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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – JOY OF LIVING – RS 06391.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-joy-of-living-rs-06391.mp3 Duration: 01:28:30
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I am a human being, a recovering alcoholic, and a sister, no different than any of the rest of you who are a human being, recovering alcoholic, doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief. The only reason why I made that statement this morning, first of all, because of the sister who was out there last night waving that flag. I thought that took a lot of nerve. But I just want you to know that we are no different than any other human being. We are a human being first, recovering alcoholic second, and religious third. I came to religious life as a result of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. For me, it is indeed an honor and a privilege to share this time with all of you this morning. I am the woman I am today because of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and you good people. And I think it was Kathy that said this morning, if you don't like me, it's your problem. You created it. The topic for sharing this morning is the joy of living. So let us open this meeting with a quiet time. And with gratitude, let us reflect on what the joy of living is today for each of us. And let us thank our higher power, the God of our understanding for all that he has done for us to bring us to today. And also to thank him for the gift of sobriety that he gave to Bill Dubya and Dr. Bob. Will you join me in the serenity prayer? God, I pray in this serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom of another. The anonymity tradition. There may be some here who are not 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, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or indeed any AA member be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help 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 AA personalities.
And a reminder that there will be tapes on sale at the tape booth in the convention center. When I was trying to put some thoughts together with regard to some type of an introduction for our session this morning, I turned to that book which is the book for me in trying to put myself together, retreats together, days of recollection, whatever. And that's the 24-hour book. And indeed God does wonderful things because the thought for today I think is very apropos to our gathering this morning. And it says in essence, never let yourself think that you cannot do something useful or that you never will be able to accomplish a task. The fact is that you can do practically anything if you are willing to call on God's supply of strength. As you grow spiritually, a feeling of being plentifully supplied by God's strength will possess you and you will be able to accomplish useful things.
And as I said last night, we are here to celebrate this weekend. And bearing in mind that we can accomplish anything because with our higher power nothing is impossible. We are indeed here to celebrate the fact that today we are useful people. We are here to celebrate that we can accomplish almost anything. We can do practically anything because of our willingness to call on God, our higher power for the strength. Because in the promises it tells us, we will intuitively be able to handle those things which used to baffle us. And we celebrate our spiritual growth and that feeling of being plentifully supplied by God's strength. Because
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we know today that God is doing for us today what we could not do for ourselves.
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We've heard the expression, you know, happiness is. And I think again we can use that expression and change the words around a little bit and know that the joy of living for each of us is no more shakes, no more hugging the toilet or as someone called it this morning, the porcelain altar. There's no more denying, no more excuses or rationalizations for our behaviors. The joy of living is the fact that we no longer have to lie, that we no longer have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired. The joy of living hopefully for all of us is the fact that one day at a time we are overcoming self-will run riot, self-pity, our loneliness and the feeling of being trapped by alcohol. Hopefully the joy of living for each of us today is practicing tolerance, dealing with depression, handling tragedy and dealing with turmoil again one day at a time. But for most of us I hope that the joy of living is a lot more than that. It's not just the fact that since we are no longer drinking that we don't experience these kinds of things. I would hope that it could be transformed from a negative aspect of drinking to a very positive aspect of drinking. So hopefully the joy of living for each of us is accepting, believing and growing with our higher power, the God of our understanding in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hopefully it's turning it over and making a decision. But the joy of living for each of us is being very grateful.
Gratitude is the attitude and being humble for the gift that we have received. But the joy of living is living one day at a time, enjoying today, the now. It's being honest, it's being open and it's being willing to put into practice the faith and the belief that we have in this program. It's experiencing change, it's working the steps, sharing the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's making progress and not demanding perfection from ourselves or from others. It is developing spiritually. This is not a religious program.
It's a spiritual way of life. And hopefully that the joy of living is delighting in the God of your understanding, your higher power and in the gifts that he has given to us through people, places and things. Delighting in God's nature, which I love to do. The rabbits, the butterflies, the beautiful work of art in each of us and in all that surrounds us. So, in essence, hopefully each of us can realize today that the joy of living is being human.
That the joy of living is learning about love, giving and receiving. It's living a clean, sober life. The joy of living, hopefully, is being free to be me, the beautiful and unique person that God created us to be. So today we will hear from three fellow members of what the joy of living is for them today. And our first speaker is Bob Bean from Indiana. Good morning. My name is Bob Bearn and I'm an alcoholic. Hi guys. I am a member of the commitment group of Indianapolis, Indiana. I didn't get sober there, I got sober in the North Port group of Long Island, New York. That's where I got the apple. I got that at the New York Hospitality Suite, in case anybody is looking for apples. There you go. I was also delivered here in a squad car this morning. Not getting you? How's that? Better? I was delivered here in a squad car this morning. That used to be my cab. I'm staying at the
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Holiday Inn, Dupuy, and I looked at this terrific map I got with the… You got one too, huh? Got you. And I started walking. I thought, you know, it's a nice day to walk. I walked a long time and I didn't see… I kept getting further and further away from people. And I saw no badges at all. I knew I was in trouble. So I saw a squad car talking to somebody. One of the boys of summer, who we've seen in the parks here. That's what I call them.
It's now a unisex occupation. I noticed in Indianapolis the girls of summer are out with the boys of summer laying in the parks. Anyway, the winos is what… He's talking to this guy and I thought, I better ask him. So I went over there and he had very good French. The other guy was okay with English. So they said, hey, you're a long way from where you're going. So I immediately thought they were wrong. I don't know why I trust this map.
I don't know why I trust that map. I've had a lot of trouble ever since I've been here but that's the way it went. It's this normal perversity that prevails. In any case, they said, well, forget it. They said, get in. I knew what that meant. So I complied at that point and they were right. So I got here on time. I noticed in Lorna that she's got a discipline. I have a problem with this. Not with speaking at AA meetings. I love to speak at AA meetings and I'm properly nervous, I think, until I start talking. I've never developed any discipline as a speaker and because I always had the idea, or was taught, I think, the idea that it was therapy for me in reliving and if anybody was listening or not, I'd never really know. I'd never really know what they heard regardless of what I said. None of that had anything to do with anything, that I should just relive so I didn't forget. And that's the way I speak. It's been very therapeutic and worked 100%. It's not very kind to the audience or very good public speaking. But I'm not a public speaker. I'm not a lecturer.
