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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – YOUNG PEOPLE IN AA – RS 06338.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-young-people-in-aa-rs-06338.mp3 Duration: 01:27:48
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Some of you are familiar with that. Needless to say, we had a good time. We'd like to invite all of you to join us next year in Florida, in Miami. Memorial Day weekend, 1986. We have other flyers like this and much more information available at the Icky Pop Hospitality Suite, which is room 936 of this hotel. And I think I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Montreal Young People for all the help that they've given to the hospitality suite.
I'm waiting to calm down so that I'll know what to say. Who said that? Okay. We have a lot of speakers here today and we have a lot of people here today, so I think that we'd better get started. And if anybody feels so inclined to go speak to someone about the air conditioning, that might not be a terribly bad idea. And I have some corrections in the program to make. First off, I am no longer from New York.
Yay! And our first speaker is not Kip W. Our first speaker is Cynthia from Minnesota. I'm Cindy and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you. The first thing I want you all to do is stop staring at me. You're making me nervous. No, I'm running on two hours of sleep and I don't know what I'm going to say, so I turned it over and if it sounds screwy, we know who to blame. Anyway, I'm from Brainerd, Minnesota. Anybody know where that is?
All right. Hey! Anyhow, I have not found it necessary to touch a drink or any kind of chemical since November 4th of 1979. I want to also mention that I'm an extremely grateful alcoholic. Today especially. I've never been to anything this awesome. And I don't use that word at all. But this is the most awesome thing I've ever seen in my life. In fact, also I'm grateful to my family's here. All nine members of us.
My father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my little sister, my son, my sister-in-law, and her child. And we're all in the program. By that you can tell I had a normal childhood. Everything was cool, you know. I haven't drunk a lot like everybody else, so I don't really want to go into that. I think what I'll talk to you about is what got me here and what I've done so far anyway. What got me here was not the alcohol or the drugs necessarily because we all have that in common to an extent.
I was 50% alcohol and 50% drugs. But I was 100% pain. And I think that that's what we all relate to. And when the question comes up about drugs and alcohol, that's what I always say. 100% pain. And that didn't mean that when I got sober that the pain went away. What it meant was that I learned new ways to deal with it, new ways to feel okay with it. Even last night we had a midnight meeting that was on humor.
That's a new way to deal with pain. To feel okay about pain is to laugh at it sometimes. When I first came in, I was babysat by many, many people. I never went through treatment. I came to AA. And I had people that picked me up from work, took me to work, picked me up, took me to meetings. Babysat me all night long. If I wanted to stay up until 4 o'clock in the morning, they'd talk to me. And I am totally, totally grateful for those people.
I also have a family that's extremely supportive. And we all haven't been sober as long as I have. And so they were even supportive when they were drinking and using. God, I'm losing my words here. My head's going 50 miles an hour. I got sober in Barron, Minnesota, but I was from Minneapolis, and everything down there was fast and crazy. And so it took going to a small town for things to slow down for me to see that I had a problem.
I wasn't ever in jails or anything like that. What happened was that I just hurt a lot.
[00:05:01]
And my father had been in and out of the program, so I decided, well, I don't want to be like him. So I'll go to AA. And I went up to AA, and you all put your arms around me. And you still put your arms around me. And I'm still a screw-up. I am such a screw-up. And you still put your arms around me. Right now, I'm involved in some crazy things. I'm a chairperson for Young People's Conference, North Central Regional Young People's.
And I got involved with that because after a few years of my sobriety, things started to get stagnant, and the repetition started to get to me, and I needed to be involved. And that's where service is. That's what it's all about, is continuing your program. When you first get in, you know, I believe, when I first got in, I didn't need to get that involved in service. I needed to learn what it was all about.
I needed to get my head clear. In the last few years, I've worked in the area of service. And let me tell you, that's a headache sometimes. But this is what it's all about. This wouldn't be here if there wasn't such a thing as service. And this is something really fantastic. I'm grateful to be here. Amongst all the people that I've seen. Is this better? All right. Anyway. When I came into AA, I thought that I was going to be the same person I was when I was using it, but I was just going to give up alcohol and drugs.
I thought I could be the same. It's as high as it can go. We tried that already. We're okay now. Anyway. Now I'm lost, Larry. It's your fault. Anyway. Where was I? Oh. I thought I was going to be the same person. And I said, five, ten years down the road, I'm still going to be a hippie, and I'm not going to care about things. I'm going to be against everything, and I'm just going to be sober. But I realized that to stay sober, I needed to change.
I needed to grow. I needed to give. I needed to share with people. And I couldn't stay that closed-up, crazy person that I was when I first got in the program, thank God. Today, I don't have to be that person anymore. Today, I can be the person that was on the inside of me all those years that I was using, that was crying to get out, that couldn't understand what was happening. One that, I don't know if you can relate, but when you'd go home, and you'd be totally out of it, and this little person inside would cry out, but I really do care. I really feel good.
I really am a neat person. I want to come out. I used to do a lot of that. I used to write a journal when I was drinking, and I never read it until just before I got sober. And every other page, I can't let alcohol get me physically or I'm gone, or I can't let it get me emotionally or I'm gone. And it did, but now it doesn't. Today, I don't have to feel that way. I don't ever have, I haven't, I don't want to say never, but I haven't had the compulsion to use physically or emotionally because of you people.
You are what keeps me sober. And without you, there's nothing. When it comes to young people, this year, the theme for our conference is we are the future, because we are. We are the future of AA. If we don't learn what the old timers need to tell us, we won't have what the old timers have when we get there. We need to continue this AA, us young people, because we are at the heart of it now. And that, to me, is a great experience to be involved in that.
I'm extremely grateful for it, and I'm losing words, so I'm going to pass it on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. Oh, my. You know, looking out over all of you, and when Cynthia was talking about the people that helped her get sober, I can't help but think about the people that have been a part of my recovery and how much effort has gone into keeping me sober. Needless to say, I've been thinking about this meeting a lot for much longer than I care to tell you.
