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Source: Various S – Losing Fear – RS 17670 – 1990-07-04.mp3 File: various-s-losing-fear-rs-17670-1990-07-04.mp3 Duration: 01:09:38
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My name is Merv. Hi. And I'm an alcoholic. And before we get the meeting started, I have a problem. Nicole LeFay is here as our guest speaker from Paris, France. But our interpreter from the Interpretation, our Interpreters Bureau hasn't shown up. Is there anyone out there who could help us out by, uh, translating a little bit of what we're going to be talking about? Translate a little bit for Nicole. Hey!
Hi. I would like to call this marathon meeting to order and welcome all of you to join in the 1990 International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Nancy and I am an alcoholic. Hi. I'm going to ask Karen to read the preamble. Welcome everyone and my name is Karen and I am an alcoholic. The AA preamble. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions.
AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. The AA's anonymity statement. There may be some here who are not familiar with our traditions of personal anonymity at the public level which states, our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV and films.
Thus we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or indeed any AA member be identified by full name in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. In our traditions of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. I'm going to have Nancy read the promises.
Hi everybody. The 12 promises. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we'll be amazed before we are halfway through. We're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. And this was taken from pages 83 and 84 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And now Karen is going to introduce our speaker. I would like to introduce Nicole Lefebvre from Paris. Would you all welcome her. Hello, my name is Nicole. I am an alcoholic and I come from France.
[00:05:06]
I am going to try to translate at the same time. She arrived three days ago and she has been waiting, looking for that meeting since that time. And of course her name is Nicole and she is an alcoholic. She wouldn't be able to speak without her higher power and she has to speak today on controlling her fears. My name is Guy and I am an alcoholic. I forgot. For me today is a very big day. I think my higher power allowed me to be with you today. And I know that thanks to you all, thanks to Bill, to Bob, in fact if I am here in this room, my heart is with the Americans as much as with the French.
She is with her higher power today and her heart is with the Americans today thanks to Bill and Bob. When she arrived at AA she had lost everything, her children, her husband. She was in hospital. She wanted to, shall we say, finish, terminate her life. Her mother knew alcoholics anonymous in France. Her mother always had the phone number of AA in France. And her mother was proposing to her AA. She wasn't happy with her husband, with her children and the only thing that really counted at that time was to drink alcohol.
She was in 1974. She was living in France out of the city of Paris and I do understand that she tried to suicide. As her mother had done many times before, she proposed to her another time to go to AA and then she accepted.
[00:10:11]
And when she arrived at AA, those people put their hand on her shoulder and then she really found out that this was home finally. There were very few meetings where she lived so she bought a lot of literature and she brought that literature with her everywhere she went. That tool was very important for her at that time. She met two friends with whom she went to AA and they were going to the meetings but having a drink at the same time.
For a certain period of time she thought that was very funny to go to the meeting and have a drink but she realized that she was in the fog and she realized that this was not written in the literature. She had a book. The name of the book was 24 hours a day. She told the people in AA that she would stop on January 1st and she asked them if they believed her that she would do that. She asked those friends to come with her and to help her stop drinking at midnight on the 31st.
I was drunk like a corner with four legs in his car and he told me it was midnight and I said yes you are right I stop drinking. And that's when my superior power was with me that night because since that day since 1975 I haven't drunk again. One of these persons acted for her as a mini higher power. That person took her to Toulouse and they watched the clock on that 31st and effectively she hadn't had a drink since 1975. She did it in fact.
And my God made me a wonderful gift. It is that eight hours after I stopped drinking, I met my sponsor AA, who is Spanish, who had taken a lot of services in Paris. He is not here today. His name is Manuel.
[00:15:23]
And I made a long way thanks to him, and I thank him today, as I can thank all the ARAs, because for me it is a day that I will not forget. Since I have known the ARAs, it is obvious that for me everything has changed. I left my husband because I did not hear myself anyway, but I had the courage to do it, and I found myself without money. I lost the possibility of having my son. He was taken away from me when I was sober, after three years. And that's where the fear took me, because I thought it was not fair.
And my sponsor always told me, Nicole, you have to act. Our program is an action program. Do everything in your time, one day at a time. And I told him, but it's not fair, I have to work. And he told me, but because you are going to become sober, you have to take responsibility. And I was afraid at first to work, to be an adult. And every time I saw my family, who judged me a lot in my alcohol, and then I always said, I'm afraid, I'm afraid to disappoint them. But I am an ARA, and I will do my best to become someone else than I am today.
