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Source: 1960 Long Beach International Convention – 1960 Long Beach Int., Alkathon Chair Tom A Mary Lou S., Ward M., Virgina D.mp3 File: 1960-long-beach-international-convention-1960-long-beach-int-alkathon-chair-tom-a-mary-lou-s-ward-m-virgina-d.mp3 Duration: 01:02:40
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Now, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to turn this meeting over to the chairman of the first Alcohol-a-Thon meeting of this day. Chair this meeting, start this meeting rolling, because I have known your chairman and met him in the Answer Club in New York, and one of your speakers, Mary Lou Schwartz, was my gracious hostess in Albuquerque on my trip out here. It now gives me a great deal of pleasure to turn this meeting over to Tom Anderson of Woodbridge, New Jersey. Tom.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tom Anderson, and I am an alcoholic. On the way here this morning, I stopped for my coffee, and as I was talking to one of the fellows from New Mexico, I believe, and he said he was leaving, and I asked him where he was going so early, and he said he was going to a loner's meeting. And he asked me did I know what a loner's meeting was. And after being here about two o'clock this morning, I had visions of being here all alone this morning. However, I find that we have some of us that were able to get up and get out here this morning.
Now, I just want to take a moment to say that I drank for a good many years. I drank socially. For I'd say about 17 years. And then I began to have my trouble. And the alcoholism progressed on me very quickly. And I think that for the last 11 or 12 years of my drinking, I went through all the torches of hell to the time when I came to AA. And I came to AA because I had nothing to lose. I certainly didn't think it would be possible for me to stop drinking. And if I did get stopped, I certainly never thought it would last over a period of time. But I came to AA. I was a firecracker. I wouldn't listen to anyone. I was very much upset. And I was a rebel. And little by little, I guess the program caught on to me and quieted me little by little. And sometimes I'm complimented by people who I associate with in my political business life. And they tell me that they can't believe that I'm the type of person who would drink. Well, time has been very good. The good Lord in AA has been very good to me. Because not only did I get my sobriety in AA, but I acquired something that I didn't think was possible. And that's contentment and peace of mind. Now, I have three very good speakers here this morning. I'm not going to take up any more of their time. And I'm going to give you, for my first speaker, a young lady from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I've never heard her myself. But I met her just a few minutes ago. And I've enjoyed talking to her. I'll give you now Mary Lou Schwartz of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everybody. You're all loyal and hearty souls to be here this early in the morning. I know probably some of you were here up until at least two when Marty was through talking last night. I know I was. You all better open your eyes and look because my voice, usually over a microphone or a telephone, people think they are talking to a man. But I am Mary Lou from Albuquerque, and I am an alcoholic. And I am most grateful to be here this morning. I'm tired and sleepy, as you are, but my heart is very full of gratitude.
I am going to deviate just a little bit this morning from the usual procedure of what I used to be like, what happened, and what I am like now. First, just briefly, I will tell you that I was perhaps the kind of an alcoholic that Marty said she was. That from the first drink, when I was about 15, alcohol was more important to me than it was to the other people, and it continued to be more important for 20 years. All of that 20 years was not heavy alcoholic drinking, but it was always an important thing in my life, too important. As the years
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went on in my drinking, after, as Marty said last night, the pride in being able to carry your alcohol better than anyone else, I went through that, and really, I had a wonderfully beautiful pride in that great achievement, and that's something to be proud of. But as time went on, I no longer could carry the alcohol. The alcohol was carrying me, and I would say that the last 10 years of my drinking, alcohol was pretty well in control. The drinking story of mine is boring, uninteresting, nothing exciting happened, just misery. I didn't lose my husband. I don't know why. I don't know why he stayed with me, because I certainly made life very unpleasant for him. But somehow or another, he stayed, for which I am eternally grateful. The gratitude that I have for having found AA is tied up in that particular element.
