, but today, like most AA members, I'm quite content to be an alcoholic today. It's a disease that affects many people. It's a disease that, with the help of AA, as well as some of our other resources, the church, psychiatric health, and so on, we have to respect those who work with AA.
AA is not the only answer, but for most of us, it has been the answer. There is a nice, easy way to get through this life of ours without a drink. It's hard to visualize when you're drinking. I was an everyday drinker to figure, to realize that there could come a time when I could exist without a drink. More important, if you're new, it's very hard to relate with the so-called alcoholic. I think this is one of the most difficult things. Both our speakers tonight reiterated that. The long time it took until the recognition could come that there was a problem and what the problem was.
The fear that you can't live without booze is pretty strong in all of us. But there is a way out, as you've heard tonight, a wonderful way out. In fact, not only a way out, but a way in. A way out of a very poor way of life for most of us to a whole new way of life that most of us around AA have found. It's a truly remarkable thing, this AA. There's no rhyme or reason for it, really. Nobody knows how it works. This Substance X that Jeff mentioned, I guess that's about as good a way to describe it as anyone could.
Those of us who are here tonight can be very grateful. Number one, we live in an age when there is such a thing as AA, which I am constantly aware of. We lived a few generations ago, there was no AA to come to. Secondly, even though there is an AA to come to, many people come to it, and for reasons, as the big book said, of mental or other grave problems, emotional disorders, they're unable to get the true help that's here, waiting.
Certainly, there is no need to look down upon the alcoholic who doesn't find immediate success with AA, because we've known some fine people who have tried this program and for the moment have been unable to make it, as we call it. Others who immediately seem attracted and amenable to the program and seem to have instant success. It's a very thin line that separates the people that are out on the street tonight suffering from alcoholism from the people that are in here enjoying the success of AA. I'm constantly reminded of this as I look around the tent meetings.
This anonymity that we hear about, and it's so puzzling I think and so strange to us in the beginning, takes on a whole new meaning. It's really the basis of this program. As we all learn, all we have to do to give up this horrible, To give up this horrible millstone around our neck is to come into a meeting, sit down, and be willing to accept some of the wonderful offering that is here from the people who are already involved in the meeting, in the program.
[00:45:15]
You begin to learn, after you're around the program, how much this anonymity means. It's just a small thanks for being able to walk in and meet people, probably for the first time in all our lives, on a true level. If you can imagine tonight walking into a church meeting, a political meeting, a business meeting, a social affair, and hearing two individuals who are strangers to you, as these two speakers tonight were to many people here, bear the innermost details of their life.
In most meetings they would have been locked up and taken away. This is a strange new phenomenon in our way of life. It's hard when you look at it in a disinterested, realistic sense, what we have here. I've often remarked that every one of us in AA have a home. No matter how hard the day becomes, in most areas we can look forward to this quiet spot, this retreat, where we're free to go, where we can meet others, whether we know them or not, on an equal plane.
I don't know of anywhere in our life, our existence, where any individuals can meet as we meet here and have the full face value of one another as human beings. We have this spot where we don't look up or we don't look down. It's a strange phenomenon. I feel very selfish about it. This is why I respect the anonymity so much, because this I found only because of my disease of alcoholism. It was here because of the people who suffered from the disease of alcoholism.
I cherish it to the point that I want to keep it for those who suffer from this similar disease, this common bond that we all have. Of course, we are willing to share it with the Al-Anons who have suffered right along. In fact, many of them far more, of course, than any of the AA folks. But it's a true, honest organization. Strange people come here. We've all seen them. We'll attempt to make something of these people like ourselves who suffer from this affliction of alcohol.
But it doesn't take very long for the thing to sift down to its true level. And anybody who is not sincere, whether they be an alcoholic or someone just looking for some advantage, they don't seem to stay around very long. I guess that's why you somehow, if you want to have any lasting success with this program, have to come for yourself and for your true problem, that of finding a way to live with yourself despite the disease of alcoholism.
Well, I've rambled along enough. We are coming to the end of this meeting. There's one point I would make. We advertised that there would be no collection tonight, and we're going to hold true to our word on that. We do, however, have a couple of baskets in the back of the room. If there's anybody who hasn't registered or who hasn't contributed, who wishes to, they're free to do so, but there will be no formal collection.
With that, we'll now close the meeting in the usual fashion. Before we close, I'm going to turn this meeting back to our chairman, Keith, who will tell you about the further program. If you'll all join me in the Lord's Prayer, we'll close with that. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[00:50:02]
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.