She was afraid to deceive her family when she began to act, as her sponsor suggested to her. She strongly believes in her higher power, and that everything that happens to her is there for a reason. Last year, I lived with a friend for 10 years, who died. He was 44 years old. He died of cancer. I lost my mother, and I lost my best friend AA. And I was afraid to be alone. And I prayed to God, saying, my God, help me, give me the courage to accept. I recited the prayer of serenity. For me, this is what is important, to know that God is always, always with me.
Last year, she lost a friend. He was 44 years old. He died from cancer. She also lost her mother, but with the prayer of serenity, she received from God the help she needed. When I thought of Seattle, I also said, my God, let me come to Seattle. And I made reservations with one of my daughters, who is here, and another friend. And that was in November. And I'm being fired. So I said, I can't go to Seattle anymore. It wouldn't be reasonable.
[00:20:26]
She asked God to come to Seattle. In November 1989, she really asked God to come to Seattle. I think she was studying in French, and she's still studying in French, in France, actually. But she did it, and she's here today. At a certain time, she cancelled everything. But after a few days or a few weeks, she had taken a decision. She received a letter from the American responsible for the organization of the Congress, and they asked her to carry the French flag.
Applause And I don't know if it's still… I have to stop, maybe. It's time. Maybe I have to stop. Yes. Two or three minutes. Two or three minutes more. What I wanted to say is that when I'm very afraid of something, I think that if I find spirituality, I can't be afraid like before. And for me, that's important. With the program, with the spirituality, she's not fearful. The fear doesn't exist anymore.
And she knows that God has many good projects for her, wherever she goes. She wants to thank everybody here, and she says that there is no language barrier in AA, and she thanks you one more time. Applause Out of a few people, if you could keep it brief so everybody gets a chance to talk. Number one, I'd like to call on John B. Applause Hi, everybody. My name is John. I'm an alcoholic. This is incredible. I was walking with my wife. We came out of the films down at the Stouffer's Madison, and we looked at the program and see what was going on.
And we have reservations for dinner at 530, and we just said, well, let's go and go into the marathon. And we happened to bump into a fellow that's from our hometown that we knew was here on the corner outside. And we were just sitting and talking with him and decided to come in here, and I sat down, and somebody comes up and asks me if I want to speak.
[00:25:06]
And I thought she was going to ask me to read how it works or something like that. I thought, yeah, that would be great. I could be a part. But I'm just a drunk like anybody else here, and I'm just thanking God today that I haven't had to drink. On my flight over, I'm from Connecticut, and on our flight over Thursday, I was looking out the window at the Rocky Mountains and Wyoming and all these places I've never seen before in my life, and I was really thanking God for keeping me sober so I could see these things.
My world was about this big. Most of it was in my van, driving from one bar to another bar to another bar, and a dark, dark bar room, trying to put down as many drinks as I could into my belly until I could get home, where my wife at the time didn't want me to drink very much. I just did a lot of driving in about 10 miles, just crazy all the time. So my world went from this to 3,000 miles, and it's pretty amazing. I started to drink when I was 10 years old, and I believe that even before that, long before that, I was already an alcoholic.
When I learned how to talk, I lied right off the bat, and I deceived, and I shoplifted, and I did everything else. We had a wonderful family. I had a mother and father who loved me, very wealthy. My father was a hard worker whose goal in his life was to make it so his kids wouldn't have to work as hard as he did, and he let us know that, so I didn't work very hard. I chose to try and shortcut everything in my life. I wanted to be a professional hockey player, but I thought just because I wanted to, I should be one, and it didn't work that way. I didn't want to do any of the work that was involved in getting anything in life.
Today, I know the easier, softer ways to work the 12 steps of recovery as they're written in the order they're written, and not try and figure out how it would best serve me. My life was so crazy from the time I picked up that first drink. I could chug a lot of beer. I'm not real small, in case you can't see. I could chug a lot of beer and hold a lot of beer, and it didn't take very long until beer didn't do the trick anymore, and I went on to rum.
I love rum, and I also got involved with some marijuana when I got into college, and then I tried some research and development in drugs, but I ended up with alcohol, and that's what I like the best. I like to start off as soon as my wife left in the morning at 7, and then I'd wake up. I was already awake for a couple hours, but I'd lay in bed until she left, and then get into the kitchen, do my drinking during the day, and then go to work.