I'm a talker. When I heard that this was going to be, or when they told me this was going to be 25 minutes, God, that worried me because I've never done that before. It takes 25 minutes to tell you my name as you notice. However, for the first time I decided to, in an effort to control that because I heard that what they do after 25 minutes is, the reason I'm dressed this way is I heard they grab your tie and they pull you down so I didn't wear a tie. But I made some notes and we're going to find out whether this works or not. I was a normal drinker until I was 14. In my case, what that meant was that I didn't drink anything.
I'd have a sip of stuff around the house when my folks would have a party. There was a lot of alcohol around our house. My dad was an alcoholic, died one prematurely, albeit at 69. He worked his way down and out of the business world, which is what I was doing. And I was pretty successful at it. He finished the job. He died without ever getting sober. He died with the firm belief that this alcoholism was a moral issue. And I came into my first meeting believing exactly the same thing, not by accident. So I came from a background of that. I never saw a grandfather, but they never talked about his father. So, you know, the imagination. He was probably a drunk. We got a lot of drunks. Then I married a drunk who has a sister in the audience who's in this wonderful club. And that's the only other child in that family. And their mother, we think, qualified and was a member of this club. You know, we were surrounded by alcoholism. All through my life, and that continues, but when I was a kid, I would sip stuff once in a while, enough to know that I'd get drunk.
I would sip stuff once in a while, enough to know that I didn't like the taste of it.
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One day when I was 14, I had an opportunity to do something worthwhile about drinking. Drink. And I went to our pantry in our apartment in Chicago. We were born and raised in Chicago. And took a bottle of my dad's whiskey. It was a Saturday morning as I recall. We lived in a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. We went to another apartment building, went to the basement of this friend of mine.
And we started sampling. That was the first time I had enough to drink to make a difference. So that I knew what alcohol was. And I was determined because I knew I wasn't going to like it. I was right about that. I never liked the taste of alcohol any time during my drinking. I never used it as a beverage. It did not flake my thirst. It made me thirsty. So obviously if I was hot on a summer day, cutting the lawn, I would go in and drink half a gallon of water or orange juice or ginger ale or milk or something.
Then have a drink for a different reason. I knew from the beginning that I used alcohol. The other thing I learned in addition to the fact that I didn't like the taste of it, was it didn't make any difference whether I liked the taste of it. What it did for me was so wonderful that I couldn't wait to do it again. Far back as I can remember, I was what I would describe as a neurotically fearful child.
Maybe that's three or four years old. I don't know. I don't know how I got that way. I don't really care. I'll never know. I have no one to blame and no interest in doing so. That's the way it was. Long before the days of psychobabble, what I call psychobabble, I knew I was not okay and all the rest of you people were okay. I just was born with that wisdom. My job was to never let you know that about me.
That's the way I operated. I kind of charaded through life. When you don't know anything other than fearfulness and bad image kind of things, you're not really as bad off as when you have some joy of living as a frame of reference. I didn't have any of that until I got to AA. It wasn't as bad as it sounds except that I was just dedicated to not letting you know how things were. When I experienced what alcohol would do for me, it made me feel equal for the first time in my life.
I just didn't. I didn't feel as good as you other folks. And I knew I wasn't. But alcohol could do that for me. It was a device. It was a vehicle to get me from that terrible place to here for a little while. And so there were some prices to pay for it. Withdrawal symptoms and get sick once in a while and job problems and marriage problems. The things that happened, the price was always worth it to me.
Until it wasn't. One day, a few years before I got here, and then I made another discovery. I didn't have any choice. It didn't make any difference whether the price was enough or not. I had to drink whether I wanted to or not. So it was too late at that point, it seemed. That's the way it was in the beginning. And I drank with increasing frequency as time went on. And as economics allowed and as economics did not allow, I was very creative.
I did my best creative thinking when it came to pursuing a drink. And I would cheat and steal and not only do anything that was necessary. And I think that's pretty much one of the basic parts of addiction. It was of mine. I've heard other people from these same platforms say the same thing about themselves. So I'm not unique in that. And that's the way it went. Through school, I quit high school. I just wouldn't go.
Anytime I got into a high school, my first thought was, how the hell do I get out of here? And that's what I did. I got out of there pretty quickly. And I'd go out and drink. And this was 15, 16. By the time I got to be 16, I knew that in Illinois they couldn't stop me from quitting school, so I did. So I see that directly connected to my alcoholism. I do. Years after I got into AA, looking back, I see that now.
That was one of the prices.
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Always worth it. So I went in the Navy for two and a half years. Every time I got some liberty or leave of absence, what I did was drink. What I did for recreation, whatever it looked like I was doing, playing ball, playing bridge, getting social events, it was all something to do while drinking. Because if there wasn't any drinking, I didn't go there. I only made the mistake once. With people, you go to their house once, you get one or two drinks, out.
Those people are boring. They don't know what good is. So that's the way my whole mentality was geared around that. Because it was so important to me to have this medicine. I just was seen to be in an alien environment in reality. I don't know, that's the way it was. Alcohol changed that for me. Now, I also believe that it robbed me from the very beginning. In a lot of ways. I didn't experience a lot of the normal emotional stuff.
I remember going to my younger brother who died in 1956 from alcoholism. At the time, I was out in New Jersey looking for a house. I got the word and I went out to Chicago for two or three days. Went to the wake, the funeral, all the time. I was never sober. I wasn't always bouncing off walls. I was just never sober after a period of time and from then on. I just was hardly ever sober. I really didn't ever experience any grief from that.
Because it was bypassed. That's what alcohol did. And I knew it. And I liked it. So, I established this drinking thing. And I know I want to talk about joie de vivre. How about that French? Hey, that's it. It took me a month to find that out. I'm not going to tell you what it means. You're going to have to figure it out. Anyway, I have to establish a frame of reference. And I want to remember because they told me at Northport, you talk about it, relive it, so that you never forget it.
Because if you ever forget it, then it couldn't have been so bad. And if it wasn't so bad, what's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this? And that's the way I feel about it. I was also, I had some terrific people in that Northport group. They seemed to concentrate. Lorna was talking about the promises, or mentioned a couple of them, intuitively understand things that used to baffle me. I've experienced some of that.
I don't remember hearing about that for three or four years. I read the big book, but I was pretty spacey, too. And I read it over and over and over, and I didn't, I don't know that we didn't talk about it, but I was told to dwell on drink and not drink. Don't drink, go to Maine, things will get better. They said you'll probably quit, it was very basic stuff, you probably won't fall off the Long Island Railroad as much if you don't drink.
