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Source: Beth G – From Brecksville, Ohio – Date Unknown.mp3 File: beth-g-from-brecksville-ohio-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:57:35
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I really don't know what to say. I'm extremely grateful for being asked to share a little bit of myself with you. I feel it's a privilege to be here. I certainly want to thank everybody for all their love and support. It's a miracle. It's what it is. And when I was looking out there a little while ago, sitting up here with Chester, I thought to myself that if nobody believes in a power greater than themself, they ought to look to the right and they ought to look to the left and they ought to look in front and behind them because there's over a thousand miracles sitting in this room and it's unbelievable. I feel every morning that I get out of bed that it is a precious privilege to be allowed to get up and ask for another 24 hours of the happiness, the joy, the freedom in spite of it all that this program has promised to me and which came through. I feel it's a precious privilege to be able to live and to walk free and all the promises that you people made to me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous have all come true. You have never lied to me yet and if it takes me the rest of my life and then some, I feel I will never be able to repay Alcoholics Anonymous for what you have given to me. You have given me the ability to make a bologna sandwich without screwing it up. You have given me the right to live in my own home. You have given me a privilege to that comes with sobriety that's walking down the street with your shoulders back and your head high and being very grateful to breathe in and out. A.O.A. has given me so much. Everything that I am here today, I owe to you and it's just that simple for me. I am so nervous I feel like I'm starched.
And the mafia is sitting right down here and the front doesn't help matters either. My name is Beth G. and I'm a very grateful recovering alcoholic. Hi everybody. I almost forgot that too. For those of you who care to and those of you who don't want to join me in the serenity prayer please. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. That prayer has meant a great deal to me in my sobriety. I use it, I almost abuse it I think. I learned that you can begin to say it backwards when you start to get angry. It helps me by the time I'm to the third word. I am concentrating so hard I have forgotten what I am angry about. And that prayer has taught me something that I hope I never forget a day at a time. That my name is Beth and the problem is me. It isn't you, it isn't my family, it isn't anybody else that I meet out there. It is no circumstance that happens to come into my life a day at a time. The problem sits right here. And my attitude and the way I look at things, how hard I look for the good in any situation, it is what is going to make me or break me as far as my serenity is concerned. I accept you for what you are today. For where you are going today. And we are all individuals and I think that is the most marvelous thing in the world. For a bunch of individuals to be able to somehow help each other. I have to accept the things in my life that come to me. I have to. I must. It's just that simple. And the only thing I can change is my attitude towards that. And the wisdom to know the difference comes with time and I am accepting that thing flying around. I don't know Tori. I'll ignore it. That's what my sponsors
[00:05:11]
told me. You're an alcoholic dear and there are times when you can see what you want to see and that's as far as it goes and I don't choose to see that thing. Maybe it needs its way of life. I don't know. Anyway, the serenity prayer is very special to me in many, many ways. When I came to you so sick and tired of being sick and tired, you said to me, hey if you keep coming back and if you do a few simple certain little things your life will get better. You won't get what you want, you'll get what you need to get through a 24 hour a day time. You will learn that you are never given any more in 24 hours than you can handle by God's help and the help of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. My sponsors were very good to me in that and I looked around at you people and I wanted so badly what you had and I can remember the first time I came to Chautauqua. I had gotten sober in March of that year and I came at the end of August and I looked in wonderment and I looked in awe at you and I wanted so badly to have this peace of mind. I wanted so badly to have what you had and your answer was the same, keep coming back. Bring the body and the mind will follow and if you work on those things what we're going to teach you to look at the rose and don't pay any attention to the thorns below it.