I made sure I had my own business that I could leave whenever I wanted to, because I had to go call somebody, and I always meet them in the bar. It was crazy. Alcohol ran my life, and I ran to find alcohol. If the bar closed at a certain time, I had to make sure I was there before it closed. If the package store closed at a certain time, I knew the schedules of package stores. We live right near the border of Massachusetts. Package stores in Connecticut close at 8, and Massachusetts is open until 10, so if you miss one, you just jump in the car and go a little further and get the other one.
I never was satisfied with being me, and I think what drinking did for me was it made me think that I was somebody else. I always wanted to be like Clint Eastwood or Popeye the Sailor Man. I watch a lot of television, and I just sit around thinking about being somebody else. I never really thought about being me. It's like June said last night at the Kingdome. Until I stopped drinking, I finally started getting a little bit more comfortable with being John. Today, I can say that I like me. I can look at myself in the mirror. I can spike my little hair.
I'm still working on my food. I like to eat, but that's alright. I love AA. I'm so grateful to be an alcoholic, and when you tell somebody that's not an alcoholic, they just about flip over and go nuts. A friend of my father's, when I first got sober, he says, I'm really sorry to hear what happened.
[00:30:04]
And I could look at the guy and say, well, don't die. And every time he sees me now, he goes, how you doing? I go, fine. Yeah. So I just want to thank all of you for being here. And this is just amazing. I'm so grateful. One thing about these big conventions. I was in Nova Scotia for the first national Canadian convention. And I heard a speaker say that there is no such thing as coincidence. It's just God's way of remaining anonymous.
Thank you very much. Thank you. I have asked Sandy Oh to come and share. Hi, I'm Sandy, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Sandy. From Indianapolis. He said he was very big while I'm very small. And I'm the lady in the brown dress, and it's okay today. I really admired the lady last night, the secretary. They got the box out so she could stand on it. That just made me feel so good. There was a day when I wouldn't have done that.
And today, some places where I speak, they ask me, do you want a box to stand on? And I say, sure. I don't want to miss the looks on the faces of the people that love me today. This has been a neat, neat conference. And I just can't believe I'm here. I've seen some people from Indianapolis. My sponsor and some other people, they're staying on 5th Street. We're staying out in Tacoma. And I haven't seen very many other than the people that I grew up in AA with.
I haven't seen very many people from Indianapolis here. Connie. Connie's here. I just seen Connie. Oh, hi, guys. Connie's our German Hoosier. Right. And I looked up a while ago, and I saw Dave. His dog needed a meeting, and he's here. And he's from Indianapolis. And it was really great to see him here. Losing fear, you know, fear ruled my life. It ruled my life coming into this program. God willing, and the creek don't rise, and I stay sober.
I'll have nine years next month. And for this fearful alcoholic, that's a miracle. I was just telling this lady down front that I was sitting with, God, we got friends everywhere, isn't it neat? Just people we haven't met yet. And I was sharing with her that I'm just amazed at these young people, the lady that got up here that had two days of sobriety, that got up here and was able to talk. I couldn't say a word.
When I was three months sober, I couldn't even say I'm Sandy and I'm an alcoholic because the fear would not up in me, and my heart would pound like it is right now. So bad that I just knew I was going to die. And it just amazes me that these young people that come into the program are able to do that. I think that's wonderful. Our 14-year-old son is in Allentown. He's here with us. And back at the hotel, he went downstairs and was greeting people.
And a lady shared with me that when she got to town, she didn't know if she was at the right hotel, and she needed a meeting, and they didn't have a meeting there. And all this stuff was going on with her, and she was hurting. And she said my son just walked up to her and just put his arms around her. And I think, man, that's neat today, you know, that the Allenteans are active. 50,000. 50,000 alcoholics overrun this town, man, and it's great.
I bet the normies are probably amazed. It hasn't been a bunch of fights, and we're sober. I tell you, it's just neat to be here. I love every one of you. And, hey, if nobody's told you today that God loves you, believe it for me that he does, and so do I. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. I'd like to hear from Marty. Will you please come and share with us?
