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Source: Lovey R – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2026-06-18.m4a File: lovey-r-box-of-chocolates-2026-06-18.mp3 Duration: 00:55:51
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Alright, there we go, hi everyone, good evening, good evening, good evening, guys, my name is Lovie R. and I'm an alcoholic and it is only, only, only by the grace of God and Alcoholics Anonymous that I'm alive, sober, and recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body and what that means is that I get to be helpful and useful in my life today. What that means is that I get to be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a grandmother.
What that means is that, you know, I didn't come too hungover today, what that means is that I'm not like chasing that next drink. So for those of you that know me, you know what's coming next, right, get your noses out, rule 62, don't take yourself so damn seriously, right, and the Big Book tells us we are not a glum lot, that we absolutely insist on enjoying life and I get to do that today, right, I get to put on this nose and remind myself that, you know, I'm not really that important, you know, that I can just have a really, really great time.
I want to thank Peter for reaching out to me, he says, are you coming or what? I had the wrong digits, guys, I had the wrong digits and it kept saying to me, no such meeting, no such meeting, and I went, awesome, no such meeting, I'm going to go put my jammies on, I got the night to myself and then Peter calls and is like, well, I guess I'm going back to work. So, Peter, thank you so much. Guys, if you have heard me speak before, feel free to log off, right, my story doesn't change, my story is my story, it just doesn't change.
What changes is my relationship with all of you, what changes is my relationship to God. So, I have a sobriety date, it is September the 7th of 2015 and in that unbelievably short amount of time, there has been no need or obsession to pick up a drink. I have a sponsor, who has a sponsor, who has a sponsor, who has a sponsor, ad infinitum, and I sponsor sponsors. In fact, right now, my sponsor just texted me that my sponsor is hanging out with my sponsee and a grandsponsee, you know, that's just the lineage that I come from.
Oh, hi, Lil, I haven't seen you forever, sorry about that, I get distracted, Lil. My sponsor also has said to me, don't suck, I might know some of those people, so do let my sponsor know if I suck. I have a home group, it is known as the Global Main Purpose Group, and like you guys, it is virtual, we've been in existence for six years, since the very beginning of the pandemic. We meet Tuesday nights at 7pm Eastern Standard Time, and we go through the book, you know, page by page, and we have guest facilitators that take us through the book experientially.
I want to, you know, it's a week after Founders Day, and I want to sort of do a shout out to Alcoholics Anonymous. 91 years! 91 years! Who ever thought that an erratic band of just, you know, of alcoholics could have kept it together this long, right? That is amazing! I can't even like keep friends longer than that, right? My milk goes bad before I use it, and the fact that we are still here after 91 years is absolutely amazing, right?
And page 18 of our book sort of addresses this, right? It says, the ex-problem drinker, that's the sober alcoholic, who has found this solution, what is this solution? The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and who is generally, or who, and who is armed with the facts about himself, right? What is that? Well, that the alcoholic has a spiritual malady, has a physical allergy to alcohol, and has this really weird mental obsession, right?
And generally, when the confidence of another alcoholic in but a few short hours, and Dr. Bob, who is one of our co-founders, in his story, Dr. Bob's Nightmare, I think it's on page 180 or something, says something that of far more importance was the fact that Bill Wilson, right, was the first living human being who he had ever spoken to, who knew what he was talking about with respect to alcoholism from actual experience, right?
In other words, they spoke the same language, and he had all the answers, not because of some academic endeavor, but because he had experienced it himself, right? And this is what this program is, one drunk talking to another drunk about, you know, all the crazy things that they did, and a solution, right? We have a common peril with a common solution. So guys, what you're going to hear is 100% my experience, my truth, my reality, both in the program and while I was an active alcoholism, right?
I can only share with you my experience. I have nothing else to offer, right? I'm a fellow traveler on this journey, and I promise you, I do not know anything, nothing
[00:05:00]
about this book. I don't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous, and I certainly know nothing about God. You know, we do this shoulder to shoulder, right? On this journey together. Oh my God, nine for 91 years. Now, I'm extremely grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous. Grateful is what I am, and gratitude is what I do. For me, and only for me, AA stands for action and accountability. I don't get struck sober sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, right?
That just doesn't work for an alcoholic of my type. The way this program works for me is that I have to take the steps, right? I have to work those steps, have a transformative experience, and this spiritual awakening. Again, for me, and only for me, AA is not for people who want it or need it, but for people who do it. If I want what the first 100 who got in states sober had, I need to do what they did, right?
We're coming up on Canada Day, and we're coming up on the July 4th, and there are all sorts of really cool recipes out there for barbecue sauce or really fun desserts. If I want that dessert, I have to follow the recipe, exactly. I have to turn the oven on to that certain degree. I have to use the ingredients as listed and in the amounts that they list, but I don't know about you guys. If you're anything like me, I have another wedding coming up, and I need to lose some weight.
