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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – IN GODS HANDS In Gods' Hands – RS 06379.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-in-gods-hands-in-gods-hands-rs-06379.mp3 Duration: 01:13:35
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Start this meeting with a moment of silence 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 words that show the difference. Welcome. I see we have a full house. As I said once before, this side is the smoking section, this side is the non-smoking section. I'd also like to let everybody know that my nickname is Shaky, so if the podium starts moving, that's why.
There are some here who may not be familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and film. Thus, we respectfully ask that no A.A. speaker or indeed any A.A. 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 other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that A.A. principles come before personalities. Tapes for this meeting will be available at the tape sales booth in the convention center, in case anyone is interested. Please get the first part cut off, that's your MC. I will tell you right away, I don't tell jokes, I am a joke.
Our subject today is in God's hands, and believe you me, he better be holding me right now. Our first speaker today, just to let you know, we're working in the true A.A. tradition, we have rearranged the schedule for you. David W. from Missouri is not here and is being replaced by a Bernie H., and she's asked to speak first because she's involved in something else too. So, with a poll of three, we have come up and decided that unanimity does rule, Bernie will speak first on this.
Thank you. Hi, I'm Bernie, I'm an alcoholic. I'm taking over the shaky role up here for a minute. The in God's hands topic was a real delight to me to see. Can you hear me now? When I learned that I'd been asked to replace David, I was really happy to see the topic of in God's hands, because it's taken this beautiful fellowship to let me see that I always was in his hands. I just didn't realize it, I was unaware of it.
And through this fellowship and through listening a lot and reading the literature, I can look back now. I've been given the ability to see some of those events that I took for granted. I figured that I had maneuvered them or that I made them happen, and I didn't, I didn't. He was taking care of me all the time. Not long ago, I'm a secretary for a living, and one of my co-workers approached me about my typing a resume for his applying for a different position.
But the thing he asked me to do first was would I please rewrite it for him. And we made about three different appointments to work on the copy for this resume and so on. And we couldn't seem to get together, just could not. And I ended up just plain typing it, no editorializing, no rewrite, no anything. And when I did it and gave it back to him, I told him, I said, I wasn't meant to have my hand in this.
As far as I'm concerned, he and his wife had put the thing together, and it was a really important step forward in his career. And I said, as far as I can tell, it's like you and your missus were supposed to see that you could do this on your own. You didn't need Bernie injected in there. And here this non-AA person's comment to me was, he said, you know, you should feel really fortunate to be in something that helps you see God at work, to realize that he is, instead of just assuming that he's working someplace else and not in your life or my life.
And I thought that was a pretty sage observation for a non-AA. So when I came into this fellowship, I was extremely cynical and callous and, oh, untrusting. It had nothing at all to do with any kind of God. I had no faith in anything except me, and my faith in myself was really going downhill fast, to put it mildly. So there was no ability within me to trust anybody or anything. The first AA group I went to, those people tried, and I didn't.
You know, I kept showing up at meetings drunk, which is not a good way to pick up a lot of things.
[00:05:03]
And I mean, I'm talking about to the point that they had to drive me home from the meetings, and that's really sad. But in this thing of being in God's hands, see, I was going to meetings three nights a week, drinking the nights in between, and showing up at meetings drunk, and I thought I was working AA just fine. Well, this God that I've come to know in the fellowship chose to put three sponsors in my life, three unwanted, uninvited, unasked for sponsors.
And it's like every time I answered the phone, opened the door, anything, there one of the three was. And they did things like taking me to meetings five nights a week, and I kept telling them I had things to do. Anyway, but I think what's amazing to me is that I didn't realize, let's say the first year sober, what was happening, that those people didn't come along just by chance. And I didn't realize until I was around the program for a while that people had to seek out sponsors.
I didn't seek mine out. They were just there, just like that. And, you know, I didn't think it was out of the ordinary. So that was another example to me, now it is, of my truly being in God's hands. And another example of something marvelous that my God did just for me, for what I needed. I've heard people talk about their higher power giving them, you know, the honesty or the open-mindedness or the willingness to be able to work this program.
Well, I told you how cynical and how callous I was. I didn't trust anybody. And yet here's this person who didn't trust anybody, and I believed those three sponsors. I mean, I believed everything they said from the initial contact. And I wasn't capable of that. I did not have that ability. So the ability to trust is something that was given me. And to give you an example of how, either how sick I was or how much trust was given me, they kept telling me that if I would just, you know, come to meetings and work the steps and read the big book and don't drink, that things would get better.
Well, in a span of like four months from entering AA, I had lost the pay for a car. I had moved from the apartment with the indoor pool and outdoor pool and tennis courts to one that cost $80 a month and $5 for a parking space for the car I didn't have. I had $15, you know, every payday for myself. That's for hoes, cigarettes, the rest of it was going to pay off bills. And these people were saying it's going to get better, and I believe in them.
You know, I believe in them. And, you know, it did eventually. It took two and a half years to pay my way out of debt. But it's that thing of he put me with exactly the people I needed. And these people did not do any of the poor baby thing. I mean, I used to tell people who my sponsors were, and they'd laugh. They'd say, you really chose three easy ones. But another thing they told me that was really valuable to me was that I heard the word faith, you know, have faith in this higher power.
I was so, you know, so sick and so afraid of anything that resembled organized religion that faith, the word faith was repugnant to me. Now, there's nothing wrong with the word faith, but for me at that time, I couldn't handle it. And they told me it was okay to use the word trust instead of faith. And I had to use that for two and a half to three years. They said trust is just fine as long as you do trust that higher power.
And that's what I did. And these, you know, these three sponsors on this thing of putting people, you know, where they're supposed to be and when they should be. There are, I had one single fellow and a married couple as my sponsors. The married couple managed a halfway house for men. And the lady of the couple suggested to me that I get involved in a halfway house for women. Well, I, along with the other character defects, I had a bit of a problem with snobbishness.
Because I remember when Becky suggested that to me. And the halfway house was being, it was only an idea then. It hadn't yet opened its doors. When Becky suggested that to me, my response to Becky was, well, Becky, I would if I really felt those women and I had anything in common. Well, how's that for sick? So, another, you know, God had a lot of work to do. Anyway, about ten more months, you know, ten months or eleven months, something like that, further down the road, I saw a little, you know, two-liner in the intergroup newsletter saying that they needed AA women with two years or more drug-free sobriety to be volunteers at the Jan Clayton Center.
