Leslie K – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2026-02-26

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Source: Leslie K – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2026-02-26.m4a File: leslie-k-box-of-chocolates-2026-02-26.mp3 Duration: 00:49:33

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Well, thank you. Thank you, Ramona. I feel the same way about you. And you know what we'll do is we'll have your sponsor, Jerry, invite me and a couple of other people out there to do some AA service in Atlanta, and then we will get to work and see you and have some fun. Thank you for inviting me here today. My name is Leslie K.. I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is May 4, 1992. And my home group is the Principals Study Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a sponsor.

My sponsor knows she is my sponsor. And more importantly, I am sponsored today. And that is something that I used to hear when I came in to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous all the time. When people introduced to themselves, it's like it was part of their calling card. They told you who they were. They identified why they were there. They said what their sobriety date was. They told you where you could find them if you were looking for a group. And then not only did they say they had a sponsor, but they used that little phrase. And I remember the first time I heard that, it struck me as a truth. Right. You know how you hear something from somebody in AA and it just kind of hits you and you go, yeah, I get it. That's a truth. And it's that phrase today I am sponsored in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that is something that I wasn't always what I was doing. I didn't understand the importance of any of the things that I just shared with you. The most important thing I really didn't understand was what it was to be an alcoholic. You know, I am blessed to be able to say that I have been sober longer than I drank.

And that is a wonderful gift from Alcoholics Anonymous. I celebrated 33 years at my last sober birthday and I've been sober longer than I drank. That's amazing. What a gift that is. Of course, the bad news is, for those of you who are newer than I am, is I've been sober longer than I drank. And so that means any dumb thing I've done in over the last three decades, I cannot claim I was drunk when I did it. I was stung cold sober. But when I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous, I really didn't even understand why I was here. You know, I walked in around 1989, the end of 1989, the beginning of 1990. I showed up at a place called the Concord Fellowship. I just drove a bunch of my sponsees by there the other day. And by golly, it's still there. And it is still as crazy and as fun and as loud and as wonderful as it always was.

I remember walking in there and thinking, oh, no, I don't belong here. This is the Hells Angels chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm a nice girl from the suburbs and I should not be here. And I am so grateful that the people that were there that day did two things. Number one, they welcomed me in with the music of Alcoholics Anonymous. They didn't. The other thing they did was something they they didn't do, if this makes any sense. They didn't rush at me. They didn't overwhelm me at the door. They didn't come at me with slips of paper with their phone numbers on it. They didn't, you know, grab a big book and hand it to me right away. It was more like, come on in, kid. You know, coffee's over there. We're going to have a meeting in a couple of minutes. You know, have a seat. And for someone like me who was so frightened when I got here, I was just so frightened. Walking into that place took every ounce of courage that I had at the moment. That was the perfect way to invite me into Alcoholics Anonymous. And the music that I heard in AA was the laughter, was the people obviously that were giving each other a bad time, teasing each other, talking about things, asking each other, hey, how's your daughter?

How's your wife? Oh, did you? How's that new puppy you just got? Having these conversations like they were comfortable in their own skin. And that's what drew me in. That is what drew me into Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't really understand why I was there. Now, you could have talked to anybody else around me and they could have told you why I was walking into the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they would have been partly right. I was doing an awful lot of drinking. Do you guys remember those bottles of vodka that are big enough to have a handle built in on the side? OK, I can't remember the exact how much is in there, but I was buying one of those about every 36 hours because what would happen is it would get down to about this much

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in the bottom of the glass, about an inch. And I knew that wasn't going to be enough. And so I had to go buy another one. And and that's how I was drinking. Sometimes I had to go get stuff like that in the middle of the night. And so I would climb over my mother's bed. I was living in my mother's house in Pleasant Hill, California. I would climb over the back fence. I weighed about 300 pounds. So that was a really interesting thing for me to do. But I did it, by golly. And I'd be holding a checkbook in one hand and a pen in the other. And I was sort of waddled down to the local Safeway store and I would write a bad check for one of those bottles of Winner's Circle vodka. And I remember it was a dollar thirty two and that check. I had to kite that check. For those of you that don't know what that means, I had to like pretend to put money in an account in an ATM so I could write that check. So then I had to try to get cash in there. I was writing bad checks for a dollar thirty two and I would not have been able to tell you why I was in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And to me, that's just a good example of of how cunning and baffling and powerful this disease can be. Right. And the first two years that I spent in Alcoholics Anonymous were by many any other standard. They were unsuccessful. You know, it was funny. I was sitting in a home my home group the other night and every once in a while you will hear someone say that they came into AA and they were one and done. By golly, I was one and done. I came in.

