Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00683 – Lucy H – FT SMITH MINI-CONF – 1986-11-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00683-lucy-h-ft-smith-mini-conf-1986-11-15.mp3 Duration: 00:51:21
============================================================
I'm Walter, and I'm an alcoholic, but by the grace of God and this beautiful fellowship, I haven't taken a drink today, except for a small amount of wine at Mass this morning. I don't think that counts. We, AA, receive so many blessings, so many good things happen to us that it just confounds us sometimes, and one of the great things are the people we meet, the beautiful people we meet and get acquainted with and learn to love and to be loved by them and the fellowship.
Several years ago, and I won't say how many, I'll leave it up to her if she wants to say how many it is, one of these people came into my life. I'm grateful for it and will be eternally. Over the years, we have developed and maintained a real warm relationship. She's moved to Dallas. We reach out and touch each other through AT&T occasionally, and I see her down there occasionally when I visit my daughter.
She and her life have meant a lot to me in my life, and as we say so often, that because this person came into my life, mine will never again be the same. I'm not going to say any more. I want to give to you a beautiful, beautiful person from Dallas, T. We'll use that in our own faith, too, Lucy. God, I'm not a crier, but I just, you know, this program is just incredible. It is just incredible, and Joe's right. It puts people in our lives that otherwise we wouldn't have in our lives.
My name is Lucy H., and I am an alcoholic. Hi, gang, and doctor-prescribed medication was a part of that alcoholism, and I've been sober, and I've been clean, no mood-altering drugs since January of 1971. That is a flat miracle. Now, I've got to tell you an aside. I'm the kind of person that if you have something that I think is pretty classy, I'm going to go to any lengths to get it, and I'm in an AA group that thinks they're pretty classy, but there's one out in California.
You know, my life is always there's one over there that's better. Well, there's a group out in California that I just think is even classier than our groups in Texas, and so I try to emulate them because that's what I do. If you've got something that I think I need or want, I'll go after it, and so I used to say when I'd get up to talk, I'd say, my name is Lucy H., and I'm an alcoholic, and doctor-prescribed pills were a part of my alcoholism, and I've been sober, and I haven't had anything to change me from the neck up since January of 71.
Now, I said that because that group in California said that, and I thought it was just darling. So, you know there is always somebody in your group that's a nerd. I mean, you know, you sober up a nerd, sober up a nerd, and you've got a sober nerd, and there was a nerd in my home group, and this nerd said to me one day, Lucy, you have got to cut out telling people that you haven't had anything to change you from the neck up, because he said, since I've known you, you've had three facelifts, and that's true. I know that you all don't believe that, but it's true, and so I've changed that to say I haven't had any mood-altering drugs.
There's always somebody out there who's going to keep you honest if you hang around long enough. I would like to ask you all to bear with me and do something for me, and for those of you who have 30 days or less, would you raise your hands just for my benefit? Let's give them a hand. You know, for a long time in Alcoholics Anonymous, I would say those were the most important people in the room, because they allowed me to give away something I had. Now, for 50 years out there in that outside world, I was trying to give away something I had, and nobody wanted it, and this was an incredible experience to have somebody want what I had, but you know, the longer I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous, the more aware I am of the gratitude I feel for those who went before me.
So, can I ask those with over 15 years in this room to raise their hands? Are you just shy, Mac? I mean, you've got 33 years, for God's sakes, right? You know, those are the people that I am so grateful to, and you know, it gets lonesome the older you get, it really does, and there are less people who have what you want around you. I am so grateful to those people. Now, I want to thank the committee, before I begin to share with you all, for having me here. It's a mixed blessing. I never believed when I was growing up in this town that I would be asked to come back if you're drunk.
[00:05:05]
I am excited. You know, this program is so damn exciting to me that I can hardly verbalize it, but to come back to your hometown, as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, is thrilling. The part that is not so thrilling is that I've talked quite a bit from the podium, and I blame the town for my drinking, and I realize that now I'm here, I can't exactly do that. I can't say… And I want to put in a little…I've had to change my story a little bit to talk to you all. I have a daughter in Rogers, Arkansas, and she's heard my tape, and she said, oh, Lord, Mother, you give the worst talk. She said, can't you change it up a little bit? And I said, unfortunately, we cannot do that. You know, our stories do reveal in a general way what we were like.
Now, the part that I've got to change is the part about my ex-husband, because I can't…I tend to exaggerate somewhat. Now, I don't know that none of you can identify with that, but when I'm at the podium, just this little devil comes in me, and like I tell people all over the United States that my ex-husband was one of the richest men in Arkansas. You all know that isn't true, particularly my son, who's here today.
So I'm going to have to moderate some of those things. I like to start off talking by telling you what this program has meant in my life in these past 15 years. I was a searcher. I think most alcoholics are searchers. I kept searching for that something. You know, I really thought it was an easier, softer way. I thought that…I think we're all searchers. Even some alanines are searchers. Searching for something to fill up that hole in my gut.
