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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – FREEDOM TO CHOOSE Freedom to Choose – RS 06353.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-freedom-to-choose-freedom-to-choose-rs-06353.mp3 Duration: 00:49:58
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I have some instructions up here, and it says that I should ask that we all sit in a moment of silence and gratitude for the AA recoveries over the past 50 years, followed by the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. There may be someone here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level, and so our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.
We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and film. Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker, or indeed any AA member, be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help others, problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us, and our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personality.
Tapes of all of the meetings, including this one, are available for sale at the Tape Sales booth at the Convention Center. I said my name is Tom, and I'm an alcoholic, and I am indeed grateful and honored to have an opportunity to participate at this 50th anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because you see, on February 10, 1966, I was picked up in the streets of Baltimore in a state of alcoholism, convulsion, and delivered to a jail cell where I was charged with being drunk in the street.
And I was drinking on February 10, 1966, and I was delivered to a mental institution who sent me to an AA meeting, and on February 11, 1966, I was not drinking, nor have I drank since. And I thank God for that. They tell me that the best toastmasters or chairpersons of AA meetings are those who have been forgotten. Someone will say, who chaired that meeting? I say, I don't know. And I'll tell you right now, if I accomplish that, it's going to be a great feat for me, because I'm not very good at doing that, but I'll try.
The speakers that we're going to listen to this afternoon, I have met one only at a forum that I attended. If I sound nervous, it's only because I am. I was talking to Nancy just before the meeting, and one of the things we talked about was, she said she wasn't particularly nervous except for the last hour to begin to build up. And I said, well, that's just God shaking the truth out of you. Maybe that's what he's doing to me right now. And so I'm supposed to thank him for that. I don't know how, but thanks anyway.
And so without anything further from me, I will give you Nancy C. from New Jersey. Thank you. Good heavens. I am Nancy, and I am a very grateful alcoholic. Tom said I am a very nervous alcoholic. I have seen some friends that are in this room now, earlier at this convention, and they asked me if I was nervous about this afternoon, and I said no. And that was true, when Tom asked me. But boy, it sure has been building since lunchtime. And right now, I'm very nervous.
Oh. Is that better? How's that? Okay, I'll try and speak up. It is an honor to be here. I sat in on a couple of other speakers, and they said, I don't know, I'm getting a resentment, I think, in a sense, because they said that their delegate had asked them if he could put their name in a hat to be drawn out, possibly to speak at this tremendous occasion we're having.
[00:05:19]
My delegate did not ask me. He told me he had put my name in the hat, and that I might be hearing, that I might be receiving a letter. And I think one of the reasons I wasn't nervous until this afternoon, or noontime, was because when that letter did come, it was presented in the same manner so many other things in this program have been presented to me. It was a loving invitation to do something for our fellowship, and it was on a subject that's very dear to my heart over the years I have learned, that I do indeed have a freedom that I never knew could exist.
Back today, strangely enough, in a morning reading I always do, I picked it up because, as I said, when the letter came, I did what I had to do. I put it away, and I really didn't think about it. And there have been so many things since I was here, and coming and getting ready, that I was so excited, that I really didn't choose to think about this moment right now until a little while ago. In fact, last night, and I said something about, you know, I really should think about what I'm going to say, or, you know, maybe make some notes, or, you know, how those things go through your head.
And then I said no, because the only way it works is to really let it go. This morning, I went to bed late last night after a meeting that ended about 12, 31 o'clock sometime, got up this morning, had breakfast, went back, opened the book that I usually do my morning reading in, and the subject was on choices. I couldn't believe it, but that's how things have worked for me in this program. I first called AA for help in September of 1972. I didn't know what this fellowship was. It had been suggested to me by a marriage counselor, because my marriage was falling apart, and we were in counseling. It had been suggested by a minister and by a doctor, all who were trying to help me.
