Um, I’ve never heard the lady that, uh, I’m about to introduce. I understand she has a good message, and so without any further ado, I’ll present Anne S. from Redding, California. Hello. My name is Anne, and I’m an alcoholic. Hi, Anne. And for all the guys that promised to speak tonight, I wish you’d do it right now. You can’t hear me? I wanna be darned clear on word tonight. Any better? Anything we can do about that? First of all, I’d like to tell you that I am totally terrified. I don’t recall ever being quite so frightened about anything except, uh, at a time when I was asked to speak before an Alateen group at a conference several years ago. I had the feeling, uh, I’m sure that the Christians had when they were thrown in the lions’ den. Having teenagers of my own, I knew exactly what kind of criticism I might get.

And strangely enough, I got really comfortable talking to the Alateens, and I felt like I set, established some rapport with them, which is pretty good for an old broad like me. I, uh, was born and reared in the South, the only girl of a family of five children. Our family was straight out of the Bible Belt, and many things were instilled in us from childhood. These were things like truth, purity, honesty, loyalty, punctuality, politeness, and a deep-seated fear of the wrath of God. Mama was the mainstay of our family since my father’s occupation kept him away from home quite a bit, and she kept us in line rather well. She, uh, she was anti-dance, anti-smoking, anti-da-dancing, anti-sex. Uh, in fact, I, uh, I grew up with the distinct impression that my mother’s motto was, “If it makes you happy, it’s wrong.” Being a Southerner, she was constantly concerned with our good name, whatever that may mean. And along with the, these teachings, we had little else.

Uh, our house, uh, was just a house. It was not a home. It was a cold place. Uh, there was very little affection and love that, uh, uh, stemmed between the members of the family. We were sort of cold front. And, uh, I sometimes think this may have had something to do with some of my feelings and emotions as I grew up with this, uh, I’ll do it myself jazz and being hard but fair. You know, I don’t like this microphone. I don’t like it at all. When I get ready to talk, I like to go through all the gestures and do a little pacing and throwing a little body English, and I feel like I’m chained to this place, you know? And I’m not too happy about it. At any rate, uh, in my, uh, younger days, I did practically no drinking at all. I, uh, I was a sort of a late bloomer, starter or something. And I was, uh, you know, brought up with the idea that drinking was not the thing to do. And so, uh, my drinking was practically nonexistent in my young life.