And the thing that comes into my mind is people, over and over and over again, and the different stages of my sobriety and the different people I've been with in those stages and how supportive and that many of you are here today.
[00:10:02]
And that means an awful lot to me. I believe real strongly in what we can do together as a group, and I find that that experience is happening everywhere amongst young people and everywhere in AA, and that all of us have had that same background. I haven't met most of our speakers before, but I have no doubt that we've all come from that same place. I'd like to hear from Sean. Thank you. Thank you.
I'm an alcoholic, and my name is Sean. Hi, Sean! Hi, Sean! Speak up! I could just sit down now, I guess, you know. The thing that really hit me is that I spent most of my life alone. That feeling that I was completely different, just that wanting to explode, you know. I found drugs and alcohol, and that made it better. I went down that line, and things kept getting worse. I've got a mother in the program.
She's been sober seven years, and an older sister in the program. My father died of this disease, and that's what I was told when I got here, that it was a disease. That mentally, physically, spiritually, I was dead and I was sick. I've got a disease that doesn't take any vacations, you know. Everybody is up here on a vacation, but my disease doesn't. And it's going to kick me when I'm down, and it's going to entice me when I'm up.
And I've got to watch out for that, you know, because I can lose it really quickly. The isolation comes back even at the meetings. I can just not talk to people. And that's how people slide away. You just don't want to talk to people. You don't want to go to meetings. You don't want to be a part of this thing. You get sick of it. And the first time I went to a meeting was in New York City. I almost got sober in New York.
But you see, I didn't have a problem, you know. I didn't have any resentment. But the thing I noticed is that all these people sitting around this table thought the same way I did. They had the same anger and just the same way of thinking, you know, that kind of hamster wheel that goes around. I was thinking on the way over here that, you know, we can hold the city of Montreal hostage. We can hold the city of Montreal hostage.
If you don't give us what we want, we're going to drink. We're going to drink. The only problem with that was that I was standing there. What do we want? We got everything, you know. Why don't you hold them hostage? You know, I'm from Montreal. And I used to do my geographics back and forth from New York and I'm glad to see the programs decide to do the same thing. I was walking up the street here with some friends and I passed the apartment I used to get drunk in.
And that was kind of strange because if somebody had said that a few years down the line, I'd be standing in front of a group of drunks talking about being sober, there was no way. Because when I came in, it was the resentments. It was the resentments and the anger. And I didn't want what you had, you know. I sat down in this, I walked into this group. My mother took me to a meeting and I saw a bunch of old people, you know, and I said, I went to a meeting and I saw a bunch of old people, you know, and my mom had joined the Moonies.
And that was great for her. It got her off my back. And things got a lot worse. I came back to Montreal and, you know, I'm doing strange things like punching out my bedroom wall. Just a little bit of anger. I covered up with maps. And, uh, I covered up with maps and postcards and everything else, and people come in and say that,
[00:15:02]
hey, that looks really good, and I'd just be thinking, don't look behind the map. And I went around my whole life with that picture of myself that I didn't want anyone to see. You know, that scared kid, that, that person I didn't want anyone to even know existed. And I went way out of my way to hide, and put up a front, and seem like I'm okay. And I was just thinking before I got here, how am I going to try to seem sober for 25 minutes and fool all you guys, you know?
And, uh, but things, things changed. Around Christmas 1982, I, uh, I wanted to die. You know, I was walking through the subways here, and I felt this pull, you know, to jump in. I knew it was only a split second, and I'd be in front of a train. Or I'd be in New York on the 19th floor of a building, and feel that pull out the window. I couldn't get that picture of myself going out the window out of my head.
And during those times, I was out of the program, and I was trying to get in, and the only thing that made me feel better was reading the book. You know, there's this book, and these people knew, knew what was going on. And I really, I wanted to get back, I wanted what you had. And I knew I had to live in the present and be grateful, and it was impossible because I was drinking and using. And I'd made a long-distance phone call to Hong Kong on Christmas night to a hostage I'd taken.
And, uh, the first time I called, they hung up, so I figured that's the end of that, you know. There's somebody over there, so I called up again. And I, uh, I spoke to her mother. I put on an English accent and said I was from Tibet. And by the way, just tell her I love her, you know. I called up about four hours later and asked, you know, had so-and-so called? And she said no, and I said, you're lying.
Because, uh, I was one of these people who were involved in mental guerrilla warfare, you know. You know, normal people don't stand a chance against alcoholics with resentments, you know. They're dead. The problem is I'm dead if I've got the resentment. I'd kill myself. I was being told I was crazy. And that night I kind of asked, you know, God to die and just kind of bring me up to heaven. I couldn't do it.
And, uh, I haven't had a drink since that day. Two days later, I was told I should go into the army. I had no discipline. And I got angry and I called Alcoholics Anonymous. Because I knew, you know, if I wasn't going to drink, it was going to have to be here. And I walked through the doors of one of the downtown meetings. And, uh, I wanted to kill everybody. You know, like Clancy says about the portable cross.
I was on my portable cross with a machine gun, you know. And, uh, God. I went to break all your kneecaps. You were happy. You must be on pills. You must be doing something. You guys are happy. It was impossible. I always wanted to be happy. My whole life was spent trying to be happy. I'd be happy in the future. I'd be happy sometime when everything was going my way. And today, I don't know what happened.
But it had something to do with Alcoholics Anonymous. And I came in and I watched the slogans glow. And I couldn't take the subway here for six months. And I was walking around with a guy just going to meeting to meeting to meeting and trying not to drink in between the meetings. And I got active because I didn't get active the first time around. And if you just go into the program and not active, it's kind of like going to the same movie over and over and over.
It gets boring, you know. It starts to really suck. And, uh, but when you're involved, it's like being part of the movie, you know. When you're involved, it's like being part of the movie, you know. Being in there and helping. And I don't remember who gave me my three-month ship. I thought I was okay when I got here. But one of the things I did say is maybe I don't know how sick I am. And things have just gotten better.
