Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Step Twelve 20th Spring Conference
- Speaker
- Michael E
- Date
- 2010-05-06
Transcript
Source: Michael E – Step Twelve 20th Spring Conference – 2010-05-06.mp3 File: michael-e-step-twelve-20th-spring-conference-2010-05-06.mp3 Duration: 01:17:01
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My name is Michael Earl, and I'm a female alcoholic. When somebody tells me they identify with my story, I want to say, Oh, I'm so sorry. I hate for anyone to identify with my story. But thanks, Lee, for having me back this year, and I just love doing Woodstock and hearing all the other speakers and their perspective on the steps. And there's no right way or wrong way to do these steps, you know. And I come from Alina sponsorship that comes down directly from Dr.
Bob, and that's what works for me. And I believe when you're really ready, God is going to put the perfect sponsor in your life. And so you don't need to worry about how somebody else does the step. You just do what your sponsor tells you. And I've had people say, Michael doesn't do it that way. I have a sponsor mad at me. But I mean, I truly know everybody does the steps different. And so when you're ready, God will direct you to what you need.
I needed a loving, nurturing sponsor, and that was Polly. I didn't need someone to say, Shut up and put the cotton in your ears and take it out of your mouth, or whatever they say. I didn't need that. I mean, my whole life I grew up like that. You know, I didn't need that. I needed a loving, nurturing sponsor. And I can remember Polly saying, If you need nurturing, go to the women. Don't go to the men.
They're not made that way. They're not made that way. They're not created that way. They want to fix you. You know, they can't just listen and nurture you. So… God gave me exactly what I needed. I want to talk a little bit about this book first, the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I love this book, and I couldn't read when I first got here. And I used to just go to sleep with it on my chest, trying to get it by osmosis, you know.
And I know you can't get it that way, but I got something. At least I could sleep if I had it laying on my chest, because that very first meeting was the very first time I felt like I ever belonged anywhere. And I thank God I did not have to go back out. It's not a prerequisite. I hear so many people talk about going back out. You don't have to go back out. But some of the people that I know that have absolutely the best sobriety are people that went back out over and over.
And when they finally got permanent sobriety, there was a gratitude there beyond any other gratitude, just struggling for it, struggling like they struggled. So I really appreciate the people that go back out but come back in, or go back out and come back in and they're still drinking. I really appreciate that. That's why we say, Please just keep coming back. But anyway, when this book was written, Alcoholics Anonymous had not broke off from the Oxford Group yet. And we have this group of drunks, and they decided they want to do something to help drunks all over the world.
In the Oxford Group, they didn't believe in drinking, and they didn't believe in smoking, and they did not particularly like the alcoholics because they were coming in there and getting sober, because they would relapse, testify drunk, they all smoked, and it just caused a little bit of problems. They started having their own meetings, you know, in their own homes of the alcoholic squad in the Oxford Group.
And, you know, in the first forward it says, We are 100 men and women who have recovered. There were only 79. Bill figured by the time the book was published, there would be 100. I never understood how that falls under rigorous honesty. But the truth is, it's rigorous self-honesty, is what the page says. And so anyway, they write this book that's to go out into the world, help alcoholics all over the world. There's no Oxford Group.
Oxford Group is in Europe and a few states on the East Coast, but it's not all over the United States. It's not all over the world. There's no such thing as AA. So if you wrote in this book, get a sponsor, I mean, if you're in California, you'd be in a lot of trouble because nobody would know what they were talking about, and nobody has the experience. So, I mean, I just know God wrote this book, and it was written in a
[00:05:04]
way that it would work without saying, Get a sponsor. They went around the sponsor thing by writing the book in a way that teaches you how to sponsor. That's what this book does. It's not about finding the perfect sponsor because it doesn't exist. It's about you sponsoring. You are going to learn so much more about yourself and the world around you and just God and life in general by taking other people through the steps. And that's how this book is written.
And the chapter in here on sponsorship is called Working with Others. And that's how they got around it. There's so many neat things about this book, the way it was written and knowing the history about it that just, I love the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, so I'm going to try to stick to the 12th step, not stick to the history. Anyway, was it Ralph, did you talk about the fourth dimension of existence or was it Bob?
One of you did talked about that fourth dimension of existence. And it's in the book in two places. It's in the book on page 8, and it says catapulted, and on page 25 it says rocketed, which is the most quoted page. But my favorite page is page 8 because on page 8 it gives you a description of what that fourth dimension is like. When you're in that fourth dimension, you're going to know happiness, peace, and usefulness.
And, you know, life goes on on life's terms, and, you know, we have some ups and downs in this program. And I've just come through a very, very hard period in my life with having a lot of surgeries. And I'm just going to say this from the podium to take the power out of it, but I hope the universe doesn't accept it. I have narcolepsy, and I don't know if you know what that is. My daughter has narcolepsy also. The gift is I was able to work around it my whole sobriety. I knew I had this problem where I'd just fall asleep, so I always worked like one block from where I lived.
And, I mean, I just made my life work. But it progresses, you know, and it's progressed to the point where I can be on the phone with somebody, and what happens when I have an episode is I'm right here present with you, and I go immediately into REM dream state, and I'm in two worlds at the same time. So I can be talking to you and say something off the wall. It's really embarrassing, and I'm finally—I'm so glad I finally found out what the problem was.
But I try to tell all the girls that call me, make sure you tell me, stand up, stand up, walk around, move. As long as I'm standing up, walking around and moving, it doesn't happen. It only happens when I'm sitting or laying down. And so, with the speaker sitting up in the front row, I'm so self-centered, I went over to Bob and Ralph and I said, Did you notice my eyes kept closing? And they said, No, we're too self-centered to notice anybody else.
So I guess we're all just still self-centered. So anyway, what I'm going through right now is that my daughter is dying. My daughter's dying of liver disease, and it's been very stressful. It's been a very long—it's a real torturous thing to have to deal with. We've taken on my granddaughter. She's 13 today, and wow, what an order. My husband's 74 and I'm 62, and now we've got this little teenager running around.
But she has really flourished since she's been with us, so it's obviously, it's God's will. It's very obvious. She's a wonderful child who's lived with her mom for a long time, not going to school because she's afraid she'd come home and find her mom dead. But anyway, even with all this stuff going on, all this stuff going on, I still at any minute can sit down. And think about that fourth dimension.
And I know that I'm still in it. I'm still in that fourth dimension. I, you know, when I'm with you, I have a happiness that's indescribable. And when I'm with you, I have a peace, a peace beyond serenity. But the most important thing for me is knowing that feeling of usefulness, having a purpose to be on this planet. And I know God wants me working with drunks. That's what He wants me to do. And I've managed to stay right in the middle of newcomers through everything that's going on.