That you will never see a gray day if you really are trying to do the best job that you can. That you will find the good in any human being anywhere in any situation and thank God for you and I thank God I listened to you because the fear and the frustration and the agony and the pain and the misery all self-inflicted left my life a day at a time and it has been replaced and replaced with all those positive things that were promised to us. I came to you fully being aware that I had been running all my life and I was tired and I didn't want to run anymore and you said to me you don't have to run anymore because in the first place when you run away you're only taking yourself with you and and it's just as bad as it was and you learned to bloom where you're planted and you'll be able to go through a situation instead of finding ways to get around a situation and you'll be able to go straight through that and you'll be able to keep on going a day at a time but keep coming back. I kept coming back and my life has become better by the grace of God and the power of this program. What you see standing here is basically what came to you 20 pounds heavier and the eyeballs look a little better and but the growth is inside the growth is inside what growth there is. I'm growing slowly I make a lot of mistakes but by the grace of God and you people I can catch myself in a mistake today and and I don't have to go all the way through and and make the mistake fully. You have taught me so much and I remember coming to you and walking through those doors and I can remember hating the fact that I had a disease called alcoholism and I didn't understand that and the members of my home group said you have a disease because you got to have help with any disease. You know if you have chicken pox somebody's got to scratch that pox that you can't quite reach. If you have an another kind of a disease somebody has got to be there to help you and it's the same with the disease of alcoholics of alcoholism. The disease you must have help and it is alcoholism and it isn't alcoholism because you're going to be stuck with it until the day you die and we don't have a cure for it. You you can't totally ever be 100 percent but you can strive for perfection and you are allowed to learn from any mistakes that you start to make and that was
[00:10:04]
fantastic for me and I wanted what you had badly and you told me that the first thing I had to do was to stay away from the first drink a day at a time and I thought you'd blown your minds. I was thinking about the first drink and and I thought maybe the third or fourth gallon of wine could send me off someplace but the the first drink and then an old-timer came to me and I was invited to go sit outside on a railroad track from the meeting. It ran right behind the meeting hall and he said you go sit down on that track and when the train comes along stay there and when the engine hits you you come on back into the meeting and tell me how you feel. Well I wasn't that screwed up. I knew that when the engine hit me I mean there'd be nothing left and he said can you see now why it's the engine that kills you dear not the caboose. It's the first drink that pulls something up here that sets off a mental obsession over which we have no physical control at all because we are alcoholics and it's part of the disease and I could understand what he was talking about. I couldn't it wasn't a day at a time for me then. I couldn't stay away from the first drink a day at a time. I could stay away from the first drink right now right this minute right this minute. I could handle it. I could do with your help and God's help what I had not been able to do for myself for a long long time. You told me the things to do and I listened and I wrote them down so that I could refer to them. You said get on the phone when that terrible urge hits you. Get on that telephone and call somebody up. AAs are marvelous listeners and AAs listen to what you are not saying to and it could save your life and nobody is too busy Beth. Nobody is too busy to listen to you and AAs are not ever too busy to listen and AAs are there. It's important to get a lot of phone numbers because my sponsor said they weren't going to hatch on the phone you know waiting for me to call them but if I had a list of telephone numbers I could keep going down that list and sooner or later I would find somebody willing and able to listen to me and it would help and I could get this feeling out. You know that compulsion didn't to drink didn't leave me the minute I put the cork back in the bottle.
The compulsion to drink didn't leave for quite a while and I don't know when it was and I frankly don't care today but I do know that I could literally would crawl across the kitchen floor on my hands and knees getting to a telephone. My sponsor said get to meetings. Get to a lot of meetings and if you've just come home from one and you get that horrible compulsion down inside of yourself to have a drink then for God's sake get back in the car and go to another meeting or call somebody and they'll take you and they kept drumming into my head that no matter how I felt when I walked into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous no matter how I felt I would feel better when I left if I would let myself be open to the meeting and I've never forgotten that and it's always worked that way. They told me to go on walks. Get out of the house. Get out of the house and go on walks. Go knock on the neighbor's door if you want to. Well that was okay but the neighbors didn't let me in their house for the first nine months. Talk about the poor me. Do you ever knock on somebody's door and you've been living next door to them for about 16 years and they said oh it's you and slammed the door shut. That's an ego deflator. Today if I go knock on their door they'll let me in. See the program works in in many many ways but then I just I just keep taking a walk. Take baths they said. You get nervous go sit in the bathtub. Go sit in the bathtub with a big book. You can read it in the bathtub and I did it. I was the cleanest AA that ever came around and I still put it plenty clean. Do you know I have had six baths today? Six and I'm still a nervous wreck. But these are the things they told me to do and to keep coming back and it would get better and that compulsion for that first drink would go away. Now I'm not complacent enough to think that I will never think of that again but today I did not. I don't have to. I have a choice today and I choose not.
I have a choice today, and I choose not to drink,
[00:15:01]
and nobody's knocked on the side of my head and said, do you want to have a drink? Not today. Nobody's done that. And I know the things that you people told me to do in case that feeling came to me again. I remember my first drink that I ever picked up, and I've got to be fast on this because I'm only allowed a little bit of time, and I talk too long anyway, and I can't do that tonight. And this is very important in a way, and yet again, the most important thing to me today is what I do in order to stay sober.
It says to tell what it was like so that you'll believe out there that yes, I am in fact an alcoholic, and that's the way it has to be. I did not pick up my first drink until I was 26 years of age. I didn't like alcohol. I didn't like what it had done. It had made a mockery out of my family when I was growing up. I grew up behind a wall, a very lonely child. I grew up in a home where I'd go into the bedroom at night when the fighting would begin and pull the blanket up over my head and hug my raggedy Ann doll right to my chest and say, I'm never going to let this happen to any of my children.
