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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – FREE TO BE ME – RS 06387.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-free-to-be-me-rs-06387.mp3 Duration: 01:06:38
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Good afternoon, everybody. Good to see you all here this afternoon for our session on Free to Be Me, and I'd like to open this session with a moment of silence. Please use it as you wish. And now I'd like to have us all join in the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. I'm a self-admitted recovering alcoholic. I am a member of the Norwell, Massachusetts Acceptance Group, and my name is Bill Early. Hi, William is my alias. I'm known by a few other things as well, at least I used to be. As long as you smile, you can call me just about anything.
For those of us who are not familiar with our traditions, and especially the one on anonymity, I'd like to read our position or our tradition on that. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and TV and films. This we respectfully ask that no 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 to our effort to keep other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. And I am told to announce, and this is not a…this is a program of attraction and not promotion, but sometimes we promote the attraction. And we have to announce that there are tapes of this meeting as well as every other meeting.
For those who didn't get the little blue check-off list, every session here in Montreal is being recorded professionally and it's respectfully requested that nobody, of course, use personal recorders or, of course, they do not use cameras while in this meeting. And I'm an alcoholic and I'm here because alcohol did a number on me and for a long time my name was John Barleycorn and now my name is Bill Early and I'm free to be me and that's a great feeling and I'm supposed to chair this meeting so I'm going to call on my first speaker, Bobby.
Bobby? Bobby is from California. Thank you, Bill. I am Bobby and I'm a very grateful recovering alcoholic from California. And I don't know…this is only the second time I've ever done this. The first time I ever spoke was our home group and I had about ten people there. I remember I said, I'm Bobby, I'm an alcoholic, I remember nothing else. My sponsor told me to turn this over to God. Remember, I was speaking to alcoholics whether it was one or a thousand.
Then she also told me if I was still nervous to take my glasses off and I wouldn't be able to see it. So if they come off, you know my stomach and heart's going to do a number on me. Well, to start with, I'll tell you a little bit of how it was. The first thing I remember of myself, I thought of myself as a dumb, fat kid. I was helped back in the first grade, I was helped back in the second. Then they put glasses on me so I was a short, fat, dumb kid with glasses on.
Which gave me a lot of confidence in life. And I went through my growing up years in that respect. And I don't recall my first drinking, but I do know as a teenager I did very, very little of it. But when I did drink, I blacked out. And when I was 17 I got married, and by the way, I've been married several times. That's one of the miracles. The first miracle is I'm sober today. The second one, it got me back to my God.
And third, this is my fourth marriage and I'm almost 22 years old into it. So, that's a miracle. My first few husbands, I didn't drink when we were married. But I did drink alcoholic liquor in between my marriages. And I blacked out a great deal in between. In my marriage this time, I continued drinking because I had a drinking partner.
[00:05:02]
Which made it real easy. At one time I went five years without a drink. And because of AA, I just joined church and quit drinking. But my faith then wasn't strong enough. I got mad at the preacher, kicked him out of my house and started drinking again. When I came into AA, I didn't want to. I was made a 12-step call in the hospital. And before then I had met a psychiatrist that was going to teach me how to drink.
And I liked him real well. He didn't believe that we should be labeled AA because it put a label on us that gave us a complex. Thank God, how grateful I am. I am an AA now. I have a complex, but it's so big and so tall. And I'm so grateful for it. Thank you. Well, they had these little pills. He asked me if I could stay dry for two weeks. I said, of course, and I did. Then he thought I was such a good student, he gave me these pills.
I don't know the name of them. I called them booze pills because you could get drunk on them. So, you could drink a little drink, get your high, take a pill, stay that way. Being a true alcoholic, one works so great, I ended up taking five. And drinking. I ended up into the hospital with a heart attack related to alcohol. I continued drinking. And then I ended up in the hospital again with pancreatitis.
At that time, I thought I had found a new disease. I was unique. And nobody else had anything that bad. But I find out now, I wasn't very unique. A 12-step call was made on me in the hospital. The lady's name was Fran. I was very rude. I didn't want anything to do with you people. Because I didn't want to be labeled, and I didn't want to get a complex. She left some literature for me. So, while I was in there, with nothing better to do, I started reading it.
I got out on a Friday, decided I'd come to AA. Came on a Friday, and I went eight months. Everybody was so proud of me. I was so proud of myself. I enjoyed the pats on the back. I was going to meetings, and that was all I was doing. I didn't change my lifestyle 180% degree. So, with a foundation like that, I went back out and drank again. Now, I'm a retread. But I had a sponsor that I've been so grateful for.
She loved me through that year of drinking. She didn't desert me. I ended up with the Yets. I got my drunk drive ticket. I got in jail. I ended up in care units. So, when I came back into AA on December the 24th, 1979, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink. Going back a little bit, when I was a kid in school, I would not get in front of the class to give a report, because I didn't want to expose myself, because I knew I would not do it right.
I took my F's. I got help back. I'd stay after school. I'd get grounded home. Anything, just so nobody would get close to me or know me. I had very few friends. I would not participate in anything. Rather than to let you know me, I would put a barrier up, and I liked to fight. Anybody say anything wrong to me, I would fight. I don't do that anymore. I'm getting too old for it, for one thing. But since I've been, I don't even know what time I started, so I was told I could quit when I wanted to, as long as it wasn't over 20 minutes.