See, by that time the doors were open. So, I called up, and you talk about having to give them your background. They wanted to know who my sponsors were, how long I'd been sober, how, you know, was I into drugs, how much. And I had never been subjected to anything like that. I mean, you're looking at a past president of the Business and Professional Women's Club, and I wasn't used to that sort of thing.
But I did get involved in a halfway house. You know, it just took away, and by the time I got involved there, it was not as Miss Goody Two-Shoes. You know, not like, look what I'm doing here to help you, you know. I finally understood that alcoholism is the common denominator. So, that was a really, really good experience for me. And then, oh, let's see, about two years later,
[00:10:01]
there's a gentleman sitting up here on the podium who was chairman of the Area Institutions Committee. And I went to one of their banquets, and he was looking for someone to volunteer as secretary treasurer for the Area Institutions Committee. And I didn't really have enough to do, and I, which means I was not romantically involved at the time is what it means. And, you know, so, he wanted to volunteer, and I volunteered, and served on that institutions committee.
And between the two things, what came through to me is that what my personal duty or obligation or responsibility as an AA individual is, is to hold my hand out to somebody when I meet them. You know, at that day, that time, you know, that point in my sobriety. And not to be questioning them about what they did to get where they are. It helps in working with those people, but I didn't realize how loaded with judgment and condemnation I was until getting involved with the halfway house and getting involved in the institutions committee.
Now, the institutions committee thing, it was a real experience, and I'm still involved in that. I like that a whole lot. On the thing of being brought down to earth and having to take a good look at how snobbish and how false I was and so on, it did just that. It made me look at it. And I found that, you know, the people in the penitentiaries and the treatment centers were human beings, and they're fellow alcoholics just like me, and they wanted to get well.
And the ones who didn't seem to, you know, were like I was, just didn't seem to on the outside, inside really did. And one of the fringe benefits of that was in continuing to go to those institutions things, I ran across a fellow who, now by this time, mind you, I'd been sober four years and no heavy romantic involvements. And I did not set out seeking a husband, but I mean, I kept my eyes open when I was at all these different fashions.
So I ran across this, anyway, I found out later on that we'd actually been to three different events and never even noticed each other. But finally, I zeroed in on this one, you know, really nice looking Mexican fellow, and I stopped talking to him and he'd been sober two years, at the time I'd been sober four years. He had been in and out of Lansing, which is Kansas State Penitentiary, eight times, three alcohol-related felonies and five alcohol-related parole violations.
So, you know, one thing led to another, and he and I had been married five years this coming September, and we're both really active in the correctional facilities work. When mention was made of, you know, switching our rotation on speakers here, the reason that I asked to be first today is not because I enjoy being first, I don't, but because we want to get over to the workshop at the convention center called AA in Prisons, that I can honestly say in the course of this work with the institutions committee, I had met some of the neatest people, and it's like this God whose hands I was in and I'm still in, knows exactly what I need.
When I mention the thing about marriage too, and I know that AA teaches us how to compromise and accommodate and all that, that same God has a weird sense of humor because the fellow I married had been single 16 years and I've been single 15 years, and you talk about a lot of accommodation. It's just, we've had to learn, had to learn. Another thing that I encountered in the course of sobriety, and, well, number one, I seem to end up sponsoring a lot of single females, which I think is terrific because I can tell them, okay, I'm sorry, thank you.
I said one thing that I seem to encounter a lot in AA is sponsoring single females, and I think that's because they're going through a lot of the very same things that I did, and I'm able to tell them simply that if they do the same things that my sponsors told me to, you know, that it is going to get better. One of the things that faced me was a matter of having to change jobs for benefit of my sobriety.
I'd been sober, let's say, four and a half years when it happened, and I realized that that job had just completely stolen my sobriety. I had let it because I wasn't, I didn't realize it was that kind of a position actually until I got into it, and so far as going ahead and making a decision that seemed completely crazy to my non-alcoholic friends and seemed very reasonable to my AA friends, I left that job that, you know, the first secretary was paying twelve and a half a month, went to work for $135 a week on overload because I wanted to stay sober, I wanted to stay sober.
At that same time, here was this heavy involvement with the halfway house, you see, with ladies who are starting out and they're having to, you know, to see through example, the thing of where do my priorities lie? Okay, you know, it was really simple. My sobriety is my priority. The idea of my life not really being in my complete charge now meets with my approval. It took a while for it to. It took a while for it too, but it's comfortable, and it's reassuring, and I like that idea.
[00:15:04]
When I came into the fellowship, you know, the condition that I went to meetings and so on, my only family is one brother, and he's the one who taught to me about getting into AA. But what I found out after getting into this fellowship that I had a terrible resentment toward him that I mistakenly thought was because he got me in here. I really thought that for a while. I thought, what a dirty trick.
But what it is, is that early in the alcoholism, because he is my only family, I knew that something was wrong with me, and I thought I was a little bit on the nutty side, and I asked my brother to sit down and talk with me. Well, he did, and he sat down and talked with my boyfriend at the time who happened to be a nurse anesthetist, and after our respective conversations, my brother's comment to me was simply that he wasn't sure which of the two of us was crazier, you know, the boyfriend or me, and that the whole situation could be remedied if I were committed.
Now, the resentment that the program let me see, the one that I held, was the idea that he didn't come through with adequate brotherly interest in his sister. After all, I'm his only sister. If he had, I could be stashed in an asylum somewhere and never have found out I'm an alcoholic, you know, and be there forevermore. That's what I meant when I said some of the things that happened to me pre-program, that I just thought were flukes or were luck or something like that, weren't at all.
You know, the guy that I found in this program knew exactly, you know, he had his plans for me, and I'm really glad that he let all those pieces fall into place just exactly the way they're supposed to. The… I don't know, I'm trying to… I have never had to be timed, you see, in speaking, and that's why I'm not quite certain on this. I do appreciate very much, you know, you're having me here and you're letting me share with you.
