Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Her Story 20th Spring Conference
- Speaker
- Polly P
- Date
- 2010-05-06
Transcript
Source: Polly P – Her Story 20th Spring Conference – 2010-05-06.mp3 File: polly-p-her-story-20th-spring-conference-2010-05-06.mp3 Duration: 00:42:35
============================================================
To come to Florida. My name is Polly Pistol, and I'm an alcoholic. And by God's grace and a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven't had a drink since April the 11th of 1977, and for that I am eternally grateful. And I have a home group, and that's the Third Legacy Group in Bellingham, Washington. I have a sponsor, and my sponsor has a sponsor. So I'm a member in good standing in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm so excited to be here.
And I thank Lee. Lee asks us. Lee does it. He does the asking. And I am so grateful for him. I'm so grateful that he likes to ask me to come to Florida. I love it. I just love it. And I'm so excited to be here this weekend. And I almost, I mean, I have seen people from a lot of different places. I saw one of the guys that used to go to Monday Night Seal Beach when we were in Southern California. He lives in Canada, and he was here.
My Columbus girls are here. I couldn't even believe that. I said, all these people are coming from all over the place. It's just fabulous. And the girls from Southern Florida, and oh my God, it's just, it's the best. And Pittsburgh, part-time Florida and Pittsburgh, and yeah. So, but it's just, I'm just so excited to be here, and I thank you so much. It is my privilege, and it's an honor to be able to do anything in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that I should share in a general way, that I should tell you what it was like, what happened, and what I'm like today, and I'm going to do that to the best of my ability. One of the things I want to say is, is that today I am busier in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous than I have ever been. I sponsor more people than I have ever sponsored. I'm in—what do you want me to do?
No, okay. I sponsor more people than I've ever sponsored, and I'm into more service than I've ever been into. And I have a really good reason for that, and it's very selfish. And that is, I love my life. And today, at 33 years of sobriety, I have so much to lose. I absolutely love my life. I am living, breathing proof that you can come to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and not come from the disease of alcoholism.
And I am a real alcoholic, but I do not come from alcoholic parents. Now, I have heard shaken alcoholics, family tree, and an alcoholic of fallout. If that is the case, then it was my mother's father. However, he never drank like me. I never saw him do the things that I did. He was just the only one in our family who drank. And my daddy died at age 60. He was 60 years sober. My mother died at age 87.
She was 87 years sober. I will assure you, my parents were not the least bit impressed with my sobriety. That was not, you know, that was not—You just didn't drink. None of those things would happen to you. But what I love is, is I love the inventory steps. And Michael's here this weekend, and ever since the first time I heard her say this, I always think about it. She says, Before I tell you my story, let me tell you my mother's story, because her story was so much worse than mine.
And what I know today from the inventory steps is that I not only— was, came from non-alcoholic parents. But I came from parents who absolutely loved me. They loved me. And not only that, I am an only child, so I had all of this love. But I didn't know that I had all of this love because I was so spiritually ill that when I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I would have sworn to you that nobody loved me, because that's the way I felt, that nobody loved me. And today, I love what our book says.
Our book says that we cannot transmit that which we do not have. And you see, my parents wanted to give me self-worth and self-esteem. And my daddy, I mean, I was a daddy's girl, and he used to tell me
[00:04:59]
how pretty I was. And my mom just, it was just, they loved me.
[00:05:05]
But what happened was is my parents are two abused children, and they found each other just like an alcoholic and an Al-Anon will find each other. And my parents had two different reactions to having that happen to them. My father was a man who was absolutely full of rage, and my mom was just totally closed in. And what happened was, I believe, now this is a theory, I can't prove it because I don't know, but I believe that the only difference between my dad and I is my dad just didn't take a drink. Everything else was there.