I'm going to look at the recipe, and it's going to call for, you know, like four sticks of butter. Yeah, I'm not doing that, right, because that lard is going right to my bum, and you guys know it, right? Oh, my goodness, it calls for six eggs. Yeah, no, my cholesterol is too high, so I'm going to use egg substitute, or I'm just going to use egg whites. What happens is that I get some version of this recipe, but I don't get the one that's printed.
So, I, me, me only, I have to follow directions, exactly, because that's the way I get results. Now, guys, when I first walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I hated you, honest to God. I just couldn't stand you. You know, you guys were all so happy and so joyful, and you said things like, hi, my name is So-and-so, and I'm a grateful alcoholic. Great, great, grateful. What on earth are you grateful for, right?
It's like 7.30 in the morning, or worse, it's 9 o'clock at night, and you're sober, and you're happy, and you're saying ridiculous things. Guys, I couldn't understand why you guys were happy, right? I couldn't drink, and I wanted to, and I wasn't very happy, and I certainly wasn't very grateful. And I came to AA not to stop drinking, but for you guys to teach me how to drink safely, right? There's a method to my madness.
So that you guys could teach me how to drink like a lady, right? Whatever that meant. Or how to drink those absolutely ridiculous Caribbean drinks, you know, the kinds that come in a tall glass with lots of fruit and ice and little fancy umbrellas. That's not the way that I drank, right? I drank whiskey from a bottle that had been placed under the seat in my car, and it's the middle of the summer, and it's 900 degrees outside, and I take that bottle, and I chug it, right?
And it's turpentine and acid going down, but I needed to drink, and I didn't know why. You see, guys, I'm a whiskey drinker, right? I'm a whiskey drinker, and I figured that you guys were the professionals. You were professional drinkers. I mean, you're sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. You obviously knew what you were doing, and that you could teach me. You could teach me, give me pointers on how to be a responsible drinker.
But did you do that? No, you didn't, right? There's my first resentment, but no. But instead, you guys showed me these things called the steps, right? And you guys told me that drinking had never once been my problem, but it was my solution. And I argued with you. I went, no, no, no, no. Drinking has always been my problem. You see, well, that's what the doctor says, right? That's what the police say.
Oh my God, that's what the judge says. My husband with frothy emotional appeals, right? Spittle flying from his mouth. Lovey, why don't you stop drinking? Oh my God, stop drinking. If you loved me, if you loved our kids, you would stop drinking. But here's the thing, you guys. I love my family. I would die for my family. I just couldn't stop drinking for them, right? And therein is my problem. And I got to tell you, I loved alcohol.
I still do. If I had known my last drink was going to be my last drink, I would have thrown a party. I own a great big white party tent.
[00:10:02]
More importantly, I think I'm the hostess with the mostest. I would have had signature cocktails. I have bartenders on speed dial. I would have served puke-friendly food, because that's just the kind of hostess I am, right? But that was not the case. And I absolutely love a 21-year-old single malt scotch, right? The smokier, the better. And I love, absolutely love the way that scotch looked in crystal glasses, the sun shone through it, and I love to swirl it and watch the legs go up the glass.
And you see, alcohol was my best friend, and it was my lover, it was my confidant. It was there when I celebrated, and there when I cried, and I drank when I was happy, and I drank when I was sad. And I heard somebody recently say, you know, I drank every day that ended in Y. And more importantly, right, alcohol transported me to this place of comfort and ease. Alcohol did for me what I couldn't do for myself, right?
And the book says that we drink primarily for the effect. Booze was magical. Now, it did something for me, right? No, it did something to me. It got me drunk like it does everybody, but it did something for me. It fundamentally changed how I interacted with all of you. So it always made me taller, right, because I'm little, I'm only 5'2". And depending on where I was in my alcoholic career, it made me younger or older, right?
So when I'm a daily drinker at 15, it made me older. And you know, at the end of my drinking, it made me younger. It always made me skinnier. But more importantly, it provided courage and self-confidence, right? Alcohol transformed me into the person I could never, ever be on my own. And in a letter to Bill Wilson, Carl Jung, right, our esteemed psychiatrist, The Other Doctor's Opinion, wrote a letter to Bill Wilson, and in it, he wrote Spiritus Conscious Spiritum, God the Spirit, capital S, versus Alcohol the Spirit, small s.
And there's a reason why alcohol is called a spirit. And it is derived from an ancient or an old Arabic word, al-ghal, meaning body-eating spirit. I don't know about any of you guys, but when I was drinking, booze consumed me, destroyed me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I was nothing but the empty shell of the person that I should have always been, right? Now, I hear this all the time. So from my experience, this is true.
I always felt different, right? I always felt like an outsider. And I used to think that I was adopted. Now, I have two younger sisters, and we look exactly the same, exactly the same. In fact, on my 50th birthday, my sisters and I went to the big island of Hawaii, and it was before Kilauea erupted. So we went up to the, you know, the Volcanic National Park, and it's at altitude. And so my sisters, who were really like this big around, got cold.
