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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – UNDERSTANDING AND BEING UNDERSTOOD – RS 06366.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-understanding-and-being-understood-rs-06366.mp3 Duration: 01:19:09
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My name is Onyx. My name is Onyx, and I'm an alcoholic. And welcome to the Understanding Being Understood meeting here. We'll begin by a moment of silence in gratitude for the AA recoveries in the past 50 years. If you'll all join me in the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I just want to say, along with so many other people that I've heard here, how truly grateful I am to be sober and to be a part of this international convention. Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to say that I'm really grateful to be a part of this international convention. And I've been told that I have to explain the anonymity tradition, and it is as follows. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need to 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 to 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 personalities. Tapes of this meeting will be available at the tape sales booth in the convention center. And our first speaker has come all the way from Alaska to share with us. His name is Joe S.
I'm Joe S, and I am an alcoholic. I'd like to thank everybody that's here tonight or today, I should say, for coming this long ways for this convention. I was filling in for a man from Alaska that's not here, was unable to make it, Jonathan E. And I'd like to say that it was unfortunate he was unable to make it, but he sent his love, and I will try to get in as fast as I can. I am a little bit nervous, so you'll have to bear with me.
I started having a lot of problems. The subject is understanding and being understood, and that was something for many years of my life that I dealt with very poorly. Long before I had my first drink or involved in any drug-related, mine-altering chemicals, I had a real problem of dealing with people, and I had a very hard problem of dealing with myself. I didn't understand what was going on within myself. I had absolutely no idea of how to express myself, and I had no idea of what was going on. I was confused and frustrated, and it developed into anger. As time progressed, the classic things that we would hear, or I was told, is that he'll grow out of this, or he'll grow out of that. I didn't grow out of any of the frustrations and the things that I was dealing with. I was around eight years old, nine years old, and I got involved in problems of taking things that didn't belong to me. I think I started off stealing sandwiches. I wasn't a big crook. I just was a little hungry crook. I remember it was kind of funny. I was being raised by my father. My mother and father divorced in 1941, and by a matter of self-kidnapping, my dad took charge of me and two of my older brothers. I think it sounded like they kind of split us up. I think half the kids stayed with my mother, and half the kids went with dad. I think they may have rolled dice for us. They never really made that clear. I didn't see my mother, actually, until somewhere in the mid-fifties. It was like she didn't exist. I can actually remember saying, actually, almost honestly, that she died. I'd go in to talk to the school principal
[00:05:00]
or something for some issue I got into, and I could remember saying, what about your mother? Where is she at? And I remember saying, I think she's dead. I'm not really sure, and I was real serious. I wasn't sure. Dad didn't talk much about it, and when he did, it wasn't very complimentary. I think I got introduced to alcohol somewhere when I must have been around 10, 12, 13. I'm not really sure. It's kind of vague, but I think I had my first taste of it, and I think I hated it. I didn't really like it. I didn't really care for the taste of it, and so I didn't really touch base with alcohol again until I was around 13 or 14, 15. And again, it was just really passing time things, but there were some strange things that were going on in my life. I got into a habit of stealing automobiles. Earlier, I was doing things like tearing up schools in a small way. I'd tear up books, and just causing a lot of problems. They would wonder what was wrong with me, and I would wonder what was wrong with me. So we had at least two people who would wonder what was wrong with me. And I didn't like going to juvenile hall, and they insisted I had to go, and actually, according to the law, they were absolutely right, because I was in a state of mind where I needed attention, but at that time, there was nobody that really knew exactly how to reach me. As I grew older, I got into taking bigger things. I got into taking automobiles, and I ended up going to a state reformatory, and it's the state of California that I grew up in, even though I was born in Washington. My dad divorced my mother in 1941, and worse than he'd migrated to California. I got out of the reformatory, I think it was in 1955, and I was out, I think, nine days. I did pretty good, and I ended up stealing another car, and I went back again. When I got out that time, I was just about 18 years old. I was just under 18 years old, and I still hadn't really drank any. I mean, if you're still with me out there, hopefully. I hadn't really touched base with alcohol, and I hadn't really touched base with drugs, but I was doing all these things that us alcoholics sometimes do and sometimes don't do. But I was having really problems relating. Again, we're talking about the subject matter here today, understanding and being understood. I didn't understand why I was doing this, and I couldn't explain to my sociologists and my psychiatrists that the state of California hired to figure out if I was worthy of being paroled and not worthy of being paroled, because I didn't have a handle on it, and they were unable to reach in to my life to find out and bring out those answers. But anyway, I was given a second chance, and I went back to Washington in 1956, and I was there for a short time, and I was living with my mother, and then I got a chance then to meet some of my brothers that I had never seen. I ran into one of my brothers and my sister, and my brother was, this particular brother was three years older than me, and he was drinking, and we started drinking together. But for mom, it was okay, because people that are in my age category, I was almost 18, that was okay, that was accepted. She had been remarried since then, and my stepfather drank at that time. I have to, I can't say one thing very quickly, that he did die sober, and that he was sober, I think, for the last 10 or 15 years of his life. But at that time, he was a problem drinker at the very least. I can't qualify him as an alcoholic. That would be unfair of me. But we drank, and I raised all kinds of heck, and I went down and applied for a job at Boyne's Aircraft Company, and they gave me a job, and I thought that was really great. Here I am, a little schnook from the Southern California area that did the best thing I did, was stole cars for a living. But they gave me a test there, and I took the test, and I passed an aptitude test, which amazed me even to this day. But they were impressed with me if I wasn't, and they sent me to school to become an engineer, which I decided immediately that wasn't for me, because my stepfather was working as a truck driver, making a dollar an hour more than I was making as an apprentice.