He was full of rage, and I was full of rage. I was a little girl so angry, full of rage. And today I know that my parents wanted to give me everything they didn't have. But you see, they didn't have it to give. They couldn't give me self-esteem and self-worth and all those things because they didn't have it. And I'm so grateful for that today because these were beautiful people. And there's some Texas people here that, and they know that this beautiful woman.
But there was an Al-Anon lady by the name of Marcy White, and we all hung out with her and did those things when we got sober together down in Texas. And Marcy White used to talk about, she was an Al-Anon, and she used to talk about the blessing. And she says, Some of us are given the blessing from our parents and our family, and some of us don't get the blessing until we come to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And she touched me so deeply the day that she said that, that she talked about the blessing, because see, I was one of those people that got the blessing as a little girl. I was so loved. And what happened was all that love that my parents gave me, just when I came to you and you let me know that I was loved and cherished and that I was God's kid. And my parents used to tell me that. I mean, I went to those Baptist church.
I grew up down in Texas, right where they took the Bible Belt and gave it an extra pull. So I knew about God, but I didn't hear about the God in church. I hear that today when I go to church, but I didn't hear it then. And what happened was is I just used to hear these things: You're born a sinner. You're gonna burn in hell, you know, and if you thought it, you've done it. And all of this stuff, and I don't know about any of you, but I was an alcoholic in the making, and I thought a lot.
So, I mean, it was just like I had this feeling of when it came to God that I was totally hopeless, that I was just too bad for God. I was just too bad for God. And when I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, you began to talk to me about this loving God, and you began to talk to me about our parents and what they've gone through. And you have given me—I'm so grateful that my daddy lived two years after I got sober, and I am so grateful because I had done the steps, and I had the opportunity to make amends to my parents, and I had the opportunity to make amends to my daddy. And my mother lived until just four years ago, and I'm just so grateful that I got those opportunities, that this program has given me those opportunities to tell them what beautiful parents they were and how much they had loved me and how much they gave me, and for that I'm truly grateful.
And they tried to give me a loving God. My mother used to say, We live in a God-fearing home. And boy, I'm telling you, I'm glad I live in a God-loving home tonight, because I did fear that old God, I'll tell you. What happened for me today is, thanks to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I've always felt strange. I have no training to do this. I'm the kid in school, when it's time to give a book report, that I am so sick I can't show up.
Because I can't stand up in front of people and talk. But thanks to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was taught when you're asked to do something in AA, you do it. And because of that, I got up behind podiums, and I'm grateful that I was taught. But if you're scared to stand up here and do this, I understand. I's still scared. But anyway, I always knew something was wrong with me.
[00:10:01]
I just was different than other people. I thought, well, and I thought, well, it's because I'm an only child. And then the other thing is because my name's Polly. It's not a nickname. That's my name. And, you know, kids tease, you know, and it's Polly wants a cracker and Polly wally doodle all the day and all that kind of stuff. And it just, you know, I just, and I'm sensitive. I don't like to be teased. And so what happened was I didn't know what was wrong with me. But thanks to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Big Book, I know today. I know what's wrong with me.
I am suffering from a spiritual malady. And the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that if I'm suffering from a spiritual malady, nothing is enough. You cannot love me enough. You cannot give me enough. You cannot do enough. There simply is not enough for a person like me. And I am so grateful today that I know that. And there is absolutely, you cannot give it to me. I have to heal from the inside out.
And I always just knew if you'd just give me enough, I'd be okay, that I would be all right. So I'm going to finish. I'm not going to finish at 9:15 because I didn't get started till a quarter till. But I tell you what, so you're right, I won't stop at 9:15. But I'm going to stop at 9:30. And so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to just give you some of the big highlights of my life. And when I was 18 years old, I married an Air Force officer, and I knew that I had found my knight in shining armor, and we were going to sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after.
Now, I know that there's a lot of military around Florida, so people—there are a lot of people that know that lifestyle. And when I first came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was invited to a coffee by the—I mean, not Alcoholics Anonymous, into the Air Force—and I was invited to a coffee. And I got this invitation, and on it was a big red stamp that said mandatory, and I had to attend this coffee, and the base commander's wife was giving the coffee. And I went to this coffee, and I was so terrified.