So, since then, I've been doing that. So, since I am in the fellowship, it got me back to my God. I always had a God, but I turned my back on him during my drinking times. And I have no idea when I went over that limit, it just, or that line that we speak of, it just happened. But now, I'm not lonesome like I used to be. It wasn't lonesome. It's just plain and awful lonely, lonely, lonely feeling. I'm not that way anymore.
I'm not frightened anymore. I don't have to be afraid. And at the time, I didn't know what I was afraid of. I do know I didn't want to answer my phone, I didn't want to go to the mailbox, except when the telephone bill came in, because I'd like to talk on the phone long distance, of course. And I didn't open my drapes up. I stayed in the house. I couldn't get out too often because I wasn't capable.
I was capable of getting to the liquor store and getting home. My daughter used to invite me out to lunch. I'd say, sure. Many times, I'd have to call her and cancel because I had the flu. I think we've all had that kind of flu quite often. I'd go with her, and there was times that I couldn't pick up a coffee cup because my hand shook so bad. And I never could plan anything because I didn't know if that was the day I would be throwing up all day or not.
But today, and I will have to say this, I was very fortunate. I lost nothing during my drinking, except myself, except my God. My family stayed with me. They loved me through it. I put them through hell. When I first got sober, it took me a while to get over feeling guilty to what I had done to my children. The only thing, I had deprived them of myself. I don't have to do that anymore.
[00:10:00]
I'm not frightened anymore. Now, we have a very good relationship. Actually, it's a good friendship. I have beautiful granddaughters, and if my daughter hears this tape, she may not like it, but I get to meet their boyfriends first because I live closer than they do. And they let me be involved in their life. They want to be involved in my life. And if I had continued on the path that I was going, if I should happen to be alive, I know they would not want to be around me.
Now, I used to couldn't walk because my legs were in such bad shape. Now, I get up every morning at a quarter to five. I walk my four miles before I go to work because I enjoy watching the sunrise. It's beautiful, quiet. I work again. I never thought I was able to work again, but I do work again, and I enjoy it. I teach aerobics. I get up in front of people and make a fool of myself, but I enjoy it so much.
I keep thinking it's good. You know, it's good for me. And I'm so grateful for all you people. God. And I am so grateful for my higher power, my God, to replace me with not being lonely, not being frightened. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me back my life and to be able to be free and to be me again. Now, I shouldn't even say again because I don't even recognize the person I used to be.
This is a new personality. And I've only known me for about five and a half years, so each day I surprise myself. So it's good. And I like me today, which I never did before. So I want to say just thank you. God bless you, and God, I love all of you so much. Boy, could I identify with her. Holy… Boy, she told my story. Our next speaker is from Ohio. His name is Robert. Rob, would you want to come out and say a few words?
Thank you. Hi, everybody. I'm Bob Morris, and I'm an alcoholic. That's neat. I know what I am for a change. I don't know whether I should say it was a welcome opportunity or what freedom to be me is. Damn scary if you're me. I really don't know. I'm not what I try to be a lot of times. And it's not as bad as it used to be because I got a little idea of what I am today. And yes, I am standing back there.
I… I was watching her, and I was wondering if she would just please go over her 25 minutes, and I could take it up. You were here for 13 and a half. So I still judge, and I still compare. Even though we're not supposed to. That's me. That's all. I guess I did that all my life. All my life, I've judged and compared and tried to be what I wanted you to think I was. Not really what I was. I really didn't know what I was.
I knew I wasn't six foot. God, I wanted that. God, I wanted that. When I was a little fellow, they said, When you grow up. And hell, I haven't done it. I have not done it. I have a lovely wife. Unfortunately for me, not her, I've only had one wife. She'll probably never have another husband. If it scares her as bad as it scares me. To be me. I don't know where I'm going or what I'm going to be, but I'm sure a lot better than I used to be.
I was at the point when I got here at a hopeless state. I had worked and I had made all the monetary gains that I was to make for me. I wasn't where I wanted to be, but it was a lot farther than I ever thought I would be. I was very happy with where I was going, but I wasn't happy with where I was. Just couldn't get happy. I did get moments of relaxation when I drank, and I don't think I ever drank for the taste.
I don't think I ever did. There are some fine beverages that I didn't like. I never was a scotch drinker, and God, I tried. God, I tried. And if you drank a certain beverage, I was going to try it. And I'd try it all the way to the commode every time. Every time. One thing nice about never growing up is I don't have far to fall, so I didn't bruise too bad. Didn't bruise too bad. But God, I beat my ego to death.
Beat my… But God, I beat my ego to death, beat my ego to death.
[00:15:02]
For some strange reason, when I was a little tyke, and up until I was fifty, I was a bobby. And my father passed away, and I was no longer a bobby. And I didn't know how much I resented being a bobby, until my wife reminded me that fifty-year-old men are not bobbies. A bobby's a cop in England. I don't know. You know, I didn't like them either. So I don't know. So I turned out to be bobby. And that was frightening.
That was frightening. Just who is bobby? And I had no idea. And I went to a treatment center, and I came out of there with an awareness that was to zilch really. It just scared me. I was aware of I was nowhere. And I didn't know what to do. And I was introduced to this fellowship. And you people had looks on your face like I tried to pretend to have, only mine didn't come out that way, because I checked it every morning, and it didn't look that way.