And so I said, later for this, I went across the street and went to work, because he'd been with the company for about 20 years, and he had put the fixed in with management. I stayed with that job for about nine months, and I got the call to go back to California. I say the call, I want to make a geographical change. I didn't want to work anymore. This was being in society, doing all these things. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go down, and I wanted to do some other things. Probably I wasn't sure at the time. I wasn't making plans then, just decisions. I went back to California, and I got involved with some more thievery, and I ended up being sent to the Los Angeles County Jail for a year, and I ended up staying there. And they sent me out to a work farm, which was a mistake, because
[00:10:02]
I immediately escaped. They caught me, and I went back, and they locked me up for some more. And then I got a thing from what they call the California Youth Authority. They sent me a little thing, and I was suddenly discharged off parole. I thought that was really funny. I wasn't even worth it. I wasn't worthy of being on parole. But the not-so-funny thing was, what they had did is they'd made me an adult in the court size. I was no longer considered a youth, and that's what I had been considered at that time. Well, I thanked them by primarily going out, getting myself intoxicated, and sometimes non-intoxicated.
I started pulling armed robberies. I thought that was a lot quicker way of making money than working for a living. I neglected to say that I'd already had a real good job working for a major paper distributor in Los Angeles, and I actually had been given the job as managing on the department that I was in. It was the type of thing that things fell in. If I wanted to work, it seemed like my higher power just gave me all the opportunity in the world to go to work and make an honest living, and kind of make up for getting off to a bad start.
But anyway, I got caught with an armed robbery. As a matter of fact, I committed seven of them. I was sent to a state penitentiary in California. The charge I had, and because of my youth, I probably would have did about two and a half years, maybe three years. I worked that in the 12th. I thought that was a good way of understanding and being understood. Anyway, I was 20 years old when I went into that state penitentiary, and I was 32 when I got out. And when I got out, the one thing they implied to me that I shouldn't drink, because while I was in there, I got involved in making a lot of homebrew, and I got drunk, and I fell down, got beat up a lot, caused a lot of problems. And in the end result, I got out, and the one thing for sure, when I got out, I was impressed with one thing.
I thought it was time to make a career change. And they impressed me in one thing, that if you're going to do bad, and if we catch you, we're going to lock you up. And I said, I can relate. So I was starting to be able to relate. I was starting to understand a few things. I got out, and I was out about three months, and I met this lady. We fell in love, as I understand, love at that time. And we got married, and she happened to be a lady of the church. And so I went to church for about a year and a half, still not drinking, and wanting to, starting to want to drink. But I had a lot of resentments. I was angry because I couldn't drink. I was angry at my higher power. But anyway, through a number of things, I ended up in the state of Alaska. And in 1979, through a couple of DWIs, I found myself in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous with just a basket full of resentments. I was just totally unhappy with myself, with society, and especially bottom line, with my higher power. I felt that he was still giving me the short end of the stick. I got in. I hung around for about two years. I had my last drink in 1979, in August. But I started just smoking drugs for a couple years to subsidize my insanity at the time, because I refused the word to Stips. And so in 1981, I almost had a wreck in Seattle. I went down to see some friends of mine in Seattle. I almost got involved in a wreck when I was stoned out of my gourd. I went back to Alaska in 81, and I talked to my sponsor, and he said, have you ever thought of living a totally drug-free life?
And so 1981 and August 1 was my last dealing with any type of drugs or alcohol. And so I claimed four years sobriety. I can only say to really sum it up very quickly, because our time is very limited, that without the love and without the caring of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous and a God, and a loving God as I understand him, there's no doubt of what havoc I may have rendered out there. I can honestly say the best of my knowledge that I've never took in a human life, and I'm very grateful for that. There's a lot of things that I'm very unhappy that I participated in, some of the things I did. I have to take responsibility for all of them, including way back when, when I used to want to try to blame it on everybody but me. But I made those decisions, whether or not they were healthy decisions or unhealthy decisions, they were my decisions, so I have to take responsibility for them. I also have to say that working the steps, I can honestly say is one way to a better communication with yourself.
One Way to a Better Communication with Yourself, with Your Fellow Man, and with God as I understand Him.