What happened in my family when I finally found AA, when I finally hated myself, loathed myself, was so completely appalled and disgusted with my own self, that I turned to AA, which I had heard a little bit about. Then the world began to change. I can't say that it was all perfect from the beginning. When I first came into AA in July, it was a little bit of a mess. In the summer of 1949, there were very few women alcoholics in Albuquerque who were in AA. There were lots of us as alcoholics, but very few in AA. I couldn't identify myself with those women who were in, because I still hadn't reached anything but a mental bottom.
At that time, I felt, well, these things that have happened to these other women have never happened to me, so I'm not an alcoholic. The reservation was so strong in my mind that I grabbed that idea, and after two and a half months of AA and complete dryness, my husband and I, in all seriousness, discussed this. We look back on it and laugh at it now, but at the time it was completely serious. We decided that really I wasn't an alcoholic, that perhaps I was a potential alcoholic. But now, with all this great knowledge that I had gained about alcoholism in two and a half months in AA, that I could handle alcoholism like a lady once again. We had a very definite plan in our drinking. There would be no more starting on Friday night and continuing until Sunday. Of course, my drinking went on through the week, but Spence's was usually, he would join me over the weekends. I would say that perhaps for three weeks, that new system worked beautifully. I only drank with Spence. I only drank on Saturday evening. Oh, it was just wonderful for about three weeks, and you all know what happened. It wasn't very long until the whole thing was right back in the same old treadmill of my morning drinking, my trying to go to work, and trying to get a job, and getting up early in the morning. Spence, incidentally, yesterday at an Al-Anon meeting said he was sitting there, his mind was sort of wandering a little bit, and all of a sudden he heard one woman speak up. No, it wasn't an Al-Anon meeting, pardon me, at one of the meetings, and the woman spoke up, and she said, and so she decided to go into business with her husband and help him run the business. Well, that's what I did, and he said his ears went on point, and he was very interested to know whether her results were as disastrous as mine were, and they were. I helped him run the business right into the ground. But we went on on this drinking of wine after my short period in AA for seven months, and
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in those seven months I went downhill fast and furiously. At the end of seven months I knew that I was either completely insane, but I didn't think I was an alcoholic. I was either insane or there was something terribly wrong with me. Somehow or another, with God's help, I found my way back to AA, and back to being able to accept completely and entirely with no reservations the fact that I was an alcoholic. And then the changes and the wonder in our lives began. My gratitude for everything good that has happened, I am grateful for it, but I am not able to express it. But some of the things that have happened briefly in these ten years in AA, one, and one of the high moments of my life, was when I was, my name came out of a hat to be the delegate from New Mexico to the General Service Conference.
That, I know, was one of the most wonderful, marvelous experiences in my life. My term was fifty-four and fifty-five, so that I had the great good fortune of being at the twentieth anniversary convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. And to be here at the twenty-fifth is wonderful. I hope I can go on making all these conventions, and with the help of people like yourself and a higher power, I can. Now here's where I'm going to deviate a little bit from the usual procedure and become very personal. You know, if we stand up here and we tell our stories, we tell the most intimate things that happened to us during our drinking, but it isn't very often that we get up in front of a group of people in an AA meeting and talk about what is happening today, what has happened yesterday, that has brought AA and its great impact on our lives right into immediate focus. And I'm going to tell you, I'm not going into details, but I want to tell you that in the past perhaps nine months, I have learned something about step number three. I have thought I have been working the program for a good many years, but it's only been in these past few months that I discovered that I hadn't been working step number three at all. I had tried, but I really never let go. I always felt that, yes, I would turn my will and my life over to the care of God, but not completely, that there were some things that perhaps because God was so busy with other things that I could handle better than he could. And I was forced into a situation in this past few months where there was nothing I could do. It regarded my son. There was nothing I could do about a problem. I had to learn to take hands off and to let go and let God. And it wasn't easy for me. I always have felt that there was something I could do about problems. There was an estrangement between my son and my wife, and I had to learn to take hands off. And I didn't know at the time what to do. And then is when the wonder and the marvelous thing in AA came to the front. I was able, for the first time, to completely turn a problem over to God and let him handle it, to keep my hands off. And you know, I thought I had done that on many other occasions, but there's a different feeling when you do it completely. I had no idea how the situation would ever turn out, if I would ever experience it.