I am so afraid, and I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know where to go, and I walled up on the inside. I was also an unbelievable liar. I could lie about anything. I found people paid attention to me if I lied, and the lying continued, and the lying kept up, and all those negative things that were in my life, when I picked up that first drink, they were triggered off in spades. I was taught good values. I was taught good principles.
Believe me, there were a couple of people in my family who took me to church, who taught me about God, who taught me the true and the right way to live, and the horrible part about it was is that it got to the point where I really didn't think there was a God. He could allow all that fighting and bickering to go on inside of my home, and when I got married, I got married because I thought, maybe, yes, I did care for Bruce, but I really never loved anybody.
You taught me how to love. You people taught me that love is giving of yourself and asking for nothing in return at all, and back then, I couldn't love anybody. I was uncomfortable when I was married. I was uncomfortable when my first daughter was born. I hated responsibility, and I never felt like anybody was listening to me, and that was not true at all. I chose to feel that way. It's just like today.
I can be as happy as I choose to be today in spite of what's going on around me, and back then, I didn't choose to be happy. We were at a party, and somebody asked me why I never smiled. I never smiled when I was growing up. I saw nothing to smile about, and he said, I look terrible walking around all glummy, and why didn't I smile? Why didn't I learn how to relax? Why was I all so tense all the time?
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I wasn't smiling either, and I had a sponsor who said, why are you running around all these meetings and reading the big book? Why don't you smile and give your face something to do when it won't feel left out? I've been smiling ever since. So I took that drink, and I forgot about all that hell and horror back there, and when I picked up that drink, it did what it was supposed to do for maybe two weeks, and then it started to remove.
Alcohol is a remover. We go home and pour some on a wooden table. It eats the finish off. It starts eating down into the wood, and it'll leave a hole, and that's exactly what alcohol did to me. It started to eat away and destroy the values and the principles that I had learned as a child. It took away any positive thinking that I had, and into its place, it put negative. Alcohol took away everything decent from here, and I didn't understand what was happening.
I didn't understand it at all. I didn't understand the way I was starting to act. Oh, I'd heard, you know, about alcoholics, but I thought it'll never happen to me. You know, I'll never get that bad. I'm always in control, Five years later, and the progression of alcoholism is something fierce,
[00:20:03]
and it went from escapades of sneaking stuff out of the house and selling it to painting wine bottles white because our house was white and hanging them out of the second-story window so I could haul it up when I was hoovering, you know, have a little slug, sure beat looking around in the basement forever, and little escapades like that which I do not, cannot go into tonight because time just does not allow it.
I was forging checks. I was forging a loan because I felt I had to survive with my drinking. My thinking was continually changing. I was a great finger pointer. It's his fault. It's her fault. And it was you guys that taught me that when you point a finger at somebody, you've got three fingers and a thumb pointing back at you, and you better take your own inventory. But I was a great excuser of myself.
I was a great person to deny anything, and I saw what I wanted to see, and I heard what I wanted to hear, and that's all that was important to me. I became the center of my own universe, and everybody and everything else was wrong, and God had blessed me with two more children, one little girl that we had to put in a private home who died when she was 6 because of a convulsion that came from the measles.
I used that. I used that to the hilt. I took anything I could take, and I used it. I abused it to prove a point. You'd drink. You'd drink if something like that was happening to you. You'd drink if this. You'd drink if that. And I used this, and Bruce had had it up over his head. The blackouts were coming almost at once. The falling asleep wherever I happened to be was coming almost at once. I was a wino, incidentally.
I thought it saved money in the budget. I could buy oranges and wine at the same time, and I don't mind saying I was a wino. It just did things for me faster. I call it rocket juice. It really works. Hey, I'd build a house on the moon, and the guys down here from NASA were still figuring how they were going to get some guy up off the ground for the first time. They should have asked me. See, and I felt sorry about that, too.
Poor me, you know, and that was my attitude. And my husband said to me, I strongly suggest you try Alcoholics Anonymous. I think you have a drinking problem. Okay, I knew there was something the matter with my drinking, if I'm honest about it. I knew you just didn't pass out in the rug and you didn't fall asleep in the middle of the bathroom floor. And I knew something was the matter, but I could not accept the fact that my life was becoming unmanageable because of alcohol.
I denied it. I denied it. And so to get him off my back, because he had said the magic words to me, if you don't do something about yourself, if you don't call AA, I'm going to take your allowance away from you. That was my only source of income. He was beginning to see that I was getting sticky-fingered around the house and selling stuff. He had taken me off the charge accounts, off the checking accounts.
He had taken me off the savings accounts. I had no other income, and I knew I had to survive, and I knew I didn't want to stop drinking because I could not honestly look at myself. That was the first of three times. That year, the following year, the neighbors booted me into AA. They said they'd take my children away from me. I was backing into mailboxes. I was going across front lawns in the car. I was leaving my children outside, locking the doors on them when it was raining or snowing.