So we bought three identical long-sleeve t-shirts somewhere in this site. Like, guys, I gotta tell you, like, I am a geology nerd. So it's like, woo, rocks, and I'm all, I'm that way, right? My sisters, they're not really into it. They want, you know, pretty flowers and cocktails. And so we got separated, and some man stopped me and said, oh, my goodness, if you're looking for the two that look like you, they went that away, right?
So even complete strangers can tell that we are related. But when I was little, I used to take my sisters, and we'd go into the bathroom, and I would push our faces together, right, the three of us, and I would look for differences, scrutinize differences, because I was absolutely convinced, convinced, right, that I was mixed up at birth. And that's just not, that's just not the case. Now, I grew up in the early 70s, right, it was the time of the body snatchers.
And Steven Spielberg had just come out with this little, you know, this little film called Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And people are being, you know, taken from their beds and tractor beams up to UFOs. And it was also the time of, like, you know, the concept of robots and the six million dollar man with, you know, all those bionic enhancements. And I really, truly believe that all the people in my life had somehow been replaced by something else, and that I was the only human being around, right.
And I had all of these thoughts, these feelings, before I even started kindergarten, right. So it looks like most of us here are between, live in Canada and the U.S., and how old are we when we start kindergarten? Questions, How Old Are We When We Start Kindergarten? Like four or five, right?
[00:15:02]
So already, at four or five years old, I already had these thoughts, right, that I'm different than everybody else. And my life has been a series of events that just remind me how different I am from all of you, right? That I'm separated, isolated, internally unique, and I could never understand that. I couldn't put my finger on it until I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was here, and it was here that you guys told me that what I had was a spiritual malady.
Oh, what? What? And you guys were very kind and very considerate, and you said, you said, okay, Lovie, a spiritual malady is just a giant God-sized hole in the middle of your heart. And alcohol fills that hole perfectly, right? Fills that hole perfectly. It gets down to all the little nooks and crannies. Now guys, I have been able to stop drinking for periods of time, if I put props in my life to do so.
And I would fill that hole with other things, right? With sex, with food, oh my God, mashed potatoes and gravy, poutine, I mean, come on. I would fill it with shopping. I would fill it with you name it, right? And there was even a time where it was shoes. In fact, to this day, my sponsor will not let me buy a pair of shoes without my sponsor's direct say-so, right, that, oh yeah, you can buy a pair of shoes.
In fact, I just bought a pair of shoes without my sponsor agreeing to it, and we had a really long chat. But anyway, the point is, alcohol filled this big giant hole. And so, you know, I just never understood it, right? And you guys told me I never had to feel this way, and you gave me words to describe how I was feeling. You told me that I was irritable, restless, and discontent. Irritable, restless, and discontent.
And you also told me that there was this program called the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that would eliminate that feeling, right? Because I would be able to fill this spiritual hole with something spiritual. And I was like, oh yeah, okay, tell me more about that, right? Now guys, a spiritual malady does not make me alcoholic, not even remotely close, right? I am married to this really, really great man, and he has a spiritual malady, and he abuses alcohol, which is not the way that I do, right?
So I didn't mention it, but I get to live on the beautiful island of Bermuda, right? Through the power of amends, I get to live on the beautiful island of Bermuda. And although that's not where I am right now, I'm in New Hampshire, but my husband likes to golf, and he will come home from golfing on a really hot Saturday afternoon, he'll go into the fridge, he'll open the door, he'll take out a bottle of Corona, he'll pop off the top, put in a wedge, a lime wedge, he'll take two drinks, put a wine stopper in it, put it on the counter, and walk away.
Dude, just drink the beer, just drink the beer, right? It's gonna get hot, it's gonna go flat, little gnats are gonna show up, like, I don't understand that, right? Now I'm obsessing, like, just pour the beer down the fridge then. But see guys, he's not an alcoholic, I am. And what makes me alcoholic is that I have a physical allergy to alcohol, and this thing called, you know, that strange mental obsession, or, you know, that queer mental thinking that the book talks about.
And I used to really truly believe it was the eighth or the ninth drink that got me drunk, right? The eighth or the ninth drink, the eighth or the ninth drink that got me drunk, and if I could stop drinking it, you know, two drinks, no more than four, six at the most, I would be good, right? I would be good. So four drinks come and go, and then 10, 11, and I'm closing down the bar, and I can't understand why this keeps happening, right?
I just don't get it. It's like, let's say that Adrienne, and Francis, and Wayne, and Sue, and I gotta drag Peter and Debbie with me, we're going out to celebrate something, we're going out to celebrate something, and we're gonna have one cocktail, one, right? Guys, I've never had one of anything in my life, right? And what happens to someone like me is that I have that first cocktail, and then I have four, and then I have six, and then, you know, I shut down the bar, and I don't understand why this happens, right?