[00:35:01]
Thank you. How long do I got? Hi, my name is Marty. I'm a drug addict and alcoholic. My home group is the North Lake Group, and I'm the GSR. I'm supposed to say that, I guess, especially with all these people from out of town. I don't know. How long do I got to talk? About 10 minutes. Yeah, about 10 minutes. Well, that's about as short as I'm ever going to talk. But AA made a mistake about 9 1⁄2 years ago.
They called on me for the first time. I haven't shut up since. This is real simple. If you want to lose fear, just come up here and stand for a few minutes and look at all these faces. Oh, thank you. They tell me that I'm from the old school. They tell me all I have to share up here is my experience, strength, and hope, what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. I understand what fear is.
I suffered from it and still do suffer from it. Not quite as bad today as I did when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm a product of an alcoholic environment. I'm a product of terminal illness environment. I'm a product of, I like to say, the ghetto. I live down the street. I celebrated my 21st birthday on Skid Row in Chicago, Illinois, drinking, rubbing alcohol, and snorting gasoline. It was kind of an interesting combination.
I heard a guy in the media the other night said, boy, if you ever want to try anything, try gasoline and milk. Never done. I mean, I couldn't find the milk. Anyhow, when I was four years old, my mother contracted what they commonly refer to as leukemia, and she was diagnosed as a terminal patient, and she died five years later. What that left me with was absolutely no feelings. I was placed in an institution when I was nine years old.
I spent the next four years living with Catholic nuns. That in itself is an interesting experience. I say this, it upsets a few people, and I'm sorry if there's any Catholics out here, but I think if you're Catholic, you're almost destined to be an alcoholic. When I was 12 years old, I was returned to my father, who at that time was a practicing wino. The reason I use wine is because he drank about a gallon of muscatel a day.
He had a violence problem. He had a sexual problem. I was victimized, beaten, raped, and molested from the time I was 12 until I was 15 years old. And I can remember my first drunk. To this day, I'll never forget it. Alcohol, for me, was a miracle. Because when I drank it, it took away everything. It made me things that I could only imagine being. My first drunk was on a squirrel hunting trip in Wisconsin.
I was kind of looking for somebody from Wisconsin here. Is there anybody here from Wisconsin? All right, hi. Oh, there's some more. Good deal. Anyway, we did get a squirrel. We couldn't find it, but we did get one. Anyway, that was my first drunk, and I spent the next 15 years, almost 16 years in and out of institutions drunk. Bad behavior. As I like to say, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous Society's worst nightmare.
I was a violent human being because that's how I grew up. I drank to escape everything. It changed me. I like to refer to myself as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It applies to me. I don't know if it applies to anybody else. I finally ran out of all the wonderful ideas I could come up with and all the ideas my friends could come up with and all the ideas that society could come up with and all the ideas the wonderful professionals had come up with.
[00:40:00]
So I took my life. And I say that because I arrived at Stevens Memorial Hospital DOA. I have 96 stitches in this wrist to prove that fact. They brought me back to life. They diagnosed me an alcoholic with secondary alcohol brain syndrome. And the psychiatrist at that time says to me, he says, I want you to try Alcoholics Anonymous because it works for some people. That statement still holds true today, believe me.
I immediately left the hospital and got drunk and stayed drunk for the next three weeks. I'm one of those people that's eternally grateful I came to my first AA meeting half drunk. I don't know how these new people do it nowadays. They come in, they're smiling. Yeah, I'm new. I've got a day's sobriety. Hi, how are you? I went to my first meeting. I sat in the back of the room. I had a big cowboy hat on.
I pulled it down around my eyes. I didn't smell real good either. When I first came to AA, I weighed 265 pounds. I had a full beard. I had hair down in the middle of my back. And I did not bathe on a regular basis. I was hungover. Anyway, they asked if there was any new people. I stuck my hand up in here and said, yeah, I'm new. And they clap. I still get chills up and down my spine when they do that.
I've been around here for 10 years. I stand up here tonight solely by the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and my sponsor. She's here somewhere in this conference. They say get a male sponsor and females get a female sponsor. That didn't work out real well for me. I got a female sponsor. She's about 28 years sober. And she's from Vancouver, British Columbia. I'm from Seattle, Washington.
It works out real well. And if you don't think that's true, she calls me at 3 o'clock in the morning and asks me when I'm going to change my attitude and hang up. I had a lot of fear to lose. I was scared of everything. I was scared of people. And the only thing that I knew how to keep people away from me was to be hostile. And, brother, was I hostile. And I got away with it for a long time. I used to think people in AA were a little goofy because they kept asking me to come back.