[00:10:02]
And even though I feel like the worst is past, it's the newcomers that got me sober, that kept me sober. And I want to read a page to you. It's one of my favorite pages. Then I'll try and qualify just a little bit so you know I'm a real alcoholic. You know, I heard a speaker get up at the podium and say, If you haven't had a blackout, you're not an alcoholic. Oh boy, that was good. I was out the door. Turned around and came back in.
But because I've never had a blackout. I have not had a blackout. I've drank so much vodka down so fast that I stopped breathing, had to be rushed to the hospital and brought back to life. But that just didn't enter my mind when he was talking about blackouts. So I'm here to tell you, you can be an alcoholic and not have experienced blackouts. This is one of my favorite pages in the Big Book. It's the bottom of 14, top of 15.
I'm just going to read you one sentence out of it. It says, For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive those certain trials and those spots ahead. That sentence tells me two things. First of all, it tells me if I'm not working with others, I failed grow spiritually. I can pray, I can meditate, I can go to church, but if I'm not working with others, I'm just no earthly good.
And then it also tells me the only way I'm going to survive trials and low spots is working with others. And when we're going through some of these trials and low spots, we feel like we have nothing to give. We don't want to answer the phone. We just want to pull the covers over our head. And it just, it won't work. It just won't work. It'll take you back out to drink or take you to the asylum, in my opinion. Whenever I back off from AA because I've got to go take care of my daughter, I get sick, you know, and I come back in here and I just feel rejuvenated and feel like I've got my life back, and this has been a wonderful weekend for me.
I want to tell you about a girl I sponsor. Her name is Amy. And Amy's anorexic, alcoholic and anorexic, and she is the sickest girl I've ever worked with. And I'm a loving, nurturing sponsor. I'm not brutally honest, you know, but this time I had to be brutally honest with Amy because she's so obsessed about her body. The world centers around her body, runs 10 miles every day no matter what, and her food and just everything.
She was a lot of work. Finally, you know, I got her through her steps, but she wasn't going out there trying to be of service. You know, she did make her amends and she did a lot of things, but she wasn't sticking her hand out to newcomers. And finally she had something come down and she was over at my house, and I just told her the truth. I said, Amy, you are the sickest woman I've ever worked with. And I, if you don't find someone to help, you're going to die.
And I said, I want you on your knees every morning, and you pray for God to bring someone in your life for you to work with. And I was hoping God would bring her a drunk, a real wet drunk, a real wet drunk anorexic, the sicker the better, you know. So Amy did this. She got on her knees every day, was praying for God to bring somebody in her life for her to help. And on the fifth day of getting on her knees, for some reason she stayed in prayer and meditation a little bit longer.
And because she stayed in prayer and meditation a little bit longer, it was light outside, because she always runs in the woods when it's dark. So it was light outside, and she has a dog that she had rescued, a shelter dog. And this dog never leaves her side, never. He's glued to her. The dog's name is Bristol, so he always runs in the woods with her. And they took a different path because it was light.
And all of a sudden, Bristol took off from the path and he ran into the woods. It's about six o'clock in the morning, and Amy's calling Bristol, and Bristol will not come back. And so she finally had to stop running and go in the woods and look for her dog. I don't know if any of you have ever been a runner. I used to be a runner, and you don't want to stop for nothing. Your kid could be dying, and you don't want to stop when you really got your face going. So I knew it was a big deal for her to stop and go look for her dog. And when she finally caught up to her dog, her dog was licking a baby that was not quite two years old in the face.
This baby had no shoes on, did not have a diaper on, had a little T-shirt on, and was huddled up in the pine straw because it was under 40 degrees that day, just huddled up in the pine straw. And he's just licking this baby in the face, and— And he's just licking this baby in the face, and the baby's reaching out to the
[00:15:02]
dog, just wanting to touch the dog's face and laughing. And Amy just, she just was besides herself, you know. First of all, it was on the news. Everybody in the world was looking for this lost child. The sheriff's department mapped out an area which they thought a little child could walk, and she'd gone two miles beyond that. So they called off the search that night. And Amy's too self-centered to watch the news or read the paper or talk to a neighbor, so we don't know what's going on.
But Amy picks up this child, you know, and she picks up this child and tears start streaming down her face. And she had to walk over a mile before she found a house where she could get to a telephone to call the police. And the second call she made was to me. And she said, I get it. I get it. I know what it feels like to be useful. And it wasn't the way I planned on her getting it. God just, God has these wonderful ways of reaching people the only way they can be reached. And this was a win-win situation.
This little girl and Bristol were in the newspaper the next day on the front page, and it says, Rescue dog rescues child. And so the Humane Society got a lot of publicity out of it, and Bristol got a medal, and it just, it turned out to be such a wonderful thing. And then I was reading Runner's World in March, a couple of months after that, and there she was. She's in Runner's World because of her and her dog finding this baby.
Today she lives in Pennsylvania. She's a professor at a college. She's married. She works an awesome AA program. I'm just happy that I got to experience seeing her recover. Which brings me to my other favorite page in the book, and it's page 89. It says, Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.
This is our twelfth suggestion. Carry this message to other alcoholics. You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail. Remember, they are very ill. Life will take on a new meaning: to watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends. This is an experience you must not miss.
We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and each other is a bright spot of our lives today. And on the other page, it didn't say alcoholics. Bottom of 14, top of 15, it said others. So to me, that's part of that 12th step, that last part that says applying these principles in all my affairs. You know, we have to take everything we do in here and take it out there. And so it doesn't matter whether the person you're helping is in the program or out of the program.
If you're able to just get out of self and be of maximum service to God, that's how I started getting on airplanes. I was so terrified of flying, and when I was first asked to do this in Alcoholics Anonymous, I just, I thought I was going to die. I really thought I was going to die. And I was dropped off at LAX airport, and I'm there by myself, and I started to have a huge panic attack, and I just fell back in the chair, and I started to get some relief because I started tearing up and tears started coming down my face because I knew I wasn't going to keep my commitment. I knew I couldn't get on that airplane.
And I had this spiritual experience, and it was an inner voice that talked to me. It was loud. It was clear. I can always tell when it's not me because it always calls me Michael. I usually think me, myself, I. But it wasn't very sympathetic as I'm sitting there scared to death at the airport, and it just says, Michael, why don't you just get out of yourself and try and help somebody else? And I just kind of shocked, and I'm kind of looking around.
I'm going, God, this isn't an AA meeting. Who am I going to help? So I watched the escalator. You have to take an escalator up to where the planes are. At least back then you did. And there was a lot of older women, probably my age now, Polly, a lot of older women struggling with their bags, trying to get them up this escalator.
