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Source: Olivia W – DAAR Palm Springs CA – Reel 0805-811 (1983) – 1983-06-05.mp3 File: olivia-w-daar-palm-springs-ca-reel-0805-811-1983-1983-06-05.mp3 Duration: 00:48:03
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We have a very lovely lady who has volunteered to talk, and I'm sure that you all enjoy her very much. I met her last night for the first time, and I asked her if there was anything that I could say or report, having just met her, and she said, no, just tell them I'm an alcoholic. So now I'm going to introduce you to Olivia W. from Midland, Texas, who is our speaker, who has been very kind to speak for us. Olivia.
Hi, everybody. My name is Olivia, and I am an alcoholic. And I really do need to clear up one thing. I did not volunteer to do this. Every speaker who has gotten up here this weekend has thanked the committee for inviting them to be here. I wasn't even invited. They came to my room late Friday night and told me that I was it, and so here I am. I would like to add that my personal prayers and thoughts are with Colleen and her family, as I know yours are too.
I'm very disappointed that they could not be here with us this weekend. I do, however, want to say that I feel very honored and very privileged that this committee believed in me enough to ask me to share with you all this Sunday afternoon, and I'm very grateful to be here. I'm a member of the anonymous group in Midland, Texas, and I think that it's the finest AA group in the world. I got sober there in the town that I was born in, that I lived a lot of years in, that I always went back to in my search for a way to get well. You know, it was always back to Midland.
And we have a group there that's full of a lot of real bad people, a lot of real bad drunks, people who are very sick, just like I was very sick, and people who are finding answers there all the time. I found a lot of answers there in my own life, and I've been given the privilege of walking in sobriety since February the 13th of 1975, and I'm sure that this is the finest gift that God can bestow on an alcoholic like me.
When I was a kid back in Midland, it was a very small town, and there weren't a lot of things to do there, and we went to church a lot. We went to church all the time, and we went to Sunday school, and I remember how I used to hear all these good things about loving one another, and loving your mother and your father, and not committing any sins, and I thought that sounded real good to me. It sounded real good to me, but I knew even back then when I was hearing those things that I didn't understand any of it, because that wasn't how I felt. I had never felt that way.
I grew up sort of living in two different worlds. I lived with my grandparents who were some of the early settlers of this community that we're from, and when I was with them, everything was very peaceful and serene and calm and full of love, and we cared about one another, and I had another place that I lived, and that was in a home with an alcoholic father, and I know that those of you who have experienced that certainly don't need me to tell you what that's like, and I would live six months with this alcoholic and my mother, and then when things would get just real bad, they'd ship me over to my grandparents, and the difference in the two homes was like the difference in daylight and dark, and I remember very early, very early in my life thinking, you know, I wonder how I'm supposed to feel, because when I was with my parents, I lived in a world that was full of fear and apprehension and total chaos most of the time.
[00:05:02]
I never knew where we were going to be living. I never knew when it was going to be time to pack up and leave and go on down the road. You know, I never knew from one day to the next exactly what was going to happen in that house, and then when I'd go back to the other place, you know, for a little while at least I would feel a little bit peaceful, always knowing that that was to be very short-lived, so this is kind of how I grew up, and I never really knew how I was supposed to feel, you know.
I would try to feel the way everybody sitting in church felt, and I didn't do that, and then I would try to feel the way my parents felt, you know, and I knew that I couldn't live with that very well either, so I just kind of tried to make myself fit in the very best I could wherever I was. I was always kind of a loner, and I didn't have a lot to do with anybody else because I was always afraid. If anyone ever got very close to me and came to my home, that they may have to see how we lived, and that was a total embarrassment for me, so I went all through my school years and my younger years this way, and when I was in high school, something happened to me that absolutely changed the course of my life because I went out one evening with a group of girls, and we went to a bootlegger up in Lubbock, Texas, and we paid a dollar for a quart of watered-down beer, and by the time I was about halfway through with that quart, I knew that I had found something, that I was determined I was going to have every single chance I could possibly do it because the way I felt at that time was the best way I'd ever felt in my life, you know.
It was just, I was just me, I guess, for a short period of time. I believe that from the very beginning, from the very first drink, that I became totally obsessed with using alcohol because the thought of it never left my mind, and every time I could get enough money together and get someone to take me over to the bootlegger, that's where I went. And for temporary periods, you know, I felt like I belonged somewhere in the human race, and that was the only time, the only time in those years that I truly felt that I belonged there.