I can't explain. They keep getting better. And I just, this guy who walked around with me for, you know, the first year. He got married yesterday. I don't know if he's here. But I was his best man. And it was beautiful, you know. On Sunday, I come out of the Howard Johnson's, and there were six people at the table from five different countries. And there was a drunk there. And he was trying to go to the metro, and he's banging his head on the pillars and things on the way in.
And about halfway there, I found out he was going to commit suicide. I asked him if he was an alcoholic and if he wanted to stop. And I grabbed my roommate. We got an ambulance and brought him to the hospital and visited him the next day.
[00:20:01]
And he'd been in and out. And it reminded me of exactly where I was. And just the despair, because sometimes it's hard to remember when you're sitting with a bunch of drunks like this that look so good and are happy, that there are people out there that are suffering, you know. And on Tuesday, at one of our downtown meetings, a guy who was at all the downtown meetings, Johnny, had a heart attack. And they were working on him, and the meeting was going on.
And it turns out he went up to the hospital afterwards, and he died. And I got really upset. The only thing that was going through my head is that he beat the disease. He beat the disease. He didn't die alone. And that there were people that loved him. And I felt it was kind of important to mention that, that this guy was going to get a six-month shift last Thursday. And I'm sure he's there. He's somewhere watching with Bob and Bill or something, you know.
I guess… applause that just the love in the room, you know, I came in with the devil chasing after me. And I was crazy, so I run off to see the priest. And he said, yeah, the devil's chasing you. laughter So I ran off to the psychiatrist, you know. And he said, don't worry, you know, you're one of God's kids, and I can't do anything more for you. You've just got to go to a lot of meetings. And I was terrified.
I was afraid this thing would just grab me and get me back into the bar. And somehow the steps… the steps have done it. Somebody gave me this, the 12 steps most of us arrived with. I don't know if anybody's heard it, but the first time I saw it, I just about died. So please bear with me. One, I decided that I could handle my drinking problem if the other people would just quit trying to run my life.
laughter Two, I firmly believe that there is no greater power than myself, and anyone who said so was insane. laughter Three, I made a decision to remove my will and my life from God, who doesn't understand me anyhow. laughter Four, I made a searching and thorough moral inventory of everyone I know. laughter So they couldn't fool me and take advantage of my good nature. laughter Five, I sought these people out and tried to get them to admit to me, by God, the exact nature of their wrongs.
laughter Six, I became willing to help these people get rid of these defective characters. laughter Seven, I was humble enough to ask these people to remove their shortcomings. laughter Eight, I kept a list of all the people who harmed me. laughter And waited patiently to get even. laughter applause Nine, I got even with those people wherever possible. laughter Except when to do so would get me in trouble.
laughter Ten, I continued to take everyone's inventory, and when they were wrong, I promptly made them admit it. laughter Eleven, sought through concentration of my willpower to get God to see that my ideas were best. laughter And he ought to give me the power to carry them out. laughter Twelve, having maintained my stability for years with these steps, I can thoroughly recommend them to others who don't want to lose their hard-earned status, but wish to be left alone and impatient to practice this serenity in everything they do for the rest of the days of their lives.
laughter applause applause You know, the funny thing about all the things that have happened this week was that I used to soft-pedal God, you know, this higher power business. If a guy came in screaming about God, I'd just about turn around and say, you know, you can kick little old ladies down the stairs, you can rob banks, just don't drink. And seeing that newcomer on Sunday night, the only thing I could say is, if you believe in a power greater than yourself, and watching our friend die, there's got to be a power greater than ourselves.
And I've gotten drunk, made the decision,
[00:25:01]
was ready to carry it out maybe ten times, it just didn't happen. You know, I was supposed to be at a meeting up at a prison group, and I just poly-filled that wall. And I thought a little box would do it, and ten pounds of poly-filler later, things were not going well. And it was another bottom at six months. I ended up at this prison meeting, and nobody, you know, I was supposed to get picked up, but nobody was there, and I had enough money to get back downtown on the subway.
And all I wanted to do was talk to my sponsor, who I guess, like today, is out in Quebec somewhere planting trees. laughter And I was dying. And I walked into one of our meetings here, and my sponsor from New York walked in. And I didn't believe it. You know, he'd come 400 miles, there was no way to get in touch with me, he was here for one night. And just, you see the coincidences that happen here.
The fact that it only takes a split second, everybody in this room is about 90 seconds from a drink. You know, you can run out to the bar and grab a drink. And it would take just a little bit of insanity. And that hasn't happened. Somebody also reminded me, you're about 10 seconds from a telephone. And the important thing is not to get isolated, not to be alone. Because, left to myself, you know, I just don't want to be here.
I just get tired, and I get cranky, and I've had it. And if I'm not talking to people older than me, you know, further on, if I'm not talking to people who are just coming in the door, I forget where I am. And I might just want to say, fuck it. And that's the one thing everybody says before they go out. And I haven't had to. And I don't want to, and I don't believe this. This is amazing. That there's so many people here that are sober and happy.
And that took a decision. That was like the third step. At 45 days, I decided, if I'm going to be miserable, I might as well get drunk. So I kind of turned my will and my life over to Alcoholics Anonymous and got as active as I could. And the activities really saved my life. Instead of getting drunk, I'm ending up making coffee. And you're there to see what happens. And you're a part of. And going to young people's conferences and seeing meetings like this, I'm not alone, you know.
It isn't just old people. I think they're going to have to start old people's meetings pretty soon. You know. And, yeah, what would we have done 50 years ago? We're just really lucky that we're all here. And I'm really, I'm in awe, you know. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sean. Yesterday morning I was having a little bit of a problem that I think some of you may identify with. I have this need to try and be in more than one place at one time.
And I had parked my bag at a meeting upstairs and I had a meeting about six flights further down that I wanted to be at. This was at the Sheraton. And then there was a meeting across town I wanted to be at, but I wasn't trying for that one. I was just running up and down the stairs frequently. And I ran right into my sponsor from New York, and that felt very good to write into on the staircase. I've been finding that the harder I try to find somebody, I just don't seem to find them.