[00:15:03]
When I was asked to make this talk, I was very apprehensive, I guess would be the word. I was stopped by New York for a couple days on my way down, and I was asked to speak in Jonathan's place, and I was very concerned. I said, gee, all the tapes I've heard, and all my fantasies about the people that speak here are people that are either engineers, or they're this or that, you know, and almost all of them got 20 years sobriety.
Well, she said, go for it. She says, give yourself a chance. Try to be good to yourself one time. So, I really want to thank the people in New York for having the confidence in me to say, please go, because you are part of the family. And I think that's one of the nicest things that's ever happened to me, to feel that I'm accepted, regardless that if I've had a checkered past or non-checkered past, if I got a PhD or no degree. And I think that's what we have to offer to every drunk in this room and every drunk in the world.
We not only have a way out of a drinking life, we have a way in to a sane life, to a living and loving life. When I walk down the streets of Montreal, it's like we've taken over the city. It's like, I walk down there, and these blocks out there, it's like, I have to say, excuse me, to walk around other alcoholics in other parts of Montreal. It's like they just cleared out, and they just turned the town over to us, you know.
I'm very grateful to be here, and I'm so grateful to take and look out on the faces of the people here, and see the smiling and joyful and very sober people. I do have some friends here from the Fairbanks area, and it would behoove me not to say that. Thank you for coming, and thank you for allowing me to share with you today. Thank you very much, Joe. That was really wonderful. I know what you mean about walking around and that we've taken over this city, and it really is fantastic.
And to share her experience, strength, and hope and thoughts on this topic also now is Rosemary O. from Jersey City, New Jersey. Hi, everyone. I'm Rosemary, and I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, the topic, understanding and being understood, is an excellent one. I've had a lot of fun this past few days trying to understand how the metro works here, and finding my way to the different places that I want to go.
But it really is a fabulous city. The whole key to understanding and being understood, I think, is my higher power, as I understand him. The more I tune into him to improve my conscious contact with him, the more I gain insight into myself and my fellow human beings. The irony of my particular life has been that for, essentially, my life has been dealing with people, both as a young teacher dealing with young children and now as a career vocational counselor.
In those two vocations, we have what we call tests for tools that are supposed to be judging people, more or less, objectively. Today, I have the tools of the program, the 12 steps and the 12 traditions of AA. When I was a young teacher, I could read a child like a book. I'm not really proud to say this, but it's true, I had very little heart when I read that child. The truth of the matter is that with all the book learning which I have had, which led me to a graduate degree, did not enhance my existential knowledge of humanity.
What AA has taught me about people, myself, and love, among other things,
[00:20:04]
could, in my opinion, have never been learned in any school, but the school of life. Because to me, AA is a school of learning as well as a way of life. How I relate to people and they to me depends to a large extent upon my own perceptions. And today, my perceptions have to do with prayer and meditation. For when I am on the AA beam and keeping my spiritual batteries charged, everything seems to be positive.
I seem to be able to give positive feedback as well, get positive feedback, as well as to give positive vibes. And by the way, as they say, I believe that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all one. I didn't understand alcoholism. I didn't understand alcoholism. I didn't understand that it was a disease, that it was a disease of denial. I didn't understand how destructive it was in nature and ultimately how fatal it would be for me.
Today, by the grace of God and the good people in AA, I'm working on my sobriety. I didn't understand sobriety and today I'm learning about it, learning to be a child of God. It's not easy for me because I always wanted to play God and did a terrible job of it. Understanding God's will for me was totally incomprehensible because it was always my way. Today, change is the name of the game. Using step three as a guide on numerous occasions, it becomes clear that his way is the only way.
And as a result, my life has become more manageable, saner and sweeter. My role in the scheme of things was a blurred vision of give-me's. Today, I see more clearly. The gift of sobriety is given for a purpose and it isn't given lightly. It is to be treasured and shared. It is to be given to others who are in need. Too much is given, much is expected. My little role in the scheme of things is to carry the message, to share my experience, strength, and hope to those still suffering.
Today, much of my understanding comes from a newfound spirituality. Before, books were my source. Now, I have found the great source, God. Recognizing who I am, where I am going, and what I am helps me to understand who you are, what you are, and where you are going. Spirituality is all around me. In the sunset, the sunrise, walking along the beach, beautiful music, poetry, paintings, serenity, feelings of compassion, empathy, joy, sorrow.
Spirituality is reading the big book, especially with a group of recovering alcoholics. Spirituality for me today is dreaming new kinds of dreams, not alcoholic ones. Making plans and setting goals, but not planning outcomes. Spirituality is seeing a new member of AA receive a 90-day pin and helping her along the way. Today, emotional maturity is seen in a new light. Growing up, as my sponsor said, growing up is a bitch.
It means making a lot of mistakes and learning from them. It means giving up selfish desires and disciplining myself. Weight is still a problem and it seesaws off and on.
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It means letting go and letting God. It means change, change, and more change. It means pain, joy, suffering, sorrow, happiness. All those emotions are recognized and dealt with today, something I never wanted to do before. Growing up is sharing and caring, which is not always easy either because it involves risk-taking, something that implies security, which I possessed very little of before coming into AA.