I don't get it, because guys, I'm honestly only having one cocktail. And the book uses this really great phrase, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization,
[00:20:03]
like, why does this keep happening? Why? Right? And then one alcoholic to another, right? Lil will tell me, you know what, lovey? When you drink, you trigger the allergy and the phenomenon of craving. And I'll say like, what? And you say, well, it's the first drink that gets you drunk. No, no, I argue with you, Lil. No, that's not gonna happen, because I'm a good drunk, right? It's like the eighth or the ninth drink, mm-mm-mm, right?
And you say things like, the first drink insists on the second, which then demands the third and screams for the fourth, and so on, and so on, and so on. You see, guys, I thought I was changing my mind. And then you say things like, you know what, lovey? You don't have the power to change your mind, right? Alcohol rules you. All right. Okay, so now I've got that down. Here's the problem. I have a body that won't let me drink and a mind that won't let me stop.
And therein is my problem, right? Therein is my dilemma. So if I didn't pick up that first drink, everything would be good. But, right, I have that peculiar mental twist, where my brain tells me, you know what, lovey? The next time you drink, it's gonna be different. You know what, lovey? The next time you drink, it's gonna be different, I promise you. My alcoholism speaks to me in my own voice. And I am really sort of convincing.
I'm a relatively intelligent woman, right? But my alcoholism is smarter than me and makes really great recommendations. You see, my alcoholism will say to me, you know what, lovey? A champagne toast at your kid's wedding is not gonna hurt. It's just not. So case in point. Some of you know that my son got married in September in Ottawa. We had an amazing, amazing wedding. It was absolutely lovely. And I think this is the fourth wedding.
And the wedding planner knows I don't drink. She doesn't know why. But she was like, what are you gonna do with the champagne for the toast? Nothing. There's nothing to do. She says, well, what are we gonna put in your glass? Nothing. Don't worry about it. You know, it'll be fine. I can put water. You can't put water in a champagne flute. Oh, OK, I'll put ginger ale. But the ginger ale is gonna be the wrong color.
It's not gonna match, you know, it's like, don't worry about it. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, taking her inventory, we should probably talk. But anyway, that's a whole different story. So she says to me, well, what would happen if you had a sip of champagne? Well, guys, let me tell you something. I do not understand the verb to sip, right? To sip is not part of my vocabulary, right? I gulp, I chug, I double fist.
And if I have a drink at my son's wedding, this is what's gonna happen. The waitstaff were unbelievably handsome young men, right? They look like Chippendales. And they're walking around with these beautiful silver trays, and they've got these champagne flutes. And they would have taken one, taken another, woohoo, taken that stemware, thrown it against the window or the wall, whoop-ba, right? Now my husband's annoyed that this wedding is gonna cost more money.
I'll probably drink a couple of bottles of wine. Wine is fine, but liquor is quicker. So now I'm in the brown liquors, right? So you know, I already like whiskey. Oh, I like tequila too. Tequila makes my clothes fall off, in case you guys didn't know that, right? And now I see those groomsmen, oh, they're all so young and handsome, and my inner cougar comes up, and I'm trying to make out with them.
I'm gonna either jump out of the wedding cake, fall, or fall into it. I'm gonna have an absolutely epic fight with my mother. My husband will be embarrassed and humiliated. The police will be called, and I will end up in the hospital, right, in state-sponsored jewelry. That's what happens when I drink. See, that's what happens when I drink. And the book tells me that there is no lurking notion whatsoever that I can ever drink safely.
And I know that to be true, but that is only self-knowledge, right? I need something between me and the drink. Now, the only way I can really describe this is childbirth. So everyone, my apologies, you know, it's a Thursday night, and we're gonna talk about childbirth. I have six children. I'm a real alcoholic. I had six children in five years. And to this day, I cannot tell you how uncomfortable childbirth was.
I have no relative memory of the pain or the discomfort. And you wanna know why?
[00:25:00]
Because God gives women amnesia to trick us into having more babies. If you've had a baby without drugs, or if you've been with a woman in labor and delivery who had a baby without drugs, why would you do that a second time? Why would you do that a second time, right? I'm gonna tell you why. Because we forget. We absolutely forget how terrible childbirth can be. And that's exactly the way my alcoholism is, right?
Page 24 in the italics says something to the effect that we are unable at certain times, at certain times, I never know when those certain times are gonna be, but at certain times, we are unable to bring into our consciousness, consciousness with sufficient force, the memory, the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago, we are without defense against that first drink. And that is my experience.
All right, I still have some time, so I'm gonna tell you guys some stories. My mom, who is in her 80s, is still incredibly proud of the fact that all of her babies slept through the night from the moment we got home from the hospital, and I know you know how she did that, right? She put a cap of whiskey in our baby bottles. And she also put whiskey on our gums when we were teething. Now, I grew up in Northern Ontario, where the temperatures would drop to minus 40.