I guess I kind of had my life planned out for myself, and I knew in those days that every young lady was supposed to get married, you know, and have a couple of kids and settle down, and then I felt like that's when life started to become a little bit easier. You know, when I look back today, I really see that all through my years, I kept waiting on something else to make me feel better. I kept thinking when I get a little bit farther down the road and when I get to a different place and when I'm with somebody else, then all these feelings and all this fear that I have on the inside of me is going to go away.
So I kind of spent a lot of time thinking about how it was going to be around the next corner. And I met this guy and went with him a couple of weeks, and he asked me to marry him, and I really remember thinking that that might be my last chance. I was only 17 years old, but I wanted to go ahead and get on about the business, the living, so I married him, and fully believing that everything was going to get better.
And as you know, those of you who are alcoholic, it certainly never gets better. It gets worse. And I had a little more freedom to drink, so I drank more often. And I drank greater quantities, and I began to get sick very early. You know, I began to suffer a lot of blackouts. And I remember having to come up with all these lies to tell this young man of mine where I'd been and what I'd been doing. And it never dawned on me through all the years of living with my father what was happening to me.
I just knew that that booze had provided a great answer in my life, and I knew something else. I knew that even back then I was totally willing to go to any length in order to be able to have it. I had a lot of problems in this marriage, and I think the next thing to think of was that, you know, well, if the marriage is having problems, let's have a couple of kids. And we proceeded to do that, and that was going to make things better.
And then it really got bad. It really got bad because by this time I was drinking almost on a daily basis.
[00:10:00]
You know, I was not functioning as I had been able to function before with alcohol. You know, I think all my life that alcohol has been to me exactly what that book says. It's cunning, and it's baffling, and it's powerful. Because what was happening to me was so horrendous that I could not even see. You know, that I was literally getting sicker by the day. We tried to stick together for a little while for the sake of these two little boys, and that didn't work either.
And by that time I had found that there were a lot of ways to keep from feeling things that were uncomfortable to feel. I felt that I found out that if I was hurting, that I could take a drink. I found out that if there were problems in my life, I could take a drink. I found, again, what the book says, that the effects produced by alcohol were the reason that I drank. You know, simply the effects produced by whatever I needed, alcohol seemed to be able to provide.
We had to dissolve this marriage because we weren't getting anywhere with it. And I figured that I could get over that, too, because I had made a mistake, and there surely was somebody else. And I'd just pack up and go on down the road. Now, that was my first exit on something important to me in my life, and I learned how to do that real easy. And I kept doing that from that time until the time I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous.
So I packed up, and I packed these kids up, and we were off, and I never looked back. I had a way of telling myself that it really didn't matter anyway. And I know now that it always did. It always mattered. But I tried to be as hard and as calloused as I knew how to be simply in order to keep myself going. And me and these two kids moved around from town to town, and by this time, alcohol was beginning to greatly interfere with my jobs, with any way to provide for these children.
So I began to look around for some help, and I found some help. And when the help ran out, I found that there were some other things that I could do to support me and these boys. And by this time in my life, I had no qualms about whatever it took. I always seemed to be willing to pay the price for one more drink, or one more place, or one more town, or one more beginning, whatever it took. And I paid those prices. I paid very, very dearly.
But at the time, it worked, so we just sort of existed. The first time that anyone said anything to me about the way I drank was during this period of time, and a lady who was a good friend of mine came to me and she said, You know, you're getting very sick, and I can't stand to be around you anymore, and you're going to lose these boys if you don't do something about the way you are. And I just looked at her like I had looked at a lot of other people in my life, and I thought to myself, Not me. You know, that's just not going to happen to me.
You know, I can handle this thing. I can do whatever I need to do. Because by that time, I was so deep in the nature of the disease of my alcoholism that there simply was no other way out. There just wasn't any other way out. And what she said to me was real true, because in less than a year's time, I ended up in court on a charge from the man that I had been married to, claiming that I was not suitable, nor was I fit, to raise these two children.
And I went into court thinking that, you know, that was just another big farce. You know, I was going to come out of that too. And I remember, you know, just as though it were yesterday. And, you know, thank God Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a way to clear away the wreckage of my past. Thank you. Because if this were not true, I know that I could not be here this afternoon. But I remember
[00:15:17]
sitting in this courtroom and I remember listening to all these people get up, telling this man all the things I had done, all the things I was, all the reasons that I was unfit to raise a couple of boys. And I sat back there and one more time, you know, in all my sickness and in all my insanity, I thought, they can't be talking about me. You know, they just, they got to be talking about someone else. It's not me.