Growing up means accepting love as well as giving love, not only to my family, that special person in my life, friends, co-workers, but to all my brothers. Incidentally, if you haven't tried this one, it's a real challenge. Growing up means understanding love in its true sense, not sex. Growing up means understanding love with all its imperfection and heartache. Love, I have learned, is not meant to be perfect or written in concrete, but to make all things changing according to the specifications of the great inventor, God.
For God is love and we are all proof of his existence because he has loved us enough to show us the way to AA and he is loving always. You see, love is the way. For me, is to see God in all things and all things in God. Understanding and being understood is a boundless concept, as infinite as the creator who made us all. In time, in his time, I believe we shall come to many understandings. Speaking for myself, living on a 24-hour basis, working the steps of the program, trying to keep it simple, I have gained many insights into myself and others.
To me, understanding, being understood, is the spiritual frontier which is vast and still largely unexplored. Thank you all for being here and I just want to express my deep gratitude for AA and thank you again. Thank you, Rosemary. And our next speaker is from Virginia, Lion W. Excuse me, there's one thing. If there are some people who would like to sit down, there are seats in the front here. Just like the Episcopal Church, there are always empty seats up front.
I, too, am a fill-in for somebody from Florida, which is where I sobered up. My name is Lion and I am an alcoholic, and I don't know how the hell you can be anonymous when your name is Lion, or Onyx for that matter. When I first came into this program, I said I was born an alcoholic. Today I don't say that because I did not drink in the first few months of my life. But I was born thirsty. I have a friend from Tennessee who says I didn't drink in the first grade, but I knew I needed a drink.
And I can identify with that. I, too, had a disadvantaged youth. Anybody born in Laredo, Texas, had a disadvantaged
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youth. I stayed out of jail just because they didn't put Anglo-Saxons in it, I guess. My first encounter with alcohol was as a small child. I was born during Prohibition, and my parents took me with them on an evening to Mexico when they went to dinner in good old Nuevo Laredo, and I sipped some beer, and I went home that night. I was still sleeping in a crib, a baby bed, which I called a choo-choo train. My mother told this story for years until I went to treatment. She thought it was cute. I had always called that baby bed my choo-choo train, and that night I held on to the rail and said, It's not a choo-choo train, it's an airplane. And I had found my best friend.
My thirst was, as I see it today, always spiritual in nature. It was a desire to know who I was, who you were, what this world was all about, and how I fit into it. And I believe that those are basic spiritual questions. Early on I was attracted to a church, and I grew up in it, and I was active in everything that was available to me in it. And at eighteen years of age I decided I would not be an engineer, that I would be a priest in the Episcopal Church, and I became one. And I spent eighteen years of my active alcoholism earning my living in that way. That I wanted spirituality and understanding is what is behind that career choice. I do not regret it, I just don't do that for a living anymore. I work with drunks for a living.
What has become clear to me is that to me understanding was misguided. I believe that understanding was something that took place in my head. Our first speaker last night said it so beautifully when he talked about not having been raised in an English-speaking home, but that he spoke the language of the heart. What I have come to know in my recovery is that understanding is not something that takes place in my head. If it takes place in my head, you can be sure there is no understanding. It is guaranteed. As a friend of mine in Texas in the program said, you were educated beyond your capacity when you graduated from grade school. And he is right. Twenty-three years of formal schooling just helped me get deeper into alcoholism.
By the time I got to this program, if you don't believe that alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful, just the year before I went to treatment, I was a quarter-day drinker. I never missed a day of work. I was on my knees in church seven days a week, 365 days a year, starting at 6 a.m., and that didn't keep me from drinking either. I had had postgraduate courses in alcoholism and drug abuse. The Young People's Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Tampa, Florida, met in my parish house. By my permission, the group secretary was a personal friend, and I had no idea I needed to be there. So much for my capacity to understand.
I have been struggling with understanding in my heart and in my gut and not in my head since I came into this program. I went to treatment in early 1973, and out of that came a pair of remarkable lessons for me about understanding. I liked everybody in treatment.
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There were twenty-three other patients, except one woman. I thought she was the most ignorant woman I had ever met, because all she talked about was astrology. She wanted to know what your sign was and what time of the day you were born and all that stuff, and I thought, that woman doesn't understand anything. When I left treatment, I was told to get a sponsor, and I thought, I need somebody who is really smart about alcoholism. I asked the treatment center director to be my sponsor.
I wasn't grandiose, and the damn fool accepted. We both lived to see that that was a mistake, but only when I drank again. Several months out of treatment, I fell back into that trap which is ever-present for me, which is, I am different. That kept me in active alcoholism for twenty-six years, and it was at the root of my relapse. I was living in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, and I was looking around those rooms, and first of all, everyone there had white hair. Second, everyone there got sober somewhere else. They got sober in Chicago, Detroit, you know, wherever, and retired to Florida. They were all at least twenty years my senior. They were all damn Yankees, so they couldn't understand me.