And I had a history of doing that. And it was the Lackawanna Railroad, too, when I lived in Germany. So I had no favorites with railroads, but they said if you don't drink, that stuff will stop and maybe somebody will hire you. It was very basic stuff. And the business of fear from, freedom from fear of economic insecurity, I'll tell you the one that works best for me is when I've got a lot of money.
And I don't put down these promises, it's just that I see them as a byproduct. Nobody mentioned them, they were always talking about the product. You know, drinking and not drinking. And the product would allow me to get some of these other goodies as I was willing to pay the price for that. And that was a very simple message. They also said using the steps and all the things which I've always felt for myself was the only way I could go, it was a matter of odds about drink and not drink.
I wanted the best possible odds. They said, no, you don't have to. I'd say, well, do you have to? No, you don't have to do anything. Push in my drink. Then they'd walk away. I'd say, what? Hold it. Tell me again. And they would say, these are all the things we do. We have slogans around these rooms, we have the steps on a pull-down shade, and they say you don't have to do any of it. It's a matter of odds.
If you do all of it, you've got the best odds. And I couldn't understand that much. All these other things were tough for me.
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So I got out of the Navy in 1946 and went to college for a while because, well, if you were in the Navy and got an honorable discharge during World War II where you could get anything you wanted, so they even gave me a high school diploma and I went to college for a while until I screwed off enough there that all I ever learned how to do in college was play bridge, and that wasn't in the college. That was at the filling station across the street.
So I hung out in the filling station until I was sure that I was going to pluck everything I was taking. The embarrassment of doing that would have been too much, so I invented a reason. I always had a reason to tell everybody. They were never asking me. If they didn't ask, I'd tell them anyway. But for any time I did anything bizarre, I had to have a reason for it, and I always composed these in advance.
I was always ready for you. And I couldn't understand why I weren't more interested. Anyway, the reason was that I had to help my dad in his business. Some well-meaning friends had staked my dad to a retail enterprise because he'd been on the street for quite a while. They put him in this retail business, and he had no retail experience. Now, he's an active drinker. This is a retail liquor store. And he really needed help from me.
He needed help from anybody, but not me, really. All he knew about that business was demonstrating. And he did that a lot. The only thing good about the job was the benefits. We would sit there and drink all day long. We drank that place dry in a year and a half. There's nothing more depressing to an alcoholic, I think, than seeing nothing on the shelves in a liquor store. Really. Nothing but those apricot brandies, all that stuff to make you throw up.
They had to buy that stuff just to get the good stuff, you know, the tie-in sales. And that's all that was left. So we closed this down. There was nothing to sell. It was a bad location the day we opened. Anyway, that was my reason for quitting college, which was free, right? Nobody asked me. I told them. Anyway, I did that for a while. Then I got a real job somewhere. I forget. A couple of more. And then I got a good job.
Got married in 1949 to a gal who beat me into this program. So we were simpatico in at least one way. We drank. That was our social life. She liked to drink. She drank differently. She was a periodic and I was a daily drinker. Well, that's the way that went. Kind of downhill from the beginning. This company that I worked for for 11 years moved me around the country. I started drinking at noon when I had to drink at noon to stop shaking.
I started drinking in the morning when I had to start drinking in the morning just to stop shaking. And a typical day in 1963 for me, we had then lived on Long Island for a few years, is that I would get up and if I got out of bed I had to start drinking pretty quickly because the shakes were pretty bad. So I'd go to this filling station and I'd wait until they opened. They were in the window telling me to come in but I wouldn't go in until 8 o'clock.
I didn't know what the hell that was. I'd sit there shaking until 8 o'clock and look respectable. So I'd go in at 8 o'clock, they'd have the drink ready at the end of the bar. I'd go into the washroom because this was a real performance trying to get this first one down. And it was like a rubber ball. I mean, right up, straight up. And a little would stay. I'd go out and they'd have another one set up.
I'd go back in there and they'd all be sitting there. There he goes. And I'd go back in there. The second one, enough of it would stay down that I could go out and drink with the guys at the bar. And I'd have three or four or five, whatever it took. I never counted drinks. It's like meetings. I don't know how many meetings I'd go to a day. Enough. I had enough drinks so that I stopped shaking and I could go to work.
That's how much I drank. So I went to work and by 11.30 I would go into tremors again but I would shake with confidence because lunch was coming up. Lunch was like a leave of absence. I'd go out from 11.30, 4 to 12. Now I was supposed to be supervising 14 people in this department and they didn't see too much of me. What they did, they weren't sure they liked. Anyway, I would go out for lunch, get back about 2.30.
This guy that sat and shook in the morning didn't answer the phone, stayed with the door shut in the office, would come back with answers. The office would come back with answers and solutions for problems after lunch that we didn't have questions for yet.
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They hadn't even surfaced, the problems, but I'd be loud and abusive and then call people up that I'd talked to the day before and all of a sudden realize that I had already had this conversation. And they were very kind. But anyway, that's the way life was. Then I'd stop on the way home, have a few drinks, and then I would pass out on the couch about 9 o'clock whether I ate or not. And that's the way it went. Well, this company canned me in 1964 and I bounced around for several more months until November.
In the meantime, Iris had come into AA and there was somebody getting better in our house. She would come home from the meetings and she would talk about the meetings and I'd turn the TV up. She'd talk louder, I'd turn it up louder. It was one of those things. But I heard enough things and we weren't, hey listen, one drunk in a household is murder, right? Two is absolutely absurd. We were two people too sick to leave, just leaning on each other. And she was starting to get better.
And I'd wait for her every seven to ten days. I could set my watch, she's going to bomb out. Well, she didn't do it. And weeks go by and months go by. That had to have an impact. And the more time goes by, the more I am grateful for her having gone to AA. And Al-Anon had something to do with it. She went to Al-Anon first. So, in November of that year, I sat in a car one day and I had been down to the Bowery, which is the skid row in New York. I'd been looking it over as a residential place.
And I really had, because there was a lot of heat. No income, mounting bills, I had a letter in my pocket for repossession of the house. And I knew, I only had one conviction, and that was that I was going to get up every day. I wanted not to drink for three years before I came to AA. I didn't want to drink. That wasn't any new idea to me, any surprise when I got here. I knew what you did. But that had nothing to do with it.