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able to accept that, because if this was what was best for him, and it was God's will, I was able to accept it. Oh, I'll admit that at first, it was not easy. I didn't like the situation, but the fact that I was able to accept it, gave me something. My husband, who is very active in the Al-Anon group, was able to do the same thing at the same time, because it was a problem too big for us. So the problem was put entirely in God's hands.
It was quietly, by both of us, put there each day, only for God's guidance of what to do, and that God would guide our son. And you know, the wonder of Alcoholics Anonymous, my son is not an alcoholic, he's twenty-four, but he was guided to AA, to an AA member in another town, who I had introduced him to, and during the trying time of his problem, he had the help of an AA member. That help was given quietly and easily, I know, because the man is a quiet, easy man. The first time I had introduced my son to this man, he had made the remark to me, he said, you know mom, he said, if at any time I never ever needed help, or needed a friend, or had a problem, there is one man that I know I could go to, and that he would understand and help me. Incidentally, from the time my son was fourteen, when I went into AA, he had been well aware of all the ramifications of alcoholism.
His mother's drinking, and then my advent into AA. He had been to many AA meetings, many AA people. But somehow, this one man, at the time he met him, when he didn't know that he would ever truly need the man, he just felt, somehow, that this person could help him. And when the time came, I don't know whether he went to him, or whether God sent Joe, it was his name, to Chuck. I don't know those details, they aren't important.
But an AA member was ready to help him when he needed help. And yesterday, I was left this building, walked over to the hotel, went up to the elevator bank, was just ready to go up in the elevator, the elevator door opened, and my son walked out of the elevator. And I told you, I said, I didn't know whether I would ever see him again. Can any of you imagine the feeling that I had when I saw him standing there? And can any of you imagine really how I feel, why I say I am so grateful, and the gratitude I have to Alcoholics Anonymous?
As if it hadn't been for this man, in another town, to stand and not advise, because no one could advise, but to be ready to be there, to listen, just as he has listened to many alcoholics with their problems, as you, in your 12-step work, have listened. So AA has done for the Schwartz family more wonderful things than I can possibly tell you. As I said, this is deviation from the usual AA talk, but it was something that I had to say.
I had to talk from my heart to you people today, and wonder why sometimes we question God's will for us. Because we do. We fight this program sometimes. We fight what is
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really God's will, because it isn't our will. I know that I have done that many times. In my ten years of serious AA, I had one slip, a one-night slip, and that was because I was trying to have a situation be my will rather than God's will. And you'd think I would have learned over that experience to leave things in God's hands. But I guess we all seem somehow to feel that we still can handle problems. But to take that third step in its entirety is such a relief and such a wonderful feeling that somehow this is the way it is to be. That if you are trying to do God's will, trying to understand what his will for us is, that the answer will come out right. Maybe not the way we think we want it, but it will come out right. I have heard the saying in AA which has impressed me very much, and that is, when our wants become needs, they will be taken care of. And as I go through the years in AA, and now am learning to really try and work the third step, I find that my wants, when they become needs, are taken care of. Not only mine, but those who are near and dear to me. I don't know of anything in the world, or any place in the world, that has to offer what this organization of Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer to us. In the first place, it gives us back, as one of our members, who those of you from New Mexico have heard her say, her card-carrying entrance to the human race again.
And that is what it does. Monty mentioned that last night. We rejoin the human race that we were so far away from in our drinking. The friendship that we get, and the extent of that friendship, and I don't mean just in numbers, but the extent of the individual friendship that we have for each other, and of course the large number of friends that we gain in AA. I could go on for hours and hours, and never would I be able to find the words to completely and entirely express my gratitude to Alcoholics Anonymous for many, many things. Thank you.
Thank you, Mary Lou. That was wonderful timing, too. Now, I'm not going to take up any time in here. I want to introduce my next speaker, and my next speaker I have never, never heard, or never met until just a short time ago. So I'm going to look forward to enjoying his talk along with you. And I'll give you Ward Montgomery of Springfield, Illinois. Good morning, everybody. You know, I thought that I have led a pretty strenuous life.