I had my sobriety date and I was all done. One and done. And somebody at my home group on Wednesday night said, I hear that all the time. And I always want to say to them, you mean you never tried to quit drinking before you came to AA? And that was my story. Right. I knew that I shouldn't drink. I'm not stupid. Right. I knew that that was causing me some trouble. But what I didn't understand was I didn't understand that I had something called alcoholism. I think the biggest mistake that I have made in AA has been to overlook the necessity of identifying as an alcoholic.

And today, when I sponsor someone, I never say to that person, the program of AA is in the first 164 pages of our big book, because if I say that to them, I am overlooking one of the most important parts of the big book, and that is the doctor's opinion. And I was not directed to that. In fact, what I heard in AA when I first got here was you put the plug in the jug, go to 90 meetings in 90 days, don't drink between meetings and you're going to be just fine.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that that's what you were saying, but that's what I heard. Plug in the jug, 90 meetings in 90 days. Don't drink between meetings. I thought that was the program. I thought that's what you meant by the program. Yes, I had seen those window shades at the front of the room with those things called steps and traditions on them. I saw those, but I wasn't real impressed with either one, especially the steps. I had been raised in a beautiful faith tradition, one that Alcoholics Anonymous has given back to me since I've been sober. But my faith tradition had taught me all of that stuff. There's nothing new in those steps.

There's nothing mind blowing for someone like me that had been raised by a sane parent. I had at least one sane parent that had handed me this beautiful spirituality and a faith tradition and had raised me in it. And I remember looking at those steps and thinking to myself, you know, that never has worked in my life. None of this stuff has ever worked. But I had never heard plug and jug, don't drink between meetings, 90 meetings, 90 days. So I thought that was the program. And for the next two years, I would sometimes get two, sometimes three whole weeks of continuous sobriety. And then something would happen. And I would get struck drunk.

And I never meant to drink. It's not like I woke up that morning and said, I am going to get drunk today. Instead, what I would do is I would be sitting somewhere and I'd be thinking, I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. I went to a meeting this morning. I went to the meeting at noon. I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. There's a meeting that's going to be at six o'clock. I just have to make it to the meeting at six o'clock. I'm going to be fine.

I'm going to be fine. And then the next thing I knew something would happen and I would be drunk.

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And so the only thing that I really did that could be considered positive during that time is I kept coming back. And you all kept welcoming me back. The music of Alcoholics Anonymous kept playing and you kept welcoming me back. One day I walked into a meeting at a place called the Concord Originals. And let me explain to you how I used to go to meetings. Let's say the meeting is going to start at eight o'clock at night. So I drive into the parking lot at seven fifty five. I park. I come into the back door of the meeting at about seven fifty nine. I lean against the back wall. I try to get behind the wallpaper. I kind of stick around the edge. I sit down. I wait patiently for the meeting to start. They would start the meeting with the serenity prayer. And the minute the serenity prayer started, I am up. I am down. I'm over here. I'm over there.

I'm getting coffee. I'm going outside. I'm having a cigarette. Come back in. I'm sitting down. I'm up. I'm down. I'm looking at pamphlets. I'm sitting up down. Now the meeting is over. Everybody runs to the front of the room. They grab each other's hands. I would get in there grabbing grabbing a hand. We do the Lord's Prayer. Everybody goes keep coming back. It works. And I'm out of there. And you see my light lights in the parking lot. I'm out of there. And that's how I went to meetings. But for some reason that night, there was no place for me to sit when I got there and except at the table in front of a mean old alcoholic man. You know, the kind they have been sober for three or four hundred years. They're in the meeting. Get a book. Get a sponsor.

You know, those kind. Right. And there was no place for me to sit but in front of that guy. And and in California and a lot of our meetings, what we do is we say, is there anybody here in their first 30 days of sobriety? And I raised my hand one more time. My name is Leslie and I'm back. And I waited for everybody to burst into applause because, you know, that's what we do in California. We applaud for everything. OK, the coffee is made.

I mean, we just applaud. And you didn't do that or I should say before you could do that. This old man yelled at me. And now, look, there are people that were there that day that have told me since that that he couldn't yell because he was on oxygen and was dying of emphysema. But I remember yelling, OK, and he's dead. So it's my story and I can say what I want. But what I remember him saying, yelling is, aren't you tired of always saying you're in your first 30 days of sobriety? I'm tired, tired of listening to you say it.