I was starting to instill fear into that home. And if nobody thinks this is a family disease, I got news for you. I taught my children how to lie, how to cover up for me. I instilled unbelievable fear in that home. Unbelievable fear. And Bruce was trying to do the best job that he could do. The third time that I went to Alcoholics Anonymous was when a judge gave me a choice, and he said it's 90 days in the workhouse or Alcoholics Anonymous.
You can't drink and drive forever without getting caught. And I had been in nine jails. And this one was pretty bad. It was on an assault and battery charge. And who wants to go to the workhouse? I didn't want to go to any old workhouse. I didn't think I belonged there. So I went around AA.
[00:25:00]
Now, if you're new, for God's sake, listen. I walked in not totally honest with myself. I walked in to those AA meetings that I went into, and I did not keep an open mind. Oh, I heard the stories. I listened to how bad you got, and I thought up here, I'll never get that bad. That's never going to happen to me. I can control it, and by God, sooner or later it did happen. I never listened to how somebody stayed sober.
Never listened to that. And I did not use what I feel. And I'm not talking for Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not use what I feel is the key to the fellowship of AA. Willingness. I was not willing to have an open mind. I was not willing to be halfway honest. I was not even willing to keep coming back. I went to one meeting a week. Did you ever hear of a kid that passed from one grade to the next going once a week to school?
It cannot be done there, and by God, it can't be done in Alcoholics Anonymous. Meetings are important. I had a little boy in 1978, and he lived eight days, and he died. And today they have a marvelous word for it. It's called the fetal syndrome. That baby died because his mother was a drunk, and for no other reason. He did not have a chance to survive. They didn't know that much about it, and that was pretty darn heavy stuff.
When I finally was allowed to make a decision that I wanted to stay sober, I really had to work on the forgiveness of that. I had to work on forgiving myself. And my sponsors finally got through to me with forgiveness, saying, Don't you think God has forgiven you? And I really felt, after I found a power greater than myself, that yes, he had forgiven me. And then my sponsors said, Then who are you not to forgive yourself?
If God can forgive you, what kind of a plane are you putting yourself on if you can't forgive you? And I had to forgive myself. It's a must, because you go no place without it. The next four years were hell. And I sunk into a pit that is deep, and it's dark, and it's horrendous. And hell has been mentioned in every single one of these leads. And yes, indeed, it is a pit of hell. There are no feelings.
What feelings I did have totally froze down there. I had no feelings. There was no day. There was no night. I couldn't cry. I couldn't laugh. I couldn't feel a thing, and I didn't understand why. I didn't know what was happening to me. Because alcohol moves in. And alcohol starts destroying any rationality that we have. And then when alcohol goes to work on us physically, and alcohol goes to work on us mentally, then alcohol starts in on the soul.
And that's a very bad place to be. Yes, I tried easier, softer ways. And I turned my back on those. I didn't want to. And sometimes, very few times, I could feel despair. And the only way I can really find to describe total despair is the day that I had really gone through every piggy bank in that house. I had scraped into drawers. I had crawled on my hands and knees like an animal trying to find money.
And I scraped together enough for one-fifth of wine. The fear, the terror, the agony, the bitterness, and I started getting to be a physical person. And my God, I didn't want to be a physical person. And I didn't understand why. In March of 1972, without even the knowledge of how to cook anymore, I would lay on the floor in my own filth and vomit wherever I fell, and the family was stepping over me.