And you told me you had to do certain things, and I'd read those books, you know, and I didn't confuse myself with a lot of other literature. I stuck to the big book, but I didn't understand the answer. Just couldn't understand it. And I was, I thought brilliant, really. I really thought I was. I knew I couldn't spell, but I knew I could read. And I just didn't seem to get anywhere. And I hung around with you people, and I just faked it until you helped me to learn how to understand.
And you directed me to understand what I was reading and misinterpreting. And God, it's beautiful. It's really beautiful. It's uncomfortable at times, especially if you're me. It's uncomfortable. And free to be me is so beautiful today, I really don't know if I want to get to know me any better or not, because I'm kind of happy with me today. I really am. I've had the ability to watch me learn to accept things in me that I never knew existed in me.
And I am somebody. I'm little old me. Little out of shape, but little old me, and I'm damn proud of it. I can see happiness that I didn't understand before, for me, because of you people. I had a religion. I guess you'd call it a religion. I believe in a God. I believe in a God. I prayed to a God every time I got in trouble. I didn't know I was bargaining until you told me so, because I never took it real serious, I don't think.
I made some pledges to God, as I understood Him, when I got married, etc. A few things I had joined, and I didn't know what I was doing when I did it, I guess. But I really meant them, and I was serious about them. I got married when I was a youngster. My wife and I were both 18, and every nine months and ten minutes, we had a youngster for three years, and neither one of us are Catholic. I don't know if that makes any difference, but it didn't in our case.
I know we had nowhere to confess it to, anyway, how's that? Thanks to a loving God and a lovely wife, those three children grew up in something similar to a home, at least it was a house, and a home where she was concerned. They learned to handle her end of this sickness that I was well unaware of. They were all ungrateful, as far as I was concerned, at those states of the game. When I came to you people, and you were talking about the abuse that you give families, and no, not me, I had never struck, I had never physically violated them, baloney, and I wouldn't have even been able to word it that nicely when I came here, it was not baloney.
I went through a stage of guilt with that, and remorse, and I finally learned me enough to look at me and understand that I was doing the best I could at that time for me. I didn't want to do things that I did, and I'm not going to tell you everything I did, because we're not going to spend a weekend here. And besides that, none of you have a column, so I don't think we need to go into that. But since I have found sobriety, and I mean genuine sobriety, not drying out, I haven't had the occasion to spend a full day in misery, and I can't remember how long now.
[00:20:05]
And I will be sober nine years this October. I'm one of those Halloween clowns that came into you folks on Halloween night. I wasn't very funny then, and I haven't been very funny since, but I sure have been weird. And I don't know about you, but I kind of enjoy being weird. I just love being weird. I still don't follow directions. I still don't take orders. I still give orders. I still expect you to follow directions.
And little by little, I'm finding out, God, I am not. Good orderly direction, I don't even know. I wish I could stand here and tell you I had financial problems because of other people. I don't. But don't let me narrow cash register. I love them. I love them dearly. You girls have got nothing on me. You got nothing on me. I love them dearly. I have incorporated in my life a friendship with a gal that I married, and I do genuinely like my wife.
And that, for me, is a whole lot more than love. Because you people taught me I can disagree and still like and love. And for that, I'll be forever grateful. I don't know whether I should ramble on or not, but I don't think so. I think I'm going to let the other one get stuck with that. I'd like to thank whoever put my name in there and drew it out or whatever happened. You caused me some beautiful moments of resentments, remorse, and a few other things.
But God, I love you all, and thank you so much for being here. It's funny how you can identify with everybody. Son of a gun, he told my story too. It's amazing. He's from Ohio. Okay, we've got a ringer next. Nancy came in as a secret speaker. So, Nancy, would you want to come up and say a few words? Thank you. My name's Nancy, and I am an alcoholic. And I was asked to be a substitute on the substitute list, and the other speaker got sick, I believe, and they called me yesterday.
So, I don't know what I'm talking about, but that's the way my sobriety's kind of going. I'd like to start by saying I'm very, very grateful and somewhat in awe of being asked to do this. But I am grateful, and like much of what I've learned to be grateful for in the program, it comes with a fair amount of fear. So, if I mutter a little bit, just let me know, and I'll try to slow down. Bob told my story.
I made a couple of notes on what I wanted to say, and I think he said it all. The idea of free to be me… Freedom is awesome. Freedom, to me, means there's no boundaries, there's no limits. And I was a kid that wanted to be put in boxes worse than anything. I wanted to be labeled. I took tests so you would tell me what I was, who I was, what I was going to be good at, what I would be when I grew up.
And I spent the first 30 years of my life trying to get you to tell me who I was. So, when I first got sober and they told me I had choices, I was terrified. And in the 15 years I've been sober, I've created a life that fits me just fine. And I'm very, very happy with it today. I, since asked to lead on this topic, have sort of checked myself out a few ways. And I do think that I live my life in total freedom today, and that is a miracle.