And I was just shocked. I I my mouth opened and I looked at him and the only thing that could pop out was the one thing I had learned from AA in two years. You're supposed to love me until I can love myself. And he looked me straight in the eye and he says, I don't love you. He says, I don't even like you very much because you've been coming in here for two years. Wine, wine, wine. He says, you whine about your dead husband. You whine about your dead baby. You whine about your parents getting divorced when you were six. Says, when are you going to come in here and say, I want to quit drinking and I don't know how somebody helped me. And nobody had ever asked me that before. And what I'm going to tell you is he made me so angry that I just spent about the next 60 days or so going to every meeting I could find him at and staying sober right at him.

I would just pull I would pull up in a meeting. I roll down the window. Is Eddie here? Because his name we called him Fast Eddie. He was like really cute. Everybody liked him. Is Eddie here? They go, oh, yeah, he's inside. Good. I parked the car and I go and I just sit opposite him. Like this and just stayed sober. I was so mad. And because I was so angry and I was I was staying sober, time started going by without my even realizing it. And some and people would say, let's go get a chip. All right. And I go stomping up to the front room and I grab a chip and I come running back and I show it to him. I got a chip. And he would say things to me like, you know, we give those to anybody. Oh, my God, you guys. He was so freaking mean. I am telling you, he was mean. Let me tell you what happened at the end of about 60, 60 or so days.

I was sober. I was sober. I was as physically sober as I am right now. I could not get and cannot get any more sober. I am sober. And I found out you people were lying to me. And I found out you people were lying to me because nothing was fine.

[00:15:02]

Stoplights were taken forever to change. I couldn't sleep. OK. Colors were too bright and sounds were too loud. And everything was bothering me. And you were running around in those AA meetings with your cute little AA smiles and your bright little AA eyes. And you're saying stupid things to me like, how are you feeling? And I can't tell you how I'm feeling because I know if I tell you, you're probably going to call the cops.

So I'm saying things like, I'm fine. Right. And they're like, oh, you are fine means. And then you tell me some cute little thing that would just make me more angry. And I was like, I was going to I wanted to die. I just wanted to die. And I never wanted to die when I was drinking. When I was drinking, I was fine. But here I am, stone cold sober, and I want to die. More importantly, I wanted some of you to die.

And I knew who you were and I knew where you went to meetings. And so I came up with a plan. And my plan was to drive my car up the front stairs of the Concord Fellowship into the Concord Fellowship and take out as many of you as I possibly could. And my plan was to have it go up in a big ball of fire. And my plan included the the being on front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. My plan included the the news media out in front of my mother's house interviewing the neighbors.

Well, she was a lovely little girl when she was growing up. We don't know what happened. I wanted chaos. I wanted detention. I wanted to die. And for whatever reason, I could not turn the corner fast enough on that street that night. And I just left my car in the middle of the street and walked into the Concord Fellowship. And there was a man there that night, a guy by the name of Cajun Kenny. And Kenny had been sober for four or five years at the time.

And he had sobered up originally in Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. And he was not impressed with the sorority girl gone bad. And he was the only one brave enough to come up and talk to me. And he walked right up to me. He said, what is wrong with you? And I told him, I can't take this anymore. I don't want to live. And I'm trying to do it. I don't understand. It's like, oh, God, quick, come with me.

He took me outside and rummaged around in his truck and he came up with a little cassette and he said, listen to me. I want you to go home. I want you to listen to this man. Says this is a tape of my sponsor. And if you still feel like killing people after you hear this tape, then I want you to call me because there are people here in this fellowship that I don't like and I will help you. And that made perfect sense to me.

And so I agreed to do that. And I went home and the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous happened for me that night. And it's very important that I share this with you, especially right now in AA, when there seems to be such a discussion about. Identification. What what you need to hear from me tonight is that the person I was listening to on that tape, he and I have nothing in common. He's a different gender than I am.

He came from a different socioeconomic background, different educational level, different faith tradition. When we were growing up, he the guy I was listening to was a real life gangster. He had been done time and in maximum security prisons. I had never done anything like that. The man I was listening to was the late Johnny Harris. And what I heard Johnny say. Was that every time somebody tried to tell him his problem was alcohol, what they usually didn't get was that he was stone cold sober when they were given that information.

And he always wanted to reach over and just grab them and say, don't you get it? My problem is not alcohol. My problem is I don't have any alcohol right now. And I have to listen to all of you. And a light went on for me. And a light went on for me. You know, we've done discussions in my early morning online group, the one I got to meet Amy and. Well, we've talked about. That spiritual awakening that we all hopefully get, and what I'm going to tell you is that there's a part in chapter three of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that talks about.