I was allowed to make a decision. And I say allowed to make a decision because, and this is very important to me, very important to me. I could not help myself. My family, there weren't any human beings My Family, There Weren't Any Human Beings Who Could Help Me, But God Did, And I Didn't
[00:30:00]
Even Know I Called Him, I Sat There, And I Wanted to Live More Than I Wanted to Die, And I Knew Something, I Knew I Was an Alcoholic, But More Than That, I Knew My Life Had Become Unmanageable, That My Life Was a Screwed Up Mess Because of Me, Not Because of Anything Or Anybody Else, Because of Right Here, And I Wanted to Live Badly, And I Crawled Across That Floor to the Phone, And I Called My Aunt Jean in Chicago, You Talk About Spiritual Experiences, Spiritual Awakenings, How Much More of a Spiritual Experience or an Awakening Could We Possibly Have Than To Be Allowed to Make That Decision, Think About Where You Were, Think About the Shape You Were In, God Did It, And I Didn't Even Know He'd Done It, I Called an Old Timer, Who Had Never Given Up Hope on Me, And I Wanted to Get This Across, Because If Nothing Else, This Man Gave Me the Hope That I Needed, I Hope I Never Forget That, That You Never Give Up Hope on Another Human Being, As Long As They're Breathing In and Out, That Nothing Is Hopeless, That There Is Always Hope for Anybody and Everybody Along the Line, And He Came Over to My Home, And He Had Been Coming, Not to See Me, To See My Family, To Try to Give Them the Strength That They Needed to Get Through a Day at a Time, To Try to Help Them to Understand What Was Going on Here, And Jerry, As far as I'm Concerned, Worked a Miracle with the Family, My Husband Was Going to Commit Me to Lima State, Because on Christmas Eve of 1971, I Tried to Annihilate Three Members of My Family, Thank God I Did Not Succeed, And My Husband Was Going to Put Me Away and Throw Away the Key, And Jerry Happened By, There Are No Coincidences in Alcoholics Anonymous, And Jerry Talked to Bruce, And I Don't Know What They Said to This Day, But He Never Signed The Papers, Jerry Said, The Road Isn't Going to Be Easy, Beth, Nothing in Life That's Worthwhile Is Easy, But If You Will Take Our Hand and Come Along With Us, And If You Do A Certain Few Simple Things, Your Life Will Get Better, And It Has, First Strength, I Remember It, I Remember It Well, And Today, I Just As Soon Choose to Stay Away from the First Strength, Go to Meetings, You Told Me, Go to Meetings at Your Classroom, That's a Place Where You Go in Through the Door, You Take the Cotton Out of Your Ears, And You Shove It Down Your Mouth, And You Wipe My Ear, And I Have One Thing of Value to Take Home with You, To Help You with Your Sobriety, Along the Line, And I Went to Meetings, And I Took the Cotton Out of My Ears, And I Shoved It Down My Throat, And I Listened for the First Thing of Value, That Hit Me, That Hit Me, Everybody Hears Something Different, Everybody Gets Something Different, Because We're Individual, And My Sponsor Said, You'll Know When This Valuable Thing Hits You in the Pit of the Stomach, You'll Know When That Happens, And It Might Not Be the Same Thing That Anybody Else Has Written Down, Then You Write It Down, They Told Me You Were So Screwed Up and Pruney, You Write It Down, And When You Get Home, You Rewrite It Down, And Keep Your Mouth Shut During the Comments, Because the One Thing of Value Might Come from That, And Not Necessarily the Lead, And Get to Meetings Early, And Stick Around Afterward, That's Where the Fellowship Part Comes In, And the One Thing of Value Might Come from That, And So I Did It, Because I Was Willing to Go to Any Lengths, I Knew Half Measures Got Me No Place, I'd Fooled Around and Abused with Alcoholics Anonymous a Long Time Ago, And I Knew It Was All the Way or Nothing, That's How AA Works, And It Works That Way for Me Today, And So I Went to All These Meetings, And I Can't Tell You How Many Meetings To Go To, But I Do Know I Could Not Be Hospitalized, There Were No Hospitals That Were Open and About at That Time, There Were Two of Them That Were Closed for Various Reasons, And My Sponsors Took Me to Many Meetings Each Day, And I Got So Tired It Was Unbelievable, And I Call Them Up and I'd Say I Got So Tired I Don't Know What to Do, And They'd Say You Think You're Tired, Just Shut Up and We'll Pick You Up in 20 Minutes, Hard, Tough, Yeah, But I Obviously Needed It, And They Did It All with What We Call Tough Love, Tough Love, I Went to Those Meetings and I Remember the First Meeting That I Was At,
[00:35:03]
Because I Remember Something Very Physical That Happened, I Remember the Handshake, And Handshakes To Me Are One of The Most Important Things Today, Somebody Took My Hand and Through That Warmth That Was Touching My Hand Came A Big Message To Me, I Love You, I Care About You, I Don't Care What You've Done, I Don't Care Where You Live, I Don't Care If You Drive or You Don't, I Care About Nothing Else Except I Will Go To Any Lengths To Try To Help You, If You Will Accept The Help, Because I Am Responsible For You, And It Says The Same Thing To Me Today, My God That Handshake Was The First Physical Contact I Had In Years, And That Handshake Remains Very Important To Me, It Was At Meetings That I Could Drop The Mask, I Didn't Have To Be A People Pleaser Anymore, I Didn't Have To Be What You Wanted Me To Be, I Could Be My Flaky Old Self, And I Could Grow, I Could Grow Slowly In This Fellowship, And You Accepted That, And You Accepted Me With All The Mistakes