But I never asked what it was. I just simply said, I don't need it. So that tells you where I was at. I still thought I was in charge. But I know today I was an enduring life, not living it. And this morning, I found out another name for that. I was a victim of all the circumstances, all the people I thought in my life, and all the expectations I had put on myself and allowed everybody else to put on me. When I called for help, I wished I could say that was the beginning of this life for me, but it wasn't.
I finally, in November, had my last drink on November 16, 1972, when the people in this fellowship finally convinced me, in a very loving manner, that I needed to get out of my bar room, which was my home, my laundry room, any place in my house. Also, at that time, we had three supplies of liquor in our house. Mine, hidden, my husband's hidden, and the one for the company. When I have to think of insanity, that's it. I have no question. Because we couldn't even talk to each other about it or acknowledge that the other had a hidden supply, too.
And a marriage counselor was trying to help us at this point. Obviously, she did not know too much about it until we finally hit one that did, and she suggested to me that maybe my drinking was a problem. But anyway, at the time, I went away. And I love to remember this today, because at that time, I couldn't have gone to a hospital. They wouldn't have taken me. But there was a small rehab nearby, which they had convinced me to go to.
And there, I learned what had been wrong and what I could do, and that I did, for the first time in my life, find out that I had choices and that I could make a choice for myself. Today, I know the first choice I made was to go away and do something to help myself.
[00:10:04]
And while I was there, I was introduced to the program, and I was told that the thousands before me had followed this path, and that if I chose to do it, I could have the joy of living that they had found. And that within the pages of the book that was given to me was the way to do that, and that was the 12 and 12. For me, that was the beginning of a journey, a journey that today has been a pleasant and a joyful one.
It hasn't been free of problems. Certainly, as I look back in hindsight, I see much that I didn't know at the time. And as they say, I don't get more than I can handle today, and I do believe it. If I have more than I can handle today, I have made the choice of giving it to myself, and I do that once in a while. As I said this morning, I learned that I had been a victim, and in this same reading, it reminded me of many of the choices that I had been given, that I had been given a choice to assess my own self, find out who I was.
I had a choice of trusting in a higher power who I had known for a long time, but I had known him as someone that was way up above me, and I had tried to bargain with him. And one of the strangest things of this program, I think, for anyone to understand until they have experienced it, is the fact that when I surrendered completely to that God, I gained a freedom that's unbelievable. And I don't continue that serenity as much on a daily basis as maybe I should, but I'm working toward it, and the more I work toward it, the more I do it, the more freedom I have.
Some days are better than others. I get back in control, and I lose it. But I have come to understand a freedom that I never knew could exist. And in that freedom, I am able to live each day to an extent that I never could live without it. And that means not living in yesterday and not living in tomorrow, but today and participating fully in that day and the life of that day. And that doesn't mean I've had a lot of choices in big things.
Two years in this fellowship, the first two years of the steps, as I said, was the way that was pointed to me and suggested that I use them if I wanted what I saw in the rooms I was in, and I did indeed want what I saw you had. So I attended a step meeting on a regular basis every week for my first two years. I didn't understand a lot, but I listened. I was scared to death to open my mouth. I used to sit there sometimes shaking for fear I'd be called on in the early days.
But I learned from people that had been there, and I learned that I could, if I was willing, that I could do it and that I could choose to do it. At the end of two years in this fellowship, I had gained, and looking back, I didn't know it at that time. I had gained the freedom to make a decision, and I think a whole lot of little choices along the line that I had made unknowingly enabled me to do that.
With a piece that I didn't know was able to exist and a lack of anger and a lack of resentment that had gone, I was able to decide to leave the marriage of over 20 years. I never could have imagined that would have been possible before, but it was, and I made that choice, and I didn't know whether it was right or wrong, but at the moment and at that time, it seemed to be the right thing. As time has gone on, I have had that reaffirmed for me in many little ways, because it was not only for my own benefit, but it was for benefit of others, including the husband I left, who was an active alcoholic, who was an active alcoholic who found no need for a program for himself because it was not a problem to him.