I sat in the back of the room and grumbled. The four-letter words would come out. All that kind of stuff. I used to check the mileage on all the women that came in the program. They don't like hearing that, but that's okay. They checked the mileage out on me, believe me. I was not pretty. Not that I am today, but I was a lot uglier then. But I'll tell you what kept me coming back to this program. And it wasn't anything that I heard.
You hear a lot of things in AA nowadays. It wasn't any of that. There was a little old guy. Now, you have to imagine me with a black cowboy hat and a full beard and hair down the middle of my back smelling bad. And the only thing that could come out of my mouth had four letters in it. And this little old guy used to come up to me after every meeting I was at. And he used to wear a three-piece white suit.
He was about 75 years old and he looked like a Southern Baptist minister, man. And you have to understand, you know. And he'd come up and he'd shake my hand and he'd say, keep coming back, Marty. Only one. And I did. Next time you're hanging around the back of the room in a meeting, man, and somebody's walking out the door, stick your hand out. And old Lester used to come up and he'd say, you know, Marty, one of these days you're going to have a hell of a story to tell these people in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I guess I have. I don't know. I'm in my tenth year of sobriety. I'm involved in service, which keeps my ego in check. I have an ego problem. I don't think anybody else in this room can identify with that. I'd like to welcome you people to my meeting. I'd like to welcome you people to my meeting. I'd like to thank this lady from France.
[00:45:02]
You know, I mean, if you really think about that, about the lack of fear, stand up in a meeting where nobody talks the same language you do and tell your story. Try it sometime. Today I have a relationship with myself. I am beyond a shadow of a doubt the best Marty I've ever been. And I'm comfortable most of the time being Marty. Okay? I can wear shorts. It's kind of funny, I acquired a purse last night.
I love that thing. You've got to understand, man, I'm from the old biker, you know, street, da-da-da-da. You'd never catch me dead wearing or walking around in a purse. When you see me around this hotel today, you'll see me carrying a purse. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Marty. And I would like to call on Diana G. Hi, thank you. Hi, I'm Diana Gardner from Williston, North Dakota, and I'm an alcoholic.
This is really awesome. I'm very honored to be asked to talk. I had no idea that this was going to happen. I would have sat farther in. But this is quite an honor for me. But this is quite an honor for me. And the topic is losing your fear. When I first got here on Wednesday, my husband and I flew in from North Dakota. My stepdaughter and her husband live in Bellevue. And we were spending some time there.
I'm going to come over here. And we got over here on Wednesday and registered. And I saw so many people in so many countries. And I wanted to go up and talk to them. And I was really afraid. I didn't know what to do. So I just kind of walked around looking at everybody's chest and wishing I had the courage to say, Hi, welcome to the United States. Or, Hi, I'm from North Dakota. Do you know where that is?
So I thought, I've got to do something different. And I had an opportunity to attend the Al-Anon flag ceremony, which was absolutely beautiful. It was just beautiful. And I saw some Al-Anon ladies who generally always had their shit together. And they had a little book. And they were signing their names and sharing it with each other. I told my husband I was going to do that. So I came back the next day, and I got a book, Language of the Heart.
And I started coming up to people and introducing myself and asking them to please sign their name in my book. As I was doing this, I've had a lot of countries now, South Africa, Brazil, quite a few. I haven't found a Russian yet. I'm still looking for a Russian. But a lot of the countries are in my book. And I realized how important they feel that AA is overseas and how insignificant I sometimes think it is in the United States.
I remember a lot of times that I do not feel extremely grateful that there might be a meeting in my hometown when I'm having a bad time. I guess it's always there, so I always expect it to be there. This gave me a totally new outlook on it. Like the speaker said before, these people are coming over here, and a lot of them don't even speak English. And they're coming over here and sitting in these meetings.
It's really overwhelming to me. When the speaker talked a little while ago in French, I understood how these people feel listening to us in English. It's just mind-boggling. I can hardly wait to go back to Williston, North Dakota, and let my group know what they missed. And hopefully I can drive them nuts and they'll go to San Diego for the next conference. It's hard to even express. I don't know what I'm going to say to them.