And then when I stop trying, I walk into them, which I see a lot of heads going up and down. Okay. I found these steps very interesting, and I think that one of the major blessings in my life is that I was not even born yet when Bill got around to writing these steps, and so my opinion was an ass. And I came into AA through Alateem. I was sitting in an Alateem conference in Virginia with one of our Alateem sponsors, who happened to be an AA member, and he stood up and said, I think I'm going to go to this young people's meeting.
And we were holding hands, and when he stood up, I stood up, and I said, I'm going too. And he didn't say anything. I would have loved for him to be surprised. I would have loved for him to be surprised. I would have loved for anybody to be surprised when I started going to AA.
[00:30:08]
I went to what turned instantly into a beginner's meeting at this Alateen conference. And there was a young man there who was a year or two older than me and he had had the same experience a few years back. And he told me that if I didn't drink, I could do anything. Those were his exact words. He did not qualify that and I defined that in my own sense. Some of you know what the result of that was. I had a very interesting early sobriety.
Like many of us who were young, I hadn't had the car accidents and the arrests and the 18 addresses and all of this in my drinking. I did all of that in my first three years of sobriety. So my life settled down quite a bit and I know that I owe that to a lot of people. Recently I've had the opportunity to reach out to other younger people who are coming in. And I think that is so much of what we're still here for.
Invariably there's somebody who… I'm taking a 16-year-old around to meetings who talk to me at an Alateen meeting. I wonder why I'm alive sometimes. It just all clicks for me. And when I see the people that knew me then, it just makes me understand a lot. Anyway, we have an awful lot of time and two more speakers. We were just discussing a little bit about how our minds have gone completely blank.
I had many wonderful things I planned on saying. I can't remember half of them. So I'm going to sit down and introduce our next speaker and maybe something else will come to me. This is Jim from Illinois. Thank you. My name is Jim and I'm an alcoholic. I am! I am! Boy, I hate that. It's a lot easier for me to tell you I love you than to hear it from you. My mind really resists and resents that. There's still a lot of old me in me.
It's difficult for me to take compliments. But anyway, Tommy B. from Chicago asked me to talk. I remember there was a bunch of us alcoholics sitting around the living room watching television. The phone rang and he said, Would you like to speak in Montreal at the Young People's Conference? There was a lot of snow on the ground and I said, Sure, why not? I walked in the living room and I really downplayed it.
I said to my wife, Eileen, and a few other people, I just was asked to speak in Montreal like it was no big deal. I'm sure this is something that I'll never forget. My mind is taking me a lot of different places on the way here through the months, I guess February and March, and the anticipation and the thinking about it. I'll tell you what happened, Eileen and myself. We left Chicago last Friday and we planned our vacation.
But a week before we left, I was thinking, we were trying to figure out which way to go. Do we go through New York? Do we go through Detroit? Do we save time? Do we take the back roads? Which way, which way? In the back of my mind, I knew I had to cross the border. I don't know about you guys, if you're anything like me, but I crossed a few borders when I was drinking and I had some drugs on me and it was a lot different than the way I crossed this border.
But nonetheless, the old me was with me and we decided to drive up through Michigan. One time when I crossed the border, we were on a trip up in Canada and we came down to the East Coast and there was about five of us and we were driving in a 1967 Cadillac and all of our hair was down to the middle of our backs and we were just out having a good time, not doing any sightseeing, looking for the towns, looking for the action and we were driving.
We had a lot of dope with us. And we crossed the border into Canada. It was fine. And when we came back in, it was like slow motion.
[00:35:01]
The electric windows came down. There was a kid that stuck his head in the window. I swear to this day it was his first day on the job. He stuck his head in the car and he looked at five guys and he smiled and he said, do you guys have any drugs? And I remember just looking at the guy like, what are you crazy? Of course not. So we proceeded. He said, pull the car over. Out came the seats. Out came the dashboard.
Everything came out of the car. Went through every piece of clothes. And I had an army shirt that was cut off at the sleeves because that was in at the time. And there was two pockets. There was one pocket here with the drugs and the other pocket had a little bit of marijuana. And this guy went through everything. Every piece of clothing, every shoe, every sock. And it came down to one shirt. And I was sitting there, of course, Ross sitting around smoking the Luckys like it's no big deal.
I'm wondering what's the penalties? How much time are we getting? But trying not to show it. And he went into one pocket, found the reefer, stuck his hand up in the air and he said, I found it. I found it. Went into the office and never checked the other pocket. We got like, I think it was a $50 fine because it was a small amount. And I've always remembered that story. And to make a long story short, we came through customs in Detroit.
And about the last hundred miles, I'm thinking I'm going through the border again. And all this old stuff. And Eileen, we're getting close and we're in this lane, see, where the guy's taking forever. And I'm sitting there going, holy smokes. Eileen says to me, don't you feel like you just might have something on you? And I said, that's impossible. We don't. But in my mind, I'm thinking maybe, who knows?
So we get up to the booth and the guy, he's a young kid again. Down comes the electric window. I look at him and I go, holy smokes in my head. He says to me, you know, these guys are stern. I'm sure a lot of you guys are women or people drove across the border. And they look at you, they go, well, how long is your business here? What are you doing? How long are you staying for? And he said, where are you going?
With this, you know, these searching eyes. Like he knows that I'm doing something wrong. And he's got me convinced I'm doing something wrong. And I said to him, I'm going to Montreal. And he goes, what are you going up there for? And I said, I'm going to the World AA Conference. And he looked at me, took his sunglasses off and started smiling. He was one of us. Now, I don't know about you, but I feel that that was, you know, that's the grace of God working in my life and all of our lives today.
It's amazing what happens once you get sober and once I got sober, how my life changes. But I'm still back in those old days. I'm still there in a lot of ways. There's a couple of people up in Chicago say that we still feel like we're guilty because of association. You know, I'm trying to leave that behind. But just before the meeting, they said, don't bore us with drunkologs and things like that. I'm just going to say that I started drinking when I was 14 years old.