This is my first time to ever share at any kind of a convention level. It's a beautiful fellowship, and the benefits and the bonuses that are within it are something else. I've… when I mentioned the marriage, that my… I didn't mention that one of the things that this same guy who had the sense of humor about the length of time I've been single and my present husband also let me marry somebody with six grown children and now there are nine grandchildren.
Now, I've never had children. You see, that was… I told my ex-husband that a family was grounds for divorce. That's how much in tune I was to her motherhood, you know. So, it's a… it's a changing, changing kind of a life. I enjoy growing in it, and as I said before, I really truly am comfortable with and like the idea of somebody else, you know, this higher power being in charge of my life instead of Bernie's being in charge of it.
So, with that, I would… Chris, I'd like to turn the meeting over to you again, please. Thank you. Thank you. Give her another round because I know she's leaving right away. Thank you, Bernie. Dave doesn't know what he missed out on. He really doesn't. There's one thing I would sort of like to relate there. There's a couple of things I could very well relate with her, but one she mentioned was regarding sponsors, and I happen to be fortunate and or unfortunate that one of my two sponsors is sitting in the audience today, and I didn't really invite this sponsor to be my sponsor either, but this person kept showing up and taking me to meetings too, and a resentment very much built up.
It does work. They are persistent, the little devils. One other thing about my sponsor that I think might be interesting for you is that this particular sponsor never knew how to be on time, so I built up a real good resentment regarding this person because I was tired of walking into every meeting, no matter if it was regarding service work or a regular meeting, late. Like, ta-da, here we were. I still have the sponsor. I don't use the sponsor as much.
I do have two sponsors, and I think that everybody should have more than one, two, three, four, as many as possible, to tell you the truth. In my case, I needed it a lot more than everyone else. Next on our mixed-up little agenda here will be Ken B. from British Columbia, and I know Ken has not spoken before. Ken, if it's any help, I wasn't expecting a loving invitation either. I laughed for two days when my husband got one, thinking, I'm not going to get one after a GSO conference in New York.
Two days after he got his, I got mine, and he hasn't quit laughing since. So without further ado, let's hear from Ken B. from British Columbia.
[00:20:01]
My name is Ken Brezow, and I'm an alcoholic. I wasn't sure whether to say my name's Ken Brezow and I'm nervous or what. The theme, In God's Hands, is what has kept me sane for the last two months since I received that loving invitation. It was an incredible feeling to get a letter from GSO that says this is a loving invitation for you to share at a meeting entitled In God's Hands. And I have been in God's hands, as Bernie said, since the day I was born.
I didn't know it then, and I didn't know it for a long time. I was, before I came to the program, when I was really young, I used to enjoy going to churches, and it didn't matter which church. I got a nice feeling inside a church. And then I got drunk, and I loved it. I mean, I loved it to the extent, we were 17 years old, and a bunch of us got together. Most people brought two beers or three beers or four beers.
I showed up with a bottle of Teacher's Highland Cream, promptly poured a water glass, and blacked out. So I think I qualify for this program. The next day, after that first drunk, I couldn't stop talking about it. And that was the first identification I got with you people. I heard a lady in Fort Moody Bridge, Columbia, say the same thing. And I said, this was after a year of being around this program.
I heard this lady say that, and I thought, geez, maybe I am an alcoholic. And since that day, since that time, I haven't had to take a drink. The God of my understanding is a gentle, loving God, and very forgiving. And I feel that he has forgave me for whatever I have done in my life. There was, I really am nervous. There's more people in this room than are in my district. Laughter I'll tell you, this program has done so much for me.
I am described aptly in the big book. I was dishonest, self-centered, and, gee, good God. Dishonest, self-centered, and egocentric. And that was me to a T. I did not know how to tell the truth. In fact, I used to think up lies to questions I hadn't been asked yet. Laughter And then to come in and, as people say, well, trust. Trust in the program, trust in God. By this time, I had not trusted in God.
In fact, I was so violently anti-God that if the conversation came up, I would get into a really heated argument at the least about it, that there was no God. And all this time that I was denying the existence of God, he was keeping me alive. Because I drank and drugged for 30 years. And there was just no way that I should have lived through that. There was, you know, the closest I have come to the feeling that we have here today, and since I've been in Montreal for this convention, was the 50th birthday party that we had in Comox.
And there was 50, 60 people there. And we had a lady come up to share that was 34 years in the program. And the feeling afterwards, when we said the serenity prayer, was something like the feeling that I've had since I've come to Montreal. It's just incredible, you know, the feeling of love that fills the room. And the feeling of, well, it's not exactly peace with me right at the moment, but when I'm not standing here, it's peace.
There's, you know, there's… Bernie mentioned sponsorship, and so did Chris. Most of the Americans, I understand, refer to their sponsees as pigeons. So I asked my sponsor if I could refer to him as a turkey. He was not impressed. I hadn't heard that term before, pigeon. And I think it really does cover the…it covers me. You know, it may be hard to believe. This is really awkward here. It may be hard to believe, but other than drinking and drugging, I had a couple of problems left after I came to this program.
And I would run over to him with it.
[00:25:02]
This is after about six months now. And I haven't been struck by lightning, and he's still talking to me. So I began to trust. And I'd run over to him with the damnedest things, you know, and really personal things. And he'd say, what do you think? Well, what about this? Have you thought about this? And, you know, like I had to answer my own questions all the time with that guy. And I still do, and I love him.
He is just an incredible person. There's a whole lot of miracles sitting in this room, and they're all incredible persons. This…God, if I could just quit shaking inside. I had left this goal because the theme was in God's hands, and that's where I am. They also don't have microphones in Comox, which is really… I used to go to meetings when I first came in the program. I was around a year. I could give you a blueprint for slipping if you want, but I'm sure you all know how to do that.
And that's what I did. I was around for a year. I took only three phone numbers in one year, and would never use them, and didn't trust anyone. I'd go to a meeting, I'd sit in the back row, behind the biggest guy in town, so that no one would see me, and I couldn't hear anything, because I was so self-centered that I knew they were going to ask me to speak. And I was so busy getting my talk together in my head that I didn't hear anything.