[00:20:01]
So I just ran over there, and I just started helping these people up with their bags. And a couple times they didn't know I was trying to be helpful. Oh, that always makes for an interesting time at the airport. And that's what I do if I'm in a lot of turbulence and I'm frightened on the airplane, I always pull out pen and pencil, and I write out the Third Step Prayer and put somebody else in it. I'll say, God, I offer Dave to Thee to build with him, to do with him as Thou wilt.
And I'll have pages and pages of the Third Step prayer written out with other people in it that are struggling with something. And every time that plane lands, I'm still here. So I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing because I want to keep getting what I'm getting. And not quite as terrified as I used to be, but it's still. And that's okay because in the Big Book it says we're to continue watching for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. It says it's not an overnight matter, that it should continue for a lifetime. Thank God, because I still have all this fear.
And then it says, at once we commenced to outgrow fear. It doesn't say we at once outgrow fear. It says we commenced to outgrow fear. So I'm 30 years sober and I'm still commencing. But I feel like that's covered in the Big Book, so as long as it's in the Big Book, I'm covered. I come from a pretty sad background, and I really don't want to talk too much about what it was like because this has been a really uplifting conference.
And sometimes if I tell my story, maybe all of us might want to go out and drink together or something. Certain parts I won't share because they're just so sad. And so I always thought my story was much too serious. When I got here, I heard that laughter was healing, but I always thought my story is just much too serious. And I'd hang out in the back of the room, and I have a friend named Teddy, and she calls the back of the room the half measures section or the denial section. Now, I don't hang out back there for either of those reasons.
I hung out back there because I couldn't read. You know, when I came into this program, I barely had a ninth grade education. I couldn't read very well, and I was terrified of that word anonymity. People had to help me say that word. For six months, I had lessons on saying the word anonymity. But I'd always hide out in the back of the room because I was terrified of being asked to read something. I never really actually got up at the podium and shared my story till I was 11 years sober, because that was another terrifying thing for me.
Four years of sobriety, I could not get up here and read How It Works. I just, I don't know why now. It just seems so silly, but that's just where my fear took me back then. What was I talking about? Got off on another subject. I do that to myself all the time. Oh, anyway, so I'm in the back of the room, and they're always saying that laughter is healing, and I'm not buying it. My story is much too serious. I had about two years of sobriety under my belt, and in California, it's pretty theatrical, you know, and we have a lot of really funny speakers. And speakers would get up and share something hilarious.
Everybody would laugh, and I was incapable of laughing. I just, I was incapable of laughing. But after about two years, somebody got up at the podium, shared something, I think it was Cliff R., and everybody burst into laughter, and I had the biggest belly laugh I have ever had. I mean, I laughed so hard, I just hurt. But right after having that experience, I found myself thinking, well, that might be funny for you, but there's nothing, absolutely nothing in my background I could ever laugh at.
About, I don't know how many years ago, 17 years ago or something like that, I was speaking in Seal Beach, my second time to ever give an AA talk. Polly really encouraged me to talk. She really loved… I was 10 years sober when I got Polly, and we both sponsored the same way, so I think we both came down from that line of sponsorship. But she really wanted me to talk from the podium. It's not in the Big Book. I don't have to talk from the podium if it's not in the Big Book, I don't have to do it.
Anyway, so I went in Polly's place because she was so sick. It was just a little meeting in our area. She was so sick, I went in her place, and it was the most depressing talk. I mean, I just wanted to go home and commit suicide. It was really bad. And I said to God, I said, If you want me doing this in AA, you're going to have to lighten up my story, because I can't take it. And so my second time to give a talk, my
[00:25:01]
daughter wanted to come hear me. My daughter had been in and out, in and out of this program. She was three years sober and leaving an AA dance, and a man came up to her and her girlfriend with a gun, and he kidnapped them, knocked the one girl out, and for two hours brutally raped my daughter. I hate the word raped because it sounds like it's about sex, and it's about violence and terror is what it's really about.
It took her two years to remember she did say a quiet prayer to live. And thank God this man was drinking throughout the whole ordeal. He had a bottle of alcohol in his pocket, and he was pretty inebriated when he was forcing her into the trunk. But she just got the courage to make some kind of an effort to save her own life, and she turned him around and she got him in the face. He fell down because he was so inebriated, and the gun went under the car, and she ran down the street naked and she got away.
Both girls lived. But a lot of my story is my having to seek God at a different level, because everything I knew about God, I just, I pretty much lost my faith in God. And my daughter drank again. So she was in and out, in and out, in and out. And she heard I was talking, so she was trying to get sober one more time, and this was towards the end of her drinking. She has almost 20 years now. Thank you. So anyway, she brought her program girlfriends over to my house.
We sat down and we had coffee, and my daughter proceeded to tell her friends my drunkalog. And for some reason, it was a little funnier coming out of her mouth than out of my head. I just never thought about how some of these things look through the eyes of a nine-year-old. She was nine years old, and what was happening to her at that time is I had a huge spiritual experience, and I turned to God for help.
I sought out this specific church. I counseled with this minister. I told him all about my spiritual experience and character defects and shortcomings, and he just really insisted if I got really active in this church, and I read all these inspirational books, and I did all this positive thinking, affirmations, that I could be everything that I ever wanted to be. After I got to this program, I heard a speaker at the podium say, If you're alcoholic, you cannot think your way into right actions.
He said, If you're alcoholic, you have to act your way into right thinking. And I'm absolute proof of that because I got very active in that church, read all those books. I could barely read them, so it took forever, and I did all that positive thinking and affirmations. And the only thing that resulted is I ended up having a torrid affair with this married minister. It absolutely infuriated his wife, and I stole the church money.
Now, that's what happened to me with the big huge thunderbolt spiritual experience, the kind that Bill had. That's where that took me, you know, is seducing a minister and stealing church money. And when it came to God, I knew I was, excuse the word, I was screwed, because I had just, I turned to God for help and I ended up stabbing him in the back, you know. But anyway, so she's sharing with these girls my drunkalog, and she's telling these girls about the minister, and I was just horrified.
She said, I'm dragging her off to church every day, and she's learning things like the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments. I'm constantly preaching all this religious stuff to her. She comes home from school at three o'clock in the afternoon, and she opens the bedroom door, and there, naked in bed with her mom was the married minister of the church. Now, when she first said this, I just, I felt the shame, embarrassment, guilt, and I felt this utter compassion for my daughter.
And I just said to her in the most compassionate way, I said, God, honey, that had to be a terrible shock. And she—I'm sorry. It still makes me laugh. She said, No, Mom, I don't know what shocked me the most, seeing that minister naked or seeing his artificial leg on the floor. Up until that time, I forgot he had this artificial leg.