I was going to drink whether I wanted to or not. I'd get up every morning and I'd say, no, I don't want to drink. Or the night before I'd say, I'm not going to drink tomorrow. I'd get up in the morning, I'd be shaking so bad, I'd say, I've got to have a few drinks to stop shaking so I can think about how I'm going to stop drinking. That's like a hula hoop. There's no end to it. I mean, it just keeps going that way one day at a time. And that's what I was doing.
So how that cycle was broken is mysterious to me. It always will be. I sat in a car one day with a bottle of vodka about noon and said, I'm going to the Bowery. I'll leave these people in manufacturing trouble for them. I've got to get out of their lives and maybe they'll get some insurance money. It's a giant cop-out I know now. But I rationalized and it made sense that just like that, it was replaced with a much healthier idea that did not come from me.
I said, no, you can go to AA. You've got plenty of time. You're at leisure. You can go to the Bowery at any time. Go to AA and see what's going on. And then I went home and I shook for two days and I called some guy and said, I'm ready to go to a meeting. I went to the Northport group and I identified with some crazy stuff. A guy sat across from me. He's an attorney. He was 34. He had eight kids. He was sober two years and he said, you know that Jim Mellingerico turd pike? I said, yeah, I know.
He said, I was in there a couple of years ago about two o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday and I saw my wife coming across the street. She was going to get money from me, she thought, to get milk for the kids and I ran out the back door and I thought, God, I'm in the right place. That's what I identified with. That's the kind of stuff I was either doing or thinking about doing and I was never going to tell anybody any of that stuff.
This guy gratuitously tells me the story. That's what that meeting was that night. I heard the ring of truth in there like I had never heard it anywhere else. Never have. I continue to hear it here. They let me be the coffee maker for 13 months, which was the best job I ever had in AA. Still is. I get that job once in a while in my group. I like that job. It gives me a feeling of belonging, real belonging. That's what it meant then.
There are other things and I don't know what I can tell you about all of them. Joy of living to me is just a contrast from that constant fear. I don't have to drink anymore and I'm convinced that I will never have to drink again if I continue to do the things that I've been doing since I got here.
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It's the same old stuff. Try to practice the principles to the best of my ability, don't drink, go to meetings, and do it one day at a time. That's fine with me. Joy of living is things like driving up here. We drove. We left the week ago yesterday from Indianapolis, drove to New York. I've got a brother who's now in the program for 16 years. I've got a sister who's been in it for 4 years. That's terrific stuff.
I've got two more out there in the weeds still, a brother and a sister up in Chicago. We drove up the north way. It took about 6 or 7 hours. Saw a lot of bumper stickers. You know, that process of identification on wheels. It gives me the kind of thing, I don't know where other people get that kind of stuff. It's just terrific for me. Most of them were easy does it. I've got a bumper sticker on mine. I could not put an easy does it thing on there.
It in no way describes the way I drive. And I like the one I got better. Anyway, that was the process of identification. There have recently been some events in our lives. When I was drinking, we had a 12 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. And I bred fear into those kids one day at a time. Not with my hands, I was not physically abusive. My brother who died a drunk at age 29 was. Alcohol in his chemistry made him physically aggressive.
Didn't do that to me. I take no credit for it. Any more than I take credit for breaking the cycle of addiction and presenting me at AA. Since I got to my first meeting, I haven't even had a desire to drink. I told you, I had to drink every day just to get out of bed. If I stayed in bed and shook for three days, I started getting human again. All I did to get here was drink like a pig. This kid, especially this boy, I could see the fear in his eyes.
Since we've been sober, and we've both been sober over 20 years, the relationship with this boy, I've been closer to my older son than to our daughter who lives in California and has been married for 11 years. We don't see her as often, but that relationship is rich. The boy I see, and he had problems, you know, other kind of problems. He even told me he had a problem with drinking one time when he was down at Bloomington to Indiana University a few years ago.
But he's done something about those things, not through AA or any self-help group. He's just done some things. He's changed. We play tennis together. We play golf together. He got married May 12th. And he wrote us a letter. I'll never be able to read this to you. But it was, you know, the post-wedding letter, the thank you note. She didn't write this one. He wrote it. And he thanked us for the help during the wedding. It was really a terrific affair.
Really happy. Joyful. And what he wanted to say was more than just that. And he did. And what he essentially said was for 27 years of help and being patient with him and guidance and advice for repeating and repeating and drumming into me what really is important in the big picture and making the day-to-day battle easier to deal with. That doesn't describe me 20 years ago.
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It's a source of terrific joy to me today. It makes me feel that my life has made a difference. And I owe all of that to AA and to you folks. Thank you for being here and thanks for putting up with me. Thank you very much, Bob. That certainly is part of the joy of this program. I have not lost my sense of humor. In fact, it has come back once again. And I was chuckling to myself when Bob was talking about the promises and that one part of it where he says with cash in his pocket he can say, the fear of financial insecurity will leave.
And I had to chuckle to myself because I was at one time a vice president of a company and now I'm under the vow of poverty. And I think it's only because of this program that that fear of financial insecurity has left. Anyway, our next speaker will be Philomena R. from Kansas. Thank you. I've got to gather myself together after hearing this. I am a very grateful recovering alcoholic and my name is Philomena.
I choose to say it this way because it's most important to me what I am and not who I am. And only by the grace of God and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 steps, the 12 traditions, and all the ball wax that goes with it, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since January the 23rd, 1970. And for that I am eternally grateful. And it's only by the grace of God and the program that I can stand up here today.
When I received this invitation to speak, I thought I didn't have to ask why me. What have I done to deserve this? AA has given me everything I've got today. It has given me a new life, a life which is really a joy to live, a joy to be anywhere except drunk. And for that I'm eternally grateful. You know, the big book tells us to tell what it was like, what happened, and what it's like today. I like to talk about what it's like today because it's a joy to live today.
It was a joy to be out there at the stadium last night and to see that terrific and beautiful ceremony that we saw last night and to hear dear Sybil talk about we women. She was in charge. I've heard her say that several times. And, you know, sometimes I had tried to take the reins to say I was in charge. But, you know, today since I've come to the program, it's a lot more easy for me to know that I am not in charge.
It's my higher power that's in charge of whatever I choose to do with me. I'll tell you a little bit about what it was like. When I was 6 years old, my father chose to take his life due to alcoholism, and my mother was left with 6 children and many, many thousands of dollars of debts. I owe an awful lot to my mother who brought all 6 of us children up and kept us all together. I'm sure had it been the other way around, we may not have known each other today.