And there was a fellow from California who spoke up in the interior of British Columbia, and I was given one of his tapes. And I understand he's not in… I don't know if he's in this room, but he's here. Clint Hodges from California. And that's how I got sober, was through that tape, because I could listen at home in bed without having my head full of what I was going to say. And I could identify with all the feelings that he had, the fear that for me was…
I was so full of fear that I couldn't think, I couldn't feel, I couldn't trust. And you people have taught me how to do that, you know? There's so much to this program. My sponsor says it's a three-legged stool, recovery, unity, and service. And the service… I am just beginning my service career. I am GSR in Comox for the health center. The best group in the world, by the way. And getting involved in the public information committee, one of the fellows, the chairman of our committee, spoke on the radio, and he slightly bent a tradition.
So I said, you know, I don't think we should do this. So he arranged for a talk the next day for me. And fortunately, I didn't bend any. And it was a good talk. I was told it was a good talk. But the service end of this program, it's the third side of the triangle. And for me, it's beginning to become a way of life, this program. You know, there was a long time that I was just recovering, and still am.
But I was over three months, and I hadn't won a lottery yet, and I was mad at God. You know, like it was… We were living in Port Moody on the mainland, and I felt that they should have a parade because I was doing what people did naturally all their life. And I had done it for three months. The illness that I had was… I was ill. You know, like I could not trust anybody. There was a lady, and still is a lady in my life, that had ten years in the program when I met her.
And I was, you know… I drank more before breakfast than she drank in her life, I think. And I couldn't believe she was an alcoholic, and I had an awful time with her. Because, you know, she's sober ten years. She cannot do any wrong. There's no way that everything was my fault. Every little argument was my fault. Everything that went wrong was my fault. This was inside me, not from her. You know, this was my feelings.
And, you know, I had a hell of a time with this program. Trying to find out where I fit in it, and trying to turn things over to God. Trying to turn things over to God is probably where I was weakest.
[00:30:02]
You know, like I tried to control everything and everyone around me because if I could control them then I didn't really have to trust them, I had them. And I don't believe that I had an honest relationship in my entire life. I know I didn't from the time I had my first drink. There was many times in my life that people tried to show love for me and caring for me and I would not allow that because I might have to do it back.
You know, it was just too tough for me at the time. And I find it easy today. I find it easy to ask questions. Where is this room? Where is this hotel? Like I could have done that three or four years ago. Four years ago for sure I couldn't have done that. Four years I would be on the bus out of town. Never mind. There was… I wish I could have some continuity to this talk but I'm just bouncing here.
There is… There is so much more to living today. It was never easy for me this program. My sponsor came into this program. I went to one meeting and never had a drink since. I was around for a year going to meetings and… Well, I'd say I was going to meetings. I would leave the house and drive down to the beach because I was too scared to hear what you people have to say. I could see the light in your eyes, the love in your eyes and the shining eyes is what got me here, I believe.
Because there was peace there, there was some happiness and I did not know what the words meant. I thought everybody felt like I did. I went around for many years judging your outsides by my insides. Like I always came out a loser because if a person can dress well and look good that meant they were all right to me. And that doesn't… That is not the way it is today. Today it's how a person is inside I'm all right today.
It's incredible. The feeling that you get from a room full of people or from two people sharing or going on a 12-step call are feelings that I never experienced before. To come here and to be asked to share at a meeting is just probably the most incredible thing that ever happened to me in my life. And this week is for sure the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. Finding this program and finding you people and being able to accept the love and the caring that was offered to me so freely.
I could never accept that. I could never accept anything from anyone. For many years I was my own God. I walked around saying that I was my own God. But of course when something bad happened, I blanked out. If it was good, it was my doing. That was me when it was good. And when it was bad, when I found myself in a jail or I found myself in a hospital once. And I was in the hospital for pancreatitis which was brought on by too much drinking.
And the kind of liar I was is that I lied to myself as much or more than anyone. And the doctors all came around and I was very charming because they were giving me drugs. And I was really nice to them. And they all told me, you can die from one drink. One glass of beer can kill you with this condition you have. And I believed that I was never going to drink again. I told them, that's it, I'm finished.
And I had all the grandiose plans. I was going to become president of General Motors or whatever. The day I walked out of that hospital, and I don't know how many people know anything about pancreatitis, but you walk around with a stomach pump with a tube down your nose for I guess it was 22 or 23 days and a Christmas tree with intravenous and plasma and whatever going into you. And I was like that.
And it's really uncomfortable. You know, it's a miserable existence. And I told all those doctors and all those nurses that I would never drink again. And I walked out of the doors of St. Paul's Hospital and into the Century Plaza, which was 100 yards away or less, in order to double. And I had honestly believed myself, like it was myself that I lied to, as much or more than anyone else. Because I was going to do all these neat things, and I was going to be this really neat person.
What happened? All the moral values that I had as a kid went down the tube along with the booze and the drugs. And then I had to relearn them.
[00:35:01]
And most of the ones that I had as a child or a youngster, you know, they were pretty right out of the movies, the good guy and the bad guy sort of thing. And I had to learn moral values from you. I had to learn how to open a bank account from you. I had to learn how to pay electric bills, how to pay a phone bill. I didn't know any of this stuff because I didn't pay them. And I would not trust a bank.
So I would live somewhere and I would move. And I moved quite a bit. As a matter of fact, I lived in this city practicing. It's not the same city today, or I'm not the same person, one of the two. And I've lived in every city in this country, every major city in this country, and practiced in every one. And then I got to Vancouver, and I finally got sick enough and sick of myself enough that I went to a detox.
And the detox sent me to a treatment center. And, of course, all the things I told them, I would send the guy too because they were all lies. And they sent me figuring I was just a poor fellow that worked all his life, done this, and just drank a little too much. And I went there and I didn't drink for 30 days. And they discharged me with all the high hopes in the world, and they asked you to make up a plan, the things you were going to do.
And the recreation things that I put on that plan, just the recreation things, would take 30 hours a day. You know, like, it was, and my whole life was like that. There was no way that I could, that I had any kind of reality in my life. Everything was, you know, right out of the movies or the movies I ran in my own life, in my own head, about what things were going to be like. Things were never like that.