I kid you not that those are real temperatures. And we would come in from this playing out in the snow, because you still had to go out and play in the snow. And she would make us this hot toddy kind of thing. And she would wash our hands with whiskey. And no, she'd wash our hands with whiskey. And I remember being a kid getting whiskey underneath my fingernails, and I would suck it out. Oh, my God, it was the elixir of the gods, right?
So KFC has this really great slogan, right? Finger licking good. Who needs fried chicken, guys? I've got whiskey under my fingernails, right? Now, my mother also made this concoction and she swears by it to this day. And it's made with whiskey, grilled onions and vinegar. It's repugnant. It is disgusting. But I took it willingly, gleefully, right? And she gave it to us when we weren't feeling well.
And needless to say, I faked being sick a lot, right? And I had a deal with my sisters that for a quarter, which was a lot of money back in my day, I would take their dose of medicine. You see, a quarter back in my day would get you, you know, a soda, a pop or bag of chips, right? Wow. So I got three doses of this whiskey stuff and 50 cents. Oh, my God, you guys, I was living large. And the reason, so in our book, in More About Alcoholism, there's this story about Jim, right?
Jim, the salesman. And he talks about how suddenly he's out trying to sell a car and he stops at a roadside restaurant and he orders a sandwich and a glass of milk. And he says, suddenly, suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey or an ounce of whiskey in my milk, it wouldn't hurt on a full stomach. And when we read that in meetings, right, the newcomers are going, oh, my God, that's disgusting.
Who puts milk in their whiskey? And I'm like, me, me, me, me, me, oh, my God, me, me, right? And the chairman always ignores me. But see, guys, the reason I bring that up is because whiskey first came to me in my baby bottle, right? And then it was whiskey with ice and soda or pop. And then it was whiskey on the rocks until it was whiskey neat, until it was whiskey in a bottle underneath the seat of my car in the middle of the summer.
And that is the progression of my alcoholism. Now, I hear people talk about the progression of their alcoholism, how consequences eventually started to catch up with them. That is not my experience. I had consequences from day one, day one. Can you imagine? Oh, my goodness. So I remember going out to a party. And then it was the week after, right? So I was 14 years old. I had my first drink without any parental participation, shall we say.
And I got blackout drunk, absolutely blackout drunk, like I said, no memory of it. And I got pregnant. I'm 14 years old and I'm pregnant. And that baby was placed for adoption at birth. And without tools, I turned to the only thing that provided any source of comfort, right? And that's alcohol. You see, alcohol is reliable. I had always known how much I needed to drink to get me to where I needed to be.
to Where I Needed to Be. But alcohol began to turn on me in a really big way and I started to put myself into unbelievably
[00:30:02]
dangerous situations just to be able to drink the way that I wanted, right? I was raped at gunpoint, I rolled cars, I drove too fast, I experimented with non-conference approved dry goods, I was expelled from high school, I was arrested three times before I was 16 and at the age of 16 I began a nearly year-long sexual affair with a man who was more than three times my age because every time we met he made sure to provide me with enough alcohol to get me through the next time we got together and I met up with him twice a week, right?
Remember guys, I'm a minor child, where am I going to get alcohol, right? Because my parents' alcohol had already been watered down because whatever was there I would drink it. And as my drinking progressed I began to cross lines I never, ever, ever thought I would and you know our big book talks about having moral and philosophical convictions galore. Guys, I had these convictions, I was raised well, to the best of my knowledge my sisters have never sat in the back of, you know, a police car in handcuffs, right?
That is not part of their experience and I started to justify my behavior and I have been told, right, if I have to justify, defend, or rationalize my behavior it is wrong. It's wrong. I wish I had known that. Now I don't know about you guys, but if I cross a line and I get away with it, I'm doing it again. I'm doing it again and I'm doing it again and I'm doing it again until I get caught. I am, I was, a heavy haul helicopter pilot, right, and you can sort of see them up there and I flew my aircraft drunk and I knew it was absolutely, unequivocally the wrong thing to do, but I was willing to risk the lives of your grandbabies sleeping in their crib so that none of you, none of you would know that I had a drinking problem and I did the most insane thing of my life.
I engaged those rotors and I flew, anyway, sorry, I don't know why that did that, but here's the thing. It was an absolutely beautiful day and nothing happened, nothing happened, right? Total memory kicked in and I landed that aircraft without incident and as I sat there during that two minute cool down period, I was absolutely baffled, baffled by what I had just done. In 30 years of professional aviation, I had not crossed this line.
I just did and I knew I was going to do it again. I crawled out of my aircraft, I flew to the tarmac, I fell to the tarmac and our big book in a vision for you talks about that jumping off place, right? Where we would realize that we couldn't live with alcohol and we couldn't live without it and we would know loneliness like never before and we would wish for the end and I was done, right? I had that moment of clarity.