[00:30:00]
It was a huge leg. But in ways that are important, he wasn't disabled. Hot flash. Having a hot flash up here. So, anyway, I didn't take my first drink until I was 25 because I was never going to be an alcoholic like my mom. And I stayed drunk, literally drunk, morning, noon, and night for six years, from 25 to 31, until I got to this program, and never drew a sober breath. I was not one that could go out and have a good time and socialize because I was always too drunk to get out of my house, and did a lot of humiliating, embarrassing things to my daughter.
You know, we lived right across the street from the school ground, which was a gang-related school, and I would do things—well, I was drinking scotch at that time, so I had to give up the scotch. I was drinking scotch, and I started seeing evil spirits because lights, gas, telephone, everything had been turned off. The landlord's trying to evict me, so I'm hiding out, keeping my drapes closed, and I'm seeing these evil spirits. And these evil spirits would do things like follow me around the house, and then I would crawl out of the house on my hands and knees, butt naked across the street to my daughter's school ground, and warn her and her gang friends not to come home.
The house is possessed with evil spirits. And this is the kind of stuff I did that makes me wish to God I was a blackout drinker. That I'm not. So, you know, my neighbors felt sorry for my daughter. They would feed her. Sometimes they would feed me. It was at the neighbor's house where I grabbed that vodka. Something happened outside. I grabbed that vodka so my daughter wouldn't catch me and drink it down so much so fast that I quit breathing.
But that experience really did get my attention. You know, I almost died under the influence of alcohol, and it scared me. But mostly I didn't want to do to my daughter what had been done to me. All the drama, all the chaos, all the police, all the ambulances. My mom was always trying to kill herself. And so I started listening to my daughter because she used to tell me on a daily basis, she would say, Mom, it's the alcohol, and if you wouldn't drink, you wouldn't do those things. She said, Just smoke pot.
And this is my only experience smoking pot because I was trying really hard not to drink that day. So I smoked this pot with my daughter and her friends. And afterwards, we're walking down the street. I have on these tight, tight jeans, and I have both my hands shoved down in my pocket. I don't know if I tripped over a crack or tripped over my own foot, but I tripped and I started to go down. I don't know if any of you have ever been on pot, but I have to tell you, for me it was different.
I had the sensation that I was in slow motion. It felt like the cement was coming up at my face, and no matter what I did, and I tried so hard, I could not get my hands out of my pockets. So you got to picture this grown woman laying with her face smashed in cement, her hands are still sticking out of her pockets, and all those gang members were laughing hysterically. They were absolutely hysterical. I hear you laugh a lot when you're on pot.
I know I wasn't laughing, but I could hear them laughing. I could hear them laughing, and as I heard that laughter, I had that moment of clarity. I knew right then and there, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that pot was not the answer. And I went right back to my drinking. And what finally happened for me is I reached the place you read in the Big Book about facing those four hideous horsemen: terror, bewilderment, frustration, and despair. I woke up one morning one more time, and I felt those feelings.
How could this happen again? Because every day I was trying not to drink. And I'm naked, I'm laying in a puddle of fluid. I don't know what the fluid was. I've got Doritos all over me. My daughter's picking them off. And I took those first three steps, and I didn't even know what the first three steps were. But I knew that I was powerless over alcohol, and my life had never, ever been manageable. And I already believed that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, but I didn't think He would because of what I'd done to the church.
And this was my way of turning my will and my life over the care of God, as I just got on my knees and I said, God, please, please, I don't care how you do it, but please just get me sober. And I managed to get to a telephone.
[00:35:00]
I called a prayer line that was affiliated with the church I'd been in, and I asked them to pray for me. In my mind, I thought if God wouldn't listen to my prayers, maybe He would listen to their prayers because they're good people. And they prayed for me for 30 days, and within 30 days I was sober. And I ended up in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I would never have gone to AA. My mom was in and out of AA, and she proved to me AA didn't work. I mean, she ran around with a lot of sleazy guys.
There's also sleazy women. You know, people just take up space in these rooms. And not these rooms. Not a convention. You're usually pretty serious. But in meetings, they're just taking up space. They don't care about the traditions. They don't care about the steps. They don't care about your anonymity. And I am not dumping myself in a meeting like that. I take that stuff to my sponsor, and I carry the message in a meeting.
I've had to learn a lot of lessons. About traditions, you know, the traditions are just so powerful. Anyway, within 30 days, I was sober. I was trying so hard not to drink. I went over to my mom's house, and the mayor of Signal Hill was driving by, who was in AA, and he knew Mom was drinking again, so he stopped and tried to talk her into going to a meeting. And she wouldn't go. She wasn't ready. But I was pretty desperate.
I was desperate enough to go, and he seemed a lot safer than the men my mom hung out with. The men my mom hung out with, several of them made serious passes at me, and I was 12 and 13. And that's what I thought about the men in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think our actions out there are very important because we might be the only copy of a Big Book someone comes in contact with. But that meeting just, that's the meeting that changed my life.
I don't know if I would have stayed if it was any other meeting. God just knew I was ready, and everything I needed was given to me at that time. They made me wait in the parking lot. They wouldn't let me go into the meeting because I was very sick, probably going into DTs. One of the old-timers ran across the street, bought me two beers, and made me drink them before the meeting. And I was thinking, well, maybe AA is not so bad after all.
And that's the last drink I ever had. That was on November 10th, 1979. So that's, I don't celebrate my birthday till three months later because we have traditions, you know, that tradition we have no opinion on outside issues. Well, those diet pills were an outside issue. And so we have no opinion on it. So I just kept taking them. I was on a lot of speed, and— When you're on speed, you can do a really fast fourth step, I want you to know.
Boy, I got right into those steps. But what that did for me is it revealed to me that I was not sober if I was abusing these pills. So I gave those up January 23, 1980, and that's when I celebrate my AA birthday. I want to talk about working with others is really what I want to talk about. You know, the step says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of doing these steps. That spiritual awakening comes as a result of doing the steps.
I know a lot of people think that they have to have a huge thunderbolt lightning spiritual experience. Well, I told you what my thunderbolt lightning experience did for me wasn't exactly what I had planned. But I have several first edition Big Books, and I have the second printing of the first edition. And that's where they added the spiritual appendix that Bill—because in the first printing, everybody thought they had to have these huge emotional displacements and rearrangements.
And in Spiritual Appendix, which was added in 1941, they talk about having a spiritual awakening of the educational variety. And I know for me, as a result of working these steps, one day I was just not the person that I used to know. Everything about me was different. People noticed it way before I noticed it. There was a day all of a sudden I couldn't steal anymore. I couldn't prostitute anymore. I couldn't—I mean, if I accidentally walked out with something in the bottom of my cart. You know, after going to the store, I'd run back real fast and try and pay for it or give it back or something.