This is one of the promises that they tell us about in the big book, that we'll find a new freedom, and I have found it. Briefly, I'd like to tell you that… Right, Bob, I'm kind of weird too. I got to be an alcoholic in 10 years drinking beer. I grew up in the Bible Belt, raised by Midwestern parents, and felt like an outcast most of my young life. I was raised to be a good girl, and I always wanted to be a good girl, and I wound up drinking an awful lot, and waking up real sick wondering who I'd done what with the night before, which wasn't exactly anybody's idea of a good girl, including mine.
But it led me into doing an awful lot of people-pleasing, and I would say that that is still a character defect that I work on a lot.
[00:25:11]
You people have really helped me to see who I am, and who I can become. And if I'm not there yet, it's because of my own sloth, and if I'm not there yet, it's because of my own sloth. Let me just say a couple of things where I've learned my lessons on being me. I have a friend who's in the program who one day I had a lunch date with, and as I was leaving for the lunch date, the phone rang, and I was on the phone for about an hour with a 12-step call, and I got there to lunch.
Well, those who know me know that I'm not usually very prompt, but this was sort of breaking all records, and my friend said to me, you know, it makes me feel like you don't care much about me that you're late. You don't think enough about me to keep an appointment. I said, but the phone rang on the way out. She said, couldn't you have left without answering the phone? I said, no. Somebody needed me, and I was there.
I handed my life over. I took no responsibility whatsoever for my actions, for my commitments. Whatever came up was what I did, and this is very recent in my sobriety that I've been able to really get a fix on that and try to learn to begin to say no so that I can be responsible to the commitments I have made. Now, this ties into people-pleasing in the following way. If every time I talk to you and you tell me, yes, you know, I agree, we're always in agreement, I never really know who you are.
It's only the person who's bold enough, like my friend, to speak up and say, I don't agree with this, I don't think this is the right way, that I learn, number one, who they are, number two, who I am and how I'm interacting in that. That's why I say you people have taught me what I know about who I am. I'd like to say also that I'm a lesbian, and being an alcoholic and a lesbian has caused me no end of problems of feeling I can outcast.
I think I drank over that a lot, and found it very difficult to lead what I would call an integrated life, where I could be who I was on the job, where I could be who I was in AA. When I got sober, there was no such thing as gay AA, and I must say I've learned an awful lot about my own internal oppression through my friends in the gay liberation movement, but I've learned an awful lot more about how I'm a lovable human being from my friends in the general population.
One of my sponsors is a non-gay woman, and at one point she would say, you know, I don't know how to deal with this, I know this person and we get along fine in the program, and we go to lunch and this person is like, I've got something I've got to tell you, I've got something I've got to tell you, I'm gay. She says, I don't know what to say, oh you poor dear, you know, or congratulations. It gave me an appreciation for what's on the other side of the conversation, you guys teach me who I am.
In any case, about ten years ago, I decided I couldn't feel comfortable working for somebody else. Now this is from a kid who's a people pleaser and wanting everybody else to do for me. I mean, I have a string of para-alcoholics in my history that you wouldn't believe, and I decided I wanted to work for myself, and for ten years I've been able to support myself, sometimes better, sometimes worse. I certainly have financial fears, yet the freedom that this affords me, if I need to go see a sponsee at lunchtime for two hours, I can do it.
If I need to talk to my lover on the phone, I can do it. If I need to talk to my lover on the phone, it's okay. I have found an incredible amount
[00:30:01]
of freedom in my personal life by being able to build a construct that includes myself as a professional woman. I hold an office in one of my professional societies. It allows me to function as a sober alcoholic. It allows me to function in the context of my family life. And I could never have done this. There is not a single person in my family as far back as I can find that went into business for themselves. This has been a true gift of sobriety and a true gift of you all's teaching me that I can do it with the help of my higher power and the help of talking about it in a meeting. Okay. Because I'm a lesbian I felt that God didn't love me. And this is probably the biggest piece of my recovery. I felt I was unacceptable and an abomination. I started to be loved sober. I started to be loved sober in New York City by all kinds of people. Young, old, black, white, straight, gay. And they told me I was acceptable. That if I just didn't drink one day at a time and came to meetings it didn't matter about any of the rest of that stuff. Coming to terms with believing that a higher power could love me was one of my greatest struggles in sobriety. I know now today I'm a child of God just like anybody else. No better, no worse. I need to be forgiven and I sure am loved. The reason I bring this up is because twofold. One is I do believe that the constraints on my being free to be me are all internal. I don't think that my freedom is limited by anything more or less than my vision of what's possible for me today.
I can do anything I want to do within the constraints of who I am. I can't be six feet tall either. But I do think that I can, as a sober alcoholic, with the help of my higher power and the help of the fellowship, do anything that's feasible for me. And that definition of feasible basically is limited by my own vision of what's possible for me. In March of this year I had a serious cancer operation and I've been on chemotherapy ever since. I would like to tell you that I have worked very hard on developing my conscious contact with my higher power and I've had some incredible spiritual experiences going into this and after I found out I had cancer and before the chemotherapy. I would like to say that I've experienced the power of prayer in my recovery like nothing else I've known in sobriety. It's tangible, it's real. I have not had the terrors I had getting sober.