And I came from an alcoholic family. I've just come to terms with my realizing that my mother was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. And that's as far back as I can trace. The most natural thing in my life at the age of 14 or 11 or whatever it was, was to pick up a can of beer. That was the thing to do. The thing was to drink and the thing was to try and hide it until you became 18 and then it was perfectly fine.
By the time I was 16, I was drinking straight booze in the alleys. By the time I was 18, I just barely made it through high school, by the grace of God. I'll just say briefly that I never heard the word college until after graduation. All of my thinking was already geared towards alcohol. My afternoons, I went to Mount Carmel in Chicago
[00:40:02]
when it was in the ghetto. It still is in the ghetto and I lived in a neighborhood where you had to go through the neighborhoods to get to the bad neighborhood. And I used to hitchhike every day. My mother used to give me a dollar a day to get to school. And we had to spend it on the bus. I had to hitchhike through some pretty bad areas so that I could save that dollar a day so I could go out and drink after school.
My plan, even in high school, 15, 16 years old, was a dollar a day times five days is five dollars and Friday night and Saturday night, I'll have enough money to drink on. At that early age, however, I was already not making it past Tuesday or Monday or Wednesday. And that was the pattern. I thought about alcohol early on. It never left me and it carried on right through my 20s. I'm in my fifth year of sobriety now.
It's been an awful lot of fun. The day that I had that awakening with myself was like no other day that I ever had. I think because for the first time in my life, I honestly, and I underline the word honestly, answered some questions to my own situation. Why was it that I couldn't hold a job? Why was it that my marriage was going down the drain? Why was it that I wasn't welcome in my family's home?
And all the answers to those questions was really one answer and what it was was alcohol. And I was very fortunate. Would somebody like to say something? You can't hear? No, it just came on. Oh. Okay. Anyway. By the way, by the tape, no. Anyway, my sobriety, I remember it was about three years before I got sober. I was absolutely nowhere. And I was sitting in a theater downtown Chicago. It was three Kung Fu movies.
And I remember this. I'm sober today. I understand what happened. Three Kung Fu movies for $2. And it was an all-day shot. And I sat there. And for the first time in my life, I said to God, I said, please help me out of this mess. And for the following three years, I ran into people. I married a woman whose father was not drinking, whose older brother was sober. And I was slowly introduced into Alcoholics Anonymous in some form.
There's an old story about Eskimos in our life. And I believe in Eskimos today that all I have to do is just do what's in front of me and everything will work out. But anyway, my introduction to AA, I was the type of alcoholic that started sneaking around to meetings. And because my pride was important. I didn't want to come out of the closet and say, I need help. I'm an alcoholic. Please show me the way.
And then get drunk again. So I wanted to stick my big toe in the water slowly and see what developed. Anyway, one of the first meetings I ever went to… I snuck, I was living in Arlington Heights in a suburb of Chicago, which I didn't belong in. But anyway, I was sneaking around in meetings and I went to a meeting down on Thursday night to the Ascension Group on North LaSalle Street. And it was an 8.15 meeting.
And I didn't know what to expect at Alcoholics Anonymous. I really didn't, as most of us do. We just get here and we hope for the best. But none of us have an understanding in the beginning of what even goes on. All we know is that people smile, they laugh, and they don't get drunk. But anyway, I walked into this church and I heard a piano playing and I heard some singing. And I was tired of drinking.
I wanted a better way and I walked in and there was 10 or 12 people sitting around a piano singing. Did the mic go off? No. And not knowing what to expect out of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I walked right up, stood next to this guy and said, hand me the missilette. I'm going to start singing. We were singing Hallelujah and all the church songs. The priest that was looking at me was looking at me kind of funny because he never saw me before.
[00:45:21]
Now, I looked at everybody and went, oh boy, I raised my hand real slowly, and I said, Father, is this the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and he said, no, it's in the basement, and I sang for probably 10 minutes, and I was, it took me about a year to tell that story because I was so publicly humiliated. And I was so tired of being publicly humiliated that I was not going to tell anybody about that, but I tell the story today because that night, and something that was taught to me is I had that third tradition, I had a desire to stop drinking, and if it meant singing, I was going to sing, whatever it took, I was going to do it because I did not want to drink anymore.
My sobriety has been the best time of my life, I got here over four years ago, and I've been basically trying to grow up ever since. And that's not hard to do, I'm sure that a lot of people out there know that. It's taken a lot of twists and a lot of turns. In Chicago, I have a lot of friends and I have a lot of meetings that I go to, and I've never been involved in more trying times in my life than I have sober, because I'm trying to be an adult, and I'm interacting with people, I'm not sitting at the end of the bar talking about what's happening outside as it's passing me by.
It's easy to talk about life when you're sitting at the end of the bar with Tom and Joe, and they're agreeing with you and you're agreeing with them, and everything is fine. But go out and try it, maintain sobriety, get a job, be in a relationship, that's tough, tough stuff. I don't care how old you are. I came into Alcohol Anonymous for a lot of different reasons, I believe that we all do. I came in because I felt that I had some talent, I felt that I wanted to do something with my life.
I wanted to wake up and have something to do. That's the way I felt. I was tired of waking up every day and saying, what do I do today? What do I do today? So I immediately went to work, I started a business, and money is not my problem today, but I just want to talk a little bit about the struggles that I've had interacting with people and what's come out of it. My business partner was my father-in-law, and he died of cancer going on two years ago, and we built a business together, and it was very, very good.
And two months before he died, he forced me out. It wasn't his fault, it was other people involved, and I still feel today there's a lot of manipulation that went on. By sober alcoholics. We're not above that, right? But anyway, it was very, very difficult. I was very scared. I sold my portion of the business under very, very trying times. And for the first time in my life, up until the point where I sold and I was forced out, I was doing a lot of bargaining.
The week before, I lived on the north side of Chicago, and right down the street from me was the lake, and I just want to tell you a little bit what happened the week before it happened. It was a ritual for me to go down to the lake at about quarter to six every morning and watch the sun come up and try to get some calmness and some serenity for the day that I was walking into. And prior to this business breakup, I was going down to the lake and I was asking God, I says, God, listen, why don't you just tell these people to back off?