Until I came to Long Beach. I got up at a quarter after six yesterday morning in order to be bright and shiny at the past delegates meeting at eight o'clock. And then I wanted to see and hear and meet that wonderful person, Sister Ignatia. And then I came over here and I heard a gal from
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Phoenix give the most beautiful explanation of the third step I'd ever heard. And then I heard Charlie Abercrombie, with whom I served on the first panel in New York in 1951, give the very funniest explanation of the eighth step that I had ever heard. And then I went to the afternoon meetings and I went to the stadium with all of you. And I came back to the hotel and at a quarter of twelve I was about ready to go to bed. And I ran into that clown, Nicky Sheridan, and he said, let's go to the midnight meeting. And it's a real good thing that I wasn't born a girl, because I never have been able to say no. So at 2.30 I got back to my hotel room. I don't think I should talk very much about my pre-AA days, because Long Beach is full of stories about like mine. I drank whiskey and I drank gin and I drank scotch and I twisted them all around. And then when I was in a bad corner and had to be on my good behavior, I drank beer.
Because I always maintained that drinking beer was like kissing your sister. No kick in it. So my drinking pattern was about like thousands that are here at this conference. Late in Bill's talk last night he mentioned the Jack Alexander article of 1941, March. Well, I am one of the products of the March 1941 article. At the end of that article there was a little note giving the address of the New York office. And my family sent for the big book and found out where the closest group to Springfield, Illinois was. And it turned out to be St. Louis. Well, nothing happened for several months. The pattern wasn't changed. And then my family put the Jack Alexander Saturday Evening Post article in a lockup ward in St. Louis.
And incidentally they put me in with the article. So since that time I have been active in AA. I don't talk at many meetings anymore for two or three reasons. One of the reasons is, and I have mentioned this to other AAs of my vintage, and that is that we are fearful that new people will think that we who have been in AA 15, 18, 19, 20 years should have all the answers. That we should be working on our second or third million dollars. That we should never be crossed with our wives. That we should never be impatient. That we never should feel sorry for ourselves. And that life should be just one great big ball.
And I, for one, have found that I need AA and I need to work AA just as much now as I did 18 years ago. I don't know what I needed more. I get in a bad humor sometimes. In a bad humor sometimes, I get a little resentful sometimes, I get to thinking that it's wrong
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for that great guy Montgomery to be kicked around and abused like he is and unappreciated, but these silly ideas fortunately only last moments now, seconds sometimes, and I've learned to count my blessings, and I've learned to be grateful, and I've learned to use the tools which were given to me in St. Louis years ago, and things haven't changed very much, very, very little since those days. They told me things that we tell people out in Illinois and have been for years, and unquestionably the California people tell their new prospects about one day at a time, and about easy does it, and about the first drink that we can't take, and about trying to live one day at a time. A very wonderful guy from Chicago who is not with us anymore said one time that if we were to try to pick up a 2 by 12 plank 30 feet long and carry it, it would break us down, but if we would cut that plank up into one foot sections, we could carry it, and I've tried to remember that, and I've tried to live just one day at a time, and I don't talk at meetings and try to throw my weight around anymore because of something that Bill said a number of years ago. Bill was talking about bleeding deacons, and those of you who haven't heard Bill tell this, a bleeding deacon is a founder of a group or groups who made the coffee, directed the meetings, did all the 12 step work, did all the talking, and then when somebody else grew up a little in our program and tried to do something, he got sore about it, and some of them got drunk, and I don't want to get drunk, and I don't want to be a bleeding deacon, but I have learned some things, and AA has come to mean some things to me that it didn't at first.
One of the first things I learned was that it's much easier to be a character than to have one, and I learned that there is no the way to work this program. The way it worked for me won't necessarily work for the other fellow, and if it doesn't work, we try another way, and I remember that AA was built on failure, and when we fail, we try again, and sometimes again, and I've learned the importance of the non-AAs, those wonderful people who have served as non-alcoholic trustees through the years, and closer to us than that are wives and non-AA friends in our own hometowns, and I remember that if it weren't for the non-AAs, there would be no AA.