And I really have to give a lot of admiration to my mother. Because this was back in the Depression days when there was just no money. I remember many a time it was a dollar a day that we had to live on. We went out and we worked for a dollar a day. And that was just really, I'm glad that I can remember that today. And I went to work with an uncle of mine when I was six years old in the summertime in order to get money to buy my school clothes, to be able to have clothes to go to school.
[00:45:06]
But this is where my drinking started. You see, my uncle, my whole family is a great big old German family and they like to make this home brew. And it was up to me to bottle up a home brew. And many times I think I drank more of it than went in the bottle. So that was where I got my first taste of alcohol. I went on through high school and I never drank when I was in high school. And after I graduated from high school, there was a program that I worked on which was called the National Youth Program.
And out of a group of people who were in the program in Wichita, there was three of us that were chosen to go to a photographic school in Topeka, Kansas, and I was one of those. There was the drinks. And then on my way home, I probably, before I ever got home, I stopped for one beer. And you know what that meant. One more, one more, one more. And I guess I really did drink quite a little bit before I did marry John, but it never bothered me. I never missed work or anything.
And this went on and on. And after John and I were married, we thought we were just doing socially drinking. And it was in October of 19, October the 21st, 1968. I had been warned about missing Monday work. I had the Monday morning blog, you know. And they told me that something was going to have to be done about this. And I went to my supervisor and I said, well, I don't know what I can do about my drinking problem. He said, well, there's help someplace. And I said, well, where do you look?
And he said, well, you'll have to find it out for yourself. So the next week, sure enough, again, so when I walked in, they just told me not to play with the time clock. Just go to the office. So I went to the office and they said, there's nothing more we can do. We're just going to have to let you go. And I started blaming everybody, everything but me. And so the manager was nice enough to offer to take me home. And he never said a word until I got home and got ready to get out of the car. And he said, no telling where you will be a year from now.
And I said, boy, I'm free. And I was free for the next 15 months. I went out and I just really lived it up. I ended up in the psych ward in the hospital. And at that time, they didn't know what to do for us drunks. You know, for alcoholism, just put you on a pill. I shook and I shook. And I can still see myself in that bed going around and around and around. And I think it took probably three or four days before I finally signed myself in because I had the shakes bad along with John. He couldn't sign me in either. And after I got out of there, I swore I wouldn't do it again. But, you know, I was right back at it again.
Then in 1955, I came down with peritonitis of the pancreas. And the doctor told me, he said, I don't know what we can do. And it seemed like everything they tried to do, any medication that was given to me, I had a reaction to it. They pumped my stomach and finally they just decided that they would give it to me until it did work. And thank God they did. I broke out with everything. I was just something.
And so on May the 31st of 1955, I was given the last rites at the Catholic Church. And I can remember that priest giving me the last rites. And I could hear all the family of mine outside the door talking. And do you know, immediately I came back. And, you know, that was God looking over me again, seeing that he was going to give me another chance. And there again, I promised I wouldn't drink anymore. But it just went on and on and on.
I'm backtracking a little bit here. And I had 11 pints of blood. And I'd lost 30 pounds in weight. I was a walking skeleton. But you know, the six months that I was off, I didn't do any drinking. But immediately after I felt like I was well enough again, I went right back out and did it again.
[00:50:10]
But I'll get back to where I got fired from my job. And so I again was put in a lockup. And I thought, oh boy, when I heard those doors closed on the elevator, that I was in for something. But you know, they let me go home on a weekend. And the last thing they'd say to me before I left was, don't drink. Before I was out of town, I had a bottle that was all gone before I got home. And then after the 30-day treatment there, they told me to either go to AA or go to a treatment center.
And of course, you know, I promised I'd do this and promised that I'd do that. But again, I went back home. And I drank clear up until I reached out for help on January the 22nd of 1970. And it was the grace of God and this beautiful sister-in-law of mine that I had had known of one person in her town who had gone to this particular treatment facility. And we called her and she called back and she said, well, just get yourself together and we'll come over and take you to treatment.
And you know, I hadn't been together for so long, I really didn't know which way to turn or where to start. The clutter, the dirty dishes, the mess, the dirty clothes, you name it, it was there. We walked into this treatment center on a Saturday night and they didn't know we were coming. And in the recovery room, a great big old bruiser came in there and he sat down on the stool and he put his hands up there and he said, what are you doing here?
And I said, well, I guess it's because I drank too much. And he said, well, how much did you drink? And I said, not very much. And he said, what in the hell are you doing here? And you know, I'm real grateful for that man today. He is now in Wichita, Kansas and he is the director of the alcoholic unit at one of the big hospitals in Wichita. And I always have to tell this story about him because, you know, a lot of the people know this man.
And after we came back from treatment, and John was a little bit sicker than I was, but three days after I'd gone to treatment, I just knew this was my last drink. I was never going to take another drink. You know, I was in treatment for two weeks and they told me, if you're here for you, don't worry about that man out there. So when I started doing what they wanted me to do for me, then I was there for me.
And we came back home. I'll get back to the job part of it. I was down taking my eighth and ninth steps and I was writing a letter of amends to this company president. He laid the phone down and he called me at the treatment center and he said, when are you coming home? And I said, I really don't know for sure yet. He said, well, when you do come back and we'll talk turkey. Well, it was two weeks later, I walked back into the same place where I had been fired from. The hugging, the kissing, the accolades that was paid to me, it was just overwhelming to me.
Those people, their reaction that they showed toward me. And they said, when are you ready to come back to work? And I said, when would you like me to come back to work? And he said, this afternoon. And, you know, that was the first insurance benefit that I had arrived from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I did go back to this job. And, you know, I had my problems, but I had my program to help me overcome these problems.
Because, you see, I was a woman. And in the work program of the everyday living out there, a woman just wasn't supposed to go up. She was supposed to do all this underlying work, you know, and the men took the credit for it. I fought this for 15 years. Well, I'd say 15, 13 years with them. And I had been sober five years, I guess it was. And I was a GSR, excuse me, of one of the women's groups, and I was making a state assembly meeting.