I just, as a result of the spiritual awakening of the educational variety is how I changed. And I always want people to read that spiritual appendix, especially if you're thinking you're not going to get it because you haven't had a thunderbolt lightning spiritual experience.
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And then it says that we try to carry this message to alcoholics. And what is the message that we're trying to carry to alcoholics? We're trying to carry the message of the 12 steps having that spiritual awakening. We don't have to find God to do the steps. We do the steps to find God. And, you know, on page 55 it talks about the consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you. And that consciousness of your belief might change over the years.
I know mine has made several changes as I have stayed sober and I keep seeking God. My relationship with God changes. One thing about my daughter's kidnapping is I had to seek for a very long time to come to terms with the God I have in my life today. And what I can tell you about the God I have in my life today is I turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I don't understand Him. Because I don't understand God, and if I did, we'd all be in trouble.
I mean, He's got to be more powerful than my understanding. But the one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I've had several spiritual experiences, and because they were so powerful, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is good and good is God, and if it's not good, it's not of God. There is a difference between man's world and God's world, and that kidnap happened in man's world. It had nothing to do with God.
And maybe I'll share about my experience before I close. I don't know. We'll see where we are. But I want to talk about some of the blessings that I've had from people that I sponsor. And I did already mention about the last part of that 12th step, applying these principles in all my affairs. Everything in my life that has changed for me that is not part of AA, you know, like becoming a good worker, becoming a citizen of the community, being a good mother, all those things came from applying those principles in all my affairs.
I can't stress enough how important that part of the 12th step is. We have to take it from here and take it out there and be an example of the Big Book. But anyway, I've got so many blessings in my life of people that I've sponsored. I didn't know they were blessings at the time. You know, sometimes you feel like you just want to go shoot yourself. I sponsored too many people. I just sponsored too many people. You can't sponsor too many people.
I mean, really, when my mom was dying of cancer, it was my—I only have one sponsor, and she has a lot of sponsees, so she's not going to have time to be there for me. But I'm telling you, I sponsored so many women, I was never alone. They all got out of themselves. They made food. They brought it over when I was watching her. They would watch her when I'd go speak at a meeting. They would help. Sometimes I had to take my mom to work in a wheelchair, and it's just all those women that I sponsored, all of a sudden they were there.
They were holding me up. They were the ones holding me up. And so I don't think you can sponsor too many women. And I have found, you know, if you are, one will drop off, and if you need another one, one will come in. So it just kind of stays in balance. If we look at it with the right attitude. But I want to share a couple stories with you, and I want to share—and is this—I asked Cheryl if I could share about this story.
Cheryl is somebody that I met in Seaside, Oregon, and I was speaking here some place, and everyone's saying, There's this girl looking for you. There's this girl looking for you. Well, she had lived in Seaside, Oregon, for nine years, but she came from Florida, and she was wanted on charges of kidnapping. And in Oregon, everybody recommended that she not come back, not turn herself in. But, you know, the book says God is the director.
And so with all those people telling her, she had that divine unrest. You know, she just couldn't get comfortable, and she knew she had to do it. And she was directed to come back to Florida, and she just happened to see I was speaking at this convention, and I had done workshops in Oregon, and we sat down and we talked about it, and I just—I totally supported her 100%. She was willing to go to jail, just not to feel that way anymore.
And God is just so merciful. God gives grace, and the things that have happened for her today just shouldn't happen, because that's a felony. Felony charges. She turned herself in. She didn't get— She didn't get the five years that she thought she would get, that she was willing to serve. They gave her time served, the time that she'd served before she went to
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Oregon, and gave her other things to do to make restitution. But the fabulous thing about it today is she's not supposed to have a passport. She has a passport. She is not supposed to vote. She's a felon. You're not supposed to vote. She can vote. She is not supposed to be able to go into jails. She takes a meeting into the jail that she was in when she was first arrested for kidnapping. Those things aren't supposed to happen.
But don't tell God that. And those are the things that have such a spiritual effect on me when I see God's grace and what God can do, and all these voices that say, No, no, no, no, no, he can't, he can't, he can't. You know, we just, I just, that unrest that we have when God's the director is just unreal. And today she's free. Today she's free, and she knows that feeling of being useful. She's very, very active, and I'm very proud of her.
And Lynn, the other girl with me, she was a, what do you call it with mortgages? Yeah, something like that. She worked in the field of mortgages. And, you know, when everything hit the fan, everybody was losing their houses and their cars. She has been fully self-supporting ever since I've worked with her for 14 years. And all of a sudden she lost her job, she lost her two houses, she lost her car. And she was just devastated, devastated.
And I just said, Pack up your stuff and come live with us. So Lynn came to live with us. And, you know, I thought I was helping Lynn, but I wasn't helping Lynn. Lynn has been the gift there for me. She has helped me so much with my granddaughter. I don't know if I could do my daughter and my granddaughter at the same time. And she took her from a fourth grade reading level and got her up to the seventh grade honor roll.
And I know that's just a direct result of Lynn being there, being there for me. But she calls me sponsor. Now this is one of my favorite ones. Polly and I just love Susie. Oh, Davy loves Susie too. Susie was somebody I sponsored in California, and she truly, I guess I would say, is the hardest case I ever sponsored. Do you think so, Polly? Honest to God, hardest case. I mean, she—yeah, that we sponsored.
She got her after I left. And, oh God. Well, we both sponsored her for a while after I left, but I think she just kind of has turned it all over to Polly now. But she'd always say I was the nice one and Polly shot the darts. But she would—she just fell in love with me. You know, I don't know why. I was sharing at a treatment center she was at, and she latched on to me, and she just wouldn't let go.
She wouldn't quit drinking, but she wouldn't let go. And we talked to her about not drinking in between meetings. And this one time she came to the meeting and she was drunk, and I said, Susie, you've been drinking. And she said— Well, you didn't say I couldn't drink during a meeting. And one time I was speaking someplace and I was so upset with Susie, and she's always trying to buy her sobriety, trying to buy me gifts and things.
And it's tempting sometimes. You know, it's tempting sometimes. But I wouldn't accept it. I mean, I heard her sneaking in my house, sneaking tiptoeing to leave something on a chair back there. And I just said, Don't you dare, Susie! It's like I had eyes in the back of my head. She tried to give me a thousand dollars for a tax thing that I had that year, and that was tempting. But thank God I didn't do it. God took care of that problem.
So she just was always trying to buy her sobriety. But she would embarrass the heck out of me. I'd be in a meeting like this. California, this is like a meeting. And I'd be the speaker at the podium, and she'd come in drunk and demand to see her sponsor, pointing at me, knocking over chairs and knocking over tables and pushing people aside, and I just want to crawl under the podium. If you want what I have, you do what I do.