The next day, I'd say, God, why don't you, you know, why don't you take this man, you know, take him early?
[00:50:01]
I'm not above that. I wasn't above that. I can see today that I had a lot of, I wasn't, I was, you know, I'm a part of everything that I do. But by Friday, I was ready to surrender, and I went down and I said, God, for the first time in my life, I took a third step. I said, God, take all of me and do with me what you will. And through a series of events, Monday morning, Monday night, I got a call and they offered to buy me out.
And it was basically of no doing of my own. I think that I just got out of the way and God protected me. What happened after that was a lot of, a lot of program stuff, a lot of meetings and a lot of third steps. Every day I'd wake up and I had to start all over again, which is very hard for me. I don't like starting things over. I don't like starting fresh. You know, I like to keep things the way they are.
It's hard for me to change. And every day in my life, I had to get up and I said, God, please help me. And I'd get an answer in my head and say, Jim, try today. Jim, go for it today. Jim, don't be afraid. I'm taking care of you. And every day I'd get up and I'd put my shoes on and I'd go out and I'd go to work. Started the business. Everything was fine. Going along. All of a sudden, this resentment comes out of nowhere.
Anger, frustration. I'm mad. I want to get even. How dare these people. How dare these people do this to me. For the next year and a half, I drove down the streets of Chicago having a relationship with a dead man. He sat next to me in the car, I thought, and I talked to him. I cursed him out. I told him, why did you do this to me? I loved you. I was closer to you in the last two years of your life than maybe any of your family.
I was searching for an answer of why this happened. And I got it about six months ago. It dawned on me for the last year and a half that I was walking around with a vengeance to hurt somebody. I wanted to give somebody the pain that was given to me. I wanted to have somebody trust me and hurt them. And I heard some tapes. God love Roger W. He's in the back there. He gives me a lot of tapes. And I heard a tape from Bobby Earl out in California.
And he started talking about, we are what we were taught. And I stand up here today in front of you with nothing creative about me. I am what my parents taught me. I am what you people have taught me in Alcoholics Anonymous. Period. Period. There's not an original thing in my body that I haven't learned from somebody else. And it dawned on me through listening to these tapes and going to meetings that one of the oldest slogans in the world is what goes around comes around.
And I feel as young people in AA that we have got to stop. And I have got to stop the chain or try to stop the chain of what goes around comes around. We have the ability, I believe through the grace of God, to change the world. We're not the original ones. It wasn't just two of us. We all have our little part of the world. We're all going to get married maybe, have children. I mean to myself in Chicago right now are going through adoption.
And I guess what I'm trying to do right now is I'm going back to the beginning and I'm trying to unlearn my learning. Because this is a chain of events that happens. I said in the beginning, my grandfather was an alcoholic. My mother is an alcoholic. They gave it to me. My wife came from an alcoholic family. Her father was sober for 24 years. God love him, but she became an alcoholic. So what's happening here?
Why is this happening? I don't know. I think that as children my emotional needs might not have been met. I'm not blaming anybody, but I feel that if I can do something a little bit different, maybe it might be the difference. We talk about giving the message to other people, carrying the message to other suffering alcoholics. But I think even greater than that, if there is something greater than that, or part of that is to carry the message to other people we're surrounded with.
Our families, our workers, our bosses. It's hard to have a program around people that don't. I know all about that. It's hard to walk away and try to work from love instead of anger and hate.
[00:55:01]
And I don't want to seem like I'm preaching, but this is the path that I feel that I'm on and it's a good path. I have to look at myself as a father. What do I want to be as a father? My father, God love him. The day that I went over to make amends to him, it was a perfect amends. Everything went fine. I got up at the end of the amends and I said, Dad, I just want to tell you I love you. And he turned to me and he said, Jim, don't give me that crap.
I don't want to have to turn to my son or my daughter and say the same thing to them. I want to be able to tell my family, my children that they're okay for who they are, period. I want to be able to look into my children's eyes and tell them that they're not going to be okay if they hit the ball over the fence or score a lot of hockey goals just for who they are. Just for who they are. And they have enough time to share with them.
And hopefully, I don't want to take a chance. If I thought for a second that they would walk down the street of Montreal at an AA conference and be recovering, it might be worth it. But there's too many people out there that died. And they might not. And I don't want them to feel the need to pick up a drink because something's missing in their life. It sounds like a tall order. I don't think it is.
I think it's just daily maintenance and communication and intimacy. This has been an incredible experience for me at this conference. I just want to tell one other story. The other night at the… I have a hard time with my emotions. And I'm on this path of just practicing and forcing myself to love other people and just let it go. Just let it fly. And I want to tell you a story. The other night at the dance was very touching for me.
I don't know about anybody else. But when they played that Michael Jackson song, I'll be there. And everybody, all of us, were sitting in the middle of the… walking around with our hands in the air. I was outside the circle. I was outside the circle. I wanted to get in the circle. I wanted to get in the circle. I wanted to hold your hands and sweat. I wanted to get in the circle. I wanted to hold your hands and sway with the music.
But I couldn't. It was real hard for me to do that. And I made a couple of steps to get inside the circle. And every time I tried to get inside the circle, I backed off. Finally the circle came by me and there was this motorcycle guy from New York. God love him. I don't know if he's here today. But I said to myself, you know, I can get in this thing. But as soon as I went to the circle, the music was going to stop.
10,000 people were going to turn around and look at me and they were going to say, I know you're not a man. So this motorcycle guy was up there in the circle and I went for it. I busted in the circle. And we stood there together and the song was over. And I turned to him and I said, it's a lot of hard work being a badass, isn't it? And I asked the guy, there was a tear coming down his cheek and one in mine at the same time.
We both understood that we've got to stop the chain of events. We have to ask God for the courage to change the things we can. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I feel better now. Oh, my. Speaking of unoriginal ideas, as the young people say, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know,
[01:00:01]
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, And he said that, you know we have gay meetings that are considered special interest groups, and probably the people that are at those gay meetings that are going to remain gay, and we have doctors' meetings that are considered a special interest group, and, most probably, those people are going to remain doctors, and some people consider women's groups to be special interest groups, and, most probably, those people are going to remain women.