I absolutely—here I was this 18-year-old girl, and I knew that all of these women were educated. I knew that they were all sophisticated, and I had all of these feelings of just absolute inadequacy, that there was just no way I could even carry on a conversation with these women. And then this base commander's wife began to tell us, all of us little second lieutenants' wives were sitting out there, and she began to tell us what we would do in order to enhance our husbands' career, how we would have the right dinner parties, go to the right dinner parties, the thing—you know, we would attend the functions, we would wear the right length gloves, all the things that we would do for our husbands.
And I am just absolutely—I can't, you know, I'm just terrified. And that we would attend all these, you know, functions that the officers' wives club had. Well, a few weeks later, there was a luncheon. Now, I had not had a drink of alcohol. I had not been around anybody who drank, and I went to that Baptist church, and they told me that people who drank were bad. But I liked these people. They weren't bad. And at this luncheon, they had this big fountain, and it was full of sherry. And you just put your glass up under the fountain, you know, and then you drank the sherry. And nothing fantastic happened that day.
I mean, it just, you know, Dave didn't talk about it, but sometimes Dave says, you know, when I took a drink of alcohol, it went down and I was six foot two, my red hair turned brown, and my freckles fell off. None of those things happened to me. All I know was, for the first time in 18 years, I could take a breath. I just seemed to be able to just breathe. It seemed like for 18 years, I had been holding my breath.
And I took that drink of alcohol, and I could just breathe. Now, I had no idea what happened to me that day. But what I know, when I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and I read the doctor's opinion, it says in the doctor's opinion that alcohol gave me that feeling of ease and comfort. And that's what it was. And it worked for a really long time. I would be in social situations, and I could nod in the right places, and I could laugh in the right places, and I could be, in some sense, of being.
Be at some sense of being comfortable around all these people that terrified me
[00:15:03]
because I felt so much less than them. We got stationed in a place called Loring Air Force Base, Maine, which is like the tippy top of Maine. And I had two little boys. I have no, I did not have any clue how to be a parent. And I've got these two little boys. It's 50 degrees below zero outside, so I can't send them out to play. And these two little boys are driving me crazy, and I'm having a nervous breakdown every 20 minutes. And I end up going to an Air Force doctor, and he says, Take these. And from 1962 until 1977, when I entered the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I took Librium and Valium and Seconal and Nembutal and drank alcohol.
And I'm here to tell you, if you take those kind of drugs and drink alcohol, you're not an active alcoholic. Now, I sponsor people who have fabulous stories. You know, I stand up here and I just, I'm a couch potato alcoholic. I mean, I just have no big stories. Michael's here this weekend. The first time I heard she slept with a one-legged preacher, I'm like, That's the kind of story I want. That's what I want to do.
I managed to do all that, but I did it sober in the rooms of Alcoholics. That's not when you do it. That's not when you do it. So it's those, you know, I just like, oh my God. But I just died on my living room sofa. I did not. I was not out there having fun. I just… And the greatest gift, the greatest gift that I have in Alcoholics Anonymous—well, I have so many gifts, so it's not the… but it's one of the big gifts that I have in Alcoholics Anonymous is that my life has been in session for 33 years, and I've been present for it.
I've been here. I've been here for the fabulous times. I've been here for those opportunities to grow. I've been present for my life, and I could not be present for my life. I just couldn't. I didn't want to suit up and show up for life. Life was too hard for me. My husband was gone for years at a time. I had these little boys. I had all these things that I thought I had, you know, that, you know, I had to do so other people would approve of me.
All of this craziness that was going on. And what I ended up doing was being a mother who should never, ever have had her children. Because, you see, I am a child abuser in every way. I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I realized what I had done to my children. I am so grateful for people in Alcoholics Anonymous who are willing to tell us the truth, whether we want to hear it or not, because I had such a sponsor.