[00:55:00]
And the state secretary had resigned. And the chairman at that time, after we had the assembly meeting that weekend, he called me up on Sunday night after he got home and he said, would you like to be our state secretary? I said, I haven't even got my feet wet yet as a GSR. I said, I'm going to have to turn this one over to God. And believe you me, I did for 10 days before I called him back and gave him an answer. And, you know, I was a state secretary for the state of Kansas for six years in a row.
And, you know, this was a very growing experience for me, a very rewarding experience for me. And I'm sure that had it not been, you know, for that service work that I was able to do to keep my mind occupied, because in 1971, I had a bout with cancer. And it, again, the people in the program came to see me and really cared about what would happen to me. And, you know, this was just another time when God was looking after me.
I did go back to work, and after this bout with my cancer was arrested, and I thought, well, you know, there was no need in sitting around on my pity pot and feeling sorry for myself, because this was something that I had to live with, and I never talked about it. Again, this was the serenity and all the gifts that had been given to me from the program that I could accept what I couldn't change. And, you know, today, I have been arrested also, along with my disease of alcoholism, one day at a time. Four years ago now, I had another, what I thought was cancer, had moved to the other side.
And it took them almost three weeks to decide if they were going to do surgery or what they were going to do. And, again, it was the people in the program that were stood by me through all of this. And it was nothing when they got in there, and that was a miracle. And two years ago, I retired from this company, and, you know, I was paid the same accolades that had been paid to me when I was hired back the ten years before, and that's what AA gave me.
After I retired, I thought, well, what will I do? I was up for state delegate, but, you know, the other side beat me out. So I just came back home and helped start another AA group, and the name of that group is the Gratitude Group. We decided that we would name it that because, you know, I'm so grateful for what AA has given to me. I'll never be able to repay what AA has given to me. So I guess I had been retired not too long, and I had heard about the Kansas State Institutional Work Relief Program in Wichita, and they were needing some volunteers.
So I went down, and I took this seminar of 16 hours, and today I'm working with the boys who are behind the wall and on our honor system are allowed to go out and work and come back and live at this place. We have a beautiful AA program set up for them where the people from the outside come in and take them to the outside meetings, and I also attend the Wednesday night meetings in-house, and, you know, I just love those boys and the women.
And, you know, this is another gift that God has given to me, that, you know, my insides, I just can't tell how I feel what a joy it is to live today. In anything I do, and am asked to do, in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I never like to say no.
[01:00:00]
Just like coming up here, I put a bus trip together. You know, first when we started we were going to have 40 people. It got to 31. We got down to 11. Then we got back up to 17. Then we got to 20. Then we got to 22. But, you know, it was just a real great thing. Great, you know, I felt so good that I was able to do this. Because this is my third international convention. And we had a lot of fun coming up.
It was a long old ride. 1,800 and some miles. We left Wichita at 6 o'clock Tuesday morning and we got in here at 2 a.m. Thursday morning. And our butts were tired. But, you know, it didn't keep us from going out to see what Montreal was all about. Because that day we took a bus trip and we're two different ones and we're gone all that day. But, you know, that's just the joy of living today. And I guess it's about time for me to stop.
I would like to tell you people I've heard the Twelve Promises talked about so much this morning. And I have a bunch of the cards with the Twelve Promises on so later on you can come up and pick one of them up. And I also have some of the Principles of the Steps here also. And I would just like to close this with a little daily prayer that I took out of a newspaper. God only knows when I took this out.
It says, May we keep in our hearts these beautiful words and thoughts. People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But when darkness comes, their beauty is revealed only if there is light within. Amen. And this, you know, is what AA is to me. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thank you, Philomena. You do indeed sparkle and shine. And certainly a lot of your gratitude came forth.
Our next speaker will be Keith M., if he is in the room. Okay. When all else fails, you call on the dearest person in your life at the present time. And I've asked a very good friend of mine to share her joy of living. And I'm very grateful that I am able, as a result, first of all, of 12-stepping her, who has shared many, many things with her over the last many 24 hours. And I know the joy that she is for me in my life.
I know that she has a lot to share with regards to the joy of living. Marianne K.? Hi. My name is Marianne, and I'm an alcoholic. And where the hell is Keith? This is terrible. Talk about the emotions that run through you, sitting here not knowing if the speaker is here and having your sponsor say, and you dare not say, no, I'm not going to do it. Would you step in if he doesn't show up? I've been up and down on a roller coaster.
Well, they say that the basis for a spiritual foundation is waiting and hopeful expectation, and I guess that's what I've been doing, with a lot of fear of being up here, but also a lot of joy. And I remember, you know, sitting back and thinking of the joys of my drinking days. One of the big things that kept me from asking for help is because I liked alcohol a lot. I like what it did to me. I like what it did for me.
And somehow in those last years of very painful existence, I still thought alcohol was doing a lot for me. And I couldn't see giving it up. You know, I could not see not drinking. To me, not drinking was not, you know, saying you can't breathe. So I'd like to share just a little bit of the joys of my drinking days, what I thought were joyful, and I think what made me realize that I'm qualified for this beautiful fellowship of being.
[01:05:08]
You know, as I said, the first drink did a lot for me. It transformed me into someone I wasn't. I was more confident. I was comfortable. I felt like part of the human race, and I was hooked on it immediately. And it went on like that for a while. But all of a sudden I found out that I was into having blackouts and all the joy of waking up the next morning and finding out what you said, what you did, where you went.
The terror was there. Am I whistling? Thank you. It's only my heart. Anyway, you know, all the signs were there. The blackouts, trying to control my drinking and switching drinks and all of this, on and on. I drank for a good 20 years, over 20 years. I've got to be honest. I'm as old as AA. You know, when you open up that book, Not God, on the first page it says, on a bleak November afternoon in 1934, Ebi went to Bill W. and told him about how he got religion.
When I read those lines, I got goose bumps. I thought, I was born in November of 1934. AA was getting ready for me then. Anyway, I don't have anything prepared, so I'm going to probably be all over from recovery to drinking and back and forth. But I was hard to convince that you could live without alcohol. I wanted to have fun. I thought fun was essential. And to me, being sober was not having fun.
It was boring. You know, who wants to spend the rest of their life going to meetings with a bunch of drunks I had nothing in common with? They seemed to be having a lot of fun. I wasn't. I was in a lot of pain in those early days. Once in a while I'm still in a lot of pain. But I really didn't want to be there. I don't know if the grace of God got me there, that's for sure. Anyway, I struggled for five years to control and play games with myself, mind games.