Besides that, I wore a black shirt and a black suit and my collar backwards, and everybody called me Father, so I was different. So I quit going to those meetings because I felt no one could understand me. What I did not know was that they understood and I did not. You know what happened when I quit going to those meetings. I drank again. I did not get drunk, but I did drink again and became paralyzed with fear, a fear greater than any I had ever known, so great that I was unable to walk out the front door of the house in which I lived.
In my arrogance, I had no phone numbers of people in that group whom I could contact for help because, obviously, they could not understand me. I looked in my wallet and guessed what the only phone number in it was, that ignorant woman. See, some of us have to be humiliated before we can get humble. I swallowed some pride and I called her, and she and her husband, whom I had known when he participated in the family program in treatment, came and got me and took me to their home in Clearwater, Florida for three weeks, took me to a meeting every night, and got me back on the road to recovery. The next step was back to the treatment center to see my sponsor, who immediately said, I won't be your sponsor, I'm giving you a new one. He is an Italian-American immigrant, and he can neither read nor write. And he lives seventy miles from you, and you'll call him every day at your expense, and you'll see him every week in person.
And at that point, perhaps I began to understand. I asked Jim why he gave me this new sponsor. He said, because he knows something you don't know. And I said, what's that? And he said, how to stay sober. Oh, okay. That began my long journey to recovery, which has been very much a spiritual journey. I went to graduate school to learn how to be an alcoholism counselor. Fortunately, there were other alcoholics in school with me, and they helped remind me that I didn't understand anything in my head, that I had to learn to understand someplace else and to be understood someplace else.
But all those facts about me really do not matter today. The God I understood so much
[00:40:09]
about, because I had a fine theological education, I got my theological degree from Yale, is not the God I know today in my life. And the way I am understood today is not by telling you a lot of facts about how old I am, how many children I have, who my wife is, what I do for a living, but to talk to you about me as another struggling, recovering alcoholic. The God of my understanding today is very simple. I don't know a whole lot about him in my head, but somehow or another on a daily basis he does exactly what needs to be done.
He lets me know what I am supposed to do, and then he gives me the power to do it. He does not do that through any of the education I received about him. One of the most freeing experiences of my life came to me when I was almost six years sober. I gave away a theological library in excess of a thousand volumes. I knew that I needed to not read those books anymore. When I left that community in northeast Georgia to move to Texas, I only owned three books, Alcoholics Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and Twenty-Four Hours a Day. They do quite well, thank you. They do very, very well, in fact.
The understanding of the steps and the traditions and my higher power today that I have does not come to me from books, and it does not come to me alone. One of the things that I did in my active alcoholism, because I had the books and the formal training to do it, was I tried every form of meditation and prayer known to both Eastern and Western Christianity and to some Oriental religions. They taught me absolutely nothing about me or the God I was so desperate to know.
Today when I want to know the will of my higher power for me in my daily life, I find another drunk to talk to. Some of us are sicker than others, and I think the fact that for more than ten years I have done nothing but work with alcoholics is probably a measure not of my recovery but of my need and my sickness. I need a lot of drunks to keep me sane—thousands over the years, all over the United States. I still keep in touch with many of them. Today I still keep the phone numbers of all of the sponsors I have had in Florida and Georgia and two parts of Texas and Pennsylvania and now Virginia. I keep them near to me because I know that I must have them if I am to understand today what God's will is for me and if I am to find the strength to carry that out. I also know that if I want to be understood, it is here that I find understanding. It is from people who need not have all of that formal education, and I certainly identified with you there, Rosemary. It was absolutely a barrier to me.
You said growing up is a bitch. Yes, and learning the truth about ourselves has, at least for me, been a terrible struggle. But it has been A terrible struggle, but it has been one which is rewarding. Whatever I know about me today, I do not know from looking in the mirror, gazing in my navel,
[00:45:03]
or reading books. I know it because you told me. I have no other source of knowledge than this program. I have no other source of understanding of me than the people in this program. I have no other source of knowing the will of my higher power for me today. And he only tells me about today, not tomorrow. You are the only source of that. I am here today not because you need to hear what I have to say.
I am here because I need to be with you so that I know what that will is today, so that I can understand today. I cannot give you any theories. I can only give you my experience. When my first sponsor gave me my new sponsor, who could not read or write except to sign his name, there was a lesson for me, and that is I need to stay away from other head-trippers like me. I have not had a sponsor now in 12 years who had a college education, and that is a conscious choice.
I don't need that. I know how to do that garbage. I like what a friend of mine said at a meeting in Dallas, Texas. He said, he was another house painter. I just love this guy. Josh says, people ask me how this program works. I don't know how it works. I know it works. It's like castor oil. If you don't believe it works, take a dose. I believe I could theorize about Alcoholics Anonymous forever and get myself drunk doing it.
Therefore, I have to work very hard at not doing that. For me, that means I surround myself with what a friend of mine in Virginia calls hard rock big book AA. That's all I know. Hi. Lady over here. Hi, Francis. Hi. Thank you. I certainly identify with that also because what I always did was I analyzed everything and I worked everything out so that it was okay that I drank. It was okay the way I behaved.