[00:15:08]
And in fact, on October 4th, before my 10th anniversary, he dropped dead in his own kitchen of this disease. I know that that was God's grace, too. But I also know that there's many other ways that he works, and I have seen it in my own life and in a lot of the lives around me. And I do believe that he is always there and he gives me choices. I don't always take it. As much as I can turn over my day and be free to hear some of the directions that he's giving, it works.
There have been many things in my years of sobriety that sometimes I have not made the right choice. I've made the choice that was mine or the thing I wanted or because I wanted something now. Little things, thank goodness. Not on the big things, but on the little things. And somehow it works out, you know. I can't say I always make the right choice and I'm sure I won't. But he also, by trusting and having the freedom to trust that this program gives me and choosing to trust in him, I was able to let go of a lot of things that I knew I couldn't control or do.
And one of those, and I'm going to get emotional again. One of those things I had to choose to let go of. I don't think I can get it out. I'd do it there too. It's a happy thing, that's the worst part. I guess that's it. I've also had the freedom to learn to laugh and cry in this program too. Okay, I had to let go of, all right, a son who had been an Alateen for four years or more when I first came in.
And you taught me how to do that. He picked up a drink and he picked up pot, as all his peers did. And I believe this boy was destined to become an alcoholic unless he never picked it up and activated that. But he did. And in all his denial, he went the route. He didn't have a problem. And no one could tell him he did, least of all his mother. But because of what I had learned, I could choose to let that go and step aside and trust and relinquish him to a higher power.
The higher power didn't do it exactly the way I wanted. And he often hasn't. And I did learn early that his answers aren't always yes, sometimes they're no. But anyway, he was arrested and decided to go to rehab to help his court case, still not having a problem. I mean, he couldn't because he would never do what his mother and father did. He knew better. We all know the denial is insidious of this disease.
Well, need I say, it was in 82, Memorial Day weekend of 1982, that he was arrested. He went to rehab and about a week later we got him in. He came out in August. And it was this boy that found his father dead in October. And he's here listening to me for the first time, having celebrated.
[00:20:13]
This is what the freedom that I found in this program and the joyous way of life. Life is full of problems. Life is full of joy. It's full of sadness. But if I can choose to live it the way you can teach me to live it and with you on a daily basis, it's beautiful. And I love it. And I love this fellowship. And I hope I can continue it one day at a time. And I thank you and I love you all. Applause Thank you, Nancy.
Is Thomas from Ontario here? Okay. We'll go just like he was. Our next speaker is Ann T. from New Mexico. Ann? Applause My name is Ann T., or actually Ann Terry, from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Very honored to be here today. This is my very first international conference. And this day reminds me, I came to the program in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. And I was with a group that knew they had a sickie. And, of course, I thought I was fine.
Did I say I was an alcoholic? Oh, okay. We walked in. They asked me to speak. We used to be traveling. I used to travel every week and chair a meeting because each little village had one meeting a week. And so they asked me to speak in some small… I know we drove about 50 miles. And it was in a school gymnasium. And we were the first ones there and very few people. And we sat up in front. And I had never spoken at a meeting.
I had been in the program about five months, sick. And so I was talking with my group and they called me. And I got up and I turned around and there were about 400 people there. And I lost my voice, naturally. Ah! But today, I can only say today, I'm not as sick as I was then. But big bunches of people don't make me very comfortable. If I seem composed, I'm not. But I'm not going to say I'm nervous.
I just will say I'm not composed. And I lie a lot. But, oh, it was so good to hear Nancy tell her story, which more or less… I've had the same experience with a son. I'm going to see him next month and he has nine months in the program. I wouldn't send him money to come up here. He has no money. Because every time I send him money, he got drunk. Took a long time for me to realize that. But I was a hidden alcoholic.
I was an Air Force wife. Alcoholism was not allowed for an officer and a gentleman. And definitely not for his wife. I was hidden in hospitals. I was hidden by my family.