If it hadn't been for Ann and Lois, there would have been no AA, and I try to keep these things with me all the time.
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At first, AA meant people to me, and only people, I'm afraid. AA meant a group of strangers in St. Louis. There were about 15 members, or 18 perhaps, when I went in, in St. Louis, and these people tried to make me welcome and feel at home, and then a little later, I met Earl Treat, who founded the Chicago Group. Last night, the gentleman who started the meeting out there mentioned a meeting out here in the summer of 1943. Well, when Bill was out here in the summer of 1943, he stopped in St. Louis on his way home, and I went down and met Bill then, and through the next year, I met other people, and then AA meant to me at that early time an angel in New York, in the New York office, named Bobby Berger, and those wonderful letters that I got from that gal, somehow, miraculously, just at the right time, when I was about to throw this whole deal out the window, saved me.
I only met Bobby in person twice, but I'll never forget her. And then, AA started meaning some other things to me. AA has changed my, the meaning of it has changed, perhaps, as I've grown up a little. And as my capacity to understand has changed. And from this handful of strangers that I knew at first, my circle of friends in AA grew, and some of the best friends that I have in the world, or ever hoped to have, are members.
And these things gave me a way to improve the quality of my sobriety. I had been physically dry yet. But these people, some of them, showed me, without saying it in words, that they had something and they were getting something. Out of AA that I wasn't getting. And I finally decided that it was the quality of their sobriety which I wanted very much. And it put me closer to this higher power that we talk about.
And I was able to have a feeling of reverence, and at the same time a feeling of friendliness, which I had never had. I learned to become reconciled to my own limitations, without losing a desire to do a little better. I gained a new sense of values which caused me to place sincerity in a man or a woman over cleverness. I learned something about honesty and integrity and tolerance. I've learned that we can have laughs without hysteria. And I've learned that we can have fun without remorse.
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And I'm trying to learn something of a very beautiful word called humility. And I have a definition of it which I like and I hope you will like. Humility is a sincere feeling that comes quietly to live inside of us, peacefully and without pretension. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ward. You know, when Ward spoke of that Jack Alexander story in the Saturday Evening Post, it brings back memories. I was fresh out of a mental institution about the time that story was published in the Saturday Evening Post.
And I recall I had gone into that mental institution thinking that all my troubles were causing my drinking. And they weren't so charitable to the alcoholics in the institution in those days. You were a drunk or a bum or something else. And I had, I believe, an argument every day that I was in that institution. Fortunately, I had signed myself in. And every time I got in a tight spot, I threatened to sign myself out. But I stayed there for about six weeks and I got dried out and I left there knowing that liquor had become a problem to me.
And I resolved that I'd never drink as long as I lived. And believe me, I stayed dry on my own for about two and a half years. And I found that I couldn't live with myself dry. I got drunk. And that brought the story on. For three and a half years, I might say that I was almost continually drunk. I had to work because if I didn't work, I wouldn't drink. But I had reached a point then where I was going to turn the gas on. And I don't say that to be dramatic because it had got to a point there where I could no longer face people or face things. And then AA and thank God for it. But if anybody wants to try doing this on their own, they can have my share of it because I had two and a half years of a very, very miserable time of staying dry on my own.
And thank God that when I was looking for something, there was AA and some people that had some time to sit and listen to me, someone kind enough to pick me up, take me to a meeting, and someone kind enough and charitable enough to encourage me along the way. Now I'm just marking time here. I was using a little bit of the time that Ward left here. And we have another speaker on here. And although I have never met the lady before, it seems that I have known her for a long time. Perhaps sometime we'll find that our paths have crossed. I want to give you our final speaker, Virginia Daly of Jupiter, Florida.