I used to make plans to stop drinking for a year so that I could get moneyed up and do all these neat things. And I got it down once. I actually stopped drinking once without you people for three days. For three days. And I had a third birthday not long ago, and I am going to tell you that was a big moment in my life, that I had lasted three years with the help of you people and the help of the God of my understanding and this program, you know, to be sober that long.
And it's not just sobriety today. It's not just being dry today. It's trying to learn how to be a human being and rejoin the human race, like get back into the mainstream of society. For a long time I hid in AA meetings, for a very long time. You know, I would go there and I would listen and I would share and I would run home because I was scared of the rest of the world. But I learned trust in those meetings, and I learned to trust the people in them and the people in this program.
And gradually it is spreading. You know, like I went to my boss, who's head of the school district in Kortney, and told him that I was an alcoholic and that I had a loving invitation and I wanted to go, and he arranged a time off. And this man, you know, he's not in the program, has no idea what it's all about or anything. It was just good for me to be able to… You know, he felt it was good for me, and it was good for me, because here's another person that I don't have to wonder, Jesus, you're going to find out I'm an alcoholic and fire me?
You know, all those thoughts used to go through my head and still do to some extent. There's still lots of insanity. There's still lots to work on, so I've got lots to do still. And with that, I'd like to thank you all for allowing me to share, and I'm sure glad to be here and glad to be sober. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. I think you did absolutely fantastic. On a little heavier note, Ken hit on something that I think is vitally important, mainly, I guess, because I'm involved in it also, and that's service work.
And he mentioned that he just recently became a GSR. And I have a word for Ken when he gets through signing his book or comes back down to reality. Remember that the GSR is by far the most important job there is. I'm the area delegate for Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and without you GSRs, we wouldn't have AA as it is today. Thank you. There's a little piece of information I picked up on my way over here this morning because I wasn't nervous, and that is the Gazette.
And I thought you might be interested, if anybody is,
[00:40:00]
that the article on the front page, if you can get past the sports, is Watertops Bar List for 43,000 AA members. And I happen to know that as of 4 o'clock yesterday in talking to GSO members, there was 42,300 registered as of 4 o'clock yesterday. And I believe registration is probably still going on, so I have no idea what it's going to peak at. Also, there's one full page inside of the Gazette that is all on Alcoholics Anonymous, so if you do want a souvenir, I sound like I'm advertising for a Montreal paper here, pick up the Gazette.
It's only 35 cents. There is another one I saw, too, and it's called On Alcoholism, and I believe that you can pick up your papers right downstairs in any one of the hotels, too. That's it. Mine was in English. Is that in French? I've heard we've been registered up to 70,000, but I do know that General Service Office, on their last count on the computer, said 43, 42, 3, so who knows? The weekend has really just begun.
Our meeting is supposed to run until 1, so that means you have… at least 45 minutes. Let's give a warm welcome to Pam R. from Michigan. Thank you. My name is Pam Rising. I'm an alcoholic. I thought maybe I'd just come up and read the paper for 45 minutes, and then I wouldn't have to tell you about myself. Everybody has said this at the meetings that I've been to this morning and certainly here, but I can't think of a greater privilege in my personal life.
It was a privilege when we decided to come to Montreal because I had never been to an international before, and this would be the crowning glory in my sobriety. And as everybody who has spoken has mentioned, to open up that letter, and I am involved in service, so I get a lot of stuff from New York, and I thought this was just one more thing. And then I realized what it was, and I sat and I shook, about like I am right now, and I don't think I've ever felt as inadequate as I do right now.
I have the feeling that people expect a whole lot at the international, and please hang in there. My sponsor that I have right now, Joe H., who couldn't be here this weekend, told me that to serve my fellow alcoholic is the greatest privilege I will ever experience, and I believe that firmly, and I've been involved in service since my first year anniversary. And on my first year anniversary, I realized that we didn't have a GSR at our group, and I approached our elder statesperson and asked who the GSR was, and she said, well, we don't have one, the one that we had left.
And I would love to tell you that we had a Democratic vote and that I became GSR by unanimous opinion of group conscience, but actually what happens was they said, we don't have one, you want to be it? So much for humility there. So that's how I became GSR, and I will go back and tell you a little bit about the beginning of my introduction into Alcoholics Anonymous, which I was saturated with AA. I had a sponsor, Marie, who is here today, and as it happened, she had been laid off of work, and I was sick enough and desperate enough that I needed to come back to AA.
And so the first six months of my sobriety involved reading the big book every single day, going to 90 meetings in 90 days and sometimes more. And at some point during that 90 days, see, I was told that after 90 days, if I didn't like AA, you would refund my misery. After 90 or 70 days, I really quit counting because I was hooked, and I saw something in your eyes that I wanted, and I wanted to learn how to get that.
And what that was that I saw, I understand it now, that was hope, and I was hopeless. Somebody said it, hopeless and helpless when I came here. I usually ask, because of my own experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, that for anybody here today who is new or… For anybody here today who is new or relatively new, please do not compare your story with mine.
[00:45:00]
Some of you may have a heck of a lot worse drinking history, and some may not be nearly as bad. But in my own experience, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous once. I had been married about a year and a half, and I was already causing problems in my marriage. And my husband was not threatening me, but I knew that I had gotten myself into a real jackpot, and I knew that the only way to get out of this one was to promise him that I'd go to AA, which I did.
And I went to one meeting, and as each person went around the table and they identified themselves as an alcoholic and said their name and then proceeded to tell their war stories, I ruled myself out in my head. As each person spoke and told something about their history, I said to myself, I've never done that, therefore I'm not. And, of course, by the time it came around to me, I said, My name is Pam, and I really don't know why I'm here.
My husband seems to think I have a drinking problem. Now, I've heard that since when I've been at meetings. And I always think in my head, Bingo, because I don't think that we get here by accident. This was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I thank God for it today because my life has just turned right around. But in those days, and I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that one time in my 20s, and, of course, I didn't know then about the yets, that if I were to continue to drink and the progression of this disease, that I would experience all those horror stories that I had heard at that meeting.