I don't know if you guys have noticed this, I'm just a wee bit dramatic, right? I got a personality and I know I'm in trouble and I'm crying and for those of you who are old enough, I look like Tammy Faye Baker, right? Big streaks of black mascara running down my face and in the state of Connecticut, we have license plates that start with two letters, a dash and something else and when I finally pulled myself together, wiped away the tears from my eyes, the closest car to me, the license plate I could read, started with AA dash something else and that was the first time I recognized a sign from God and I crawled into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now my higher power, whom I call God, has a wicked sense of humor and uses what I call God shots to make a point. You see, alcoholism was the baseball bat, right, that God used to get my attention. I walked into the rooms of AA hoping that you guys would teach me how to drink like a lady but instead I found God first as the gift of desperation, right? I'm out in that metaphorical ocean, it's dark, it's storming, right?
It's Bermuda, there's a hurricane coming, waves are cresting over my head and I am drowning. I've been treading water for a long time and I can't do it anymore. I can't do it anymore but you know what, you guys show up in a life raft and you throw me a line and I grab onto it and you pull me into safety, right? I don't have a choice. I am dying. However, if it was a beautiful day in Bermuda and the sea was flat and the sun was shining and I could see, you know, the beautiful pink sand down below and if I turned around I could see the shore, I still think I have choices, right?
[00:35:03]
And you guys show up in that same raft which turns out to be a canoe with a hole and, you know, it's rusty and you throw me that life preserver but it's moldy and it's got barnacles on it. See, I still think I have choices and I'm going to say, you know what, why don't you come back when you have like a 30-foot bass boat and make sure that the life preserver is magenta. Yeah, yeah, because I like pretty things, right?
See, that's the way my thinking goes. I still think I have a choice. My next higher power becomes a group of drunks, right? I'm sitting in the rooms of alcoholics, it's 7 in the morning and you guys are going, I'm grateful, alcoholic. But I'm hearing how you got your kids unsupervised for the weekend. I'm hearing how you went back to school to finish that degree. I'm hearing how you won your, I don't know, some kind of civil case in court.
I'm hearing how all of these amazing momentous occasions are happening for you. Wow, that's amazing, right? Because that wasn't happening in my life. And then my next higher power becomes good orderly direction. Because you guys say things to me like, you know what, lovey, get a sponsor. Someone who has experience in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics and Honest from this book, and do the work. And lovey, start living your life according to spiritual principles.
What's a spiritual principle? Oh, exasperated, you guys go, all right, look, this is what you're going to do. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal. Wake up in the bed you're supposed to wake up in with the person you're supposed to wake up next to. What a brilliant idea. See, you guys taught me how to be a human being in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I got here and I'm like a feral cornered animal, right?
Don't get too close. I didn't know how to relate. And then finally, as the result of these steps, right, I had a spiritual awakening and I've been able to develop, cultivate, and nurture a relationship with a God I can't even begin to understand, guys, I just can't. Now, our 12th step says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to Alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.
For me, and only for me, Step 12 is a three part step. The first part, right, is a guarantee. It's a guarantee. It's a promise that if I do the first 11 steps, as outlined, I am guaranteed a spiritual awakening. And the first 11 steps for me are directions for finding this God, right, because I don't know how to access him. And the book gives me some pretty basic directions, right? Lay aside my prejudice, all my old ideas and my old thinking.
It tells me to be willing. Oh, crap, I gotta actually be willing to do this. And I need to take the action of seeking. And if I do that, I'm guaranteed to have a spiritual awakening. Now, I wish I could tell you guys that my spiritual awakening was, you know, the bright white light moment, you know, no, that's not my experience. My experience is of the educational variety, right, where eventually things just started to change.
And I didn't need to drink one day at a time. I don't need to drink at all. And my life has changed and I've become a completely, completely different person. So the second part of step 12 is to carry this message, right? And that is the charge for having a spiritual awakening. If I have a spiritual awakening, there's a cost to that. And what that means is that I need to carry this message to other alcoholics.
Well, what is this message? And again, only for me, the message is found on the forward to the first edition of the big book. It says something to the effect that we have alcoholics anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book, right? Precisely. There's not a lot of wiggle room in the word precisely.
Again, it's that recipe analogy. If I want what the first 100 who got in states over had, I need to do what they did, right? And they carried a message of hope and recovery. And from that, you know, 91 years ago, we are here today. I have a responsibility to take others through the steps, right? I just don't get this miracle and not do something about it. I get to cultivate the fellowship that I crave, right?
I get to build a fellowship. And it's not a as a whole. Indeed, that's true. But it's also, you know, my sponsor, my sponsors, their sponsors, right?
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My litter mates, and we grow and we share. I have a God squad, right? And I get recovery, not by not drinking one day at a time, but by engaging in this program so that I can fill my life with a power that is greater than me. Now, our big book uses the word approach 28 times, 28 times, I have a responsibility as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous to go out and find the newcomer. I have no idea where we got this idea that the newcomer has to come and find me.