I believed on all those years that I was trying to find what the answer…I believe that…now, I'm into early senility. You'll have to bear with me, because I get a little…every now and then I get a little forgetful about where I was walking. I am a searcher, and I thought, I believed that the searching was going to end when I got the all-time high, and I thought that all-time high was going to come from drinking alcohol or taking medication. I don't know where I got this idea, but it was the only road I knew to travel.
Since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous these 15 years, I've experienced highs that I never dreamed were possible when I was out there researching for you all. They have been incredible. You know, and I've heard it said from the podium, you can't get from where I was in 1971 to where I am today in any area of my life. There just is no road there that you couldn't do it. In 1971, when I came back to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was the kind of woman who lived in a fantasy world. I mean, I had no more reality in my life than a child. I remember one time I had a flat tire, and I threw the wheel away. This was the kind of world I lived in.
Today, I have a certified public accountant's firm of my very own. You can't get from where I was in 1971 to where I am today, and it's all been because of you. You encouraged me. You made me go back and take that CPA exam over and over again. You told me I had to go to work to eat, and all of these things became possible only because of you all. And I've seen many alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous do this, where they get from this place to that place when there's no way they can do it. It's been an exciting, thrilling 15 years. I like to verbalize some of the excitement in the fact that we've got something in here that is mysterious, because we deal in life and death.
That's part of the excitement. That's part of the mystery. Why am I standing here today talking to you all when people who went the same path I did are dead? Recently, William Holden, the movie star, died, and he died by getting drunk and hitting his head on a coffee table. I did that lots. I remember one time in Fort Smith, Arkansas, I fell in a tile bathroom, and when I came to, blood was coming out of my eyes. Yet, I did not die like William Holden. That movie star, Natalie Wood, she got in a rowboat one night, drunk, in her nightie and her knee socks. She fell out of the rowboat, and she drowned. I've fallen out of rowboats in my nightie and knee socks, and I didn't drown.
The only difference between us, besides the fact that she died and I didn't, was the fact that my primary boat was the rowboat and Natalie's primary boat was the yacht. But John Belusha died of an overdose. I never had to go on the streets for my drugs. I had a doctor in my hometown. Here I am in my hometown, who, if I had a hangover, I used to call him and he'd come out and give me a shot of Demerol. You can't beat that. Why go on the streets when you can get it like that?
[00:10:23]
I had curb service. This is the incredible, mysterious, wonderful part of this program. It's a grace. I don't know why I've got this many years. I used to judge, I don't anymore, I share now, I used to judge people's sobriety, and I'd think, how can that man stay sober when he's not working this program like I am? That man usually was the one who stayed sober. It defies human description. Our human analysis. I like to kind of share some things that have happened to me that we call coincidences in Alcoholics Anonymous before I get back in my childhood in my hometown, Fort Smith. These are little things. I had an old mentor in Dallas, and he used to say to me, you know, the steps are so that we can have demonstrations, so that we can recognize them.
Now, when I'm on these steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, they usually are behind me. I see these demonstrations, and I'm going to share with you a few. And these aren't much. My God, I've had really miraculous experiences since I've been in AA. One of the things that happened to me after I'd been sober for a while, my mother, now my mother's the kind of person who allows me to practice these principles in all my affairs. Rather difficult. And she had asked me to go on a cruise, and I'd been sober for eight years, and I knew that it was going to be a tough time, and I was too old to go on a cruise with my mother, but she was the only person who had ever asked me to go on a cruise.
And so I went on this cruise with my mother, and I knew it was going to be tough because I was going to be away from you all, and I need you. Every day of my life, I need you. And I talked about this in the group at home, where I take all my problems, and one of the members in this AA group in Dallas said, why don't you put a notice in the ship's bulletin when you get aboard that ship, and tell them that you're a member, that you, I just thought Ted enjoyed your talk a lot.
Ted enjoyed your talk lately. That you are a friend of Bill Wilson's, and if there's anybody aboard on this ship, would they call you and give your cabin number, which I did. I put that the first night we were out in the ship's bulletin, and I got a phone call, and it was an old guy. I could tell because he could hardly talk. And he said, wasn't I darling to try to find out how many people were aboard who were in the class of 15 at West Point. And I said, no, no, that isn't the guy I was talking about. But see, I talked to somebody besides my mother, and then there was a knock on the cabin door, and I opened the door, and there was a young couple out there, and they were so excited.
And they said, oh my God, they knew Bill Wilson. He lived right next door to them in Vernon, Texas. And I said, no, that wasn't the one, but here again, I met somebody besides mother. And so I got another phone call, and this voice said that he was John Lewis, John L. Now where else in the world are you going to meet people who say, my name is Ann M.? Last night, Mike and I were in the restaurant, and we saw all these name tags, and Mike said, those are A.A. I said, how did you know that? He said, where else are you going to find a convention where everybody has one initial?