And you can have Susie. Christmas time, at Christmas time, Susie's still drunk, and she bought me a first edition Big Book. This was my very first edition Big Book because
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she knew how much I loved the history and AA. And I called Polly up and I said, Polly, oh my God, Susie gave me a first edition Big Book for Christmas. I mean, I can't accept it. She's drunk. And Polly said, If anybody's earned that Big Book, you've earned it. You keep it. So now, in Susie's sobriety, she likes to call me up and say, Remember that big book? And I said, Don't even think about it. That's my book. So, but the gift of getting to see her finally get sober, what finally happened is one more time she'd been drinking for three months, and she was in a recovery home in Orange County, and I'm in Los Angeles County, and it's not working between us.
It's not working. And she called me up and she's, This is Susie. I've been drinking. How long have you been drinking, Susie? Three months. I said, Honey, I just don't think there's anything I can do for you at this point until we get you sober. I said, I want you to call Dr. Paul, who lived near her. That's the one who wrote Doctor Alcoholic Addict in the third edition. Call Dr. Paul. I want you to just call him and tell him that I said for you to call him. So it's six o'clock in the morning, and she puts down the phone, she calls Dr. Paul. Dr.
Paul answers the phone, and she goes, Dr. Paul, this is Susie, and I've been drinking. And he goes, You've been drinking? And she said, Yes. And he said, For how long? She said, Three months. And he goes, You've been drinking for three months, and you call me at six o'clock in the morning. Call me at ten! And he slammed the phone down on her. And she was so upset that somebody in the Big Book could treat a newcomer that way. Oh, she was so indignant, so indignant.
And she wouldn't call him back, but Paul knew the person who ran that treatment center, and so he went. To Susie. Of course he'd go to Susie. And he talked to Susie and he said, I want you to call me every morning at this time for 30 days, and I want you to tell me what Step One means to you. So Susie started calling Dr. Paul, and every morning she'd have some psychobabble, something that she thought a doctor might want to hear, or she'd say something she heard in a meeting, or, I mean, she'd always come up with this BS. And Paul would just say, Susie, you're gonna get drunk, and slam the phone down on her.
And about the 28th day of her calling, she's upset now, and she's really crying, and she says—she gives him this BS and stuff, and she's crying, and Dr. Paul says, Susie, are you crying? And she goes, Yes, you're making me cry. And he goes, Nice touch. Call me in the morning. Slam. So on the 30th day, Susie calls Dr. Paul, and she says, I don't know what you want me to say. All I know is I can quit drinking, but I can't stay stopped.
And Dr. Paul said, That's it, Susie. That's it. We have to find a way to stay stopped. I don't know why that worked. And he turned her back over to me, and we got her through her steps, and she was able to get sober. I just don't know what the key is, but you just—sometimes God being the director, having someone else take over the show. She just needed that 30 days of really being put on the spot every morning, I guess. I don't know. But she's been a real gift for Polly and I.
She's been a real challenge for Polly and I. She has just been a big part of our sobriety, hasn't she? She really has. Vivian, I know a lot of you know the ladybug story. When I first moved here to Georgia, it was very difficult for me. I was having a nervous breakdown. I was not feeling the love of AA. In my area, there were very few women in the meetings. It was pretty rural. Now it's not. But it's nothing for me to go up to a newcomer and assign myself sponsor, because I'm the one that's hurting. I need them.
They don't need me. And so I was assigning myself sponsor to everybody. But anyway, I spoke in Hilton Head, and a woman named Vivian was my hostess, who I didn't see until I actually talked. But she ended up calling me and asking me to sponsor her. And I took her on. She'd been in AA for four years, but she was doing that marijuana maintenance program. And she really had no one ever said, Don't do marijuana.
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Nobody had said that to her. And I just told her I couldn't sponsor her if she was smoking pot, and so she gave up smoking pot. I got her to Step Eight, where we had to put her daughter Tina at the very top of the list. Tina was nine years old, and Tina died in a car accident as a direct result of Vivian's alcoholism. Vivian never took responsibility. She blamed it on God. It was all God's fault. It's all God's fault that her daughter died.
And she was in the hospital with her own injuries for over a year. When we got to Step Eight, I had her put Tina at the top of the list, and it was the shock on her face. I didn't really get it until I saw the shock on her face that she hadn't taken responsibility. And I said, you know you're responsible for your daughter's death. And she, you know, she just burst out crying, and she said, No, it's God's fault, it's God's fault, it's God's fault. I said, You are responsible.
You're the one who popped the pills and drank down the alcohol. You put your daughter in the car, and you got in the car, and you drove. You are responsible. And I think Vivian drank for another 14 years over this. She couldn't take responsibility. And I believe God allows us to blame anything on Him because He knows we can't take responsibility until—I mean, she couldn't take it until she got to us. She really needed us.
And I told her, We don't have to do anything alone in AA. I wanted her to write her daughter a letter. The Big Book says if you can't meet them face to face, write an honest letter. So I told her to write her daughter a letter, and the following week we would go to the graveside in Columbia, South Carolina, because I had surgery scheduled like the next day or something. So I had this surgery, and I'm back home, and she calls me. She is very suicidal. She cannot deal with it.
She cannot deal with it. And I knew we couldn't put it off till next week. I knew we had to go do it now. As bad as I felt, just having surgery, got in the car and we went, and a whole lot of really spiritual things happened at the graveside. We had a hard time finding it. It was in June. It was 106 degrees out, and we're both just profusely sweating. And it's a little plaque. It's not a big thing.
It's a little teeny plaque. We finally found it, and she wrote this beautiful letter, which she read, and then she buried her chip at the graveside. And when she started to read this letter, this wind started blowing all around the graveside. We looked. The trees weren't blowing, bushes weren't blowing. My hair was blowing all over. Hers was—the wind was just around the graveside. As soon as she buried the chip, the breeze stopped.
It just blew during the reading of the letter and her burying the chip. And so a little ladybug flew past me and it flew onto Vivian's arm. And I could see she was just kind of mesmerized by this ladybug. But I went and I sat in the car because I was dying, I thought. But I started to worry about her because it was so hot out there and she's just standing there for so long. And finally she sat down. I knew something was happening, but I was still worried.
And when she got back in the car, she told me she couldn't leave. Well, that ladybug was on her because when her daughter was alive, ladybugs were her very favorite thing. And when the ladybug flew off, we don't believe the spirit was in the ladybug or anything like that. I don't know what we believe, but when the ladybug flew off, she actually heard her daughter's voice. And her daughter's voice—now she's wanting to commit suicide—her daughter's voice says, Mom, you have to get on with your life, and you have to help other mothers recover so more children don't die of this disease.
