Drink is to die, literally. ‘Cause on June 11, 1951, I was pronounced dead of an overdose of a drug called alcohol. Why I’m here is by the grace of God. Just imagine. Just imagine, 29 years ago, the 11th of June, I would’ve been dead of alcoholism. My sister Evelyn, the one I told you about that was so talented and so beautiful, Gene took me to the cemetery yesterday. My sister died of alcoholism. Look at that tombstone. Look at that date. I was three years sober. I tried to help my sister. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t have two days back-to-back sobriety. She died. She blew apart, bled to death from alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver. Why? She’s a talented one. She was beautiful. She was a skier. She was a radio singer. Why’d she die? Because she fought. She kept on fighting. The doctor told her, “She drink, she die.” And he says, she said, “I’ll tell you what, you quit drinking or not quit drinking.” I gave up, and I won, and I lived. If you fight, dear ones, you’ll die.

It’s the only thing in the world where you come in here, you gotta surrender, throw in the towel, and you win. Your family said to you, as my family said to me, “For God’s sake, Dottie, don’t be a quitter. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Keep on fighting. Keep on pushing.” In this program, you come in here and you keep on fighting, you keep on pushing, and you will die or go insane. You throw in the towel, get out of the boxing ring, hang up the gloves, and you will win. You know, it’s a, there’s a lot of paradoxes in here. They’ll say, “Easy does it,” and they’ll say, “Action’s the magic word.” Oh, my God, you know, it’ll throw you out of your mind. But this one thing I ask you to do is surrender at depth. Quit fighting. The book says we cease to fight everything and everybody, including alcohol. The only fight I ever give up is alcohol. Many times I fight people and things, not as much as I used to. Well, the doctor sedated me all night long.

I can remember coming out of this thing and taking bitter-tasting medicine and waking up the next morning, looking in the mirror, and not being able to even see the slits in my eyes. My face swelled. You talk about poison. Yeah, alcohol’s a poison to me. I went back to the doctor a couple days later, and he said, “I want you to listen to me, girl.” So you can see how long ago that was, he called me girl. He said, “If you ever drink again, you’ll die. Why you’re here, I don’t know, but you were as dead as any patient I’ve ever examined.” My first thought that went through my mind is, “Why didn’t he let me go?” Geez, I had my perfect out. See, I was afraid to kill myself ’cause I was so afraid of God, but I had my perfect out, and he brought me back. The next thought that went through my mind, “There must be something God wants me to do.