Anyway, John said, this is John L., and I knew Bill Wilson for 23 years before he died, and I'd found my A.A. member. And we had meetings aboard that ship that were just really terrific. I had an anniversary on that ship, and they brought me a big cake. That was in the days before alcoholism got so popular, and people, it created quite a sensation, and people would say, what's the cake for? I said, eight years of sobriety.
And they'd back away from you, and we had a girl aboard that ship who had come from Houston, A.A., named Pat, and we knew Pat had gotten drunk because she was sleeping with the accordion player, and he was so goony, you'd have to be drunk to sleep with him. So we made 12-step calls on Pat, and you know, I don't ever know if Pat got sober enough, but it sure kept us sober. Another thing that happened to me that I felt was one of those coincidences, before I worked this program perfectly for 10 years, and you all finally gave me a husband, I was out there alone for 10 years, and it takes a long time for this program to work.
It takes a long time for this program to work, and even if you do the steps perfectly, and I did have a few dates, it wasn't easy, but I had a blind date in Kansas City one time, I flew up there and he met me at the airport, and he said he was going to give a cocktail party to introduce me to his friends, and I'm a corny AA.
[00:15:19]
When I joined you all in 1971 in Fort Smith, I told everybody, I didn't want to put it in your newspaper, but somebody said, no, it really wasn't all that great a piece of news, and so anyway, when he asked me what I like to drink, so he'd be sure and have it on hand, I said, well, I don't drink, I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, my God, he said, I can't wait for you to meet my roommate, he's president of AA.
And I said, you know, that's one guy I really want to meet, and I did, I met him at the cocktail party, and he had a drink of scotch in his hand, he was drinking it, you know, he didn't make the program, he eventually committed suicide, he'd had eight years. See, here again, there is no criterion, there's no yardstick for this, at least not in my point of view. When I moved to Dallas, I went to a grocery store there, and I was very vocal, as I said, about my Alcoholics Anonymous membership, and I told everybody there how wonderfully I did in this program, and I had all these years of sobriety, like five, and one day I was checking out at that counter, and I had my hand out like this, and this brass coin appeared in the palm of my hand.
In Dallas, we give these when they're birthdays, and that damn brass coin had Roman numerals 29 on it, and that guy had been in that grocery store all those years listening to me expostulate about, and you know, that was another nerd, you know. There have been many ways of bringing me down. I have a bad ego. I believe that God works in every area of my life. I've come to this program so often and heard people say, well, God could sober me up, but y'all told me God worked in every area of my life, and it ain't true, because I turned my bills over to God, and he turned them over to the sheriff.
And, you see, I believe that God works in every area of my life. I cannot limit that God, and I have had demonstrations of that when my ego's gotten out of hand. Not too many years ago, I thought that I was becoming a circuit speaker. I don't know if you all are aware what a circuit speaker is, but that's one that talks all around the country for Alcoholics Anonymous, and I really began to think I was the greatest entertainer in the world.
Well, I had become sort of a female David A. Now, you don't know David A. maybe, but David has been talking all over the country for years, and I thought, my God, they need me. You know, there's several people in AA, the males like Clancy, and I thought, oh, here I am. You know, I'm the new Clancy. I had been asked to speak around the country several times, and my calendar was sort of filled, not like David's or Clancy's, but I had a few speaking engagements, and I flew up to South Dakota to talk, and I was the Friday night speaker. I'm never the main speaker, because they always talk on Saturday night, and I was the Friday night main speaker, and there were about a thousand people at this convention, and we were on a race platform, and I thought, man, this is where I belong.
You know, these people need to hear what I've got to say, and the chairman that night leaned over to me, and he said, Lucy, if you don't mind, there's an Al-Anon here. She just wants to say a few words, not on the program, and you know, I was playing gracious lady, and I said, oh, certainly, and that Al-Anon got up there, and she pulled something out of her pocketbook that looked like a script this thick, and that woman talked 55 minutes, and I thought, you know, I was talking to God the whole time, like you all told me to. I said, God, what did they pay my way up here for to listen to this Al-Anon? This is ridiculous, but you know, that's all those people needed of me was five minutes, and, but that didn't teach me anything.