And what happened was, is I'm one of these people that had a man for a sponsor, and I think God gives us exactly what we need. And my first AA sponsor had been a captain in the Navy. He had been a monsignor priest, and he was an only child. And I think God sends us exactly what we need. Because I was certain that what was wrong with me was the U.S. Air Force, the Baptist Church, and that I was an only child.
And Frank was able to remove all of that from me. And I am so grateful. And when I got through, when I did my fifth step with Frank, when we got through, Frank looked at me and he—Frank didn't do watered-down AA. And Frank looked at me and he said, Polly, you are a child abuser. And you have abused your children in every way. And he said, What you need to do is make amends to those boys. Now, I'm here to tell you that my sons, when I got sober, were 14 and 16 years old. And he told me that I was to go to my sons and I was to make amends. And that what I was to do is I was to tell them how sorry I was that I abused them.
I didn't get to say, I hurt you, and stuff like—I had to use the terms and to let them know that having me for a mother was not good, because I was incapable of taking care of my children. I had abused them emotionally, physically, spiritually, and by blatant neglect. Now, I have a son who is 26 years sober in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I have been able to hear James talk many times in AA.
[00:20:02]
And he does this to get a laugh. But if I'm in the room and he's talking, he'll say, I've heard my mother talk hundreds of times, and she has never, ever made it sound as bad as it really was. But anyway, he talks about being a little boy, maybe 10 years old. And he gets up one morning, because I can no longer put my kids to bed and I can no longer get them up for school. And at any rate, he gets up, and his mother is passed out on the floor, in the kitchen floor, and a drink is spilt.
And this is the reality of a 10-year-old who lives with alcoholism. And the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says that this is a family disease, and that anybody who is affected by the disease of alcoholism, who lives with a practicing alcoholic, is affected by the disease of alcoholism. And my children were traumatized by this disease. And what James does is he steps over me. He gets his cereal, he gets his milk, he gets his bowl, he puts it together.
He steps back over me and sits down and eats his breakfast and feels nothing. Absolutely, completely shut down. That's the disease of alcoholism. My oldest son was my caretaker. And many a time, I've come to with him shaking me, Mom, wake up, wake up. Are you dead? And me to come to and see the fear in his eyes. And you know, for 33 years, I haven't had to come to and see that kind of fear in anybody's eyes because of something I'm doing.
And for that, I've been overpaid in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll just tell you a couple of things that got me to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a car wreck in Irving, Texas, and that would bring me to treatment for the first time. And I ended up, I'm a blackout drinker. It was sort of a long story, but anyway, I called the police and told them that my car had been stolen. Here comes the police and my husband.
And I get taken to the Irving Police Station. And the policeman looked at my husband with so much disgust, and he said, Why don't you just take her home and sober her up? And on the way home, my husband said, Polly, there's a treatment center, and it's not far from our house, and I wish you would go. And that night I entered treatment for the first time. Now this was a county detox. This was no fancy jitter joint.
And I entered this county detox, and they started taking us to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I absolutely loved it. I loved the loving. I loved the fellowship. I mean, we are a program of attraction. And I loved the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. But something inside of me said, Polly, people like you don't become alcoholic. And Dr. T. Bolt says, In every alcoholic, there's two characteristics: grandiosity and defiant individuality. Dave says, Only an alcoholic can lay in the gutter feeling superior to those looking down on him. And what happened was, I'm saying that people like me don't become alcoholic. But what happened in that treatment center is I had one of those Jitterhouse romances, you know, where you walk off into happy destiny.
And we stayed sober for 58 days. And I was 12-stepped out of a motel in Euless, Texas, and brought back into that treatment center. And I had been beaten up and numerous and sundry other things. And I'd reached that place in the Big Book that talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. And I knew that I could not live sober. There was no way that I could live sober. I love to hear Clancy talk.