All I know is I'm very grateful to be in Seattle. I'm very grateful to be an alcoholic. We've all gone through our fears. We've all had our struggles in life. I have family members that are in the program. My husband's in the program.
[00:50:00]
My children have been involved in it. My mom, my dad. So it is a family disease. Everybody has it and everybody got to share a bit in it. And today, sometimes I feel like there's people in my family that might need this program. And maybe that helps me track a little bit better and stay on that AA beam we talked about and try to make this a program of attraction so that maybe someday when they are having a bad time, they might want what I have.
I'm not going to walk around dragging my head, feeling sorry for myself and kicking myself because I'm an alcoholic. I found out a long time ago that I will be treated the way I treat myself. If I treat myself like a lady, I will be treated like a lady. And that took a little while to figure that out because I came into Alcoholics Anonymous not acting like a lady. So I'm learning. When I first came into the program, I was a two-stepper.
I heard somebody talk about that. I did the first and the 12 and then I did 13. I stayed sober four years and tried to give it to everybody, even if they didn't want it. Of course, the result was I prayed for a crisis and it came and I used. At that time, I used prescription drugs because you couldn't smell them and I could get away with it. I certainly found out I had this disease because I went to hell quick.
In about three days it took. For three months I used and I had to come back to my program, turn in my four-year medallion, go to a birthday meeting and pick up a one-month medallion. Applause When I came back to the program, I realized there was one thing I needed to do and that was to open up the big book. I hadn't done that before. It was interesting. We had a big book tape study a few years ago, maybe last year, and I opened up my book and I have two chapter fives in there.
I didn't know that for six years. So that's a book to treasure. But today I'm very happy in AA. It is my life and I'm willing and able to talk to anybody, anytime about Alcoholics Anonymous. In my hometown, I don't have any anonymity because I am very proud to be recovering. When anybody reaches out, I try and reach back. Thank you. Applause Craig, are you still here? If you are, raise your hand. No?
Well, you can go ahead. Go on, Craig. I'm looking for Larry. I'm an alcoholic and my name is Craig. The Pleasant Hill Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Pleasant Hill, California, is my home group and I'm real proud of it. Applause I wonder who's signing the court slips? Does anybody know? Laughter I was with a group of people last night. We went to the Kingdome and we were joking about that. We were offering people with court slips and we'd sign them three at a time for that big meeting.
I've been having a great time here the last few days, but there's been a problem. I'm used to having the opportunity to share at a meeting and I haven't had that opportunity since Monday when I came up here. Actually, I went down to the 1504 Club and felt real at home down there. Great, great meeting place. Applause It felt real warm there and I was able to share my feelings. But I haven't been able to do that since then.
I've gotten used to that. By the grace of God and you folks, tomorrow I'll have ten months clean and sober. Applause I, like you, am a real miracle. It's a real miracle for me to be up here and share that with you because I'm proud to be ten months clean and sober. I've always wanted to be more than what I am and today I want to be just where I'm at. But to get back to where I'm at today, I need to be up here for me and I haven't had that opportunity to share.
I started to get crazy. I've been to meetings. I went to an Al-Anon meeting, my first Al-Anon meeting. Applause I got some relief, but it's just not the same. It's just not the same. I just needed to share. I've been running around with some people that I'm not real close to and there's been some times that I've felt a little lonely, especially when I'm not the center of attention. Laughter In my home group, I've been charming them with my honesty
[00:55:04]
these last ten months, so I miss it, I guess. When I share and I raise my hand, the answers come and they're coming right now. I love this program. I owe everything to this program. Just a little bit of testimony. I didn't have a life since I was 13 when I started taking drugs until a year ago. Even that little short period I used AA to control my drinking and drugs for about five years. I never had a life.
Up until ten months ago, and I started to get honest with you people and trust you people and let you in and join AA, is when my life really began. I'm so grateful. That fear, the fear is gone. I don't know. I never thought it would go away and I never thought this thing was for me, and it is for me, and it's because of you guys. Everywhere I go, it's a common bond. I don't know where else I could get this.
I don't want to go anywhere else. I've got nothing against those other 12-step programs, but all the answers are here. I believe that. They're in the big book. I'll just make it official. By the end of July, I'll have my fourth step done, and when I come back in San Diego in 1995, I'll have all that done. So thanks. I appreciate it. I have asked Shauna See to come and speak. Thank you. My name is Shauna, and I'm an alcoholic from Seattle, Washington.