I went down to Tyler, Texas after that. They asked me to speak with my husband, Mike, who you all finally sobered up, and we went down there. Now, normally, I let him go first because he ain't got as much sobriety as I have, but I decided that I'd go first because, see, I was still trying to prove something, and I got in that convention, and I got up there, and I'll tell you something. I have never seen a more wrapped group, and I thought, you know, these people really need me. These people are hanging on to every word I say, and I went over time. I never do that because I've sat out there, and I know how uncomfortable it gets, and, you know, I can, really, for the first 15 minutes, I'm pretty good, but after that, Katie by the door, but I talked 45 minutes that day, and I gesticulate a lot when I talk, and I finally, I finally just ran out, and I sat down, and Mike, my husband, leaned over to me, and he said, you know,
[00:20:14]
he said, Lucy, your blouse is unbuttoned. You know, that was it. One guy came up to me after that meeting, and he said, you know, that's the best AA talk I've ever seen, but, you know, those are the kind of demonstrations. If I will work these steps, and listen, and watch, that's the kind of thing that happens to me. I got to tell one more. I am a corny drunk. I have a little sticker on the back of my car. Nobody's ever put anything on my car, but if I see one of you all with a sticker, I write a little note on it, and leave my name there, and I honk. You know, I've seen so many stickers that Easy does it, and I'll honk, and they'll just ignore me.
I think maybe we ought to have a hand signal of some kind, but anyway, that, I'll think of that later, but I was telling this to a guy one time. He said, you know, I had a funny experience. I was driving to Amarillo, and I passed this car, and it said, if you know Bill W., honk and wave, and he said, I honked, and I waved, and this guy just turned up his nose at me, and he said, we stopped at the same stoplight going into Amarillo side by side, and I rolled my window down, and I said, hey, guy, why do you have that sticker on the back?
You're going to ignore us AAs who are waving and yelling. This guy said, my God, is that what this is? He said, I bought this car in a used car lot, and he said, I've had more people honking and waving at me. We're just wonderful. You know, we got something that you just can't describe. There's a guy in my building who belongs to AA, and his brother was in town about three months ago, and I met his brother, and I said, how'd you like that AA meeting? The brother was in AA, and, I mean, my friend was in AA, and the brother wasn't, and John, the AA member, had taken him to an open meeting, and so I met the brother the next day.
I said, how'd you like that meeting? He said, God, it was awful. He said, it was the worst experience I've ever had. He said, you know, AAs laugh in crazy places. He said, one man told about how he broke his back, and everybody just broke down and just screamed with laughter. He said, they gave out some little plastic chips, and people cried over them. He said, you know, they're crazy, and, you know, we are. We've got a language of our own. We have got an international language of our own that those people out there don't understand. They really don't.
Boy, we've got something. Well, it's time now for me to tell what it was like. I've been avoiding that because I was born in a town in Arkansas, and I was born to a lovely family, really a lovely family. My father and my mother were loving parents. I was told that we were well-to-do, which began the confusion in my life, the paradox that I just couldn't handle. People would tell me we were well-to-do, and yet all my father talked about was how I was going to break him. You know, I couldn't leave the lights on after 6 o'clock and couldn't run the bath water over this high, and this was confusing to me. My father and mother were very sophisticated people. My father had gone to Yale undergraduate. He had graduated from Harvard Law School.
You can't get any more sophisticated in America than that education-wise. My mother had gone to New York to finishing school and a year abroad for whatever they did back then, and this spelled sophistication. Now, more than anything in the world, I wanted that sophistication. For some reason or other, I thought that would please them. I was always trying to please them. My mother had inculcated me with the idea that we were very strong people. She used to love to say, God takes care of those who take care of themselves, and, you know, that was the beginning for me of the idea of, okay, the confusion's there. I knew inside I was weak, and that what I would do is try to make my outsides like I thought they wanted them to be, and that was strong.
Now, the confusion was rampant because if they were sophisticated, and if I was supposed to be sophisticated, why was I living in Arkansas, and why was my name Lucy Brown, and why, when we went east, they'd laugh at me. They'd say, little girl, what's your name? I'd say, Lucy Brown, and they'd laugh, and where are you from? Arkansas, and they'd laugh. And this, you know, you lose something. You can't be too sophisticated when somebody thinks you're kidding them, you know. This was confusion to me, and this lasted until I came back to AA in 71, when you all told me that we live by paradoxes. You've got to surrender to win.
[00:25:04]
But anyway, I grew up here in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and I was happy here. I love people here, and I think they love me. In retrospect, I never drank to like people or to make my pimples fall off. I'll tell you why I drank, and this is in retrospect. I drank to get out of the responsibility chair. I thought I was responsible for everybody's happiness, and, you know, I have a hard time with that today.
If I had known back then that there were all those Alamonds out there taking responsibility, I might not have been so serious about it, but that's why I drank, to get the hell out of that responsibility of taking care of all of you all. You didn't know I was taking care of you all all that time. But my first drink was with an older guy. He was a sophomore in college, and I was 16 years old, and he said to me, you know, if you really want to be sophisticated, you're going to have to learn how to drink, because all the girls in college drink. And that guy had bought a pint of gin. I haven't seen a pint of gin in 30 years, but anyway, he bought this pint of gin, and he didn't have to tell me how to drink it. I just took it and drank it right out of the bottle.