It was all right everything I did. When I came in and I heard the other slogan, don't analyze, utilize, I found that that was far better for me because that way I could work this program and stay sober. Hi. Thank you, Sharon. Carla. Hi, Carla. When I first came to AA, I really didn't want to go to meetings, but I wanted to. I had to show up and stay sober. But in the last year, I've needed meetings.
[00:50:00]
I've needed to be in a room where anything I said would be understood. Even if I wasn't talking about alcoholics, I was talking about my health, I was talking about my job. Whatever it was, there would be someone in that room that thought like I thought. Didn't think that I was crazy for saying what I said. About a few months ago, I ran into my ex-husband and he told me that he was having a baby. Well, I flipped out.
You know, I flipped out. And I went, I was like floating around. I didn't know what was going to happen. I got myself right to a meeting and I shared it at the meeting. This type of room came up to me and said, I know exactly how you feel. That's how being understood and understanding works for me. It's like I sit in these rooms and I understand how other people feel and then I get an insight into myself with that.
Thank you, everybody, for being here. Thank you, Carla. Hi, there. Hi, Sheila. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to say that I too have been just, I mean, overwhelmed by this entire weekend and the number of meetings and the number of people and every time I see somebody from New York, which is my hometown, I just, I mean, I feel like it's a little connection to sanity almost because it's just so much and it is nice to finally have like a meeting and to be able to hear some people share that they feel the same way.
Okay, there's another hand here. Hi. Yes, you. Hi, Anne. I'm really glad you could keep up with my passion. I think that was a really good feeling. I've had a lot of fun. I feel really, really happy. Thank you all so much. Thank you. I have a question for you. I've been doing this for thousands of years and I'm really excited to be here. And I have a lot of people to meet. And I really haven't had the opportunity to do much in my life.
It's neat. It is neat. It's neat. And I guess I need to ask because I haven't been involved. I've been here. And I think there's a connection. I guess I should point out that you're not my girlfriend. What's your name? And I guess I should connect. When people talk about things in life that we can get from, it scares me a little bit. Because I think to myself that I'm not doing anything. I'm so comfortable in as much of life.
And I think to myself that I'm not comfortable in as much of life. That when I come to work and I feel I'm loved, I want to run. I just have to run. I have to sit on my feet and allow myself to run.
[00:55:03]
And if I went my way, I would be fascinated with what I'm looking at. Thank you. I really think that's what it's about, Anne, is doing that. It's getting here and sharing that you're feeling that way. Because the worst thing that could happen is that you don't, you stay sleeping in your room, and then you start drinking. Because even though we're all these alcoholics here, I know they still have some alcohol left in Montreal.
And if we take off our badges and walk into a bar, they're not going to say, no, no, no, you can't have any. They probably would allow us to do it. So it's really up to us to come to meetings, maintain our sobriety, and do things like share our fears and share our apprehensions about sobriety and this convention and life in general. So thank you for sharing. I think you're very brave. Hi. Hi, Lynn.
I was thinking when you were saying that you were depressed. And I feel a sense of higher power situation. I'm getting an opportunity to think and experience. And I'm also, and one of those areas is that I've always felt that I was too expressive. Hello. Welcome. And I agree with what you're saying. But… Why don't you answer that? That's it. What I'm trying to do, I'm trying to be more smart. So it's easier to communicate.
The way I was trying to communicate at all was through just a kind of conversation. I've got a lot of family, a lot of kids. And we didn't communicate. So what I wanted to communicate was to be more idealized in so much of the way that protects me also. And in spite of that, I have a good model. And it's actually a journey for me as an artist. And it's also a journey of letting my emotions show. It's still part of me that I value.
It's not something… It's not something I plan to change. It's part of who I am. And who I am today is something I'm trying to be. I'm trying to be okay. And… I had a situation in my career where I… For one thing, I never felt so good and proud of it before. And I just feel like I'm in life. Because being in the city, it's a lovely city with a beautiful shore. But it's difficult working on the street.
Knowing that I am on the street. I didn't know what my dad told me today. That they met a friend. And I was able to be able to find him. And for a while, I thought, Dad, you're not paying attention. You're not doing something I didn't like. But thank you for letting me do this. My name is Jim, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm a father, but I've got drunk in New York all my life. That's what we're chasing.