What's going to become of me? Will I make it? Will I live? How can I live? Can I hold a job? All those obsessing, churning fears have not been mine. I didn't have a minute of why me. And it's because, not because of my work, because my higher power is sustaining me and because I've had prayers from all over. And this is why I think that creating a life in which I'm free to be me is not my work. It's the work of all of us who love each other in this program. I couldn't be here today if I weren't sustained by the power of love and prayer from people who have quite literally supported me when I couldn't support myself lately. Quite literally been there for me. Call me up and say, Nancy, I just think about you, I love you. Nancy, I just think about you, I pray for you. Lit a candle for you.
Whatever. It's been so meaningful. I hope I will remember to do that for my friends when they need it. Therefore, I don't think I have a lot of control over being free to be me, in a sense. I think the limits are within me, but that it's a co-creation process. I have to do my work, but I have to also know that I can't do it alone. I can't do it off in the desert with my higher power. And I need every one of you in the room. Thank you very much.
Boy, that's a powerful message there. Free to be me, isn't that terrific? I mentioned
[00:35:11]
that to a lot of my friends. I figured I'd be, there wouldn't be anybody here. I needed some moral support, and I have it. Look at all these beautiful people. And I mentioned the topic, free to be me, and everybody says, gee, that must be a tough topic. It's the easiest one in the world. And I think back to when I first came around. In fact, I was back in, we used to have a state convention up at Eastover in Lenox, Massachusetts, and I heard a fellow up there one time, and he talked about when he first came around to the fellowship. And somebody asked him about the invisible line, and he had to have an answer, and he said, well, I crossed that invisible line maybe three months ago. And the longer he was around, the further back in time he found that he had crossed over the invisible line. And, you know, it went back to a year, and then to five years, and ten years, and all of a sudden he came to the startling realization that he was born on the wrong side of the invisible line. And I could identify with that. I had tried for a long time to bring my life into focus and to find out who Bill really was, and I didn't know. I thought I knew, and I often tell the story as a young boy, we didn't have organized sports as they do for young boys today. We had picked up, we called it sandlot baseball, today they call it Little League, and this story of mine brings it back into focus for me because I can, what Bobby said about this insecurity and the lack of self-confidence and the feeling of rejection that I had as a young boy for no good reason now that I look back on it, but this was something that was in my mind. And I look back and I recall how we would pick up sides to play baseball, and it seemed that I was always the last one picked. And when they did pick me, they put me out into left field, and I always figured they did that to get rid of me. And I had a sort of a resentment, not so much a resentment, but that feeling of rejection. They don't like me. Why is it they don't ever ask me to play in the infield where the other kids are? You know, I was always out there all alone and not realizing that I had a natural talent to play in left field. And those kids knew it. And maybe down deep I knew it myself because I could get off at the crack of the bat and I could snag a fly ball perhaps better than any other kid. I could run like a deer and I could throw the ball a country mile, and that was my God-given talent. But I didn't want to admit that. I would rather be in the infield doing something that I was not qualified to do. I did not want to be me, even before I picked up my first drink. And, you know, I knew full well that if they ever did put me in the infield, I did not have the talent to play there because my reactions weren't quick enough for that. I mean, if a ground ball were hitting my direction, I would probably never catch it, you know. And that sort of brings me to the 12 Steps of Recovery because I would not know me except for the fact that I was involved in the 12 Steps of Recovery. And I'm looking around this hall this morning and I see there's five or six members of my 12 Step group here from Braintree, Massachusetts.
And we have what I consider to be a very unique 12 Step group, one wherein I have learned to be me. I have found out who I am. And we go one paragraph at a time. And we can go for three weeks on one paragraph, you know, and that's great. We're in no rush. And we have up to 50 people sometimes in that 12 Step group. They come and go. We have a corps that's there more or less continuously, but there are others that come and go and there's others that come and stay, you know, and it's beautiful. And I get to that fourth step, you see, and I have to take a fearless and searching moral inventory of myself. I can't take your inventory because that will do me no good. I love what Nancy said. I could, oh my God, what a powerful message she has there. She is free to be Nancy today. We're
[00:40:05]
free to do anything we want, but first of all we have to know who we are. And, you know, some of us, most of us, I'm sure, are finding that out. We never will know completely, I don't think. I think we do it one day at a time. We make progress on a daily basis, and thank God we never get perfect at it. I always like the prospect of something better happening tomorrow, finding out another aspect of Bill that I didn't know today, and I found out a lot about Bill here this convention. This was great. I would like to ask if there's anybody here, we have a few minutes to go. I think we go until 2.30. We got plenty of time. Let me ask you, I have some friends from West Germany. Are any of my friends from West Germany here this morning, like Margaret or Laurie? Laurie was going to come here this morning, or my friend Chris from Limerick Island? Nobody from there, okay. Is there anybody here who would like to come up here and say a few words on free to be me? Go on up and say a few words.