Now, I have had an inordinate amount of greed in my life, and I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with an inordinate amount of greed, and I want to tell you an aside that points out my greed. It's a demonstration of the envy and the greed I have. I was in AA two years before anybody asked me to sponsor them, and they really didn't ask me. There was a woman who kind of staggered into a meeting one night, and there was an old timer there, and he said, here's your sponsor, and she was still drunk and didn't know what a sponsor was, so she couldn't complain or say no.
Now, this woman's name was Gwen. Gwen had come into the program with a coral-colored 450SL Mercedes. I had come into the program with a Maverick that already had the drunk bumps on it. I was sure that it was used, and my husband, my ex-husband of 28 years, had three car dealerships. Now, you know, there's some kind of paradox here, but I thought, you know, here's this woman with this coral-colored Mercedes, and here I am in this Maverick, and I've worked those 12 steps perfectly and well, and you all have not given me an upgrade in my auto, and that woman doesn't work the steps at all, and she's got that car.
So I went out to my mentor at Suburban in Dallas, and I said, listen, S.A., there's something the matter. I just can't handle sponsoring that woman any longer. I said, I'm just full of, oh, this terrible feeling, and I told him about that Mercedes that had become an obsession with me, and he said, oh, Lucy, don't worry. He said, don't feel bad about yourself. He said, everybody at one time or another must want a Mercedes. I said, no, S.A., you're wrong. I want Gwen's Mercedes, and that is the kind of greed that I have had to divest myself of. I want to tell you a little bit about God's bizarre sense of humor in case you all don't know about it.
That woman married my brother in May. You know, you can't get from there to here. No way. Anyway, when George told me that night that I'd have to drink that gin, that'd make me sophisticated, I drank it all, and of course, then George had to walk me around block after block while I threw up because I immediately got sick, and I don't think that's what George had in mind when he bought the bottle, but he finally gave up and took me home, and I passed out. Now, when I woke up the next morning, it was the first of thousands of hangovers, and I don't know if you can remember your first one, but I hope to hell I never forget my first one. I don't have to tell you all what it was like because you know what it's like. It was a horrible experience, and the incredible thing was the guilt.
I felt so guilty when I came to, and I was still sick in my stomach, and I wasn't brought up in the Baptist belt. For those of you who are old enough, I don't think this was ever a Baptist belt. I mean, I was brought up an Episcopalian, and they used to call us Whiskeypagans, so I don't know where the guilt came from, but I was terribly guilty, and when I was guilty, I couldn't talk about it, and my parents were loving, and they wanted to know why I was sick, and I told them I didn't know, and they called a doctor, and back in those days, they doctors made house calls, and they were looking for a little income, and so this doctor came over to the house, and he said, man, this is one sick girl. I didn't tell this man why I was sick, and he took, I allowed him to take me to St. Edwards Hospital, and take me in the operating room, and cut and take me in the operating room and cut me open and take out my appendix.
Now, I knew right then, because I ain't no fool, as JoJo in California says,
[00:30:05]
I may be slow, but I ain't no fool, and I knew that I had some kind of problem with alcohol, because I didn't think that many people would go through what I went through because they had one drunk. Now, I'm an alcoholic, and I believe, maybe like Ted said, that I've been an alcoholic ever since I can remember. I decided that I was going to lick this problem. Now, my brother had a bad experience in college. He doesn't drink anymore.
He's not alcoholic. I am. And I thought, I'm going to conquer this enemy. And people, I had a lot of help in this town. You know, people would say to me, why don't you drink like me, socially. A lot of those people are dead today. But I had to stay sober 15 years to see it. And I thought, they're right. You know, why can't I learn to drink like a lady? I didn't know back then that ladies don't drink.
I mean, nobody acts like a lady drunk. And so I tried for 10 years to drink socially. Now, I was a periodic drunk. I think there are probably 500,000 different patterns of drinking and drugging in AA, but our feelings, they've got to be alike. I drank periodically. And what I'd do is, sometimes I'd skip six months at a time. And I wouldn't drink. And then I'd say to myself, you've been such a good woman.
Reward yourself. And so the reward would be a drunk. You know, where I'd break a leg or run off with somebody else's husband. You know, wonderful things. So this was the way my drinking went. Now, I had gone away to school. And the reason I had gone away to school was because my mother called me in one day and she said, we're going to punish you and send you away to school, to prep school in the east, you know, where my name was Lucy Brown from Arkansas.
And she said, we're punishing you not because you've been a bad person but because you kissed a boy in the railroad station. And it wasn't because you kissed a boy in the railroad. I can't even remember who this was. He's moved away too. But she said, it's because you closed your eyes when you kissed. And, you know, in my cunning mind, I thought, okay, I will never close my eyes again. It's going to make it okay.