I just feel like that he can just tell, you know, he just can talk about the pain of the alcoholic. And he talks about, you know, trying to commit suicide and what happens to him when he doesn't drink. And I knew that I could not live sober inside my own skin. And I couldn't live with the kind of mom I'd become, of the wife. I couldn't live with the daughter I'd become. I just couldn't live inside my own skin.
When that seven days was up, I left that treatment center and I got a bottle of scotch and a bottle of Valium and I checked into a motel. I don't believe that anybody's in this room that doesn't have an angel in their life, someone who leads us to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I had such a woman in my life. She knew nothing about AA, but she loved me. And she said this day that something came over her.
And today I know that that was God working in my life through her.
[00:25:04]
And she drove around until she found my car parked outside this motel. And the door hadn't latched. I had just closed it. And she pushed it open and she found me laying there. And on April the 8th of 1977, I was pronounced dead on arrival in a hospital in Bedford, Texas. Now that didn't take, because I'm standing here tonight. But I just need to just talk about God's grace. God's grace. Dave just got through talking and saying, you know, God did overnight what I couldn't do. The grace of God.
And I believe grace, Webster's Dictionary says it's a gift unearned, that we have been given the grace of the gift of sobriety. And I believe that anybody who walks in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous is given the gift, the grace to be sober. The really sad thing is, is that most of us lay it on the chair and walk back out. I am so grateful today. I love that writing in our daily reflection where it says, Sobriety is God's gift to me.
What I do with my sobriety is my gift back to God. Because there isn't anything today I wouldn't do because I have been graced with the gift of sobriety. I am a mother who loved her children. I wanted to show up at ball games. I wanted to be—my oldest son is a musician, and I wanted to be, you know, at his bands and all of the stuff that he was doing. But I couldn't get there, and I wanted to. I loved them, but I couldn't show up for my children.
And what happens for me is, is that I get 5150'd to a psychiatric hospital, which was enough time for my husband to obtain a court order from a Fort Worth judge that said I was a detriment to myself and others, and I was court committed to a treatment center in Dallas, Texas. And I entered that treatment center on April the 11th of 1977. And by God's grace, I haven't had a drink since. And on page, In A Vision For You, on page 164, it says that if we stay spiritually fit, that great events will come to pass.
That's the great fact for us all. And I've got 20 minutes, and I want to share with you my great events that have come to pass. When I got out of that treatment center, Frank, who was the one who had 12-stepped me out of that motel, I asked him to be my sponsor. And I just knew that women are supposed to ask women and all that, but I just knew that he was the one that was supposed to help me. And he started telling me to get busy in the rooms with Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I come from Texas, so we do the steps quickly. And I met Michael, and when her and I hooked up together, she does this—we did the steps quickly as well. I take people through the steps, you know, in a few days. And so what happened was, as soon as I got out of treatment, Frank took me through the steps. Now, while I was in treatment, it was a five-step treatment center, and I had written this, you know, my life story.
And Frank says, That'll make a great novel, but it doesn't do anything for inventory. So we're gonna get busy here on the steps. And what happened was, is he believed getting you into service quickly. And just like Bill talked about in his story, that's the thing that is going to keep us sober more than anything else, and that's working with others. And he said, If you have 15 minutes of sobriety, more than that newcomer coming in the door, share that 15 minutes.
Just get busy and do something in AA. And I got busy in AA, and I fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. I absolutely fell in love with this program. Now, I did everything in the first three years of my sobriety that you shouldn't do. I mean, everything you shouldn't do. I got divorced. I had numerous and sundry affairs because I was one of these people that just knew if you'd just love me enough, I'd be okay.