What does a newcomer know? When I was new, I knew nothing about nothing about nothing, right? It's like gone with the wind. I don't know nothing about birth and babies, right? Nothing. I knew nothing. So I go to wind up joints, right? I go to the places I wind up if I drink again, jails, rehab, detoxes, I go to great fishing spots and I go to beginner meetings and I look for that face I don't recognize.
Now, in my home group, I stand by the door, right? I'm going to sit there in my little clique and chat with all of my friends. I stand at the door and I look for that face I don't recognize. And I'll go up to them and say, hi, are you new? Yes. Welcome. My name is Lovey, right? Here are the coffee. Here are the donuts. Here's a meeting schedule or here are the bathrooms. Here's a meeting schedule. Oh, you're not working right now.
Fabulous. Look at all these great big book meetings. I'll meet you at this one and this one and this one. Come sit beside me. Here's here's a book. Let me introduce you to some people. Would you like to go for coffee after the meeting and talk? Another new face, especially true in a place like Bermuda or a place where you have a lot of tourism. Hi. Are you new? Oh, no, I'm just visiting. Welcome. My name is Lovey.
Here's the coffee. Here are the scones because we don't donut in Bermuda. Here are the bathrooms. Here's a meeting schedule. Here are all the meetings closest to your hotel. How can I be helpful to you while you're visiting our beautiful island? Can I can I offer you a ride? Can I give you some suggestions? What can I do? Another new face. Hi. Are you new? No, no, no. I got 30 years of resentment in a coffee pot and I'm here to create chaos.
Welcome. My name is Lovey. Here's the coffee. Here are the donuts. Here are the bathrooms. Here's a meeting schedule. You know, right now in the state of Connecticut, there are eighteen hundred meetings a month. I'm sure we can find one just perfect for you. Please come and sit beside me. Oh, here's a fourth edition book just in case you're still working from the third. Let me introduce you to some people, guys.
There are people who have a lot of time who are sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous who have stopped hearing the music of AA. They have stopped hearing the music and the magic that this program brings. Right. You know, that that crusty old curmudgeon that sits there and I have a responsibility to reach out to that person as well. Right. The newcomer and the person who has stopped hearing the music.
Now, here is the challenge in my life. The third part of step 12. To practice these principles in all my affairs, capital A, capital L, capital L, all of my affairs, not just the ones that I want to practice, right, because I'm good at those. I can behave really well for an hour in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. But how do I behave on the on Friday night in the summer on the 401 and everybody's trying to get to cottage country?
Right. How do I behave? How do I behave on the busiest travel day of the year, which is the day before Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving? And I'm at JFK Airport. Right. How do I behave when I'm standing in line at a grocery store behind a little old lady paying for paying with coupons and pennies and there's some place that I needed to be? How do I behave? This is the gauge today of my recovery. How do I behave?
These are spiritual principles and these are the things that I try to live by today. Right. I try to live in compassion, patience, forgiveness, love, goodwill, humility, honesty, integrity, fidelity, consideration, restitution, acceptance. Right. Today I get to be a producer of harmony rather than confusion. Right. I get to do that today. There is a line in our book that says that love and tolerance of others is our code.
And that's that's great. But this alcoholic cannot use the word tolerance because for me, tolerance comes from a place of spiritual hubris. Just putting up with you and your nonsense today. Right. But if I come from it, from a place of compassion, I'm I'm doing my best. your lenses. Guys, it's not always easy, and I will tell you today that my job is to care for God's
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kids right here, right now, on their journey, whatever that might look like, with love and compassion, without opinion or judgment. I fail sometimes, oh I fail a lot, right, but I make the attempt, I take the action. I was hoping it'd be over by now, but I got to talk about this. All right, I talked about restitution, and restitution, it follows our ninth step amends, and I had to make an amends to a government agency that oversees aviation here in the United States, and I didn't want to do it, and I wasn't going to do it, but my sponsor, who's a pain in my backside, would say, did you do it?
Did you, did you, did you do it? No, I'm not doing it. Do it! Okay, now one of my character defects, and it's glaring, is that I think I'm smarter than my sponsor. I do, I do, I do, gets me into trouble all of the time, and so I thought, you know what, well my sponsor's not a pilot, what does my sponsor know? So I went to my attorney, I said, hey there Mr. Attorney, my sponsor wants me to do this, and my, and my attorney says, oh hell no, we worked so hard to keep you out of jail, and you want to go do what?
I'm vindicated, I am vindicated you guys, and I go back to my sponsor, and I go, hey there sponsor, this is what my attorney suggests, and my sponsor looks at me like only a sponsor can, one descendingly pats me on my head and says, oh so sweet, how free do you want to be? Get on your knees and pray for the willingness to be willing, right? And there's a line in our book that says, if the indicated action is to be taken, I must not shirk, right?
There are no loopholes, precisely, right? That's what the book says. So I spoke to my husband, spoke to my children, and we all agreed this was something I had to do. So I made an appointment, and I took my attorney, my union rep, my aviation physician, and another sober pilot. And I told this gentleman, this panel, that I was a sober woman and Alcoholics Anonymous, and that my sobriety was predicated on making right the wrongs of my past.