But then we have young people's meetings, which are considered in some places to be special interest groups, and there's a really phenomenal thing that happens to young people when they come into this program, is that frequently, with much hesitation, we grow up kicking and screaming all the way. And I have found a tremendous amount of difficulty with that. I'm getting serious now. And I really, really appreciate Jim's talk and some of the ideas that we have an awful lot of work to do.
It is very likely that I am going to live to be an old-timer, and I have a lot of work to do because, for me, for this alcoholic, not drinking is not enough. You know, I also… While we have all this excitement in the room, I have a friend who I intend to send a tape of this meeting to because he couldn't be here with us, and he's someone who I've learned a lot from, and I think a lot of us have learned a lot from, and tomorrow is his anniversary.
His name is Lou, and he is very special to a lot of us and young people because he has told us, quite frankly, that we have a lot to learn from our old-timers, and he's impressed that on us in a very loving way. So, I thought it would be neat if we sang, but… Should we do this? Does anyone have a group? Will someone else start? You don't want me to start. Are you guys really going to join in? Yeah!
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Lou, happy birthday to you. Thank you. All right. I was sharing with Jack earlier something that I had always hoped I would never tell anybody, but it's starting to be lifted as I sit here with these wonderful people who are also having a hard time regaining their memory. I made my debut as a banquet speaker this year, and I did a lot of work on it up here, and what happened to me was that once the mic was in front of me, and there were this many people in front of me, I forgot my name, my serial number, where I was born, where I came from, anything about my drinking or my sobriety, my husband's name, my mother's name.
I lost it, you know, and that was it. So I got down, and I prayed to God to kill me then. He didn't. And Larry called me up a couple months ago, and he said, I'm going to put you on the program. And I said, oh, okay. And he said, I'm going to put you on the program leading the meeting, so I'm going to give you a job that I know you can't screw up. Well, at any rate, it's a lot easier to sit down and be able to come back up, you know, once you lose it.
When I got home from Tennessee, I got a letter from a couple of people there, and one of the letters I got was from Lou, and he had decided that I needed some more sponsorship, so he appointed himself. And what I found is what I already knew is that there's an awful lot of real loving people there, and that the only thing that separates me from anybody else is my own fear and the walls that I put up around me.
And we are really something else, you know, and it's real exciting to see a lot of people and a lot of faces, and I have two friends with me here from New York, and it's been real difficult trying to travel around town because I keep running into people that I really need to stop and have a long intimate conversation with.
[01:05:09]
And that's been real hard to do, you know, it's two minutes here and two minutes there, and there's just so many people that I'm so glad to see. And that's nice, it's nice to feel a part of, it's nice to have a lot of hugs, it's nice to have a little bit of a history somewhere. But what's especially special to me about being sober today is that on rare occasions you go past that with somebody. It's more than a hug and a kiss, it's more than, oh gee, it's so good to see you.
I have friends today, and I have some friends that I'm just glad to see, and da-da-da-da, and I have other friends that I really feel connected to. And it's kind of funny, introducing speakers, I didn't know, you know, I was asking is there anything I can introduce you with or tell me something about you, and you know, we're just all young and sober and doing something, and that's how we happen to know the people that told us to sit up here.
But it's truly an honor to introduce someone when you know them, and have a lot of affection and feel connected, and I'm glad I have the opportunity to do that in this system. I'm really glad, I'm really grateful to be able to speak today at such a serious, conventional meeting. My name is Susan, and I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I had a similar experience to Leah a while ago, and it was, I was asked to speak at a big meeting, and I possibly did the most boring, unbelievably, ridiculous talk that I ever gave, and I asked God to help me not do that again today, and I pray for your sake that he heard me.
I immediately wanted to hang myself. I'm real, real glad to be in this meeting, and I'm real, real glad to be in Montreal and have the Icky Pa Hospitality Suite here. I would not be sober without Icky Pa, and I say that without hesitation. I have a little trust problem. I have a mom who celebrated 16 years in Al-Anon recently, and that might tell you what the first 15 years of my life was, and I have a father who is dying of alcoholism today.
And I take responsibility for my recovery in spite of that, and I have a gift because of that, and I have a gift for you and for other people because of that. I have learned in the program and continue to learn that that is not my limitation, but that is my gift. I came into AA when I was 27, and I celebrated my 30th birthday sober, and I'm 32 today, and I'm on my 30th birthday. Thank you. I didn't mean to say it was my birthday. I meant to say that I'm 32 this year.
I celebrated my 30th birthday and realized that I couldn't not trust people over 30 anymore, because that was no longer functional. It just didn't work. And what Young People's AA has been for me is a place where I could go where I could start to trust. I did not trust, and I have problems with it today. I could go to a conference. I've probably been to 30 or 40 conferences since I've been sober, and I could go there and I could be in the sandbox.
[01:10:08]
And I could be in the sandbox in terms of learning how to trust, in terms of how to live, in terms of how to laugh, in terms of being in a relationship. I was thinking about that, and all of this is a real rare opportunity in terms of being in relationships, and that I never required a recommendation from anybody before. And it's really easy to get one now. Everybody knows everybody. And I like that. I always traveled alone, and I always lived alone, and somehow in some kind of weird sort of paradox, I've needed people desperately and they were never there.
You know, I look out in the room today, and I cannot bullshit you because I know too many people in here. I just do. And I love it when you take my inventory, because I need that, because when you don't, I don't have any data to work with. And I like it when you tell me what you feel, and I like it when you trust me and trust yourselves enough to tell me how you feel. About you, and about us, and about me, and about the program, and about God, and about working, and laughter, and working, and play.
I came… My sponsor said something to me that worked for me, and I couldn't hear it at first. And it was just sort of an anecdotal thing, but I like anecdotes, and she said, you know, I came in here an asshole and you people built a person around it. And I basically continue to be an asshole, but I'm not alone in that job. And I'm glad, because I forgive you for it, and you forgive me for it. Was anybody in Denver last night?