And she sent me away to prep school, and it was a disaster for me. It was the same time I had my first drunk, and I don't know if there's any correlation, but my brain stopped working. And I couldn't get what was going on in prep school. I never got a high school diploma. But I went on to college because back in those days, if you had $50, you could go to college. I went to college. I couldn't hack it.
And I decided I'd go to New York and work. And I went to New York, and I was modeling for the biggest modeling firm in the world at that time. You know, I believe our colleagues can do almost anything we set our minds to, but if you're like me, I can't hold on to anything. I don't know what to do with it when I get it. But anyway, I modeled, and I found out to my horror that they wanted you to show up if you had a hangover, and that just wasn't my mode of operation.
So I decided I'd go to the University of Missouri where they'd appreciate somebody with my stature. And I let them know that they had a big-time model coming, and they were very nice to me. And the sorority that I was in was proud of me because I won some crowns. Now, in those 10 years, the things I did were not tragic, but they were tragic to me. They were tragedies to me because they built up that albatross of loss of dignity, I think is probably a good word for it, and things like that sorority asked me to walk across the stage one night in the engineering college and get the third crown, and they had negotiated for this honor.
Well, that afternoon I was supposed to show up at the engineering college. There was a young guy out in front of the class where I'd just come out of, and he asked me to go have a beer. You know, and I ain't no fool. I'd never had one beer in my life. I did not drink one or two drinks. When I started, I drank until I left this world and got out of that responsibility. But I went to have a beer with Frank, and 17 beers later, you know, he's taking me back to the sorority house.
I'd totally forgotten about the engineering college, that same dumb sorority. I decided I couldn't hack it in college, so I'd marry. That's a good motive to get married. I mean, you know, it really is a good reason. And I decided, well, I'd have to get married, and I found this young man who had graduated from the Naval Academy from Fort Smith, and he agreed to marry me. And so this sorority was going to give me a going-away party, and they were going to give a surprise going-away party.
And you don't give a practicing alcoholic a surprise party, particularly not at midnight. This party was at midnight. They'd gotten big white cakes with blue anchors on them, and, of course, I didn't show up. They couldn't find me. So they got a search party, and they found me. All right, they found me out in the yard with another guy. You know, I mean, these things don't sound like much now, but, boy, I'll tell you, back then they were.
[00:35:05]
I married this Naval Academy graduate, and we moved back to Fort Smith. And anyway, it was the first time I ever saw his mother. Brad, I hope you're not listening. Anyway, I never really noticed his mother. His mother was sort of strange-looking. She had a big stomach. I knew she wasn't pregnant because she was over 40. Women over 40 were too old to have babies, I thought, back then. Anyway, and she had bruises all over her, and she did strange things.
You know, every now and then here we'd go to a party, and they'd invite different ages. And, you know, she'd be passed out. I didn't know what it was then, but we'd always have to step over her sometime during the evening. And this is Brad's grandmother. Anyway, she'd come to our house for dinner, and she'd tell me that these nuns on my wall were bothering her. Well, I didn't have any nuns on my wall.
And so because I'm part Al-Anon, I went out to save this woman. I thought, there's something really wild wrong with this woman. And so I went around Fort Smith, as I'm wont to do, and talked about these problems of mine. Thank God A.A. says you get sick with your mouth, you get well with your mouth, because I love that part of this program. But I told a lot of people in Fort Smith, I said, you know, there's something the matter with my mother-in-law.
This was in 1949. And some woman told me, said, you know what your mother-in-law's problem is? It's alcoholism. I'd never heard that word before. I don't know if you all can remember the first time you ever heard the word alcoholic, drug addict. But man, my gut tied into that word. And I said, oh God, no. Yes, she said yes. And she said there is a group here in Dallas called Alcoholics, I mean in Fort Smith, called Alcoholics, and I wish I was in Dallas, named Alcoholics Anonymous, and said some of those guys have stayed sober over a year.
And so she told me, she said, one of them is Foss Harper and he's got a tailoring shop. Why don't you go talk to Foss? And I did. Now, I went into Foss's tailoring shop to talk about my mother-in-law. And I saw something and felt something when I walked in that tailoring shop that was the most incredible, gave me the most incredible feeling I had ever had up to that time in my life. I saw something in that man's eyes that was so wonderful and I wanted it.
I was willing to go to any length. I call that now spiritual guts. But you know his eyes had a voice and that voice said everything's going to be all right. And that's what I wanted. And I didn't talk about my mother-in-law. I told Foss that day, I said, you know, Foss, I've got a problem. I said, if I take a drink, I cannot identify what my behavior is going to be. But I understand. And, you know, I knew he did.
I had told people about this for years and everybody, my answer was go out and learn how to drink like a lady. And this man understood. And I stayed sober five years. Now, I don't think that Foss knew what to do with me. In this town back then, as far as I can remember, there were no women. Foss and David, there were about four guys and we'd meet in Foss's tailoring shop. But I never went downtown to a meeting.