And I was to go out and to drink for another eight years. And when I came through these doors four and a half, almost five years ago, I had done all of those things that I had heard at the tables and more. The self-esteem, gone. I was a fallen down, sloppy, disgusting drunk at the end of my drinking. The progression of this disease, when I first started drinking, which was around 12 years old, and I'm part Canadian, my mother's Canadian, and I grew up partly in Canada and partly in the United States, and I never felt like I fit either place.
And I belong to two groups today, one the Serenity Group in the suburbs of Detroit and the Friendly Riverside Group in Windsor, and I figured if I could get drunk on both sides of the border, I could get sober on both sides. And so I still go to Windsor twice a week for the Friendly Riverside Group, and I go to the Serenity Group on Thursday morning, and I see some of my friends from both groups here tonight.
But at the end of my drinking, during those eight years, the desperation and the feeling of growing up in Canada and growing up in the United States really was just a symptom. I didn't feel comfortable anywhere. It wouldn't have mattered where I lived or who I lived with or what kind of a family. I just didn't fit, and I was sure that I was adopted, and I don't know. I felt that everybody had the secret to life and that they just weren't telling me what it was, and something inside of me just didn't fit.
That much I knew. And I did what a lot of alcoholics do. I went on the geographical cure, and I always thought when I was over there, I would be happy, no matter where over there was or with him or with that person. Some kind of a change was going to make me happy. I made promises to myself, and I thought if I moved to California, that would make me happy, and it didn't, obviously. And I thought if I ever got a chance to go to Europe, that would make me happy.
And, of course, I didn't realize then that I was always taking me with me, and I didn't understand that I had to get happy from the inside out. See, all my life I expected other people to fill me up. Your job was to make me happy. And I can remember being maybe eight years old and saying to my mother, you know, I never asked to be born. And with that statement, saying that to her, my attitude was, but now that I'm here, amuse me.
And that was my attitude. I expected everybody else to make me a whole person. And it wasn't until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that I was given that responsibility to take care of myself. And it's where I run into trouble today. When my expectations of other people to make me happy, that's where I run into problems. During those eight years, I won't go into a long drunk-a-log about this, but the progression of this disease, when I was growing up in Point Pelee, if anybody's familiar with it, I came from an alcoholic family, and our cottage was halfway between town and the bootlegger.
And we were kind of the halfway point. And I just grew up with drinking. It was natural and it was automatic. I was allowed to drink in the house when I was 10 or 11, whatever. I remember the first drunk I had was when I was 12 years old.
[00:50:02]
Nothing remarkable except I got sick. I always drank to get drunk. I don't ever in my life remember drinking because I was thirsty or just to be one of the gang. I drank from day one to get drunk. I just, that was the only purpose in it for me. I never understood, even when I was 15 years old, how somebody could sit down and have a beer or a half of a beer and then leave it. I still don't understand it.
That's why I'm here. Having grown up in that atmosphere, I then trouble all my life, defiant, somewhere as a result of a fourth and a fifth step in this program. I realized that most of the problems in my life I brought on myself and I provoked other people. See, I always thought I was at the mercy of this society who was trying to do me in and be in the underdog. And I found as a result of my fourth and fifth step, particularly with my father, that I provoked a lot of the arguments and problems that we had in our household.
And going back through patterns, I also did that with the people in my life. As my alcoholism progressed, when I began, I just drank to get drunk, and I drank for that one night and that was it. And the thought of drinking the next morning just made me sick to my stomach. But those eight years that I talked about, the days were to come then that when I drank I could not stop. And that's how I identify myself as an alcoholic, that once I begin to drink I cannot guarantee my actions.
And I couldn't promise you if I were to go out of here right now and have a drink, I couldn't promise that I'd see you in a week if I had a date or an appointment to meet you. And everything went out the window when I started to drink. Any kind of responsibility, husband, family, job, all became secondary to drinking. And I know that's my definition of myself as an alcoholic. And the progression of this then became I'm not necessarily a binge drinker after that, but I was able to drink for two or three days, and I would drink everything that was in the house.
And if that lasted for two days or three days, fine, and then I'd stop. But if it lasted five days or eight days, that's how long I was drunk. I had no control whatsoever. I couldn't stop until everything was gone in the house. And my husband and I got into these problems where I would hide booze all over the house for me, and he would hide booze from me for company. And we were always running across each other.
And it was a real adventure. So towards the end of my drinking, now came the loneliness that we talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous, this being the lonely disease. And in my case, two reasons that it came down to me being alone and drinking alone. It was too much trouble to go out with people who were going to point out how much I drank because I used to get phone calls. I'm sure you did, too, the next day.
Oh, I hated those. Do you remember what you did? Well, of course I remember. And you're trying to rack your brain. It's awful. And I would have girlfriends call and say, Do you know how much you drank? And do you remember the difference in the beginning of the drinking? I used to brag about how much I could hold. And now that I realized there was a problem somewhere along the line, then I started to lie about it, and I'd say I really didn't have that much or I hadn't eaten.
And so all of this changed then, and the inferiority that I'd felt all my life, inferior and inadequate, what alcohol did for me initially turned on me. That only enhanced that inferior. And I was afraid of people, and I a lot of times didn't answer the phone. People who used to be my friends, I lost them because I just couldn't stand to be around them and have them point out what I was doing to myself.
And the other people I offended so badly, they didn't want to be around me. So at the end, I drank only with my mother, who is a practicing alcoholic today. My father died of alcoholism about 14 years ago. And so that's where I was after those eight years, and into binge drinking. And I remember one thing vividly, even though I was drunk, and I don't remember now how many days I was drinking, but I do remember going out on the front porch and getting the newspaper to see what day it was.
And I can remember standing in the living room with that newspaper and crying and thinking, what on earth is going to happen to me? I'm going to have to be like this. And I thought that I would always be a loser. Nobody ever told me that I could be a winner. And that's what I felt. I just felt like I would drink like that until I died. And where I was at that point, I hoped that would be soon.
[00:55:03]
I was considering suicide towards the end, not only when I was drunk, but when I was sober. And my mother had been a real stickler with my sister and I about neatness all of our lives. So when I thought about suicide, I thought about some sort of tidy way to go out where I wouldn't leave a mess. And so I thought about electrocuting myself. Now I was afraid that I'd just be paralyzed and have to depend on someone else to bring me booze.