If you'd just love me enough. And I had to hit a bottom in this program sober. And I'm so grateful that, you know, that I stayed sober. I am just so grateful that I stayed sober because I know that my story is not unique. There's a— I know that my story is not unique. There's a lot of women who come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous thinking some man
[00:30:01]
is going to fix them. Now, I was married. I mean, all of this was just insanity. And Dave had been my buddy. And we had been—I've known Dave since I was six months sober, and we were just friends. We were just AA buds. Now, Dave sponsored a lot of the guys that I was a little more friendly with, so he knew more about me than he needed to. But anyway, when I was three and a half years sober and Dave was four and a half years sober—I mean, we weren't that sober—Dave looked at me and he said, Polly, I'm in love with you. And he said, But you need to get something straight.
I don't want to have an affair with you. I want to marry you. And, you know, things like that aren't supposed to happen to people like me. And, you know, God willing and the creek don't rise, Dave and I'll be married 30 years in October. And that's a great event. It's come to pass. And I still think he's the cutest guy in the room in his bright green shirt. You know, it's just, it's wonderful. And it's been a journey. I mean, it has absolutely been the greatest journey.
We have had this journey together in Alcoholics Anonymous, and life's been in session. Dave—I mean, we're busy in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dave sponsors guys, I sponsor gals. Now, Dave works in an area of service that I don't work in. Dave loves working in the area. He's our district treasurer. Now, I don't do well in that level of service. I do better at the group level. But Dave and I are busy in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we've got to make this walk together.
But life's been in session. Dave and I got married. We had two kids each, so we put these four kids together. You know, if you want to know what an order, put some stepkids together. That's just loads of fun. And out of those stepkids, we used to say three of them were alcoholics and drug addicts, and the other one had grave emotional and mental disorders. But now we found out all four of them are alcoholics and drug addicts.
So, you know, just don't leave five minutes before the miracle, because my oldest son got sober and I was 32 years sober. So don't ever leave five minutes before the miracle. And Dave and I had—we were doing a lot of stuff in Southern California. You know, we were really involved. And then the bottom fell out of aerospace, and Dave and I got our house foreclosed on, and we had to file bankruptcy. And oh my God, I was so humiliated.
And I've got a sponsor, and Dottie's walked through a lot of adversity, and she was saying, You got to get up and share everything. Well, I don't want to share that stuff. You know, I don't want to share that stuff. I just want to share, you know, God, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I got sober, and everything's wonderful. And that's not life. That's not life. We come in here and life's in session.
And Frank Honeycutt said, you know, I didn't want to talk anymore because I was too embarrassed and too ashamed. And Frank says—I said, Well, what will people think of me? And Frank says, You know, it's none of your business what people think of you, but your very life depends on what you think of them. And so I just kept going. And Dave and I had this fabulous sponsorship, and it was just—we were taught how to do things in Alcoholics Anonymous, even when you don't look good.
You just go on and you do things in Alcoholics Anonymous. And Dave looked at me one day and he said, Polly. We're going to be fine. He said, Kris Kristofferson wrote a song and Janis Joplin sang it, When freedom's heaven, nothing left to lose. And he says, you know, all that stuff is just stuff. It's just stuff. He says, you know, we're going to be fine. He says, we have God, we have AA, and we have each other.
It's going to be fine. And it has been fine. And we've had, you know, we've—Dave, we lost Dave's oldest son to cancer, and he was sober in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's really hard to do that. And we've lost friends and our parents, and I've lost sponsees, and it's just—the thing that happens is, is we stay here and we stay sober and we do life. And I am so grateful for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that that has happened, that we stayed and we did the things that we were told to do.
[00:35:00]
And life just has been wonderful. Dave and I have been retired for six years, so I get to hang out with him 24/7, and I really like that, and it's great. I just want to tell you a little bit about my grandkids and my kids. And I have five grandchildren. And I want you to know that I was a mother who abused her children, but I am a dynamite grandma. And my granddaughters that live in Southern California, my oldest son's—oh, and let me tell you something. I can't even believe this.