When. We concede to our innermost selves that we are alcoholic. And Bill writes that we think is the first step into recovery. When I first got sober, old timers referred to that line as a description of step zero. Because in the moment that I identified with what Johnny said, I conceded to my innermost self that I'm an alcoholic

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because I understood in that moment what being an alcoholic was. I was stone cold sober. And the only thing I could think of was that alcohol was going to relieve that. And I couldn't drink because if I did, it would mean that Eddie guy was right. And so I, I was in that horrible spot that an alcoholic of my type gets when they know what they need and what they need is alcohol. And they can't have it.

And there's nothing else that you can do, but die. And in that moment, the light went on for me and I realized what I was. And I grabbed the phone and I called Kenny and he answered, he answered the phone. It was after midnight and he answered the phone and I said, you're not going to believe this, but I think I'm an alcoholic and he goes, how long have you been hanging out with us? I said about two years.

He goes, well, you are a quick study. And I asked him what was probably the most important thing I've ever asked anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, would you be that sponsor thing that they tell me I have to get? Would you be my sponsor? And, and Kenny outlined for me a program of sponsorship that seriously is probably still the same program I'm in today. He said, all right, here's what we do.

We are going to work out of the big book. We are going to work out of the 12 and 12. You are going to take the steps one at a time and you are going to learn about the traditions one at a time. You are going to get a sobriety date that you hold on to like a biting sow. You are going to go where I go. You are going to do what I do. And if at any time you think you've got a better idea of how to do this program, there is the door.

You will get yourself a new sponsor. No harm, no foul. And the, and the miracle is that I said, okay, I said, yes. And it was from that moment on that I went from that taking that first step into recovery to beginning my treatment of my disease of alcoholism. And what is that treatment for someone like me to be successful? Treated with the disease of alcoholism. I have to have a complete and total psychic change.

I have to literally become a different person and that becomes possible for someone like me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we started that journey together. We started taking those steps. He got me into service. Those, the service that I did was at the beginning where things like sweeping up cigarette butts, washing ashtrays, not emptying them, washing the ashtrays. And then I got to graduate to making coffee.

And then from after six months of that, I got to chair. We called it chair here. They call it secretary. We chaired my first meeting and I did that for six months. And suddenly at the end of that I had one full year continuous sobriety and I was moving forward in my steps. I was making those lists for step eight. I was starting to make those amends to people and I had some interesting things happen as I started to make those amends.

You know, I had had a very difficult relationship with my father. My father was our tornado in our life. My mother, thank God was the same one. And listen, I have listened to enough fifth steps to know how blessed I am that I had one sane parent because there's a lot of you people that didn't and my heart breaks for you. When I hear your fifth step, your fifth steps give me such hope for the human race because what I hear is the resilience of the human spirit.

But I was blessed. I had one sane parent, my father, six foot five jet black hair, looked like a cross between Aero Flynn and John Wayne. Big old guy from Texas was charming, could sell ice cubes to Eskimos, but he was also amoral. He was violent and he, you know, we don't like to diagnose anybody, right? But we've all heard that old saying, if it walks like a duck and it has feathers and my dad quacked a lot, but my father also, we're sure now suffered from PTSD.

He was a world war two combat vet and we had a difficult, difficult relationship.

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And, um, when I was about a year and a half sober, my father was diagnosed with, um, a very deadly cancer and I was sitting in meeting, oh my dad's gonna die from cancer and we've never done it. This I've got it in my mom, like, oh my God, my poor sponsor. Finally he got so tired of that. He yanked me out of the room and he goes, listen to me, I've had it with this. You get your money together that you owe that man and you'll get yourself up there and you make amends to your father.

And so I went up to the oncology ward at good old John Muir hospital in Walnut Creek and I walked in with my little down payment of the thousands of dollars that I had stolen from my father over the years. And I, um, he's there, he's hooked up to everything and there's a nurse standing there and I started talking to him and I'm like, you know, daddy, here's, here's the down payment on the money. I'm going to make you a monthly payment of $50.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I blah, blah, blah. And I make my amends to my father. And my father said to me, he goes, you know, honey, I always loved you. I didn't like you very much a lot of times, but you're my girl and this and that. And it was just beautiful. Right. And as I'm walking out of the room, I hear the nurse say to him, oh my God, that was just beautiful. What was that?

He goes, I don't know. It's some goddamn hippie thing she's doing now. But my father recovered from that. And in 2003 of my father's three children that we know of, I was the one that had the key to his house, whose name was on his accounts. And the last thing I was able to say to my father was, daddy, I'll be there in the morning and we'll have coffee. I love you. And he said, I love you too. And when I showed up the next day, I found my father's body in his house.