Good morning, everybody. I'm Virginia from Florida, and it's great to be in California. Your sun is awfully nice, too. I'm constantly amazed when I find myself up on a platform saying that I am Virginia and I am an alcoholic because I am an example of a woman who hated drunks. I hated the word alcoholic, and I never liked to be drunk myself, strange as it may seem. I drank always to get well, never to get drunk, until the end when I drank for oblivion. I fought alcoholism all the way through. To me, an alcoholic, an alcoholic woman particularly, represented the very depths of degradation, a woman of the streets and a tramp, anything but an alcoholic.
I'll take you back a little bit, just so you'll have an idea of my background. And in so doing, when I talk up here, I know a little bit about myself. myself. And I find, too, in AA, that when I know myself a little better, then I am able
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to know you better and, therefore, to love you better. I came from New England, and I was brought up in a very fine environment. I had the best any girl could have. I had a lovely home, married to a very successful husband. And I say this with my tongue in my cheek, because I'm now married to an alcoholic who's in the audience. And he's been sober longer than I, and I hate to have him have a resentment, but he's successful, too, and sober. But my first husband was not an alcoholic, although a heavy drinker. I had two beautiful children and a lovely home. We lived in a suburban area right outside of New York, and it was a very fast, lively set. I was a kind of a girl that was an idealist, a perfectionist. I know now that I had created for myself a completely false set of values. I was basically very insecure inside. I covered myself with a veneer of perfectionism, trying to prove myself to everybody else, but never believing it inside. These little things I didn't know then, I have learned since coming to AA. Everything I did, and every place I went, I was trying to prove myself. I did everything for approval of other people. I find, incidentally, that this has been one of my difficulties in AA.
I've been in eight years now, sober, and it took me four years before I was able to stand up at a platform and say one word. I became actually physically ill. Blush, heat, oh, just a terrible physical reaction. I realized at that, after about four years, and I finally had a blackout in front of a group like this, just couldn't even recall my name, that it was my same old character defect hitting me right square in the face. And that's where I learned about myself. I was again standing here trying to make an impression in front of people, you see. The same phony. That's all I was. And now, actually, very frankly, although I hope you like what I say, I really don't care. I really don't care. I don't care how I look. I just hope I can help somebody. But I'm not up here to show off what I'm wearing or what I'm like. This is stripping me sort of naked, but I need it. I cloaked myself with this veneer of artificiality for so many years, and I know that that is one of the reasons that I drank. Because, as Bill said last night so beautifully, this art of communication, when I drank, the veneer fell, and I was able to communicate with other people. When I was sober, I was afraid to, because they might discover what I really was inside, and that I couldn't stand. I drank well. I had a tremendous capacity. As a matter of fact, I could drink most of the men under the table. I think that is typical of most alcoholics in their earliest stages. I somehow discovered the use of sherry during the beginning of my alcoholism. I had heard that it was good for nursing mothers. It only had a small alcoholic content, so that couldn't have been a problem. I found at that point that I was using the sherry for the smallest detail around the house. I seemed to have developed a void in my living.
Even though I apparently had everything that a girl would want, there was a void in my life. I wasn't satisfied. There was a yearning, and could only be satisfied by alcohol of some variety. Then I entered into a phase of drinking that is probably familiar to a lot of you of really working hard. This is easy, staying sober, but I really had to work in that early days of my alcoholism. My husband naturally wouldn't approve of my getting drunk, so I had to establish a plateau, a plateau of mellowness. This is a hard job because you have to drink so much to get this level of feeling well, and then you have to have a little coffee to sober you up a little bit, and this goes on all day so that you can be right so you're sure and have cocktails when your husband comes home at night. Then I progressed from there into this little department of having my drinks measured. My husband would leave in the morning, and I discovered that he was marking the whiskey bottle with pencil.