That I Made Along The Way, And All The Things That I Am Doing Wrong Today, Because You Know That I Am Striving For Perfection, I Am Trying To Do The Best Job That I Can, And That's All AAS Of Any Of Us, That's All AAS, And It Isn't Much, So I Could Be Myself, I Didn't Have To Wear That Dumb Old Mask Anymore, You Said Action, Action Is It, You're Never Gonna Stay Sober Sitting In The Corner Sucking Your Thumb, I Wish He Would, But You Know, You've Got To Be A Part Of, And I Wanted To Feel A Part Of, Because I Hadn't Felt A Part Of Anything In So Long, In So Long, And So My Sponsor Said It Takes Action, Look There's Ashtrays To Pick Up, There's Chairs To Pick Up And Put Away, There's, You Know, Did You Ever See Donuts, Beth Marching Down The Street Into An AA Meeting, You Know First The Two Powders, And Then The Glaze, And Then The Chocolates, And They Jump Up On The Tray And Say Here We Are, Come On And Eat, It Doesn't Look That Way, It Takes People, And I Remember The First Thing I Did, And It Was To Empty An Ashtray, And I Remember I Picked It Up, And My Hands Were Going Just Like This, When I Came To AA, I Did Not Shake, I Vibrated, And I Had To Make A Waste Basket That Was About That I Had To Make A Waste Basket That Was About That Far Away, And I Vibrated My Way Over There, And I Dropped Cigarette Ashes, And I Dropped Cigarette Bucks, And You Know What, Nobody Laughed, They Said Keep Coming Back And It Will Get Better, And It Has Gotten Better, All Those Things Are So Important, The Big Book Of Alcoholics Anonymous, I Was Told By An Old-Timer, There Is Not A Question That Cannot Be Answered In That Big Book Of Alcoholics Anonymous, And Read It, My Sponsor Said, Start On The Flap And Go All The Way Through It, And Keep Reading It, And It Is The Most Wonderful Love Story That I Have Ever Read In My Life, I Love The Big Book Of Alcoholics Anonymous, It Has Something In There For Everybody, And It Has An Unbeatable Way Of Life, I Love The Traditions, I Think They Keep Us Sewed Together At The Seams, I Love The 24-Hour Book, I Can Open Mine Anyplace, Anytime, And Can Read It, And It Always Answers Some Question That I Might Have, The Big Book Is The Same, It Is Important, The Absolutes, Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness, And Love, The Foundation For A Lot Of Programs In Alcoholics Anonymous, It Is The Foundation For Mine, Because My Sponsor Said To Me, There Are Four Questions That Come Out Of Those Absolutes, And You Better Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Open The Hole In The Mouth, It Is What You Are About To Do And Say Right Or Wrong, It Is What You Are About To Do And Say Ugly Or Beautiful, It Is What You Are About To Do And Say True Or False, And How Will It Affect The Other Guy, And It Is All Right At AA Meetings Is Where It Started, And I Looked For God, I Had To, I Had No Power Greater Than Myself, I Used You In The Beginning, I Did, I Hung On To AA, The Greatest Love Affair I Have Ever Had In My Life Is With Alcoholics Anonymous, It Is A Never Ending One, I Hung On To You, Because I Had Lost God Way Far Back There, When I Was A Little Girl, Slammed The Door On Him, And I Wanted What You People Had So Badly, And I Knew You Were Doing What You Were Supposed To Be Doing, And I Wanted That, And I Hung On To
[00:40:03]
You, And An Old Timer Said To Me, Take Your Slippers Off At Night, And Get Down By The Side Of Your Bed, And Push Your Slippers Underneath The Bed, And While You Are Down There, Say Thank You, And I Said To Who And For What, And He Said, You Have Been Sober 24 Hours, And You Will Find Out Who You Are Talking To, Don't Push The River, It Runs By Itself, Easy Does It, You Know, Stay Green, You Grow, Get Ripe, You Rot, All Those Things That Old Timers Say, And He Said In The Morning When You Get Out Of Bed, Get Down On Those Knees, And While You Are Feeling Under The Bed For Your Bedroom Slippers, Say Help Me To Make Lemonade Out Of The Lemons Of Life That Are Bounced My Way Today, And I Have, I've Had To Pour On A Lot Of Sugar, But It's Worked, And Always I Read My 24 Hour Book In The Morning, I Always Ask My God As I Understand Him, To Have A Good Day, And At Night I Ask Him If He Had One, And I Think This Is Important To Me, Because You People Have Taught Me Not To Let Anybody Stay Out, To Try To Include, And I Kept Doing This Bedroom Slipper Bit, And I Don't Know When It Happened, And Today I Don't Care, But I Knew That The Power Greater Than Myself Was My God As I Understand Him, He's Terribly Slow, Like Was Said The Other Night, I Was Delighted To Hear Somebody Else Is, You Know, He's A Little Bit Slow With Them, But He's There, He's There All The Time, I Have A Feeling, A Very Comfortable Feeling That He's Around, And When I Am In A Valley, And I Don't Know About You Guys, You Probably Are Always Up There Sailing Around On The Peaks, In The White Clouds, But I Spend Some Time Down In That Valley, And I Go To God, And I Lean On God, And He Carries Me Across That Valley, My God Has Never Made Junk, My God Is The Steering Wheel In My Life, My God Is Kind, And He Is Good, And He Understands, And I Don't Put A Question Mark Where God Has Put A Period, Never, He Has Never Given Me Anything I Wanted Since I Come To AA, Everything I Needed, And If I Have To Wait, If I Feel I Need Something, And I Have To Ask Him For It, And I Have To Wait For An Answer, I Feel It's Because It's Loving Restraint, And If I Don't Get It, I Feel Rough, I Don't Got It, I Don't Need It, And I Get On With Living, God