Hi, my name is Rich and I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. I'm a member of the take a chance group in Quincy, Mass. And we were talking about character defects in a meeting once and I had to admit mine was I never pass. But take a chance group for us means you take a chance on just about anything in your life as an alcoholic, but it's very difficult to get yourself to take a chance on the one thing that works, AA, because you want to know ahead of time. You're sober, you want to know ahead of time what the guarantees are. How's it going to work? When am I going to get out of this? And you don't get that. All you get is a guarantee that you'll be sober a day at a time if you do what you're supposed to do and everything else comes after that. When I came in this program, I can really identify with having been born on the wrong side of the invisible line, because when I came in this program, like most people, I was full of fears and I had become someone who I was not comfortable being. And I knew I didn't want to be that person any longer, but I didn't know how to go about changing it. I did know that alcohol was a problem in my life, but I had other problems too. The only reason I came to AA is I had been in Al-Anon, the enemy camp, you know. And I don't believe that. I mean, I was in Al-Anon, so I know what it's really like if it's being worked properly. There are sick people there too, but Al-Anon works just like AA. Although I know a lot of people here have probably experienced Al-Anon SWAT troops coming to their home. But the real principle of Al-Anon is you stand back and let the drunk do what the drunk is going to do anyway, so that when the drunk finds themselves in the position they ultimately will and there's nobody else around to blame, they have to realize who's at fault. But along the lines of that, you know, feeling free to be me today comes with sitting down there and realizing that when somebody says to me, you know, I had the flu all this time, blah, blah, blah, and I hear that and I realize that ten years sober, I still think today that there was a terrible outbreak of flu in the early 70s. You know, I really do. I'm sitting there and I'm saying, I didn't have the flu. I was sick from alcohol. And, you know, I would say in those days, am I sick from alcohol? And I'd say, no, I didn't have anything more to drink than I usually do.
And I was ignoring the cumulative effects of drinking. When I came in this program, you know, I've heard a lot of people say, what do they want from me? What does AA want from me? You know, like, you know, what do you got, right? By the time you get here. You don't have anything anybody wants. And we're the only ones that want you. But the fact of the matter is, when I came here, I really didn't feel like that. I was ready to be helped. And my sponsor said, you know, you'll hear a lot of things. If you go around to the right people, you know, those are the people who are the right people for you. I mean, everybody in here is the right person, but maybe not for you. But if you go around and you ask the right questions, you know, my sponsor said he went on an ego trip when I asked him to be my sponsor because he'd never sponsored anyone. And he said, two seconds later, he came crashing back to earth. And he said, what am I going to do if this guy asks me a question I can't answer? And he decided that as long as I ask the right questions, he could be my sponsor, you know. And there's a lot of truth in that. If you want to get sober, you ask the right questions. You know, if you want to get caught up in all You know, if you want to get caught up on all the intellectual BS, you know, it's another and that meeting woke me up. The topic was freedom and sobriety. And I sat and I mulled
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that word over, freedom, because to me, you people told me always one thing, capitulate or surrender. And oh, did I hate that word surrender. Because after all, you know, I surrendered everything over in Germany. I was not drinking at the time, but I surrendered everything that I owned on material things. Little did I know that that really had no merit whatsoever. That actually the surrender of myself to become free was terribly important.
I think I had one of the most moving and most beautiful things happening to me last night. We were coming from the metro, thinking that we were beating, my husband is also in the program, by the way, and he's with me, but not in the same room. I kick him out wherever I go. I work my program and he works his. He's a bastard and I'm a bitch. And I was the most beautiful things that I have ever seen was we came out of that lovely subway, underground barn, and we thought while we had it all together and all of a sudden from all sides, all these blue shields and these red shields were coming. And there was a stirring moment because they all walked together. They walked together with a smile, with a joy, with an awareness, with an aliveness, which I had never seen. It was to me, God walked with me. I do believe in a higher power. I had to learn one thing that Heidi spelled H-A-I-D-I, not H-E-I-D-I. See, I was supposed to be something different. I made it that way, but that Heidi was only one among these thousands. And it was great not to be the one, but to be one of them. I always liked the one analogy which I found. I have a very dear friend in Rochester who is anorexia, alcoholic, plus dope. She kicked two of them, the one she cannot kick. And that is anorexia, and I've been working with her day by day.
And I have felt the power of God with me. It was not me because I felt saying things that I didn't know. And one thing I used with her one day was, did you ever see a beach? Yes. What is a beach made out of? Sand. She has all the answers to everything. I said, see, I am one of these pebbles, these teensy-weensy little molecules that are laying there on that beach. That's what I am. I am the sand. I am the sand. I am the sand. I am the sand.
I'm not very important at all. I am that little thing. Pick me up, put me in the toilet, flush me down, I'm gone. I'm no more beach. But the thing that is really important is, I am a part of that beach. Because if you took me and you and each one of you away, there would be no more beach. There would be no more AA. What would I do then? To me, this program is a living program. It's a life. There's not one negative thing in our program.
Thou shalt not is not there. It is, try it that way. I tried it with my husband, doesn't work. That's beside the point. But the most wonderful thing is that I'm alive. I don't care. I spoke yesterday in front of the Germans. They asked me to speak, and I told them one thing. I don't care if you're a doctor, if you're a lawyer, a ditch stickle, whatever you are, it doesn't matter. It's important that you are you and I are you and I, and you have to be me, and I have to be me to be free. But that cannot be if I want to do it on my own. You people have given me the helping hand. You have said, Heidi, walk with
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me. Whenever a girl asks me to sponsor, and I have men also, I have one man in jail who killed his wife and three children that I sponsor, but that man has learned to be free in the prison, because he's AA, and now he is in AA. He's a pepper in the beach. He's one among all, and that is what freedom is, to be among each one of us, a unit all together. And when we say the Lord's Prayer, holding hands together, having this chain going all around, not one break in it, we are all together and free. This freedom in this meeting to me is one of the most important ones. I wrote on my little booklet, Excellent, because I heard what Bobby said. I heard what Bob said. I heard what Nancy said. I dare not to sit judge, because if I do, I have to judge myself first, and there's a heck of a lot to be found.