So to get started in the morning, I'd have to have a couple of shots out of that bottle, and it would go down. So I'd have to get the funnel out and dilute it very carefully, still shaking, being sure it would go right to the pencil mark. And then it would become so diluted that I'd have to run out for the half pints or the pints, hide them in the dresser doors, and not have to finish them so they wouldn't be discovered, you see. This is work. And then, of course, the trips of the empty bottles, piling them in paper bags and driving miles out into the country so even the garbage man wouldn't know. But all this time, I had no
[00:50:04]
problem. I was a lady, you see. I mean, I was very circumspect and very proper and very phony, of course. It's wonderful to stand up here and be able to look back on these scenes and laugh at them, isn't it? I had an experience a few months ago, and my daughter, we were having a girl scene in the bedroom, and she looked at me and started laughing and said, Mother, you know, I think I'm the one that's responsible for you drinking that vanilla extract. And I looked at her and I said, Oh, my Lord, no. And she was laughing then, you see. I said, What do you mean? And she said, Well, I emptied all those whiskey bottles and hid them so you had to drink the vanilla extract. But isn't this great? Here's a teenage girl and she was laughing with me. She wasn't ashamed. And this is what I did so fearful of, being a mother of the tortures and the scars that they might have carried themselves and not let me know. That's another lesson that I had to learn in AA, too, was self-condemnation. That's a terrible thing, a terrible thing. I went around with that for a long, long time. I'll go back again into my alcoholism. I fought admitting it.
I went to AA not because I wanted sobriety. I went only to keep people quiet. I used AA. I used you, dear people, because I found at last I had some people that wouldn't scold me and say, Where's your willpower? Why don't you drink like a lady? Why don't you do this? Take a walk, read a book. No, they were kind. As a matter of fact, they'd even run out and get me a bottle of drink if I needed it. This was great. So when I had trouble and I was feeling lonesome, I'd call my dear alcoholic friends. But I wasn't ready for it. I was using them. I learned a lot of things from them. I learned about doctors, calling a doctor in. I learned where to hide my bottles. I found one wonderful place that was never discovered, the bag of Electrolux vacuum cleaner. That was great. These things I learned then from AA. But my nose was up in the air. I couldn't be one of you people, not me. Oh, no. I was a lady. But the path of a woman alcoholic is fast and hard and quick, and it was for me. And two short years after I had my nose up in the air at these meetings, scoffing at alcoholics, oh, yes, I thought it was a great organization for these people that have gone down so far and needed it. But this could not happen to me, not me. Two short years after that, I had lost my husband. I had lost my children and my home. I was living in a small furnished room in a strange town. I had never worked before in my life. I had no money, and there I was in a furnished room, shades drawn. I don't like to recall these scenes. They're not very pleasant. But I must do it. I never want to forget it. Never want to forget it. There was Virginia who could not admit being an alcoholic, and I was there and I was down. I was so dehydrated I couldn't put my shoes on. Half-paint bottles under the mattress, hiding bottles from whom? There was nobody there. Crawling to the phone, always for a half a paint. I never wanted to get drunk, you see. I still hold my check stubs for that last drink. In this one day, five little half-paints, hoping to get well enough, strong enough, so that I could get downstairs and at least get a glass of milk for nourishment to get on my feet again. But you know the story. One drink, back into oblivion again.
One too many, and a hundred not enough. And this was the end. Thank God, my last drink. How, why, I know it was the grace of God that brought me to AA at that time. It was April Fool's Day eight years ago, and this was the end of a battle. I was stubborn, self-willed, filled with a terrible, terrible false pride, and yet basically very insecure. And I fought right to the end. I was brought up never to admit defeat. To admit defeat was weakness in my book, and I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. And to admit that something that big could get me in Virginia down, no. I couldn't admit to that. But I learned. I had to learn the hard way, that the only way that we can recover as an alcoholic is to admit that complete defeat. That was necessary for me, and may, I hope, it is necessary for other new ones that come in. But for me, it was. And I thank God that today, I can stand here and say,
[00:55:05]
I am Virginia Daly, and I am an alcoholic, and I'm so grateful, so very, very grateful for having been given the gift of this Alcoholics Anonymous. That first year in AA was hard. I look back on it now and I wonder if I could ever get through it again. I know it was my higher power that did it for me. I fortunately was in a town where there was a club room, and I held on tight. It was my lifeline. You see, at that point, I had lost my children. I felt like a woman with a scarlet letter walking around, even though I was sober, trying to explain why I did not have them. It was a torturous thing. Again, the self-condemnation. I had to go to meetings all the time, talk to alcoholics. They took me through, one day at a time, that first year. And bit by bit, I began to grow. I began to learn about myself. I began to understand that I was not a moral leper, that it was a disease, that I had something that was similar to diabetes, that no one drink of alcohol had an effect on me that was disastrous. I know today that I might be able to take a drink, perhaps get away with it. I might be able to for two weeks a month. But the guard is down. I am an alcoholic. The guard is down, and I am completely out of control. I would have no idea when the next binge would occur. And I did have binges.