Could not let go of the idea that I could not live without alcohol. I came to AA, and I drank for about a month while I was in the program. Still not convinced. But I guess going to those meetings and listening to the beautiful people that I have come to know in the program, something sunk in, and I realized, hey, yeah, you can't handle it. You can't go without drinking. You've got to go to meetings, and you've got to ask for help.
And they were telling me to ask God for help in the morning, and I thought, nah, he doesn't like me. One of these, a long time ago, I blamed him a lot for my alcoholism. I blamed him for my father's alcoholism. And I really couldn't see God's love at all. You know, I saw him up there with the tablet and the pen, and he's marking it all down, this and this. And I really didn't think I had a chance. But I did what the people told me.
Very simply, I asked God, please don't let me drink today. And I started going to meetings more frequently than once a week. And those people were crazy. I'd say, how many meetings do you go to? And they'd say, oh, five, six, seven a week. And I thought, God, how do you find time to live? I was living. I wasn't living. I realize that now. I wasn't alive at all. I was existing. Talk about the joy of living.
Being here at this conference is fantastic. See, I'm going to today now. I've got to get back into the past. Anyway, I came to meetings, and I sat there. And I was angry. I was resentful. And it took about a year for some of these feelings to go away because I couldn't identify. I didn't have any of these character defects all you people have. It was really, I couldn't see them. I'm doing everything okay except I drink too much.
And it was my family, my friends, the world, God, everybody. They were all at fault, but not me. And so it took about a year before I realized, hey, this program means more than just not drinking. It means looking at myself, trying to change. That's where it's at, trying to grow. Golly, I'm a slow learner, a real slow learner. But people start talking about fear.
[01:10:01]
They start talking about anger, resentment, self-pity. And finally, finally I could identify. But it was slow, and it was painful to look into myself. I have to practice that third step a lot in my life. I have to ask God constantly to release me of the bondage of self, you know, in that third step prayer. And that's, I think, the beginning of my acceptance of the program. Excuse me. I also smoke too much.
You know, I was a fighter. I wanted to fight everything. I wanted to handle everything by myself. I really could not see God's grace in my life. But when I started to pray sincerely and honestly, please help me, help me see what I need to change. I don't know what I need to change. I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel like hell, but, you know, I couldn't pin it down. And I said that prayer over and over, and I still say it today.
Help me to become aware of my defect. Help me to become aware of the things that stand between me and other people. And other people, that's another thing. I just couldn't see them, you know. Give me my space. I was great on that. Leave me alone. Back off. Don't touch me. That was another one. You know, holding hands, hugging. I just couldn't. I just couldn't. Now I enjoy holding hands, and I enjoy hugging, and I just, hey, I feel, you know, part of the human race.
Anyway, to go back to that first painful year, you know, and people say, do something. You don't just go to meetings and sit there, and there's one fellow here that I won't mention his name, but he used to always say, action, action. And I thought, oh, up yours, you know. Not me. I'm going to just absorb, and it's going to all come. And it was hard for me to act. You know, I wasn't an actor. I was, I'll sit back and, you know, let me sit in the corner.
I wear subdued clothing. I don't want to be noticed. And action is where it's at. You know, that faith came only when I started to do things. And I remember during my very first meeting, one of the very first meetings, and we had a woman walk in, and she was quite inebriated. She was a little disruptive. And I sat up there, and I just shared, you know, the first step and how it was and on and on. And I was talking about suffering.
And she said to me, you look like you're still suffering. I'll never forget that. You know, I feel real, I feel good inside most of the time. And, you know, it's hard to show it for me, really. I'm not a very, you know, demonstrative person. Maybe it's my Polish nature. I don't know. But last night when they had the ceremony of the flags, God, I cried through that whole thing. I thought that was just, you know, I thought, these people have what I have, all of these people, these thousands.
And I felt so good. I thought, this is beautiful. And thank you, God, for, you know, letting me come here. Anyway, see, I'm going back and forth again. Anyway, action is a very big part of this program because by that my faith started to grow. I started to do things. And I couldn't do anything without saying, hey, God, please see me through. Show me what to do. Help me handle it. And, you know, after I went through it, it worked out.
You know, not good all the time. But, you know, I lived through it. I managed. A lot of times I'll have to ask them for help to accept me when they don't work out right. You know, help me to accept humiliation, like when I was sitting in my seat up there. I thought, I'm going to get up there and I'm probably going to cry for half an hour, 25 minutes. I don't even remember what time I got up here, so somebody waved.
Okay. Okay, I guess I'm still begging at first year. No, I don't want to dwell on that. You know, I drank a lot. I paid the price to be an alcoholic. To become, to be an alcoholic, and God, I am so grateful to be an alcoholic, and that's something I could never say, you know, I thought you people were all sick, why could you, how could you be grateful to be an alcoholic, you know, to sit in these meetings, and I just couldn't see the benefits of AA at all, and there are so many, you know, not drinking is only the beginning, and finding God is only
[01:15:15]
the beginning, and I know I'm on an adventure now that's going to last for the rest of my life one day at a time if I keep on doing what I'm doing now, going to meetings and asking God for help. That second step, to me is very important too, because I couldn't identify with insanity, at all. You know, I knew I had a drinking problem, maybe it's because my father was an alcoholic, also three uncles, I was very knowledgeable in what an alcoholic was. I know it was a person that can't drink, they drink out of control, they get into a lot of problems with alcohol, and knowing that, I couldn't see myself as crazy, but I still couldn't see myself as an alcoholic. I was somewhere on the borderline there. I was unique, totally different from anyone else. So that second step, coming to believe that my higher power, God, could restore me to sanity, took a while too, because that first year I acted, I just pretended, as they say, act as if the real feeling didn't come for a long time. I asked God for help, and said thanks sometimes when I remembered, but I remember it was at the end of that first year, and I was going on vacation, and I went on vacation to a place in, I used to drink a lot in Acapulco, oh that's a great town for drinking. And I was scared, I thought hey I'm going to go on this vacation, I don't have any AA people around me, what am I going to do? And I prayed a lot, I prayed, oh did I pray like crazy, because I didn't want to lose my sobriety, as new as it was, I had latched onto it by then. And every morning, in the past years, I used to get up, we had a little veranda, we used to rent a house, we had a pool and a terrace, and I used to be first up every morning for drinks, I'd have to have my little, to stop shaking before everyone else got up. This year I was up every morning with my 24 hour book, and I sat there by the pool, and I just, I meditated, I asked God for help. It was after that trip that I realized that his power was working for me, because I didn't have any AA support around. And I know now he wants me to succeed, I know now that he wants me to stay sober, and he wants me to continue to grow, and that I have to practice that third step and ask him for the strength to show me where and how, turn my will, my life over to him. That was not easy to do. It's still sometimes not easy to do, you know, because I'm your typical alcoholic, I'll run the show, let me do what I want to do. Do I really believe he wants the best for me? And I, you know, I spent a lot of years thinking I want, I know what I want, I know what's good for me. So letting go of those ideas of what I think is great for my life, and just accepting what's happening, what's going on. A speaker yesterday morning, this woman was terrific, she said, just showing up for life, you know, here I am, God, ready, what do I do? But it's a very simple way to put it, but that's the way I'd like to live, you know, and it's a daily practice, it doesn't always find those things, that's for sure.