Now, of course, my mentor in Dallas said to me one time, well, those five years were like you were sitting on top of the car. You know, if you get in a car, your chances are much better when you go around the curve of you staying in the car. If you're sitting on top of it, you're going to fall off. And the minute that I had some problems, of course, I was not in this program. The only thing I, and I see a lot of young people today and I know where they're coming from.
Hell, I couldn't understand what this big book said. I couldn't understand it at all. The only thing I understood was I was powerless over alcohol. I took that step at 16. I didn't know what you all were doing, but I had the intuitive desire not to drink anymore. And for five years, I didn't. Now, my mother-in-law, God bless her, we did a 12-step call on her. We took her to the hospital. They used to do that back in the old days and they'd bring them down on paraldehyde.
I don't know if any of you all know what that is, but it's, it's, wait a minute, it's formaldehyde and alcohol, right? Isn't that what paraldehyde was? Ether and alcohol. Ether and alcohol. And so they brought her down on that. Now, listen, that's not a bad deal because I don't know anybody back in those days who ever brought a bottle of that home with them. It smelled horrible. Nowadays, you know, they put you on pills and some people go home with them.
But after 10 days of that, we brought her home and she said to me, would you go get me a milkshake, which I did.
[00:40:06]
She seemed to have a desire to stay sober. When I got back from getting that milkshake, that woman was bombed out of her mind. And, you know, I thought A.A. didn't do it. I didn't do it and I lost faith in myself. I lost faith in you all and I planned my drunk right then. And it wasn't going to be a dull drunk. I was, you know, I, I, I don't ever, a dull, I don't want to be dull. I thought I'll, I'll go back to drinking by having a nervous breakdown.
That was very popular back then. And I had a nervous breakdown. I'd had five kids, you know, to try to make that hole in my gut fill up and to try to make my life better. And it'll fill it up literally. I got filled up literally with five, five kids, you know. But it didn't make it easier and it didn't give me that serenity I kept looking for. So I went to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and I had a heart specialist who found that I had a heart condition.
I was thrilled to death because I'm dramatic. I, I didn't want to come back to Fort Smith where all you all were waiting to find out what my problem was and say I had an ulcer for God's sake. So, and I had a cardiologist recently say the most horrible thing to me. He said, why don't you give up your heart trouble? And I said, my God, I've milked it for years. You know, I got my pill. When I come to, came to AA, I talk about it from the podium.
But anyway, the doctor said to me then, he said, you know, you don't have a drinking problem. I'd forgotten you all. You know, we've got killer minds and I can say that as a group because I've watched some of you and I've watched myself. We have killer minds. My mind forgot you all the day that I decided to have a nervous breakdown. I did not think about you all for 13 years. That was how long my research took.
I thought about you one time in those 13 years. I met a really good looking guy and he said he was in AA and I said I'm an honorary member of that group. He didn't call me. But I did not think about you all and this doctor said to me, why don't you go back to Fort Smith and have a couple of drinks before dinner? It's wonderful for a person with your heart trouble. Now, he called me a neurotic and I thought that was a wonderful description.
I just loved that neurotic. I didn't know what it meant. He said somebody as neurotic as you. Now, I couldn't wait to get back to Fort Smith and have that drink before dinner. And I remember that drink before dinner. I had bourbon. I had an old fashioned. I haven't had one since. God, I never want another one. It's bourbon and you put a lot of garbage in it. And I'll never forget that first swallow, hopefully.
Because that first swallow, after five years of not drinking, went down like the warm feeling that I had been looking for. And that first swallow had a voice and that voice said everything's going to be all right. And I looked for that voice for 13 years. By the time I got back out there, they had lots of medication. They had tranquilizers. I was one of the first persons to be put on Librium, which they assured me was non-addictive.
I never abused that Librium. I took it for it, four 10 milligrams a day for 13 years. However, they gave me open-ended prescriptions for second all. And eventually, you know, I was taking those to go to cocktail parties. I was also continuing on with my drinking pattern, which was periodic. Now you know why I am a miracle. Because there have been so many people who have died with a combination that I had.
And yet I didn't do it. Now in the 13 years, things began to happen that I feel are more tragic because they got my attention again. I had decided that, I mean, my behavior got so bizarre that it got my attention, right? I had decided in 60, wait a minute, this was the late 60s. I decided, by golly, I'm going to college. I never got a high school degree and I was always so ashamed of it. And I decided I'd go up to Fedville.
Now that's 120 miles round trip. And I had five children at home and a husband and a nice home. And I was going up to Fedville, Arkansas, the University of Arkansas. Now that isn't so bad. But I was so stoned that I thought that I was the sweetheart of Sigma Chi. I was running around with my oldest son's group. He was up there in college and I was. So I drove out of a 28-year marriage with a maverick.