My second fear is not having a partner. The other scary part, I had no other plan in life other than being active in a program of power in LA. I didn't get drunk. I was fortunate I had a self-breakdown. Uh, I was fortunate enough to have a breakdown, and I went back to, uh, New York, where the main wedding was made every four weeks, and, uh, I started to understand what I was missing in this program, uh, I was never much of a reader, and the emotions that I, uh, would always keep in to myself, I shared some of the program, but not so much, but I didn't understand myself, and I certainly didn't understand others, uh, and that was seven years ago, the break, I think, uh, and three drinks a guy, I didn't, uh, drink, I didn't, you know, drugs in the house,
[01:00:19]
once I started to understand myself, it opened up a new life for me, and I started to understand myself, people would say, you wake up automatically, I like that, no, I never said that, I didn't use my head, I didn't use my head at all, I was so screwed up, I couldn't believe it, but the important thing I did was understanding of myself, it made life so much more difficult, so much more easy, so much more free, more powerful, more understandable, I'm overwhelmed by this retreat, by this convention, and, uh, I met the last three, the last, uh, ten kids, and this is a, I don't know why, I feel more at this one than the others around, and all these, and how about, this one is a bit more moving than the other, so it's just wonderful to be able to share this with you.
Hi, Debi. Hi, Debi. Hi, Debi. I'm going to do this panel to help you understand the different kinds of pain you feel. And I'm glad to be here. I really do feel that when I first came into New York I felt that connection once again with the program and education and after a big number of people said can I be anywhere because that's me. Why do I have to be in New York? Because I'm from New York and so was I when I came here.
I know that's not true. I know people who are on and off my panel. And I'm very glad to be here. I've been in this program for a long time. I've always been in this group. And I feel I've been able to connect with so many people. Thank you, Debbie. Cliff. My name is Chip. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Chip. Thank you all for coming to one of the talks. It was really a little great meeting you. A lot of what you said in the beginning was important to me because it connects to what you were saying because that's the way I wanted to find my field of life, my shorter program.
I mean, I know it's going to be interesting. I'm going to jail or whatever. I've got that type of experience. It's similar now to what I'm here as a drunk. But, I mean, I should always tell my background and stuff. That's what I had to do to get in touch, to get to make that journey from my head to my heart. It wasn't the people attempting it. It was what I did. And then we, the goal we were going to end on, God, started moving in that direction.
It was a real struggle. I'm happy with the program. But what I find is the journey is maybe working both ways. I'm finding through the people and through the hush I get, through the love and through what the last couple of days, that I knew the readings and stuff. As a matter of fact, in the beginning of my first year, it was a book I bought, an intellectual treatise of what movement is and how it relates to some of the philosophy and ideas.
And I found it really appealing because when I first came in the rooms and I saw Sloan and I read the people, the first thing I came up with was simplistic, as opposed to simple. And when I began to feel really the beauty of the distinction, you know, what simple
[01:05:00]
is and how beautiful it really is, and that jaded thing I had in the confusion of my own mind. And as I get to know people and my understanding of myself and of others, just to listen and just to be better and just to love the hush, the physical stuff, I think maybe more than anything, that's the thing that brings down my cynicism about higher powers and things like that. And a lot of the stuff in the program that I've served with all along, I really enjoy this stuff a lot.
Thank you. Hi. Hi, Tom. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Patty. Hi. I'm going to look at the sound. I'm going to try to get a perspective. I don't dance. I don't sing. I don't have a voice. I'm not saying that I can do it. I think that it's great. It's great. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's great. It's great. It's a good thing. Thank you.
They just explained to me. The next person who will share, come on up and use the microphone. Come on up. I'm David. Hi, I'm David. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, David. And I'm from Brooklyn, New York, which is the best part of the Big Apple. And I want to thank all the speakers for leaving time for participation. It's a real treat, because you know, this is the type of meeting that I'm used to from back home.
And I came to this meeting, Onyx, because I saw your name listed. And I know there's only one Onyx that I know of in New York. And I said, well, at least I'll see if it's a first convention. My first one was five years ago. And I was a couple of years sober. And I was a nervous wreck. And I was so nutty that I was actually running around from hotel to hotel. And missing a lot, consequently, because I wanted to be everywhere.
And this one, I'm thinking of doing it, but I'm able to not do it. I'm like, my mind is going all over, but I'm able to pretty much stay in one place from time to time. That's really all I want to say, except to express gratitude for this convention and for everybody here. Thank you. Thanks, David. Next, is there someone else who would like to come share? Jan. Hi, I'm Jan. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jan.
And I came also because, well, I came because Onyx is my sponsor.
[01:10:01]
And I'm very proud of that. And I also needed to, I went through a real mood yesterday afternoon where I couldn't find any familiar faces. And I was too shy or caught up in myself to reach out to people. But fortunately, people spoke to me. And there would be a few breaks there just on the street where you just get to say hello to each other and say each other's names and talk about the experience of being here.
And it would lift my mood for that second. And then, you know, ten minutes later, it would be like, what am I doing here? And I want to go home. But then, no, I don't want to go home to New York. This is easier and more fun. I could just ride around in the metro here and compare it to the subways in New York. And it's really fascinating to me. Anyway, what I notice about, we've been talking about understanding and feelings, and I'm always trying to perfect my feelings.
I'm always trying to get a permanent understanding of how I feel. Like, this is why I'm angry and that I'll somehow be able to pin it down like a formula and it'll last me for the rest of my life. And I just, I think a lot's been spoken about how, I don't think that how I feel in my heart or the kind of emotions that just come up naturally. You know, if you're hurt, you tend to get angry or you tend to get scared.