And I went through all of these things. And so finally, see, I was never afraid to die, but living was the problem. And I had never learned to do that. And it's real depressing to be this age and have the mentality and emotional level of a 14 or 15-year-old. And learning things that I look at my nieces, who she's 16, that these kids know. How did they know that? How did they know how to handle situations that I…
And I have a sister who is not alcoholic. One difference between us, it amazes me. A person can say something to her that offends her, and 10 minutes later, she's forgotten it. They say the same thing to me. Three days later, I'm ticked. I am still upset. Years later, I remember it. So my last drunk, I'm not going to go into a big thing about it, but I had totaled, I don't even know how many cars, in and out of hospitals with broken bones.
And I was forever waking up with broken bones, broken fingers and toes and scars and, jeez, bruises the size of softballs. I used to swear that my husband waited until I got drunk and passed out and beat me with a ball bat, which I wouldn't have blamed him, but I just got drunk and fell down a lot. And, in fact, I was three months sober, and my husband went on our first sober vacation. Remember some of the drunken vacations where you come back and you show the slides and you don't remember a thing?
And we'd had years and years of vacations like that where we'd come back and he'd show the slides to the family, and I didn't have a clue what they were. I was three months sober, and we went on a real nice vacation, and I remembered everything. What a gift. I was so impressed with that. But while we were there, I bought a T-shirt. I had to have this T-shirt, and the front of it said, I have no drinking problem.
I drink, I get drunk, I fall down. And that, I thought, epitomized the way that I drank because of all of these hospital things that I went through. And speaking of that, I will bring up one thing. One of the things that helps me to stay sober are the looks that I got from my family, those looks of disgust, pity, but more disgust towards the end. And the Christmas before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I woke up Christmas morning and three fingers were broken, and I didn't have a clue how I'd done it.
Somehow I'd done it Christmas Eve, gotten drunk and fallen or whatever. I don't know to this day how I did it. But we were going to my sister's house for Christmas dinner, and I had to have somebody else cut the meat for me. I decided I wouldn't go to the hospital until that evening because I didn't want to ruin Christmas Day. Obviously, I already had. And this was a pattern that I grew up in, where my father on all holidays, it seemed like, were destroyed, and I had carried on the good old tradition.
And ruined all the holidays by being drunk, because my family never knew what shape I'd be in. And this Christmas morning, I saw the look in my nieces and nephew as they looked at me, and it was just disgust. And that's something I never want to forget, ever. Because that's one of the things that helped me to get here, and it's one of the things that helps me to stay. Because I know with one drink, I won't go back to that.
Having had no friends when I came here, and my family wasn't real fond of me either, one of the greatest blessings in my life today is friendship. And I put a high quality on that. It's very, very important to me. And I'm here with four ladies who are very special to me, Sadie and Marie, as I said, who was my first sponsor. And we spent six months of intensive, it was like boot camp, come to think of it.
And Dolly, who's very special in my life, and Colleen, of course. And these are some of the gifts that I've gotten from Alcoholics Anonymous. And just going on picnics and things like that. I went on picnics and things like that. Anyway, this last drunk of mine, I ended up in the hospital, I don't know what I had done, I woke up and my face was split open, and I don't know how I did it, but it didn't look too good, so I called the doctor,
[01:00:02]
and ended up, to make a long story short, ended up in the emergency ward, and they admitted me on the pretense of a concussion, and I was to later find out that it was to detox me, that my blood alcohol level was right off the scale, because I had finished off a half a bottle of vodka before I got to the hospital, and that was typical, and I couldn't face anything without a drink, I couldn't even face my family, who kind of liked me, but not real well, but I just couldn't handle any responsibility without drinking, and that's where I was, where the alcohol, what it did in the beginning, was now the problem in itself.
And so I ended up in the hospital, and they sent a psychiatrist in to see me, and they said that I would have to see him when I was released, and I had been through psychiatry and group therapy, and I'd tried controlled drinking, and I'd tried just about everything, and that's why I say, as I said in the beginning, that this was the last place I ever intended to end up, and if there had been any other place to try, I would have, and I knew when I got here, this was my last shot.
The day I got out of that hospital, I drank, and I drank for three more weeks. I had a pattern of drinking every Wednesday and every Saturday with my mother, and sometimes they just ran into each other if I was binging, but on this one day, there was nothing remarkable about this, and as many times as I've tried to tell this, I've never really found adequate words for it, and it was just another day, and it was just…
Is that like the bar lights where it's time to quit, this last call? Anyway, on this day, it was to be my last drink, and that was October 7, 1980, and I'd been out drinking as usual with my mother, and as usual, we stopped at the liquor store on the way home, and I bought a bottle of vodka, which I usually did, and I drank half of it, and I drank right out of the bottle by this time. The illusion that I was a normal drinker had long since passed.
I didn't bother with ice or glasses or mix or anything. It was too much trouble, and it seemed silly anyway to get a glass and ice cubes out and get that all set and then go drag a bottle out of the linen closet where I had it hid all over the place. And so that's the way I drank at the end. All I wanted was oblivion at the end, and I drank as fast as I could, as much as I could, until I passed out.
That was the objective. And on this day, I drank a half bottle of vodka, and I was standing at the kitchen window, and I was just looking out, and I can't explain it, but something just came over me. There was that moment of clarity that came over me, and I had been a defiant, rebellious kid and in trouble with the law and teachers and parents and husband and everybody all my life. And at that moment, this moment of clarity is the only way I can explain it.
It was like somebody had just taken me by the waist and just wrung me out and gone with all the fight and the denial and the rationalization and justification. And I was just sick, and I went to the phone, and I called Alcoholics Anonymous, and the lady who came the following morning and began my AA career was Marie. And I can't explain that any better than that, and it really doesn't do justice to it, but I believe that that was the first miracle in my life of being in God's hands, and there's been so many since.
I had a problem. The God of my understanding today, because my father died of alcoholism, an understanding I came to, and I don't expect anybody to agree with it or whatever. It's just what I'm comfortable with. The God of my understanding, because I've known so many people who have died of alcoholism. You know, I spent a large portion of my life asking, Why me? Why me? Why is everything so unfair?