And I wasn't there to beg for my job back or to have my license reinstated. I was simply there to do the next right thing, whatever that was, and that I would accept their decision, right? Their judgment for me. Guys, my biggest fear was that I would be arrested and remanded to custody on the spot. But here's God working one more time in my life. That man said to me, I, too, am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I know exactly what you're trying to do.
He said, this is what we want you to do. Never drink again one day at a time. And we also want you to help share what alcoholism is and what it isn't in the aviation community. And I get to do that today, guys. I get to sponsor a lot of people. Not all of them are in aviation. Most of them are not. But I get to suit up and show up and help. I spoke in May at the Colorado Women's to Women's Conference, and a woman came up to me after and said, I'm a pilot.
I need to talk to you. See, I just never know where God is going to show up in my life. I wasn't going to mention this. I wasn't going to talk about it. But I had surgery two and a half weeks ago, and it was orthopedic, had some tendons fixed because I fell on my driveway in the snow. And as the surgeons coming in, you know, talking to me before the surgery, I said to him, hey, look, you're here. I'm here.
I've got this little mole on my thigh. Would you take it out? OK, fine. But here's the thing, guys. I debated about this thing for a long time, right? It's like, oh, do I have to go to a dermatologist? I don't have time for a dermatologist. You know, plastic surgeon, who can afford a plastic surgeon? You know what? Just take it off. It'll be fine. The pathology came back, and it's stage three melanoma, right?
That was not the diagnosis I was expecting. But see, that's God working in my life one more time, right? There was God in my ego, right? That voice, that still small voice. Just take care of it. And I did because I could have just let that thing languish. And here's the thing. I'd lost a bunch of weight, and I thought, oh, I'm going to go lay in the sun in my bikini in Bermuda. Well, there's no more sun and there's no more bikini.
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And everything is going to be OK, guys. This is what I did, right? Sandy Beach sort of set the platform for it. When I got the news, I went to God first, right? I said, God, this does not change my relationship with you. Please give me the strength to be the best example of this situation that I can be. And please help me to help my family. Then I called my sponsor, and then I called my husband, right?
Things have been happening really, really quickly. I'm going to have a sentinel node biopsy and have the rest of this lesion excised. I don't know what tomorrow brings, right? I don't know. But I know that it's going to be OK. I know everything is going to be just fine because I pray for God's will today, right? I don't pray for my will. I don't say, please, God, I'm begging you, I'm begging you, I'm begging you.
I know that this is going to be OK, right? And I really, truly mean that. My sponsor is like, I am fine. I am good. Life is good. My husband flies in tomorrow. I get to pick him up. I have not seen him since this diagnosis, but we get to talk about this. And his mother is dying of cancer, and she's in hospice. And my poor husband, how can I be helpful to him as he's losing his mother, as he's preparing for retirement, right?
And his wife, who probably didn't use enough sunscreen. But the truth is, pilots have a highest rate of melanoma of any classification, professional classification. And that's because, you know, we have those suns. You know, a lot of airline pilots are 40,000 feet in the air and they don't have cover. And so there's just a lot of exposure. But anyway, guys, you know, everything happens for a reason.
And more will always, always be revealed. And the fact that I told you guys about this now means that I have to tell other people, like my sponsees, like my kids, because they don't know. So I'm almost done. But I would like to close with page 100 of our book. And it says, both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen.
When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned. Follow the dictates of a higher power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances. So, guys, thank you so much for allowing me to be of service tonight. Thank you for allowing me to participate in my sobriety.
And thank you for allowing me to be vulnerable and honest with you. Love you all. And I think I came in under time. If I went over, I'm so sorry. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Well, you never know what you're going to get. You just have to keep coming back. And we surely hope to see you here next Thursday. Our special guest is Jimmy D from Dallas, Texas. If you've never heard Jimmy D's story, what a treat.
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 porch. Lovey, do you have any closing comments? And would you please leave us out with a prayer of your choice? Um, you know, that's that that that little nagging voice in the back of your head.
That's usually God trying to get your attention, right? So pay attention to it. I can't find it. Maybe I didn't bring it. I'm looking for my 12 and 12. I guess not. Do you guys have your 12 and 12 handy? Page 99. Ah, Lil, will you help us with the prayer of St. Francis? Sure. Thanks. I'd be happy to. All right. Uh, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love, that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, that where there is discord, I may bring harmony, that where there is error, I may bring truth, that where there is doubt, I may bring faith, that where there is despair, I may bring hope, that where there are shadows,
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I may bring light, that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved, for it is by self-forgetting that one finds, it is by forgiving that one is forgiven, and it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen. Amen. Thanks, Lil. Thank you, Lavi. Thanks, Lavi. Lavi, it's lovely.
Great share. So beautiful. Oh, thanks. Love you.