Sunday, it's Mother's Day. But my oldest son will be 50. I'm like, I can't believe that. And it's like, you know, it's, I don't know about any of the rest of you, but I pass a mirror and I want to say, Who is that old woman? You know, it's just, it's just not right. And here my granddaughter, Katie, is always saying, Grandma, you're just not like other people's grandma. Because I'm the kind, you know, you go out to Disneyland or you go out to Knott's Berry Farm and you get on those roller coasters and then you get down and then you run around and you get back on it again, you know, and it's like, you got, you know, that's, and I mean, you know, that's what I do. And so it's like, how can this be happening?
But I'm a good grandma today. And my kids respect me. They let me have my grandchildren. They let me have my grandchildren, and they let me take care of them. They leave them with me. They trust me with my grandchildren. And that's a beautiful gift. When I was six and a half years sober, my youngest son came to me and he said, Mom, I want what you have. And James did not want what I had six and a half years before.
Six and a half years before, I was supposed to attend a function at his school, and he said, Don't you dare show up at my school because I am ashamed of you. And six and a half years later, he wants what I have. And he's married to Kelly, and Kelly is also sober. And James and Kelly have three children. And I have watched these two people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. That is just amazing. Because what happened with James and Kelly is their first child was born deaf.
And I watched them take this child who was born deaf. And I mean, when it first happened, all of us were just, we were just so shook up. Because, I mean, here we wanted this baby so bad. And, you know, I just was, I was just so angry with God. And I said, you know, how can our child be deaf when all these people have babies and they're born perfect and they don't even want them? And we wanted our baby so bad.
But, you know, one more time, Clancy talks about alcoholism, a disease of perception, that my perception of reality was distorted. I had no idea what God was about to gift our family with. But what happened is, is I have watched them be relieved of the bondage of self. And it has never cost too much, taken too much time. Whatever was necessary for them to take care of Ryan was done. Absolutely amazing. And they have Chris and Maddie.
And one time Dave and I were speaking together—Dave, James and I were speaking together at a conference, and this lady walked up to me and she said, Oh, you have to be so proud of him. Look what you've done with him. I said, Sweetheart, AA did that. You should have seen him when I had him. Oh my God. I got sober in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I realized that he was a full-blown drug addict.
He could have been here at 16. But it's just amazing what happens in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and what has happened with our children. And both of my sons, my oldest son and his wife have just divorced, and my youngest son is having problems. And I just keep praying that everybody's got a God, everybody's got a higher power, and it's not me.
[00:40:00]
And all I need to do is just stay sober and just be there. And the rest of it is going to take place like it's going to take place. I just want to tell you this little story. Dave used to tell this story in his talk, and he's quit doing it, so I'm going to tell it because it's really my story. So I'm going to start telling it. When I was in Center Hospital, I got court committed there, and I was put in a detox room, and I started getting nervous. You know, when you start coming off booze and drugs and all that stuff, you get nervous. And so I'm running up to the nurse's station, and I said, I want my tablets. And the director of that program came up to me and he said, Not this time, Polly.
You need to know how sick you really are. He said, Here's a shot of Dilaudid, and we're not going to let you die, but you need to know how sick you really are. And four days later, I walked out of that detox room, and I had pulled out most of my hair, and I'd clawed up my body, and I was just so angry. I was so angry. And I just told him, You just don't treat people the way you've just treated me. And Bill took my shoulders with as much love as I've ever felt from another person.
And he looked at me and he said, Polly, if you make it, you're going to love me. If you don't, it really doesn't matter. And I just want to say, if you're new in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, or maybe you're not new, but maybe your sponsor's kind of got their finger in your chest telling you to do things you don't want to do, and maybe you don't think it's a very good idea. But what we just want everybody here to be sober and enjoy this wonderful life.
And the way you get sober and you stay sober is you work the steps, and you work the traditions, and you work the concepts. And with these things, we get to have this beautiful life and to get busy into service. And if that sponsor is doing that to you, all I can say is, if you make it, you'll love us. If you don't, it really doesn't matter. God bless you. I love you.