But it was me that they were talking about. And on that day, that was the very last time in my life that I saw those two little boys. I have come to believe in this program that there has always been an influence of God in my life, somehow, all through the years. Because I certainly know that I was not capable of looking after myself and certainly not any other human beings. So I have been able, with his help, to totally accept the fact that all these things that happened to me, had to happen to me.
I left there that day and I felt as though my kids had sort of been my last little link to a little bit of decency, to a little bit of sanity, to a little bit of purpose. And I felt that all that had literally been torn from me. And I walked out of the Lubbock County Courthouse that day and I knew that I was totally set on self-destruction. Because by this time in my life, I had eliminated everybody who had ever cared anything at all about me.
Everybody was gone. Nobody was saying, you know, where are you going or where are you living and when are you coming home? Because, you know, I had eliminated all of those people. So I left there and I have never in my life felt so utterly and so hopelessly alone, ever. I know that when I finally, later, got to Alcoholics Anonymous, the promise that that would never have to happen to me again, that was the sweetest thing that I'd heard in a long, long time. Because I know what that's like.
I can remember, I can almost feel, standing here today, that feeling. You know, and I thank God that I can. The next few years were simply a blur in my life. You know, it was just packing up one more time. By that time, I think I had one cardboard box left and couldn't fill it up with all my possessions. And it was a hell of a lot easier to travel that way. And I'd just grab that old box and I'd go on.
And I lived by writing hot checks and I knew exactly how long I could stay in a town before they were going to catch up with me. I knew exactly how much time I had from one sleazy motel to the other and this is the way I lived. You know, I just absolutely bummed around and all the time I was drinking every single thing that I could drink. You know, I remember very little about that period of time except that I was just out there doing what I had to do in order to survive.
Sometimes along the road I would think, you know, this is not worth it anymore. I don't want to go on like this anymore. And I made a lot of attempts to take my own life. And it seemed that I was such a failure at everything I was doing that I couldn't even do that. So one more time I'd just pick up the box and down the road I'd go. I ended up in a motel room in Oklahoma City and I want to tell you that I believe as much in miracles as anyone sitting in this room.
[00:20:08]
First of all because I know that I am one. And I can look back and I can see things happening. I can see things beginning to change. What was going on in my life because, you know, I would have died. I would have died if I hadn't have. And I checked in this motel room and I took every penny that I had and I bought, found a connection and I bought some drugs and I bought as much whiskey as I had money to buy.
And I locked myself in that room and I thought, you know, this time, you know, this time I'm going to succeed. This time I'm going to do the job because I could not, I could not stand one more day. And I don't know how long I laid there, you know, it seemed like a long time to me. I'd swallow a few pills and drink whiskey and swallow a few more pills and was starting to feel good again. I guess I knew that maybe I was coming to a way out, you know, nothing was bothering me, nobody was looking for me, you know, and I just kept on doing it.
And my brother happened to live in Oklahoma at that time and he was dating a girl who happened to be the desk clerk at this motel where I was holed up. And he had no idea that I was in that state because my family was not looking for me. They had not looked for me in a long time. They told me to just keep going, you know, and I did, you know, they didn't know what to do with me and I understand that, you know, I really understand that.
So anyway, I'm just about in my twilight zone in this motel room and my brother comes to pick up his date and they go into the bar for a drink and she says to him, boy, have we ever got a drunk out here. And he said, oh really, what do you mean? And so she began to tell him. They'd kick me out of the room a couple of times and call the cops and I was going to set the motel on fire and I was causing all these problems.
And so she began to tell my brother about it and he said that to this day he will never know what made him ask. But he said, what is her name? And of course I was so brilliant I hadn't thought to register under another name. You know, I had mine out there in big bold letters. So she told him my name and he said, that's my sister. And she let him in the room and it was almost too late because the drugs were gone.
There was a couple of drinks of whiskey left in one of the bottles and that was it. And there's a nut house in Oklahoma, in Norman, which is about 20 miles from where I was in Oklahoma City. Now I had to do a fast conning job because my little brother was going to commit me to Norman, Oklahoma. And I had heard about all these nut houses because somebody was always going to put me in one of them. And I knew that Norman was a real bad place to be so I told him, I said, now look, just go on home, I'm fine.