[00:25:01]
And if they didn't hide me, I hid. I stayed in my bedroom. I was a bedroom drinker. And my son found me. You know where they talk about closet drinkers? One time, I was in my closet sitting on a little stool. And my son opened the door and said, Mother, what are you doing in here? And I said, I'm having a drink. You know. I mean, isn't that normal? I had a hard time with that woman that I saw in the mirror.
And my bedroom had a mirror in it. So it was much easier to go in the closet. There was some way I couldn't seem to get away from it. When I went in to brush my teeth in the morning, I opened the medicine chest so that the mirror was against the wall. And I drank until they did not think I was going to live in this Air Force hospital. And I really do believe that I was, on that card we've all seen, that I was chosen.
The doctors were baffled that I lived. I knew I was going to live. Don't ask me how. But I knew I was. I was one of them with the arms and legs this big and the stomach out to here. They had to drain the fluid from my stomach or wherever it was. I was in the hospital 11 weeks. I was in Puerto Rico. And they could not even move me from that Air Force hospital because they had no facility to take me back to the States.
I ended up going to Hazelden in Minnesota. Another Hazelden. I was there in 1987 and went back to Puerto Rico from there. What did I say? Sixty-seven. Sixty-seven, thank you. I'm certainly glad no one's asking me what day it is today. But I would like to say I've been sober since then. But I have not. I'll tell you why I'm up here with deep humility as to why I was asked to speak here. One thing, my delegate put my name in.
Also, she is my tough and loving sponsor. And she's here today, so I have to tell the truth. And I have found through the years it's easier to tell the truth. But I went back to Puerto Rico where we had no AA. I tried to start it, not that I was any better than anyone else that came. But I was the leader, you know. I was the one that knew all about it. I did last till we hit Massachusetts. And, of course, in Puerto Rico we lived at an isolated base where there was only one place you could buy liquor on base.
And my husband went there and told them not to sell me liquor. My husband locked his liquor up and hid the key. Many a night I would hunt that key. He was a sound sleeper and I'd reach under his pillow and, oh, just all night long searching a key. And he would not let me have the car. So I had trouble drinking. It was very hard, but I needed it. So we got back to Massachusetts and every corner there was a great big liquor sign.
You know, I had, you know, you could just drive in. You could go to grocery stores and there was liquor. And things were pretty sick in our household. My husband was married to a very sick alcoholic. He was very sick.
[00:30:02]
ago last August by taking his own life. But, uh, it was a difficult time in that we all lived in a motel, and I'd go to bed in this little room with the fumes and the sickies, and, uh, this is no excuse. I went to AA, and I got sicker, and I have a habit of not telling people when I'm sick, and fortunately with the help of my sponsor and my higher power, I have found that I share every feeling I have now. I want you to know who I am, which I didn't before, and I picked up a drink, and they threw me in the Air Force Hospital with anxiety, and, uh, so fortunately we got into a house. I got a marvelous sponsor in Wilbraham, a marvelous sponsor in Long Meadow, and I still hear from them, and this was November the 11th, 1968. I threw in the towel, and I want no applause because I have a story to tell you, because I have not been sober since that time. I ran into some 11s, don't ask me why. Uh, the, uh, month before my 11th birthday, I drank.
11 months later, I drank again, and I had an active life in AA, happy. I did not share when things were just falling to pieces in my life. You know, I was the Anne that everybody knew that they'd say, how are you? Just fine, you know, and, uh, I can say that I did not choose this today. I had had this beautiful freedom. I had enjoyed all of the things. To me, I knew it was insanity, and I can tell you when I picked up the first drink, it was insanity that happened within me. I was filled with all the fears, all the anxieties that we get. I have picked up a drink since then four times, so at this point, my last drink, and I like this. I, it was in November of 19, okay, here I go again with years. Um, this is 85, November of 84, and so I am only in my seventh month.