Is Very Important To Me, Build Up Your Faith, Work On Your Faith, I Was Told To, Because I Want To Tell You Something That Was Told To Me, Someday, Something Might Come Into Your Life, And No Human Being Is Going To Be Able To Help You, There's Only One Place You Have To Go, I Found That Out, I Worked Real Hard On Mine, Because You Told Me To, And I Remember The Night, It Was A Very Warm And Quiet July Morning, About 1.20 In The Morning, And It Was The First Time Since I Had Gotten Sober, And It's Been The Last Time That I Ever Felt Terror, Way Down Here In The Pit Of My Stomach, I Thought My God, I Can't Handle What Has Happened To Me, I Can't Take The Responsibility, I Can Take Nothing, And So I Went The Only Place I Knew To Go, I Went To My God As I Understood Him, And I Got A Feeling Down In Here That Everything Was Going To Be Okay, He's Kind, And He's Good, The Steering Wheel Of My Life, I Take My Own Inventory Every Morning, I Took A Massive Fourth Step When I Came Into The Program, I Have Taken Four More Fourth Steps Since I Had Been Sober, It's Important To Me To Continue To Do That, To Get The Garbage Out, To Cut It Loose, And Those Nighttime Inventories Are Extremely Important To Me, Because I Can Look Back Over The Day, In Fact, I've Got A Thing Like This, And I Call It The Garbage Pail, I Painted It, I Bought It For 39 Cents At Woollyworth, You Could Go Get One, Though It Cost You Probably $9.28 With The Inflation, But It's Worth It, Any Negative Thought I Have During The Day, I Write Down And I Put It In My Garbage Bucket, And At Night I Can Literally Go Over My Garbage And Think Of Something Positive For The Negative That I Had Written Down There, My Sponsors Told Me When I Took That First Massive Fourth Step, Go All The Way Massive Fourth Step, Go All the Way Back and Dig, Be as Fearless, as Honest as You Can and List the Negative, but Beth, it is very important that you always list the positive too, we are very negative people and there is always something positive and if you look hard enough for it, it's like anything else, you can find it, seek it, you'll find it, it's there and this is very
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important to me today, I watch out about opening the hole in this mouth, unless it's kind or it's necessary, that's very important to me, I hate gossip, I hate it and gossipers need listeners and all you have to do is walk away from it, my God, we're here to give each other the love and the support and the caring and the sharing, I have learned to give you the right to be wrong and I have learned to give you the right to be right, because you have taught me how, my sponsor said to me, if you never, you know, if you doubt your humility and you think you can do it all by yourself again and you think you're just doing just standing and you get any of this complacency that starts rattling around in the head, take a walk on the beach and you come back and you tell us which grain of sand on that beach is the most important, that's an impossible question to answer and speaking of sand, that really isn't the mountains in my life that I have to climb, it's a grain of sand in my shoe, I try to do the best that I could do with helping other people, I try today, I love to sponsor, Alcoolia though, it's the first time I ever thought of murder since I sobered up, live water, you know, I think about go hang them out in the forest, who's gonna know about it, I know and I have to be careful, did you ever see, excuse me, did you ever see the new guy coming into a meeting, new people on floors, I don't know why, but they say hi, how are you, fine, you know, you're looking down there, but then a wonderful thing starts to happen, they keep coming back and then they start looking at the ankle and then at the knee and then at the shoulders and pretty soon they're looking right into the windows of your soul, right in your eyes and their eyes start to glow and shine with the enthusiasm that this fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer them in the nows of each day, it is very important to me, the new person, the new person at a meeting, the new person sitting in a room, any place is the most important person, I do not take credit for anybody that I sponsor, if they stay well, nor do I take credit if they go out and get drunk, I think sponsorship is a group effort, everybody puts in, excuse me, when I first went home, because you told me to practice the principles the best I could in all my affairs and when I first started going home, when I first surrendered, I was sitting in a house with five strangers, I didn't know who they were, I really had not cared and I'd walk home and my attitude was, oh I have to go out to all these meetings all the time, why should I cook, why should I make beds, why should I do anything, because after all I am going to all these meetings and staying away from the first drink, poor me, see, and I have a home group, I don't know how many of you have a home group, you better get one, my home group knows what I'm doing, what I'm saying, where I am all the time, and they got wind of this, you know about people in home groups, you're walking along in a supermarket, minding your own business, doing the shopping, and you're thinking kind of nasty thoughts about the guy in front of you, you want to give him a little push with a basket, and all of a sudden out of the tomatoes, hi Beth, how you doing, you know, or out of the pickle relish, hi Beth, how you doing, home group members pop up every place, we're never safe, and they know what you're doing, and mine nailed me to the wall, and they said you're going to get drunk, you've got to take what you learn here and apply it at home, it's important, those are the people, those are the people that went through all that anguish with you, and they didn't ask for it, they didn't ask for it, and so I went home, they said treat him like other AAs, treat him like you treat AAs in an AA meeting, so I went home, I started shaking hands with everybody, hi how are you,