I'd been in the hospital and they'd popped my stomach. And I said, I've already made my own arrangements to go to Norman. I'm going to commit myself and, you know, I'm going up there this afternoon. And he said, how the hell are you going to go? And I said, well, I've made reservations on the airplane and we're only 20 miles, you know, from there. So he loaded me in his car, wrote a hot check for enough gasoline to get back to Texas.
And the way I'd been drinking and the way I'd been using drugs, I was in awfully bad shape. My tongue was so swollen that I could hardly talk, you know, and I just, I was totally unaware of what was going on around me except that something bad was fixing to happen to me and I was going back to Texas. And we made that long trip in record time and by 8 o'clock the next morning, I had been legally committed to another institution we have at home called the Big Springs State Hospital.
And it's not the Cadillac of mental institutions. I mean, it's bad there, you know, it's real bad. You, there's all these different wards and each ward is for a different illness. They've got places for glue sniffers and sex deviants and anything.
[00:25:06]
They've got all these different buildings. And at first they didn't know where to put me and that really hurt my feelings. They finally decided that I did belong on the alcoholic ward, so I was taken over there. And you know, I never really minded being there because I'd been fighting those streets and I'd been fighting living out there for so long that I was so tired I didn't think I could walk one more step.
And it in many ways was sort of a relief to me to know that I was going to be fed, that I had a bed to sleep in and it had sheets on it, that I had other people that had to talk to me. You know, they had to counsel me, they had to send me to psychologists. And boy, if you think that wasn't a trip because some of our psychologists out there get their degree a week after they get out of the same place that I had been in for several months.
So this was how I lived for almost four months. I never saw my family. No one ever came and said, hey, do you need this or do you need that? I would have to steal deodorant and a little bit of makeup. I don't know why I worried about how I looked over there, but I did. And it was again another really lonely place. And I don't think even up to now it had dawned on me that I had a problem with alcohol.
Because, you see, I had blamed everybody and everything else for so long, for so long, that I just couldn't see that the sickness was mine. I just couldn't see it. And when it came time for me to go, I didn't have any place to go. And they asked me to leave there. You know, they, I guess, figured they had done all they could. And they asked me to leave there, and they set about making some arrangements for me to have a place to go.
It was during this time that I had my first association with the program at Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I did not get sober then, and I did not stay sober then. And I remember very vividly the things that happened to me as far as this program and this fellowship is concerned. Because I was laying back there in my bed one afternoon, and a little old lady came walking through. And I shall always be grateful to her for the words she said to me.
She came up to my bed, and I had never seen her before. And she said, you know, honey, you just really don't have to live like this anymore. And I thought she was crazy. You know, I guess I thought that everybody lived like I did. I don't know. But I asked her what she meant, and she said, I'm talking about a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's for people like you. And she said, we go, and we've got a book, and we've got some steps, and we don't drink.
And when she said that, it immediately turned me off. You know, I was kind of interested in her book and her steps, but the not drinking sure wasn't going to cut it for me. And because the entire time that I was in this mental institution, I managed to get just about what I wanted, you know, because they'd give out a lot of medication to the real sick people. And one day they decided I'd been there long enough they could trust me to pass out some of this medication in a hospital unit.
And I figured these people over there, they were in their 90s, some of them 100 years old, most of them bedridden, and I figured that I needed it a hell of a lot worse than they did. And so I'd go through every morning at 6 o'clock, and, you know, it was one for you and two for me and one for you and two for me. So I'd managed to stay pretty loaded most of the time that I was over there, so much so that I experienced a lot of withdrawal systems.
And this was when a second thing happened to me that had to do with Alcoholics Anonymous. Because I was laying over there with those older people who I'd stolen their medication from, and I was 29 years old. and I was 29 years old and I was laying there listening to him sing and you know do all
[00:30:01]
these strange things and I was strapped down on a rubber mattress that was packed with ice. My fever had gone so high that they thought that was it, they thought I was going to die and I was laying over there strapped down, sweating, sick and another funny looking man, a one-armed man came in the room and he came over to my bed and he said, honey is there anything I can do for you and you know of all the things I wanted was just a real cigarette.
That was all I could think of, you know, that I just wanted one real cigarette and I asked him if he had a cigarette and he said what kind do you smoke and I told him and he left and he came back in a few minutes and he bought me three whole packages of real cigarettes and he laid them by my bed and I'm laying there telling him that when I get on my feet I'm going to pay him back and he's just standing there kind of looking at me and he said, now I tell you what, he said when you get on your feet, if you do, and you're in a position to buy three packages of cigarettes, you go down and you buy them and you give them to somebody just like you who needs them at that time because he said, you know, in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, that's how it works and I later found that to be very true too.