And these things just have to live out their lives. And I don't think that it'll ever be, inside of me, subject to my intellectual understanding where I'll be able to pin it all down. And I've come from a I grew up feeling very self-hating and hating if I hate it. If I was angry, then I would feel like such an awful person or something. And I feel on the edge of maybe being able to live a little differently that way.
To not have the opinions and judgments about how we just naturally feel about things. And that it vacillates so quickly. And that's what I noticed yesterday afternoon. I wanted to hide in my room again. And I came out for the big big meeting. And I'm really glad I did. And I'm definitely grateful to be here. And it's wonderful that it's a meeting. It's small enough. It's become a tight enough group here that we can all talk to each other.
Thanks. I just wanted to share a couple of things. One thing. They told me that at 12.30 the tape ended. And that's why I thought that we could share from the floor. I've been so nervous about the whole thing. I wanted it to be so perfect that I'm sure it's all messed up. And this is just my feelings. And I hope you all understand me. From what I understand from our speakers that we all do understand each other.
And that makes me feel a lot better. Anyone else? Hi. Come on up, Richard. Hi. Hi, everybody. I'm Richard. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Richard. Thank you for calling on me. I'm from New York also. The reason why I wanted to come up and speak was because I wanted to share with you. Because I've come accustomed to sharing with you. And it feels good. And what I wanted to do is qualify as an alcoholic again that I've been carrying a little resentment around.
And it's funny. The minute I got the resentment when I got here was about my housing. We're so far away we had to rent a car. You know what I mean? To get to where we're staying. And I'm very grateful for my roommate to listen to my crap. Because I keep talking about this resentment. And I want to dump it with you. Maybe it'll be cleansed. But the minute I got this resentment I also got something in my eye.
And it's still a bit in my eye. It's digging away. But I just want to say that although there's part of me that says that the glass is half empty the larger part of me the part that you've all helped to nurture and to grow and the part that I think my higher power wants me to be knows is really half full. Actually it's even more than half full. And I'm really grateful to be here. And I just wanted to talk and see you all.
Because I really feel much more connected now. Thank you. That was great, Richard. Hi. Come on up, and then you.
[01:15:04]
Hi, everybody. My name's Bobby. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict from New York City. And I just, I wanted to say that everybody's talking about isolating. We're out at the airport in Hilton. You know, we've got the pool. I mean, my grandiosity is, you know, fits right in with this. I don't understand why they're not having meetings out by the pool. No, just kidding. But anyway, you know, something I struggled with for a long time when I was drinking and taking every drug in the book was being special.
And I think we all suffer from that, I often say, my terminal grandiosity. But I got a little bit of it last night going out to the big meeting, you know, because the subways, you know, I mean, I live on the subways in New York. I don't want to have to get on the subway in Montreal. But it was beautiful and clean, and everybody's been so great in the city. It's just been, it's been such a lesson. And so I, one thing I learned early on was to try to get rid of that being special and just being one of many.
And being at that meeting last night really brought it home that we're from all over the country and all over the world, and we all dress different and talk different, and we're all the same. You know, we're all the same. And it's been such a spiritual thing for me. It's been really overwhelming. And I think the thing this weekend that has really, really done it for me is, I mean, I met some guy from Ireland. I started crying immediately.
You know, immediately. Because although, you know, I get, I always, I'm one of those people, I get all the international books and all that stuff, and I read them, but it's like actually meeting these people, and people from Australia and England, it reaffirms that we can go anywhere in the world, and we can go to a meeting. You know, I was planning on going up to Prince Edward Island in a couple of weeks, and there are a lot of meetings up there. I met some people from up there.
So seeing it and seeing the people from all around the world just gives me so much hope that, you know, wherever we want to go, we can do anything we want sober. And that's why it's so great to see Anne, you know, with six months, because it's like, what a great thing in your first year to be able to share. And it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming for all of us, because it's like, is it really real? But it is.
And it's been very grateful. Very grateful. Thanks, Anne. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bobby. This gentleman wanted to come share. Fran. I could hardly get up there. I got up here to say I'm a ham in a can. But, you know, essentially what I want to say, and I don't want to ramble, I want to get over the obsession of self, getting into the intellect. I obsess even now, and I try to go out of myself.
I want to understand my commonality with you. You know, that I'm more like you, that I come from the pain that you come from. I don't want to be haunted by self. I was haunted by alcohol long enough. I come from a dual obsession, an obsession with Franny and an obsession with alcohol. And I want to diminish, I want to stand here and say I love you. I reach to touch you. I want to identify with your pain and share all the thoughts you have about this disastrous disease.
And I want to keep it down because it's late and it's dormant in me and it keeps beckoning and says I'm different, I'm unique. It says come back to me, get away from these finks. But I know falling in love with myself is boring. So I want to substitute you. And I want to shove you down inside me to give me strength to confront life. I don't want to fall in love with me anymore. I want to like me, but I want to love all you and take the power of you.
Thank you.