And thank you. Wow, thank you, but I feel so humbled to be asked to stand up in front of you. If this helps anyone who does not share, uh, because I hated myself so, I had no idea. It was a big ego problem. I'd had practically 11 years sobriety. Who could tell me anything, you know, and who knows more than I do how to work this program, and I would look around my sponsor had died, my brother who had died of 33 years sober, who I adored, and it was shortly after he died, my sponsor had died when I had like, uh, eight or nine years sobriety. Did I get another sponsor?
There wasn't anybody around. Oh, you, you have no idea how good this makes me feel to admit this, but I have a sponsor who has known me for quite some time, and with this last time,
[00:35:05]
she and I, she and I have gone through this twice. I, why she took me back after the last time, I don't know, but I think she sees a ray of hope, but can you imagine the friends I've had and have lost that have never got back to the program? I went back right away, but I was still very, very sick, still very, very sick, and I needed lots of help. I've been, we started in on step one again, and I do, I should not have said again, because to me, this is the beginning of a, it's a whole new way of life for me now, and I won't say my other sobriety was bad, because it was gorgeous.
I had a doctor tell me in Puerto Rico when I was in my late 40s, he said, Ann, if you don't drink, you may live to be 60 years old, and I thought, you know, when you're drinking, I thought, God, who would want to live to be 60 years old, you know, so I'm going to be 67 next month, and believe me, I'm, I'm happy to be here, and, but I remember that comment, and I thought, oh, God, how can I live? I don't want to live till I'm 60, but now I enjoy each day. I play tennis about four times a week with AA friends, and I find that I need a meeting every day.
I don't need it. I want to go to a meeting every day, and since my husband's death, it's made it easier. I have the freedom to get to these things. He was very, very sick and was, I had a hard time with this. I went to therapy. First, I went to grief therapy, and then I went to an alcoholic therapist. After doing another fourth and fifth, there were things that I had to get out. I had to get out all my anger, and I was the type that thought if I professed being angry at my husband, you know, and angry with the things that had been done to me and to my children, my first husband was killed in a plane crash, and I was not a drinker then, and I had two babies. I had one 18 months old and one three years old.
You told me to spread it out, right? Okay, I'm doing. When you're 66, you can go back a long way, but I was not a drinker then, and I feel sure I was alcoholic because, boy, did I marry once, but I thought this was, look at what I'd been missing. People drank on Saturday and Sunday, you know, from morning till night, and had a lot of fun with it, but the freedom I found here is only through my complete effort a day at a time to do God's will.
God, I had to take an emergency trip to Florida last month, or whenever it was. I got back a week before I came here. Those cells that remember dates, they're gone, and it was an impossible job, impossible job, and each morning I asked God to drop all of you, and I needed him, and I'm sure he didn't drop all of you, but he did the job, and it was an impossible. It gave me such a sense of strength. I was telling my sponsors this afternoon, and last night I just lost everything. I had no contact. I needed him. I was full of fear for this
[00:40:00]
afternoon. I thought, how can I tell him about my length of sobriety in front of all those people, and I thought, I'm going to get sick. That's a good excuse, you know, and I really did. This morning I felt sick, but I have tried not to say no when I've been asked in AA, and I've had such a beautiful life in this program, and we, it's the steps that have given it to me, and I have found a great deal of help and relief from, whoops, my denial of my son's problem.
I have joined Parents Al-Anon, and we have a fabulous program, and it also helps me to quit meddling with my older two sons, who are not alcoholic, and you know, they're really enjoying it, because I, uh, I worried about what they ate. They're not married, you know, and almost how do you do your laundry, you know, it's, I was into their lives, and now I have been able to release them, and we have a ball. I'm going to play tennis next week with two of my sons in Seattle. Anyone from Seattle here? I have a, I have a program, and I will be seeing you. I've been to meetings in Seattle. They're great, and I'm going to close now. I could talk for another hour and a half.