But I left the nut house and I went to live with a man who's very special in my life today. He's not sober. At the time he was in this fellowship for 11 years, he was an ex-convict. He'd spent half his life locked away in penitentiaries. He'd gotten sober in Alcoholics Anonymous in Midland and he came to this institution and he offered me a place to stay and he said, I don't have much money and I don't have much room with the kids and all, but we can go get a mattress and put it on the floor and you'll at least have a place to stay.
And that's where I started, on that mattress in that ex-convict's house. He took me to meetings every day, read the big book to me every night. I knew that was just going to be a ritual, that we had to read that big book before we went to bed. And the whole time I'm there, you know, I did not come in and embrace this fellowship. I didn't come in saying to you, you know, show me a way out or what can I do.
I came in absolutely fighting it with everything that's in me and I was still fighting it then. And I was to not stay in Alcoholics Anonymous because I was so busy being different, you know. I knew that there was something here that worked because I had people around me that I saw it working for, but I didn't ever really believe that it could work for somebody like me. I went to meetings and I heard a lot of success stories.
A lot of people talk, especially women, because I hated the women. And they got up there and they just looked a lot better than I did. And they told about getting sober and getting the husbands back and getting the kids back. I kept sitting there thinking that that's what was supposed to happen to me and it didn't. You know, it hasn't until today. And about this time that I was trying out Alcoholics Anonymous, I met another guy.
I don't give the credit for my sobriety to people. You know, I know that my sobriety is a gift from God, but I know another thing. In the beginning, the way I was, had I not had some people in my life that hung on to me and loved me until I could do something about this program on my own, I would not be here this afternoon. I met another man about this time and he's here in this room today. I met him up in Shreveport, Louisiana.
And he's the first person that ever talked to me about love in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because I went to his room that afternoon and I wasn't going in there to talk about loving one another in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because this guy looked pretty good to me, you know, and I thought, well, if this is what this program's all about, I may hang around a little bit longer. So I went to his room and the reason he asked me to come in there was not the reason I thought
[00:35:01]
at all. He called me in there so that we could call his wife long distance and he could introduce me to her on the telephone. And we did. And these people have been my family from that time to this. As long as I live, I'll never forget the words that he said to me. He said, I think if you stay in Alcoholics Anonymous, you're going to find that there is a love in here that you've not ever, ever known before.
And he said it has to do with loving one another being a principle. And as long as it's a principle, then nothing can ever, ever destroy it. And I looked at him like he was crazy. Today I know with all my heart what this man was saying to me because I've experienced a lot of that, you know, a lot of that. In February of 1975, my husband came to me and I was in a mess. I was in bad shape. I'd been running and using drugs and lying and same thing, fighting, saying I'm different.
I can do this and I don't have to do that. And he came to me one day and he said to me, you know, Liv, you've tried everything in the world. You've been to hospitals, you've been to institutions, you've been to doctors, you've been to psychiatrists. And he said the only thing I know to tell you to do is I'm going to let you stay back here in this bedroom. And if you don't die getting sober, I'll take you back to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because he said that's the only thing in your life you've never really tried. And that's what we did. Well he didn't. He went on to work. And I'm back there in that bedroom and I didn't know if I was going to make it or not. I really didn't, you know. I was seeing things and hearing things and I couldn't lay down and I couldn't stand up. And I felt like every fiber of my being was absolutely falling apart.
The end of three days I felt that I was strong enough and could get my clothes on and I asked him to take me back to Alcoholics Anonymous. And we went. And I've been coming and living and believing around this fellowship from that day to this. I started back with the sponsorship of a lady who is one of the finest women I've ever known in this program. She's sober 33 years. And she's the sort of sponsor who only said to me that the answer to any problem that I would ever have in my entire lifetime could be found in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that the only thing that I needed to know was that I was an alcoholic and that I was powerless not only over alcohol but over every single thing in my life. And she told me where to find those things. She told me what to do. She told me how to start with the book. And then she told me how to start cleaning up my life. And that took a long time because I had hurt an awful lot of people. You know I'd done an awful lot of damage and it just took me a long time to get started at that.
You know. I'll never forget that when I did come to AA there was still one outstanding warrant for my arrest. And I figured since I was really going to get sober this time I could just ignore it. You know that I didn't have to do anything about it. And the man who I later married came by to pick me up one morning and he said get your clothes on we're going to take a little trip. And I said oh good where are we going?