This is pretty frightening up here. Losing fear. For me, when I came into the program, I was full of fear. I was always afraid of people, places, and things. I was always looking over my shoulder. I was extremely paranoid. I'd go home at night, and I'd check the smallest cupboards to see if anybody was hiding in there to get me. There was always somebody who was ready to get me. How I got to the program, or the last drink, was shortly before hitting a parked car doing 70 miles an hour.
I was in jail, and I was coming out of a blackout. I was scared to death. I was afraid at that point that I wasn't going to die. I was afraid that I was going to live, and this is what I was going to have to live in was jail. I stayed dry because I was afraid of staying in jail. I was ordered to go to treatment. In treatment, the woman who evaluated me told me that I wouldn't drink or take drugs. If I did, I would go back to jail.
She was kind of my guide that kept me in long enough before I actually started liking Alcoholics Anonymous. When I first went to my first AA meeting, they told me I wouldn't have to share for my first, second, or third one. The counselors did. At my second meeting, they asked me to talk, and I said, My name's Shauna, and I'm a grateful alcoholic, and I'll pass. It was really resentful. I thought I could be upstairs learning about this thing instead of down here listening to people laugh and joke around because I was dead serious.
This was serious business. I was worse than the rest of you, and you didn't know how I felt. About 63 days, 10 days after I got out of treatment, 63 days without a drink or any drugs, I was contemplating on getting a couple meetings out of the way to get the court slip signed like the guy was talking about. On Wednesday night, I went to my first meeting that I went to on my own. At that meeting, I was also afraid to have somebody sign my court slip.
I thought, Well, I heard this woman share before, and I heard that she had two years of sobriety, so I thought I'd ask her to be my sponsor, and that way she wouldn't reject me when I asked her to sign my court slip. I walked up to her and I said, Will you sign my court slip? She said, Sure. I said, Would you be my sponsor? She said, Sure. She put her name on this piece of paper, and I thought she was going to give me a big lecture, and she just told me to call her.
Then she said, Do you have a home group? I said, No. She said, Well, why don't you make this one your home group until you can make that decision. She said, well, why don't you make this one your home group until you can make that decision for yourself? And, uh, so I thought I had it made, you know, I had a sponsor, I had a home group, I could go back to my counselor and just tell her what all these great things I had done.
[01:00:01]
Um, I still didn't really want to be there, I still wouldn't admit that I wanted to be there. Three days later, and three meetings later, um, my sponsor had asked me to go bowling with her and her husband. And my mind was saying, you know, why would I want to go bowling with this woman, she's my mother's age, you know, all these people are old, I don't have anything in common with them, it'll be totally boring.
You know, but inside I was aching, and I was tired of being alone, and it was the only place that I knew that I could come and I didn't have to be alone, I already knew that. And, uh, halfway through this bowling game, um, we have what's called blackout bowling, where they black the whole alley out and if you get a strike, you win money. And she got a strike, and I thought, great, this is my sign from my higher power that she's the right woman and she's being rewarded.
And, um, little things like that worked for me for a while. Um, and I rocketed into that, you know, the big pink cloud and stayed on that for about a month and came tumbling out after that after trying to get another woman sober, taking her to tons of meetings, buying her coffee, buying her the literature, just cramming it down her throat, you know, my way, me, me, me. And, uh, I'd gotten involved like I wasn't supposed to, and I was only working the first two steps, barely the second one.
I thought I wasn't insane, you know, and now looking back, I was terribly insane before and during. And, um, when I hit that bottom, there was a woman there, and she said, would you like to come to my house? And I said, yeah, and I was holding in the tears, and she took me to her house, and she held me in her arms, and she let me cry, and she told me I didn't have to talk and that everything was going to be okay.
And at that point, um, I felt like I was home, you know, I felt like people really did care and that, um, everything was going to be okay. And so I started working the steps. Um, fear started to leave when I started loving sobriety. It comes and it goes and it comes and it goes. I moved to Seattle when I was eight months sober. And, uh, like this guy was saying, um, I wasn't the center of attention when I got here.
And I was kind of everybody's baby back home in a little small community. And, uh, it was real hard. It was just like starting over. And I, I was complaining. I called up my sponsor back home, and I was complaining, you know, nobody hugs here. What's wrong with these people? And, uh, nobody sticks their hand out. And she said, did you offer to do that? And I said no. So I became the greeter at my home group, which is, uh, Broadway.