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hi how are you, you know, I kept going back and doing that, and between me and Bruce G., I'll tell you, things got a heck of a lot better, slow, but you know, I learned who they were, and I had to earn the right of their love, and their respect, their understanding, and their caring, sobriety was a gift that has been given to me, and I have to earn the right in the nows of each day to keep that very precious gift to the best of my ability, I have an older daughter that got married, and she put her arms around me after the reception, and when she was on her honeymoon, and she said, mom I'll never know how to thank you, to thank God, or to thank AA for this day, I remember that child shaking in fear with one side of her face laid open, and we are the best of friends today, I have an 18 year old daughter, well she's now 21, she chose to run away when she was 18, she said it was a circumstance in our home that she couldn't tolerate or stand, maybe she couldn't, maybe she couldn't, I had to say to her though, the door is open Linda, the door is open, and I love you, I don't love what you're doing, but I love you, and things have worked out okay for her, she's not as happy as she'd like to be, but she keeps coming home, and she shared things with me, she's married today, she's married today, and she had a little girl a year ago, and with that darling grandchild, I can see by the grace of God, all the things that I missed with my own children, the first step, the first tooth, the delightfulness of when you walk into a room, and I'll say hi Candace, and her whole face lights up, maybe by the grace of God, and the power of this program, she will never know, or see her mother drink, her grandmother drink. My son Bruce is going to go to college, it took three years for that boy to talk to me, after I got sober, and it was hard, and it was rough, and you people said to me, keep going back, and it'll get better Beth, if you apply the principles. There was one very warm night on a ball mountain, three years after I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, when he was pitching the final ball in a little league championship game, and his eyes looked at the stands, and they searched the stands, and they found mine, and he held the ball up in a gesture to me, before he threw it, and after the game was over, he said, you know mother, it doesn't make any difference if we win, or we lose, as long as you're here. It works. I watched that same boy get his diploma from high school, a couple of weeks ago, and I ran down in front, and I put the camera up, and he smiled at me, and his eyes were full of tears, and he made an okay sign.
My youngest son John loves Alcoholics Anonymous. He is forever telling his friends to go to AA. Oh, he's 16, and he's Beth's peer pressure, and he just thinks it's the greatest way of life there ever was. That marvelous man, who stuck there, a day at a time, with me. I asked him, what was the basis of his believing? What was he really like? What made him tick? Because he was so much like us, and he wasn't an alcoholic, and he said, I'll tell you Beth, life is a game. It's a damn dangerous game. And you see, the thing of it is, we play to win, but winning really isn't the point. Trying, trying to win is the point. Trying to do the best job that we can do right now is the point. Never giving up on what we believe in right now, and never letting another human being down. And if we have to lose in a certain situation, at least we've tried our
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best, and we can go out like champions. And he lost in a situation. He died in July of 1978, after a two-and-a-half-year battle with leukemia. I will be eternally grateful to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous for what you have given to me, so that I was able to build a marvelously sound and decent marriage. I will never be able to thank you enough for your love and support. I will never be able to repay you at all. When you leave this conference, take a lot with you, if you can, your valuable things. And look up at the sky at night, and watch how the stars glimmer. And when the first snowflake falls, remember that it's an individual one. It's unique, like you and me. Reach over and give the dog a pat. Remember that he cares about you. Do something nice for somebody else that they don't even know about. And walk in the rain in your bare feet. There's nothing like it. Feel the wind in your face. It's magnificent. And these are the things that count, because of our sobriety.
I would like to thank the committee for asking me. I would like to thank you for your patience. And I would like to leave you with my thoughts for you. May the road rise to meet you, and may the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rain fall soft upon your field. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand, in the mouth of each day. God bless you.