I don't like that sometimes. But the freedom that we have, everything we want to do, we can. We do it together. We do it twice as good. I like being the pepper on the beach, and I hope nobody picks me up and flushes me down the toilet. But I don't think anybody would dare, because I walk with him. He's not up there. He's all around us, right inside of me. And when I start my day in the morning, and when I start my day in the evening, I stop my day at night and in between. You people have brought me back to God. He brought me to you. You people have brought me back with your faith, with your togetherness, with your walk, with your smile, and with all your love and all your hugs. And I got plenty of hugs for anybody who ever wants them. Today, a guy was trying to sell me a T-shirt, hug me.
I said, I haven't got the money, but I'll hug you. I didn't get the T-shirt, but he got the hug. Keep walking free. Let's walk together. Let's walk together with a smile, with a love and a joy. And we keep AA going. For me, the traditions are terribly important, because I heard it said yesterday in a German group, I needed the traditions, because without them, I couldn't trust. So whenever you hear the traditions read, listen to them. They have the message just as strong as the big book and the 12 and 12. God bless you all, and I love you. Bye.
Well, I say we got another 15 minutes. Is anybody, there's a fellow right there. My name's Steve Keen. I'm an alcoholic from Sioux City, Iowa. This is a trip, I'll believe you. I'll tell you it is. On the way out here, let me backtrack just a second here. This is the first time that I've ever been east, and I've been planning this trip, laying it out on the map probably about three or four different times, and two nights before I'm leaving, my wife and I are sitting down, and we're changing it all over again anyway. About six years ago, a little over six years ago, I found myself in a treatment center. I went there because I had no place else to go. People had tried to help me three and a half years before that, but I wouldn't let you. I wasn't ready yet, and I and the loved ones around me had to suffer a little more. But about six years ago, in the middle of the night, I made that cry for help, and a lot of things started to change. A lot of things started to happen. I seemed to be granted an awful lot of insight, and I can remember talking to my wife on the phone one time, and I said, you know, I said you didn't like the SOB that came in here, and I said you might not like the asshole that comes out of here either, but I said you cannot go through something like this without changing. To me,
[00:55:02]
the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is change. If you don't change, then there's something wrong, and it's not with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had somebody scare the death out of me one time. I'd been sober, oh, I don't know, a year and a half or so, maybe two, I don't know, and a guy walked up to me one day who knew me, and we were talking, and all of a sudden he turned to me and he said, Steve, have you changed? And my God, I was panic-stricken, because I thought, my God, have I? Have I changed? And I did a quick mini-inventory in about three-tenths of a second, and was very honest when I said it to him, yes, I have changed. Maybe not as much as I should, maybe not as much as I want, but I have changed. This capability to change, this whatever, is exactly what the heck I think we're talking about this afternoon, and that is the freedom to be me. I found out that I don't have to agree with my sponsor all the time. I found out I don't have to agree with maybe some of the AA counselors, but I also find out that I can't come back to them later and say, yep, you were right again, I should have listened, and I find myself having to do that sometimes. I now have the freedom to sit there and admit that I'm wrong. Sometimes that takes a little bit, sometimes it takes a hell of a lot, and especially if I'm sitting there talking to my own non-spouse, that's where it seems to be the toughest for me, to sit there and let this freedom come through, is when I'm dealing with the ones that are closest to me. It's awful easy for me to sit there and walk up to you on the street after I've stepped all over your dog on toes with my number 12 and say, excuse me, no, I wasn't watching where I was going. When I do that with my wife constantly, it's, why don't you watch where you're going? But that's the way it is. I'm not where I want to be yet, and maybe I'm not where I should be yet, but like I've heard before, I'm a hell of a lot better off now than where I was at a little over six years ago, and for that I have you people to thank. Thank you very much.
Now you can come up. You get what you need, you still do. My name is June and I'm an alcoholic, and I just would like to bring greetings from Western British Columbia. Bill and I, we're both in the program, we're both alcoholics. He doesn't mind me saying this, he's sitting over there and he said I should get up and go, and so here I am. I'd just like to, you know the part of the program where it says that you make amends and you promptly admit it when you're wrong? Well, Bill and I passed through here about, oh, a couple of years ago, through Montreal, and we were in the program then, and in fact it's our good fortune, and I say this with a real, when I see our table full at home at our little town of Creston, and now there's five groups, I say this with real thankfulness that we were fortunate enough, Bill and I, with another person, Rod, and Rod was a salesman, and that's the way he brought AA to us. He was in the program about a year and a half, and he had slipped away from the program, and he was, when we were at the worst of our drinking, at least it was bad enough for me, he brought AA to us, and Bill and I are sorry that Rod is out there, and we hope and pray he'll come, I mean he's out drinking, and we hope and pray that he will come back, but that was, and I don't say this, when I say the number of years, I don't say it with any, I really say it with thankfulness in my heart, that Bill and I and Rod was able to start Alcoholics in Creston, it certainly wasn't 50 years ago, but it was half of that time.