No, I, I am so grateful, and you can't, I can't tell you this relief of sharing what, uh, I am so, and I'm so grateful to have my sponsor here with me, and, uh, just all of you, and we all have this choice now to go and live happy, joyous, and free as it's promised to us, and let's do it. God bless you. Thank you, Ann. Is Tom S. from Ontario here? In that case, in that case, you have Tom E. from Maryland. I will share with you very briefly, a little bit about myself. Uh, I told you that on February 10th, 1966, I was picked up in the streets of Baltimore in the state of alcoholism convulsions, delivered to the local jail cell, and when the judge took a me, a look at me, and he said, send him to see the head shrinkers, they sent me to a state mental institution, and that state mental institution sent me in an A.A. meeting, and the first A.A. meeting that I recall being at, at that institution, a guy came there, and he said, my name is Waller S., and I'm a retired chief from the United States Navy and an alcoholic, and I said, I think I'll listen to this clown and see what he's got to say, because you see, I too am retired from the United States Navy, and I did not intend to listen to Waller because he said he was an alcoholic, because I certainly was not, and I didn't believe that I belonged where I was, and I could look at the back of the heads of the other 52 nuts that were there and said, they all belong here, they're all a little bit goofy, but I'm different, and Waller told a story of a 17-year-old kid who, during the World War II, joins the United States Navy and finds himself involved in a world of alcohol, and his life was so much like mine that when Waller got done speaking, I said something to myself, and I hope and pray to God that I never forget what I told myself that day. I said to him, if he's an alcoholic, so am I, and I believe that somehow, some way through the grace of God, I was able to see through that fog in this thick head of mine and identify with another individual.
and identify with another individual, and say that I was so much like him, that if he was an alcoholic, then surely I was.
[00:45:02]
I thank God for that. Because you see, as a result of that, I have been an active participating member of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since. You see, I believe that the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. But that does not make me a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. When I came to AA, they said to me, find a group that you feel good with, you're happy with, you like it, you think it's the best group in AA, and join it.
And I did. They told me to get a sponsor, and I did. I followed those few suggestions, and I believe that that is part of and parcel of being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a result of that, I became a general service representative. As a result of that, I was allowed to participate in a general note. And I wrote a note, and I addressed it to Bob Pierce at the New York office, and I said how much I enjoyed my visit.
I certainly was overwhelmed by how everyone shared what they did, and how they rotated, and et cetera. I said, but really what the trip kind of exemplified to me was that what you are all about is what Bill Wilson said to me when I was sober seven months. He said, pass it on. I received a letter from Bob that said that they were in the process of writing Bill's biography, and there was a good chance that that sharing process that I had done with them, that little anecdote that I had provided them with, would probably become part of his biography.
And a year later, I, serving as the delegate for the New York General Service Conference for Maryland, was given an opportunity to vote with the rest of the delegates and trustees to accept Bill's biography with the title, Pass It On. The little note on the flyleaf about the drunk with just a few months of sobriety that was overwhelmed by his meeting with Bill was me. Now I don't tell you that because I feel that I have contributed anything except that I was where I was supposed to be at a given time, destined to do something, and wasn't even aware of it.
And it wasn't to happen until about 19 years later. It wasn't to happen until 19 years later. And so I say to you, be careful what you say, and who you say it to, because you never know what's going to happen to us. But I do say this to you, that Bill did indeed say to me, pass it on, and I believe that that's what these two beautiful ladies did today. They passed on their sorrows, and they passed on their good times.
They passed on to you exactly what Bill and Dr. Bob passed on to us. And that if you're here today, and you didn't have a drink today, and you are indeed in a meeting, that's what this is all about, and you are participating in a service function that will never be forgotten in the history of the world. It may just be a little, a very little part of a very great and magnificent thing. I believe that alcoholic phenomena will go down in history as the spiritual experience of the 20th century.
And I get cold chills when I think that the God that I knew nothing about, cared nothing about, wanted anything to do with, was so gracious, and so loving, and so forgiving, that he gave me an opportunity to be a part of you. Thank you, and God bless you all. Applause Thank you much, and we'll close in the usual way.