Yes. I heard the Sunday morning spiritual speaker, who was possibly the most… He was definitely in a channel that day, Roy, that really talked to me, that person. And, you know, I heard him say something that I brought home, and for anybody who wasn't there, I'd like to share it. And he said, you know, we get to go out in the world with support, and with help, and make huge, glaring, unbelievable mistakes.
Bring it back to our home group, and share it for a topic of discussion. And, you know, I don't believe in coming in here and looking good, and going out there and falling apart. You know, I have regularly come to Young People's Conferences, and believed that I could fall apart with my friends, and you are the people that I fell apart with, regularly, regularly, so that I could go out and do something.
You know, so I can go out and try to live. This is a bridge back to life. And I have a chance to live. They say that all alcoholics stop drinking. I want to say something else about Young People's AA, as opposed to Big People's AA. I'm an addict, and I did a lot of drugs, and I went through barbiturate withdrawal, and I went through alcohol withdrawal. And, you know, I spend a lot of time, and I think that it's kind of, it's very strange time.
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what disease I have, you know, and I got a lot of choice. And I got a lot of choice. Out of Choice, and I get just about everything I need here, just about everything I need. Larry said to me one time, you know, you can go to all these other places and ensure the focus of the meeting, you know, and that's true, and sometimes I do need special help and I go elsewhere.
[01:15:10]
But this is where I feel at home, this is my home, and this is where I have learned that it's okay to hurt and it's okay to laugh. Now I was one of these drunks that had a big investment in if you didn't take me seriously there was going to be some kind of major consequence. I spent a lot of time being suspicious of people who were cheerful, and we have a sign in my apartment that says suspicion of cheerfulness, and I don't have that today.
I look around sometimes and I see people that have these linear rises to serenity, and these relationships that look like something out of books that I read before I was in grammar school. And things are peaceful and calm and, you know, really, really wonderful. And then I talk to them. And I'm not alone today. I am not alone today. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I hurt too much, and I was dying and I knew it.
And I walked into a place called Chelsea Riverside in New York City, affectionately known as Chock Full of Nuts. A couple of years later I look around in that meeting and I think, ooh, man, there's some crazy people in here. And I still go there. When I walked in there they all looked normal. And they all looked like they were certainly happy and healthy and they wouldn't want to talk to me. I was too fucked up.
And if I ever have doubts about my growth, if I ever have doubts about the fact that I haven't done, that it's no different than when I was making compulsive phone calls to the man every six minutes saying, did you get it yet? Did you get it yet? Did you get it yet? No, Susan, even if you only wanted it, we didn't get it yet. We know you need it. And I have changed. And I had to trust you long before I had a chance of trusting God.
God was kind of far away from me. God was somebody that sat in the back of the Catholic church with the lawyers and the doctors and my dad. With a hangover. And the women and children sat in the front and were prayerful. And they were having a good time back there making money. And I would have rather done that. So I didn't understand. I didn't understand what it meant to be vulnerable and to surrender.
Because what that would do, that would be to open me up to my fundamental character defect and my fundamental fear in life, which is that someone will humiliate me when I need you. And I am getting help with that. Sometimes you fuck up, but I'm getting help with that. And occasionally I have to go back in my treehouse, you know. And you seem to understand when I have to do that.
[01:20:03]
You know, sometimes I use words like devastated, you know, or vile, or exhausted, you know. I use these real words and I forget that I have a child in me who is still full of wonder and who is still full of awe and who is still full of very unconditional love. And I scare the shit out of that child. And I need you to love me when I can't love myself when I do that. And you have done that. So I'm trying to change my grammar and my language.
Don't worry, Atlantic, God's not finished with me yet. I don't have a very interesting drinking story. I started when I was about 12 and my first was a speed habit. And I went through my, you know, macrobiotic stage. Jack Daniels is macrobiotic. And I went through my time of looking for a community. So I ran a halfway house for schizophrenic kids. And they weren't much help. They're too confused. But there's a problem in being there needing that much, you know.
I have, I want to talk about me today. I have recently pretty much thrown my life up in the air. Not precipitously, but because I planned it and because I had the courage to try it. I need to take a good hard look at my work, which has become impossible for me to do. I live in New York City and I love the place, but I can't live there anymore. So last week I ended my job, I ended therapy, I ended all my private clients.
I ended teaching, I ended going to school and chaired my last step meeting for six months. And my relationship went into relationship land. I quit trying to define that one, thank you. And I am, with the grace of God and with the help of you, I have decided to travel and to look around and to meet new people and to go to other meetings and to drive around and look at things I've never seen for three months.
And since I make a habit of trying to tell you the truth, I'm scared shitless. I hear enough and I hear often enough that there is abundance in the world, that there is enough for me and I don't have to live my life like a hungry animal, that I will get what I need, that God is with me and that faith can replace fear. Not in the next seven minutes. But I'm not much for waiting, you know. I've learned a little bit of patience, just a little bit.
And I've learned something about giving. The gifts to me give me the opportunity to be more giving. I had the opportunity to be dropped by four sponsees within about two weeks.
[01:25:05]
And I called my sponsor and went, they don't want what I have. She said, I suspect it's good for your ego. And it was, and it is. Because the people that I get to give to today, I give to in a very different way. I think it's about loving people and about loving God and about carrying the message. And I think it might be in that order for me. Or maybe it's all together. I absolutely love this program.
I feel when I walked in here, I felt like I had gotten home. That didn't last, by the way. I had to take back my will and get arrogant and righteous and crazy again. But I did feel like I got home. And I have not found it necessary to take a drink or a drug since November of 1981. And I really believe that you can help me. And I never really thought anybody could before. Sometimes I think that individuals can't help me.
But I know that the fellowship and the program can. And I know that you are there. And I know that you're not going to go away. And coming from where I come from, and coming from where a lot of us come from, that is an incredible gift. And I look forward to knowing that I can never give back as much as I've gotten. But I look forward to opportunities where I can pass it on. Thank you very much. Thank you.