This trip has been a revelation, and it's been sometimes a test in patience and tolerance. We are staying at the most, I hate to do this, but I've got to, we are staying at this luxurious motel, it's out on Sherbrooke, it's called the Leigh Marquis, I wouldn't recommend that to anybody in this world. But we checked it, we had no choice, that's what they gave us. I'm getting to like it now, you know. I mean, it's not only, it's tacky, it's seedy, it's dirty, service is poor, but we're here, that's what counts. And the fellow that preached to me, action, action, kept saying, oh, come on, we could be staying 60 miles out of town,
[01:20:01]
we could be staying in New York. Anyway, I'm glad we made it here, I'm glad we do have a place to stay. The joys of sobriety, God, there are so many of them. Being alive, primarily, knowing that God's love is there for me, knowing the people in the AA are there for me, being able now to ask for help, to share, oh, God, there's, the list goes on and on, but primarily I think that the joy, the real joy that helps me when I don't feel too hot, you know, those nights when you go to a meeting and you've had a day that was less than good, you know, no growth days, you just feel like, yuck, and you go to a meeting, because I go to meetings, I go to three meetings a week, faithfully, more if I could, but to sit at a meeting when you're not feeling too hot and listening to a newcomer, that to me is the joy of living.
Last, a couple of weeks ago, we had a girl come in for her very first meeting, a little girl, 22 years old, her name was Cindy, and she sat there, and next to her sat down another newcomer who's been sober three months now, and this girl, Annie, we took to detox, and she was really a mess the night we dropped her off in detox, and to hear her talk about her, Annie, share with Cindy, what she found in this program was something else, you know, it was just beautiful, I thought, Jesus, this is great, that's how it works. It was also funny too, because she said to Cindy, she said, I know you, and Cindy looked at her, she said, you know, very puzzled, she says, you used to drink at this bar, right? And she said, yeah, and she said, oh, you probably don't remember me, you were always wasted.
I thought, talk about being confronted by reality right there. Those are the joys, to hear somebody say, hey, this program does work, hey, I feel better, hey, I like looking in the mirror now, hey, I like waking up in the morning, hey, I like the Le Marquis Hotel, almost, not quite. I don't know, am I running out of time? Going back to that third step, that third step to me is the basis of this program, because I have to rely a lot on strength that I know I don't have. One time that I found this step really hard to practice was a few years ago when I wanted to change my job, and I thought, should I do it, God, should I do it, God? It was going back and forth and back and forth, and I talked to people. I think it was a lot of fear. That was one of the challenges of life, to do something that we don't normally do. I spent a lot of time being a secretary.
I could type, I could take shorthand, and I was good. I was good even when I was drinking, except sometimes my shorthand was not too legible, but, you know, I faked it, I made it. And to decide that I wanted a career change at this stage of my life, you know, I'm up there in years, and I thought, can I handle it, can I grow, can I be adequate? So I had to ask God for a lot of help in that area, help me to make that choice, and then let go of it. And I finally went through it one time, and I didn't get the job. I thought, thank you, God, you showed me I don't need this job, I'll just stay where I'm at very comfortably. But another year that same job came up again, they were going to interview me, and I remember back to the turmoil, yes or no, what should I do? And it meant going up to my boss and saying, I'm an alcoholic, and I want that job, because it was an employee assistance program. And I thought, well, once my boss finds out I'm an alcoholic, you know, I fall over curtains. I was afraid. You don't know what people's attitudes will be. Anyway, I remember going to my room and sitting down in my meditation chair, and I don't even think my feet touched that pillow, and this thought came to my mind, it's time to grow. I thought, that's really fast, God. You want to talk it over a little bit. And so I got the job, and oh, talk about fear, and being afraid of handling the day. I've been doing it for
[01:25:11]
a year and a half now. I hope I'm doing my best, but I know I could not have done a thing without this program, without God's help, because it scares the hell out of me, truthfully. It really does. I've got to talk to people like this, you know, in groups like this, that have no idea what alcoholism is all about. Oh, and they sit there and they look at you, and sometimes you feel like you have horns, or, you know, it's not the language of love we speak here. It's not the understanding. And it's very difficult. I know I can't change anyone's mind about whether or not I've got a disease, you've got a disease. A lot of people will not understand it, but I've come to accept it. I feel comfortable with it, and I feel comfortable with people that don't understand it. That's their problem. I'm grateful I've got a disease, because this disease is the only one I know of that can teach me how to live. There are a lot of diseases out there that will kill me, that will waste my body away. I would probably rot in self-pity if I knew I had something like cancer when I was drinking. But I've got a disease that tells me that self-pity is a killer, that anger is a killer, that resentment is a killer, and I've got to work on these daily, and the only way I could is by this program, the beautiful 12 Steps. I hope my time is up.
And I want to thank you all, and I love you all. Thank you for helping me to get sober and hopefully to stay sober. I love you. I'm going to hear about that for probably many, many 24 hours. Thank you very much, Mary Ann, for a beautiful message. What I would like right now is for each of us to express to the three speakers our gratitude for their sharing their joy of living. So a nice round of applause. And I too would like to thank all of you for coming here this morning and sharing with all of us. My hope and prayer is that for each of you that God will continue to gift you, as I know he will, with the gift of sobriety, and that you too will respond with your yes to that particular gift one day at a time, and that you will continue to know the knowledge of God's will and then to put into experience and practice those things that he wishes for all of you, and that as a result of the knowledge of God's will that you can continue to experience the joy of living and loving in this fellowship.
Can we close with the Lord's Prayer?