And that was a huge spiritual experience for Vivian. Everything about her face was different when she got back in the car. And she had this motivation for working with others that was—I cannot tell you how many women she has helped, in the rooms, out of the rooms. She has just been awesome. And this story, I shared it for a long time when I'd speak at conventions. I don't share it anymore because Vivian shares it.
She's now speaking. But things that have happened as a result of this ladybug story—oh, there are so many things, miracles that have happened. Vivian's going to write a book called Ladybug Chronicles. She's just trying to figure out how not to do it and break AA's anonymity. I mean, how to do it without breaking anonymity. But I was in Missouri and this woman came up to me and she said, Are you Michael? And I said, Yes. She said, I just want you to know that ladybug story literally saved my life.
She said, I just want you to know that ladybug story literally saved my life. And she proceeded to tell me that her sponsor heard me talk and got the CD and gave it to her. She had four children that had been taken out of the
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home because she was an unfit mother. And that was her excuse to keep drinking. She could not quit drinking if she didn't have her children. And so her sponsor was hoping she'd get the message, At least your children are still alive. You know. Anyway, so she listened to the tape and the ladybug story, which she really liked, but it wasn't a burning bush. And she had already made plans to commit suicide, which she—were planned for the next day.
You know, seconds and inches, seconds and inches in this program. So she went the next day under a bridge. It was where an overpass to a freeway. She had a bottle of alcohol, which she drank down quickly, and she had razor blades, and she put the razor blade to cut her wrist. And as inebriated as she was, what happened is when she started to cut her wrist, a ladybug landed right where she was cutting. And if she had heard that story a month ago, it wouldn't have had the impact that it had. She just heard it last night.
And that ladybug landing where she was cutting, she couldn't cut. She couldn't do it. As drunk as she was, she called her sponsor. She had a year of sobriety when she told me that story, and she had her kids back. So those are some of the things that you get to be part of, you know, by just being willing to suit up and show up. Vivian sponsors an entertainer that performs all over, and she doesn't believe in God.
So her God was GOD, group of drunks. And it worked really well for her, and she sponsored a lot of women. But she finally got her first role that she had to go out of the state for and do this performance. And she did the performance, and they have a cast party afterwards. And at the cast party… She had to show up because she had a lead role. And at the cast party, there's lines of coke and everybody's drinking, you know, and group of drunks or group of drunks are in Hilton Head, you know.
And she, the session to use hit her hard, so she went to the phone and she called Vivian, and Vivian wasn't home, a human power. The book says, There'll come a day, no human power. Then she called me. I wasn't home, another human power. So she went into the bathroom and she got on her knees and she prayed to a God she didn't believe in. And it was more like a challenge. She just said, God, if you're real, you're going to have to do something because I'm going to drink. She got off her knees.
She left the party. She went to a cafe. She ordered a glass of wine and a salad. And the waiter came back, set the wine down, which she had up. She was about to drink it. Then he set down the salad, and in the salad was a live ladybug, just flip-flopping around, you know. Now, anybody who knows Vivian or knows me knows the ladybug story. And for her, that was the only way you probably could have reached her, is seeing that ladybug. She felt like she was back in Hilton Head.
She felt like she was with her sponsor. Her group of drunks were there, and she came to believe in a power greater than herself, and it wasn't her home group. And so now she's very active in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think I'll share with you, how much more time do I have, Lee? Yay, thank you. My husband and I work with soldiers at Fort Gordon. It's one of the last treatment centers for the military.
And they've been trying to shut it down for a long time, but now that Iraq has happened, there's three different phases there and a lot more soldiers. Anyway, the soldiers come over to my house every Wednesday night, and I get them into the Big Book, and we do a Big Book study. And it's just, I only have them for four weeks, so I do overall history, first step out of the Big Book, second, third, show them how to do a fourth step.
And luckily, where they're going, I know people, and I can kind of hook them up. I've learned that don't depend on the soldier calling because they won't do it. So I call the person going where the soldier's going, and I put them together on the phone. I guess that's a little controlling, do you think? It works. Anyway, so these soldiers, and the reason why I started bringing them over to my house is because they were sharing about autobiographies as being a fourth step, confronting their parents being a ninth step.
You know, I just knew they really need to get into the Big Book. And so I've been doing this for a lot of years, maybe 12 years now I've been doing this. And it was really painful when they started going to Iraq with 28 days of sobriety when they were going to Iraq. So I have lots of soldiers that went with the first group. I have lots of soldiers that are coming and going now. And AA's actually been started in Iraq by one of our soldiers that
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was kicked out of the program and kicked out of the military, but he got a civilian job that took him to Iraq. He hooked up with an old Navy SEAL. They started the first meeting in Iraq, and it's registered with New York. It's just so amazing. But anyway, this one surgery I had, it was a back surgery, and it was very serious. And I woke up Wednesday morning, and I told my husband, I don't think I can meet with the soldiers tonight. And of course, I just had surgery, you know, but I kept hearing my sponsor's voice.
She used to say, You can be sick in bed as well as you can be sick in a meeting. You're going to feel like crap, so you might as well feel like crap with your butt planted in a meeting. I just couldn't get it out of my head, so I decided that I'd just suit up and show up. I didn't have to drive anywhere. I just had to go into what I call my AA room. And so I showed up that night, and I don't know, we had about 35 people, mostly soldiers, but some people from our home group.
And we were on Step Two. There was a man sitting right here next to me, and when the word God came up, he just jumped up, and he's towering over me, and I can feel the spit on my face. I mean, he's that angry. And he said, If there's a God, it's going to take a burning bush to prove it to me. And I would say, I used to say, Oh, I'm out of burning bushes, was my first thought. That was a lie. It takes me a while to get honest. My first thought was, I can't believe I got out of bed for this crap. That was my first thought.
I don't know why. I don't know why. I still have a little bit of that wanting to look good up here, I guess. Anyway, then I asked for help. I just asked God, help. I don't know what to say to him. And then all of a sudden, I remembered this man named Lee, this man sitting next to me is named Lee. I remember this man named Lee that wrote me a letter two years after I had spoken, Gulf Shores, Alabama.
And at that particular conference, over the speaker on the stage, and it was like an auditorium, over the stage was this great big Mardi Gras multicolored sign that said Jubilee, because they call it Gulf Shores Jubilee. And anyway, this man wrote me a letter that he wasn't registered for the conference, but he was trying to make the decision whether to commit suicide or to drink again because he knew there was no God. And for some reason, he came to the meeting I was speaking at. Now. If it wasn't me, it would have been any speaker.