And, you know, I was just as happy as I could be. I was so sick. In January of 1971, my ex-husband came to me and he said, I'm going to have to take the children, Lucy, because they're… I have to take the children, Lucy, because they're terrified of you. When you get drunk, you disappear, and they don't know where you are or what you're going to do to yourself.
[00:45:01]
And, you know, back then, when I was out researching, I had a dreadful habit of lying. I don't know if you all can identify with that. The lies became my mode of operation. I mean, I didn't know what the truth was. Now, I told Clyde that night, I said, or that Tuesday, when he came to me in January, I said, You don't have to worry. I've joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll never take another drink again as long as I live.
Now, even he knew better than that. He said, I don't think that's the way they work. I think they do it one day at a time. But, you know, he let me off the hook. Now, you know, there's something… I also had another defect, which was much harder to do, and that was to go back and make lies true. I don't know if you've ever tried that, but, my God, that's like backing into a situation where you've got to come up with the right combination.
It was horrible. But, anyway, what happened on the Thursday night after that was, it was true. Now, it says in our book, in the fifth chapter, there are three words that, to me, are the most powerful words that I have ever heard in my life, and that is no human power. I never thought I'd tell this story in Fort Smith because I never thought you all would ask me. You waited so long. Don't ever pray for anything. You'll get it.
On this Thursday night, I drove to a little church here in Fort Smith, Arkansas, called St. Bartholomew's, and I was home again. Now, when I went into that room that night, January 28th, there was a voice in there that said, everything's going to be all right. That voice is in rooms like this all over the world right now. It is something that is indescribable. Now, the no human power, I drove that old Maverick alone to that meeting.
That's why I can relax sometimes when we do 12-step work, because I know there is no human power. I drove to that meeting. I did not know where it was. I think that anybody who was at that meeting that night could bear me out. There was nothing in the newspaper about it. How did I know? I had been out of AA for 13 years. How did I know where that meeting was, what time it was? You know, this was the beginning for me of the miracles that really do happen in alcoholic phenomena.
And everybody here today has had that kind of experience. It is, well, it is indescribable. And I came back to AA, to my family, and there you were. You had been in existence those 13 years. I thought probably you had, you know, stopped meeting when I left, but you were still there. And that night, because there were only about seven people in that room, they concentrated on me and to say that I was alcoholic.
And I did not need any urging because I knew intuitively that this is where my answer was. That night was the beginning for me of the miracles that have happened since I have been in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I have got to share a funny with you. I picked Joe to be my sponsor. Now, I did not know how I knew to pick a sponsor. I mean, back then, I can remember Joe saying to me when I went to him to ask him to be my sponsor, he said, I do not think we have sponsors.
He said that to me. I picked Joe because he had more sobriety than anybody I had met. I did not care whether Joe was male or female. That did not really matter to me. What mattered to me was his length of sobriety and something in his eyes. Well, just recently, now this is, you know, you have got to have a sense of humor because they do say you sober up a horse thief in Alcoholics Anonymous. You have got a sober horse thief.
Fifteen years later, apparently this old timer had been kind of running this over in his mind, and this happened in Dallas the other day. He said, we always meet and then we go to eat lunch. And he said in a loud voice, well, we were talking about my sponsor in Arkansas, my long-suffering Arkansas sponsor. He said, well, you might know Lucy would get a man for a sponsor. I thought, that guy has got 23 years of sobriety.
One thing I had to learn, and I think one thing Joe has told me over the years, is that I cannot have any heroes, any human heroes in AA. I have got to realize that we are all humans now. We are all humans, but you better believe I have got to have some heroes in AA. There are people in AA that I have got to emulate. One of them is Joe. One of them was Chuck Chamberlain. And I have got to have those people in my life to try to emulate them, to try to copy them, to try to get what they have got.
You know, I used, my tactics were not very honorable when I first came to AA to get what you all had. If you tell me, if I thought you had something I wanted
[00:50:02]
and you tell me you stood on a corner out here for an hour, I would go do it. I did not want you all to have anything I didn't have. And so I have got to have those people, and that is why I really like to give an accolade to the people who have long-term sobriety because it is rare, it is so rare. It is particularly rare in Dallas. You know, you have got more here than we have got in most Dallas clubs in Alcoholics Anonymous down there.
I want to thank you all, and I particularly want to thank the committee again. This has been a wonderful experience, and I hope Brad survives. I have got two sons in Alcoholics Anonymous. I never thought I would get up in front of a group of people and say, God, I am so excited I am an alcoholic, and I am so excited my sons are alcoholics. You know, it is crazy, but it is true. Thank you all. I love you dearly.
Thank you. Thank you, Lucy. Well, when it is over, it is over. I would like for the speakers to stand up again. Lucy and Ted are still here.