And he said well we're going to go over to Odessa. And I said fine. So I got my clothes on and we started over there and I said what are we going over here for? And he said I'm taking you to turn yourself in. And I thought the man had lost his mind. You know. And I said you can't do that. I mean this is why he's driving me up to the courthouse. You know I said you can't do that. Look at you know I'm getting sober and I'm doing these things and I'm better and you know I don't need to.
He never heard a word I said. Pulled up in front of the courthouse and I said aren't you going to come in with me? And he said no I didn't write those checks. You did. And so I got out of the car and there must be a million and eighteen steps up to the
[00:40:06]
county courthouse there in Odessa and I thought well I'm going to experience another one of those first. I'm going to jail sober. You know. And I walked up there and Harold had already told me I couldn't go in and tell him I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous either. And that was the only thing I really had going for me because there wasn't anything else I could tell him. So I did go up and I talked to this man and he questioned me a little bit and gave me the opportunity to make restitution without going to jail.
But the reason I tell that is that I learned something from that experience that I've been trying to practice ever since then and that's the fact that in order for me to be sober, the principle of being willing to go to any length is the most important thing in my life. A few years after that I was still sober and thought I was doing pretty good and this friend that I met in Shreveport came down to Abilene and talked at a convention down there and we were visiting one night and we went to have some ice cream.
And I was telling him how well I thought I'd done about cleaning up the past and making amends and going to people because I had put a lot of effort into that. I had tried to do everything you people told me to do because by this time I knew that I just wanted to be sober and I really didn't give a damn what else went on. I just wanted to be sober. And we're sitting in this little ice cream shop and he says to me, Liv, have you ever thought about doing anything about those two little boys?
And I said, no I haven't. And he said, I think you know that a principle cannot be a principle unless it's practiced in every affair of your life and you've got some house cleaning to do there. And I told him that I just didn't think I could do it because all through those years I thought a lot about that and I justified it by saying, well, you know, they took those kids from me and they'll be better off if they don't ever hear from me and so that's really something that I'm not going to be able to do and I just wiped that off my list, you know.
I just wiped it right off. And after we had our little conversation I went back home and I knew that I was going to try to do what he suggested that I do because I always had and it had always worked and I suppose that's why I've always done it. I found an attorney, we found an investigator and we went back sober to Lubbock, Texas. Now I've told parts of my life to people on Alcoholics Anonymous for the last eight years but I never had to sit and tell the non-alcoholic, someone who knows nothing about alcoholism nor about this program, I've never had to sit and tell anyone anything like that until I sat in that investigator's office.
And he began to question me and to drill me about things because I told him that I would like for him to try to find these two sons of mine. We spent several hours in his office that day. He has not found these boys. I don't know if he will or not. I know that when I left there I felt very drained and very emotional because the things I had to say were real ugly, they were just real ugly. And as I was driving out of Lubbock to come back home I thought, you know, this is really the first time in my entire 41 years that I've ever been free.
The only time that I have ever been free. I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous is the most fantastic program for people like me that I've ever known anything about. that I've Ever Known Anything About. I have never one time in my sobriety had to go outside
[00:45:01]
this fellowship for any help, for any answers, nor for any solutions. I've found every single thing that I've needed in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe that in my own personal sobriety, the privilege of trying to put back what so many of you people have given to me has made so much difference in my life. There are a lot of sick people just like me who have not ever had anyone to come up to them and say, you just don't have to live like that anymore. A lot of people. And I know that because somehow God's grace in my life saw fit for me to have the privilege of sobriety, that the only thing in the world I can spend the rest of my life doing is just passing it along. I don't know a whole lot about Alcoholics Anonymous. I know that it works like my friend Don says, it works real good. It's certainly worked in my life, in my family, in my home. It's the most peaceful place that I've ever been in my entire lifetime. So all those years of all those things and all that heartbreak and all that losing, you know, I just kept losing one thing right after the other. And today I really know that that's okay. Because what I got was absolutely the most overwhelming thing that I've ever experienced in my life. And that's called sobriety through a program called Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thank you people very much for having me here this afternoon. If anyone had ever told me when I left that nut house with that box and those clothes were all stamped property of the state of Texas, that I'd be around a lot of sober drunks in Palm Springs, California, I probably would have run again. But I just, all I can say is that I thank you Alcoholics Anonymous for giving me a program that literally breathed life into me. I love you very much. Thank you.