Why do I have to be? Why do I have to do? And after I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I began to wonder, Why me? And why you? And why did my dad have to die? And why did people I know have to die of alcoholism and I'm alive? And of course the obvious alcoholic answer is because you're special. And I wanted to believe that, and I do to an extent, but that didn't explain why my dad died and why a lot of good people who happen to be alcoholic die.
And the thing that I just happened to come up with, and I believe it, is that in every alcoholic's life they have a chance and a choice, and some of us have many. And I happen to be one of those who had a second chance, and some say no. I think it's as simple as that. We just say no. And my dad wasn't able for whatever reason. But I don't believe that God lines us up and decides who will live and who will die of alcoholism.
[01:05:01]
I think it's our decision. And so that's what I'm comfortable with. When I came into the program, I had no use for God. The first step I was able to accept. The second step, I had no formal religion, and I hear a lot about the punishing God. And fortunately I didn't have that, and I think maybe there's an advantage to being a semi-heathen. I didn't have any unlearning to do because I had no formal religion.
And so I built, when our founders said, God as I understand him, I kind of took that to mean God as I conceive him or her to be. And so I had the advantage of just building the qualities into this higher power of compassion and love and beauty that made me feel at one with this power. And that power now was no longer out there. It was in here and with me. And that was a real beginning in my life because I had always associated everything, if it was God, it had to be religion and Bible, and it had to be a full structure.
And that was not the case here. And so something happened inside of me. I bought the big book and the 12 and 12. The first chapter I read in the big book. The second day I was in the program, I bought the book. The first thing I ever underlined in the big book was in the chapter to the agnostic. And I used to have a lot of problems with the second step. There's one phrase in there that was to help change my attitude and change my life, and that phrase in the chapter to the agnostics is something like this.
It says, Do you believe or are you even willing to believe in a power greater than yourself? And I thought that was a reasonable request for where I was because nobody was trying to convert me. Nobody was asking me to make any kind of an undying declaration to their God. And all I was asked at that point was to make some kind of a commitment of willingness and open-mindedness and honesty. At some point to believe in something other than myself.
And I was able to accept that, and from there I was able to make a beginning. And while I didn't have a whole lot going for me in the beginning, I did have some willingness because I had no alternatives. And a lot of the stuff, to be dead honest with you, I tried because I wanted to prove my sponsor wrong. She kept telling me this stuff was going to work, and I kept saying, Okay, we'll give it a shot here.
I wasn't saying this out loud, but I was going to prove this wrong because it just sounded as bad as I wanted to be sober. I didn't think I deserved to be sober. The way I felt about myself, and I looked at you people and I thought, even if there is this God or this higher power that you're talking about, you must have done something worthy enough in your life that you've been given this chance. But the way I felt about myself, I thought, I'm going to be sober for a week or two or maybe a month, and the balloon is going to burst.
This is too good to be true. And one day at a time, finally made a beginning at something and finally kept at it for a while, like a lot of my alcoholic friends, were great out of the gate and then we hit the skids. And I was no exception to that. I started a million different projects, got involved in a million different things and never completed them. And I thought this would be one more thing. And so what this program has done for me, I went back to school three years ago.
I just graduated in June. I became involved through, as I said earlier, being railroaded into GSR, which I wanted to be. I very badly wanted to be involved in service. I had been brought up with the traditions right from the beginning of AA, immersed in the traditions being as important as the steps and all three legacies needing one another in order for Alcoholics Anonymous to survive for another 50 or 100 years.
I was taught that from day one. So after I became GSR, a rather remarkable thing happened in God's hands. Through a series of events, I became involved with the correctional institutions in Michigan and began going into the prisons. And one day I was in the state prison, Jackson Prison, if anybody's familiar with that, meeting with administrators in how to set up our AA meetings in there, how to make them better and more convenient for the prison administration.
And when I left there and I got in the car, I thought what a remarkable thing Alcoholics Anonymous has done for this defiant, rebellious crime, on the fringes of crime a little bit. And there I was in a prison with, I mean, you can't, I hated authority figures all my life. And I thought I'm here for a reason. There's something I'm supposed to learn by being in this setting
[01:10:02]
and working with these people. And the gratitude that I've learned from the people in the prisons, men and women that I've talked to, and again asking why me, why am I allowed to be sober. I suspect that a large number of people in this room today probably should be dead by all intents, car accidents or whatever, physical illness, compromising positions maybe, who knows. But when I got involved with the prisons, I've had the opportunity to talk to men and women who are serving life sentences for crimes they don't remember committing.
I was a drunk driver. I don't know anybody who didn't drive at least once when they had been drinking. The things that I was capable of, violence when I drank, I could have committed manslaughter, murder, I don't know. But the gratitude that I feel and the blessings that this program has given to me, my sense of being overwhelmed at being any part of an international conference or being able to share, I just can't quite put that into words.
I want to thank you not only for my sobriety but for giving my family back to me where I'm pretty good terms these days. My sobriety and my life and the friends that I have in my life. And please, whatever we can do individually to help the still-suffering alcoholic, whatever individually we can do works out to be a collective effort. It's so important that we keep these doors open. I have nieces and nephews.
I would like to see these doors open and the traditions and the concepts still rigidly adhered to the way they were when I came through these doors. And we owe that to those who follow. And for my mother, should she ever reach out for help. I would like to close with something that was said to me about two years ago because I get real hard on myself about where I am and am not in this program. I'm never as far as I think I should be, and I'm my own worst enemy and critic and all that.
And this lady said this to me, and I really believe that this applies whether I'm two weeks sober, 10 years or 50 years sober, about the honesty with myself and where I am. And this says, forgive the person you were, accept the person you are, and believe in the person you are becoming. Thank you very much for letting me be a part of this. Thank you so much, Pam. You almost did it. If everyone else's stomach is like mine, where your belly button is sticking to your backbone, I don't think that they'll mind if we close just a few minutes early on this.
I would like to ask Ken and Pam if they'd come back up by me so that you can again say thank you to them. I'd like to say thank you to them and to all of you people. Thank you. They did a neat job, didn't they? Really great. And would all of you care to join me in closing with the Lord's Prayer?