Thank you. And so, like I said, there's five groups, and when I think that it started from the three of us there, and with God's help, and when I see each table full, because we visit the other groups around, we have a home group, I've always been, I've felt Around, we have a home group, I've always been, I felt from the day that I came in, I've been very close to Al-Anon, and I related really well with them, because I wasn't always out drinking when Bill was out drinking, I was home wondering if he would come home, or if he would be killed out there somewhere, and so I know the Al-Anon side of it, and I've been close to Al-Anon since the day that I came in, and in our little group where it started, it's still going now, when we were having our 20th, I wanted it to be open so our family could be there,
[01:00:18]
and I don't really know why, but like you just said, we get what we need, and sometimes we don't, I mean, most of the time we shouldn't be asking why, but I ask if that meeting, we open them up at the end of the month, the original group, and I said we would like to have our birthday at that time, because I would, we would like our family to be there, and nobody said anything about that, they just looked, so I mentioned it three or four times, because it didn't seem like that they were going to do what I wanted them to do, and when I came in that evening, I could see they hadn't, it was closed, and I was really upset, and I was cross and angry, and we had our birthday, not the way we wanted it, but we had it, but I was upset because I wanted our grown up children to be there, they were with us, the three older ones, we have three daughters and three sons, I'm happy to say that our second daughter Betty, that's taking care of the place, she's in the program, our youngest son that we, we didn't know whether he would get here, he was only eight months old when we came into the program, so he didn't see us drinking, and I was foolish enough to think that none of our children would drink, but anyway, Harvey doesn't mind me saying, he said anywhere, anytime mom, at any, when you're in a meeting with AA people, you can tell them that I'm in, and if he hadn't been just changing jobs, he probably would have been with us, and his wife is in the program, they seem to be following the same path as we are, I see people in their house, and I see him opening the door of AA, and Friday night is his meeting too, and we have a Friday night meeting now, that's when I got mad, and I had a big, when they didn't have all the family there, and I started, I had the big book and a real good resentment, and three years ago we started the open meeting, and I was, I said well I don't want to see somebody sitting out in the car, I want it to be open, I don't want this to ever happen to anyone else, so we started Friday night meeting in Creston, and it's open, and that's one of the five meetings that's going, and then I got over being upset with them, they seemed to change, so I went back to the old group, but I, but I'm not one of, I'm not a member there, because I want to be a member of an open group, and I seem to pioneer a lot of, a few things in this program, like I sat, when it first started, and just with a coffee pot, and Bill was taking first aid, and I was there, and I opened the door, and then I have a little problem, a little problem with food sometimes, so down where I work, I've seen a few people with a little problem with food, so I said, I thought, and my boss, he's a wonderful guy, and he's always admired us being in AA, and give us courage, and he has gained quite a bit of weight too, so he said, I said, you know, Keith, I'd like to start an OA group down here, it's along the same lines as AA, he said, gee, that's good, I'll be your, and he's rubbing his tummy here, and he said, I'll be your best advocate, so they're pioneering that there, and it's going real good, and it just also makes my heart feel good to hear them, to hear those people that I work with reading how it works at meetings, and I said, you know, if we can follow this program, there will be less bickering in that, and our boss calls it, I think he's thinking of the Ten Commandments, because he comes to our meetings too, he said he didn't mind if I said, and he said, we'll have to remember those 12 points, June, and when we had a disagreement, like with some other people, and I said, 12 steps, Keith, and he said, oh, yeah, right, so I'll just close by saying that when I was going to say about amends, and going through Montreal, I don't know if there's any, there's probably a lot of people here from Montreal, maybe in the room, but I just want to say that the last time I went through, I don't speak French, but I would like to learn sometime, and they didn't understand us too well, and I didn't feel too good about it, and I said, next, this was really bad on my part, I said, I'm going to pack my lunch next time, and I won't bother, you know, having to try to explain what I want, but I take that all back, and I, you've been very gracious here, and everyone has done everything they could to try to understand, they speak much better English to talk to us than we do French, and I would just like to close with saying this little, I try to be me, and I found in AA that I can be me, and I'd just like to say this, read this little verse, Bill is the one that, my husband, he says a lot of, he used to say it when we were drinking, he can recite poems, and I just want him to stand up, so you can see who my sparring partner is, if he'd just stand up, and you know, we had a big fight about which directions to go to, and I had to say, he said, you know, there's step 10, and I said, yeah, I know, but I said, I'm hardly ever wrong,
[01:05:09]
but this little one, and then I'll close, and it says, let go and let God, as children bring their broken toys with tears to us, to men, I brought my broken dreams to God, because he was my friend, but then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own, at last, I snatched them back and cried, how can you be so slow? My child, he said, what could I do? You never did let go.
God bless you all, and I'm very happy to be at this convention, thank you very much. Well, this has been a fantastic meeting for me, I know that, this is really, really good. And I'd like to thank all our speakers this morning, I don't want to leave anybody out, but I'll mention the names that I can remember, I know Bobby, and Bob, and Nancy, and Heidi, and Rich, and June, and Brenda, Brenda by all means, Brenda, and anybody else that spoke up here, and I'd like to close this meeting, as we close all meetings, with a large prayer, if you care to join me.