It had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with him. And he was the first one in the meeting. He sat down in a chair. If he hadn't sat down in that chair, he would not have had this experience. But he wrote me that the whole time I was sharing my story, he didn't hear a word I said. He was looking down at the floor, just thinking of me, me, pour me, pour me another drink. But when I started to close my story with how I came to terms with God, and I started talking about my daughter's kidnap, somehow that got his attention and he could hear it. And when I got to the part where I came to terms with the God I have in my life, the part that says God is good and good is God, he said this force that he could not explain.
It was just a force was pushing his chin up. He couldn't stay looking down. So this force is pushing his chin up, and when his chin came all the way up and he opened his eyes to look at the speaker, I'm saying God is good and good is God, and my body is blocking the whole part of the sign that says Juba. The only part he can see in big neon lights is his name, Lee. So he looks up. I'm saying God is good, good is God.
Lee, I'm talking to you. He said it was just like, I mean, like electricity went through him when he looked up and there's his name on stage. But he still doubted it. You know how we doubt these things, and he still doubted it. But his life made such a dramatic change that he shared it in the letter. But it took him two years to write me that letter, to come to terms with that being his experience. So I'm sharing that with the guys that are in this room.
And we have, just like those bushes right there. On the couch I was sitting on, two bushes, and we have to shove everything aside to get all these soldiers in the room. And so we, somebody shoved one of the bushes into a corner where there was a halogen lamp. And it's facing Lee. And this is the honest-to-God truth. I'm at the part about telling about the other man, Lee, saying, God is good, good is God, and the halogen lamp caught on fire and the bush caught on fire.
My house is on fire! Oh my God! I didn't even think of him. I didn't think of him at all. My house is on fire. I just had surgery. I'm probably on a little medication. Oh my God! I was freaking out. I'm screaming at the soldiers to do something, do
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something, do something. They got into action really fast. They got the fire out. They took the lamp out, the bush out. They brought fans in and kind of blew the smoke out. And it wasn't until my butt hit the seat that I got it. So I sat back down. We all sat back down and I went, Oh my God. This man demanded a burning bush and God delivered it. And you could feel that thought go all around the room.
Like every soldier got it. It was like a spiritual experience for every one of us in that room. There's nothing you can put in your body that's like a spiritual high. I mean, I didn't have to take any more medication. I didn't feel my pain. I mean, I quickly, quickly recovered from that surgery. And this group of soldiers, they were so transformed. They went back to the treatment center, and the treatment center was so impressed.
That they started bussing them over to our house. And this is a big white bus that looks like a prison bus that you see on the highway with prisoners getting off and picking up trash. Every Wednesday night, here comes this big bus, and we live on a little cul-de-sac, and it makes that turn, and it has to go all the way down, has to circle the cul-de-sac, come all the way back, stop in front of my house.
Guys aren't in uniform, so these roughnecks get off the bus and come into my house. And this has been happening. The bus has been coming for about eight years, and not once has one of the neighbors had the courage to ask me, What goes on in your house on Wednesday night? I think I'd ask somebody, especially if I thought they might be prisoners. But those are some of the great gifts that I get to share.
I've got so many. I'm going to try and share two last ones with you. It's about Amanda, Arkansas Amanda and Airplane Anna, both soldiers that ended up living with me for long periods of time. But anyway, Arkansas Anna, I had already worked with Anna, Airplane Anna, and she moved back home because she didn't have a driver's license or a car, so she moved back home. And then Amanda came right from Iraq, and so I got her right from Iraq, and I got her through her steps.
She was in mortuary affairs, and I'm telling you, that was a rough inventory. And got her through her steps, and 28 days of sobriety, she goes back to Fort Campbell. I'm having back surgery, so I have to lay down. I can't sit. I lost the ability to sit. I have to lay down or stand up. So we drive to everywhere. I'm laying on the floor of the van. We drive everywhere. And we're going through Fort Campbell to get to Minneapolis where I was speaking, 7,000 people.
It's the biggest conference, yearly conference. And anyway, so we stopped there to see Larry and Amanda. And I get a phone call from Anna, and Anna's drunk, and she's begging to come live with me. Anna's drunk and she's begging to come live with me. And I said, Honey, that's fine, but I won't be home till Tuesday. She started crying, and she said, She won't make it till Tuesday. She'll be dead. Please, please, can she get on a plane to meet me where I'm at? Thought she was in a blackout. I said, Call me in the morning.
So now we're having breakfast with these two soldiers, and the phone rings, and it's Anna, and she's sober. She's sober. She wasn't in a blackout. She's sober. And she made all the arrangements. She was going to fly into Minneapolis at 6 o'clock, and it worked for when we were getting there and my husband going to pick her up. So anyway, Larry whispers in my ear that Amanda has nothing to do for four days, so we kidnapped Amanda, who has 28 days.
We stopped at Walmart, bought her a dress, and I told her she has to 12-step Anna. She starts crying, I don't even know what the 12th step is. I forgot. And anyway, so at the convention, my husband went to pick up Anna, and she was pulling into the dock, called him, said she'd meet him in baggage. So she and my host's husband were waiting for her and waiting and waiting and waiting, and she never showed up.
So they thought she was in a bar drinking someplace. Got security, go looking for her, didn't find her. Finally, security called the Minneapolis police, who were waiting for Anna when she got off the airplane. Anna had Decided to drink during the flight and the layover, and she got quite drunk, and she went into a blackout and she— And she went into a blackout, and she punched the man she was talking to, and she interfered with flight crew.
She had five charges against her. So the minute she gets off the plane, they're cuffing her behind her back, and she goes, You can't arrest me!
[01:15:00]
You can't arrest me! I'm on my way to an AA convention! And they're going, AA? Okay, airplane Anna, let's go. So when we finally were able to bail her out, it's the police that gave her the nickname Airplane Anna. And so we tease her a lot, and we call her Airplane Anna. And at that conference, the clerk of courts was there. There were lawyers there. There were judges there. They didn't make any special things for her, but what they did is they, instead of coming back in 30 days to face the charges, they were able to make it 90 days to give her a longer period of sobriety.
And when she went back to face the charges, the clerk of courts was waiting for her, and the whole justice system got her where she needed to be when she needed to be there and did not give her a minute to think of anything except getting through these charges. She went back to school, got a degree, and she went back into the military as a lieutenant. Amanda went to Korea, and she ended up drinking again.
She came to live with us. She lived with us for two years. She's going to school to be a vet. We bought a kennel where we have, half of the kennel is for rescue animals and half is room, board, and care. We just want this to pay for that and pay for her school becoming a veterinarian. And she is the daughter that my husband never had. And she is the most powerful woman I have ever met. And this girl comes from a horrific background.
And to get to see recovery like that in this program, this is an experience you must not miss. And we know you wouldn't want to miss it. Thank you.