He had gotten up to make me coffee. He had thrown a blood clot due to his heart surgery and he had died. And I made two phone calls to 911 and then to my sponsor. And my sponsor said, hang up the phone with me, look on your phone list and call the first person on there. And I'm waiting for the people to come from 911. And I picked up, called the first person on my list. And that man contacted one of my sponsees and Alcoholics Anonymous got there about two minutes before the ambulance did.

You guys were on your way. You were coming. And what I will tell you, if you are newer than I am in this program, is that what Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me is it has allowed me to be the type of woman that my mother always hoped I would be. Now, what does that mean exactly in a very practical sense? You know, when I got to AA, I was this close to losing my job. I was a civil servant back in the day.

It was virtually impossible to get fired from a government job. Okay. And I was this close to losing it. I get sober in AA. I start doing the actions that you people have told me to do. I start learning about the traditions, not just how to work them in the rooms of AA, but how to apply them to my life. And suddenly I start getting promoted. And in 2017 I finished a 30 plus year career with Contra Costa County, a career that started off as a little beginning level clerk and I ended as a manager in administration services.

But I got to work in health services. I got to work in social services. Get this everybody. I got to work in law enforcement. I was the manager for records, warrants and central identification for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's department. And no, I can't help any of you. So don't even call me. But I got to do stuff like that. Right. And in 2017 I ended that career and I decided I needed to get a little job and I got my next job.

My next job was with St. Joseph's Catholic church here in Modesto and I became the coordinator for children's catechesis for the parish school of religion. And my mother, who I was sharing my home with said to me at the time, you know, honey, you were always so sad that you never got to have children of your own. She says, and now you have 600 of them and you don't have to send any of them. www.asmrmedia.com

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got two questions for you, and I said, okay, what's that? And she says, the first one is, she goes, can you, are you awake enough to take a phone call from somebody in Jerusalem? And I said, yeah, I can do that, and she goes, good, my second question is, who are you? I'm nobody special, it's just friends of mine from the family, you know, but you guys showed up. You know, all of my life, there were things that I wanted to do, there's places I wanted to go, and there were things I wanted to accomplish, and Alcoholics Anonymous has allowed me to dream and to plan and to live the kind of life that I really, honest to God, never thought I would be able to have.

Well, 20 years ago, I decided that I really wanted to learn how to be a Scottish Terrier, Preservation Scottish Terrier dog breeder, is what I wanted to do. I had lost two Scotties in a row at a very young age, and I thought, I need to learn how to preserve this breed. I really love this breed, and I started that journey, and last year, believe it or not, it took me this long, because I had to learn all this stuff, like getting a PhD in Scottish Terrier, but you know, I did it, and last year, I bred my little Lola for the first time, and she had two fat, healthy Scottish Terrier puppies, and one of those puppies won the National Puppy Sweepstakes for the Scottish Terrier Club of America last year in November.

I did that, right, because of Alcoholics Anonymous. Every day, I start my day with prayer and meditation and a gratitude list. I go to a meeting. I have service commitments in Alcoholics Anonymous. I make myself available for sponsorship. In the evenings, I end my day with a review and inventory. I never let the day go by without looking and seeing where I have been an asset and where I have been a liability, and if I have been a liability, I do my best to correct that as quickly as possible.

I do that every day. I do that every day, because that's how you have taught me to treat my alcoholism. I do that every day, so that I can come to rooms like this with people like you, and I can say, my name is Leslie, I am an alcoholic, and I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in good standing. Thank you for letting me share. Thank you so much for joining us tonight, where you never know what you're going to get.

You'll just have to keep coming back. We surely hope to see you here next Thursday, when our special guest is Jennifer T. I'm going to say this, but I'm not sure if I'm going to say it right, Bemidji, Minnesota. That's fun to say too. That's fun. If you like this meeting, please do as Bill Wilson always said, pass it on. You can help others right from your phone or computer and tell them about this special meeting.

Everyone is invited to hang out with us afterwards, in the meeting, after the meeting, on the porch. Leslie, do you have any closing comments, and would you please close us out with a prayer or reading of your choice? You know what I'd really like us to do, is I would like us all to make a pledge right now, that when we go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, we are going to do our best to make sure that we define alcoholism, and we share the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the alcoholic that is still suffering in the room.

And so, to that end, let's end with the responsibility statement, okay? Who's responsible? I am responsible when anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help. I want them to end the day, always, always, to be there, and to that end, I'm responsible. Great job, Leslie. Thank you, Amy. Thank you for coming. I appreciate you. Wonderful job.