I was a bedroom drinker, strictly a bedroom drinker, behind the closed doors. I couldn't stand to look at myself, and I didn't want anybody else to see me. The shame and the remorse, you're all familiar with that. The thousand and one torturous thoughts that go through your mind. I'll say that after three or four years in AA, the wonderful dividend came to me, and I had my daughter returned to me. I learned a great lesson from that.
We alcoholics, I think, are great for wanting things yesterday. We're impatient. We're sober. Why can't we have this? Everything is fine. And of course, as a mother, my heart ached for these children. My dear AA friends told me that, Virginia, when the time is right and when you are ready to receive these things, you will, if it is right for you and for them. So at a day at a time, I had to learn this. So four years, and then the reward came. And I know now, looking back, that had this happened earlier in my sobriety, it would not have been right for her, nor would it have been right for me. So you see, this AA does work.
I learned an awful lot about myself. These first three steps in AA were so important to me because they were the surrender ones, and they were the ones that were so hard for me to give up, to give up. In every department, not only to give up the alcohol, that was only the very beginning. I want my sobriety, but to be dry is not enough for me. I know that. I know that's why I drank, because I was yearning and looking for something. There was a tremendous void. Sobriety to me means a great deal more than being dry. It means living and working this program every day of my life. And I know now, I am convinced, how completely helpless I am as a person. I am almost two people, I and me, and I am always fighting with me all the time. And I know how dependent, completely dependent I am on the God of my understanding, even to be up here today. Because I've tried that before. When I did this alone, I blacked out, it didn't work. And now the God of my understanding takes over here and it's easy. And how I fought so long, the self-will, the ego, the willfulness running my life. And now I have learned, and I am learning. I'm only in the kindergarten of this. Heavens, there's so much more to go. I have a whole life, a wonderful, wonderful living ahead. The first three steps of letting go completely, as Mary Lou said, turning our will and our life over. And then came the next steps of the cleaning up department.
Real clean up, right through the ninth. And then we come to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth that I call my living steps. And my pet of all is the eleventh. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with a power greater than myself. with a power greater than myself. I'm so very new in this that in order to use this step, I have to find time alone. I need it, because I know, being an alcoholic, how sensitive I am to circumstances and to people around me. I know my weaknesses through this program, and I know how important it is for my daily living to
[01:00:18]
depend on this higher power. I have to do it. I have to do it. And it's wonderful to have discovered this, to discover that I don't have to fight anymore. The monkey is off the back. I don't have to pretend anymore. I don't have to prove myself to anybody anymore. My only job now is try to prove myself to the God of my understanding. And in so doing, I've learned how to love you, to love my fellow man. I never knew that before. You were people, you were shells as I was, because I saw you through my eyes, you see. And now I begin to see a little clearer through the help of this wonderful program.
And this grapevine, this line of understanding we have, this communication, it's wonderful to come to these conventions, to meet people from all over. Tom and I attend many conventions. We love it. And it's great to come here to see Boston over there in the corner, people from Connecticut, from North Carolina, all growing and all learning. And we'll be doing this for the rest of our lives, thank God.
And I certainly want to thank you all for the opportunity of listening to me, and particularly so early in the morning. Boy, this was a job to make it. Thank you a lot. Thank you, Virginia. Thank you. I want to thank all you people for making this possible, for our speakers, and for myself. Thank you for listening. And would you care to join me in the Lord's Prayer? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.