It's on Monday night at eight o'clock up on the hill if you want to catch a good movie and you're still here. Um, another thing that helps me with fear is getting involved in service. It's really changed my life. Whenever I go out of town to a conference or a convention or even just out of a town to a meeting, I offer to do something. And it helps me feel better. It helps me feel more like a part. Because a lot of people who know me don't think I'm very shy.
But, um, I get real, real afraid. And what I learn in here I'm able to take outside with me. A couple months ago I had to give a speech in front of my class, and I was scared to death. Because a lot of them were 18, and I'm 25, you know, and I thought I have to do it better. And, uh, I was told I didn't have to do it better. All I had to do was suit up and show up. And I, I suited up and I showed up, and I did a great job.
Um, And I always, I always think that I know the answer. But when I put it in my higher power's hands, when I put it in God's hands, um, it never turns out like I planned it, and I'm grateful for that. Because I always sell myself short. All the time. I, I think that I won't have enough money, and here comes a little job. You know, I think that I won't have enough time, and it opens up. You know, I know that I don't know what's best for me.
And sometimes I just have to get quiet, and listen to my higher power, and the answers are given to me. Sometimes the answers are given to me to you, and that's why I continue to go to meetings. Because you people have the answers, I don't. I didn't have the answers to begin with. And I'm just really grateful that I got asked to share, because I was kind of feeling like that too. And also, like, you know, because I'm from Seattle, everybody goes, Oh, you're from Seattle, you know.
And kind of moves on, because there's a lot of us here. But, uh, I hope to see you folks in San Diego, and also come back up and see us. Thank you. Um, would Pat J. like to come up? Thank you.
[01:05:09]
Hi, I'm Pat Johnson, and I'm a grateful alcoholic. Hi, Pat. Gee, this is really overwhelming. This is overcoming fears. And when I was asked if I would speak, at first I said no, no. I only have nine months sobriety. I can't get up there and talk. But, you know, I'm really grateful for those nine months. They've taught me a lot. And I have so much more to learn. I belonged in this program back when I was 14 years old.
But at that time, I didn't even know about it. That was my first time that I went to juvenile hall. I spent my 18th birthday in jail. And life just seemed to go that direction for me. You know, it was just nowhere. Then because of these inadequacy feelings that I felt, I felt the only kind of work I could do was as a bartender. You know, I didn't know what else to do. That's all I'd ever done, you know.
And I finally had just reached a point where it was the old saying that alcoholics say, I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired, you know. It just wasn't worth it anymore, you know. I didn't have anything good, no good memories. My family didn't like me, you know. And I didn't like them either. So, you know, it's like you wonder what got me here. I don't know what got me here besides the alcohol.
My family didn't drink. I was the only one in my family that did drink. You know, I was the only one that never fit in. I never fit in. And today I fit in somewhere, here. It's the first time I've ever fit in any kind of group, you know. I did a geographical change. I tried four treatment programs that didn't work for me. And I finally, well, it's not that the treatments didn't work. I left at about my fifth day, you know.
About nine months ago I decided that this time I'm going to complete it no matter what. No matter what. I completed my first 30 days in the treatment program and I sent letters to every place in California to get me in a long-term program because I didn't feel strong enough to leave. At the time it just didn't seem to work financially. I couldn't afford the things that were available besides just my AA meetings.
And that was great, but what do I do when I go home? You know, what do you do when you go home and you're all alone and those evil thoughts, you know, they start sneaking in. So I decided, well, the only way I'm going to do this is to leave where all the people that I drank with were, you know. So I moved to Langley, Washington, and it's got a great, great, great group. You know, they've been very supportive to me.
I live in a house with seven other recovering alcoholics. And, you know, this conference is, like, unbelievable to me. Being up here is unbelievable. It's an experience I've never felt in my life. And I want to thank you for helping me stay sober. I want to thank everyone for sharing this evening. And I'd like to turn the meeting back over to Karen. And thank you all for letting me be up here tonight.
I would also like to thank Nicole LaFay for being here this evening. And I want to thank all of you. And we need to have the hall be cleared quickly because there is another marathon meeting in 15 minutes. And with that, thank you for being here for me and for each other. And with that, I would like to close the meeting with a serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity.