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Source: Beth H – Sunlight of the Spirit 2018 – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: beth-h-sunlight-of-the-spirit-2018-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:12:24
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Kerry, North Carolina. Good morning. Okay, got my drink squared away. My name is Beth H., I'm an alcoholic. And because of God's grace, AA and sponsorship, I've been sober since June 26, 1988. And that amazed the crap out of me in January of 1989, you know. Then I could say I got sober last year. So, and there's milestones all along the way. Is anybody two in here? Got any two-year-olds? All right, somebody might not have told you this, but once you turn two, one of the old timers in my home group told me this on my second anniversary.
He said, now if someone asks you how long you've been sober, you can say I've been sober for years. I want to thank Dolly for inviting me. It's always an honor to be asked to participate. But with the program this weekend, there is no way. I usually don't schedule myself out this many weekends in a row. I never thought I'd wake up and say, where am I in sobriety? Sometimes it's like, okay, hotel, where am I?
But I just, I could not pass up this. And if you had told me when I got sober that I would be spending a whole weekend with all women on purpose, I would have laughed or cussed, depending on how you phrased it. And much less be excited about it. I was not excited about hanging out with women when I got sober. They said hang out with women, and I just thought, you've got to be kidding me. I didn't even drink with women.
I could keep up with the men. Why would I drink with women? And so they would say hang with the girls, and I would just think, oh, just shoot me now. But I just love women's events. I just love them. There is such a power in a room full of sober women. Oh, yeah, I always bring a clock, but it's kind of just to give the newcomer hope, because I never remember what time I started. But there is a power in a room full of women that are sober, because we are, you know, if you just stop to think for a minute about how broken we all are when we get here.
And we have different kinds of brokenness, and different degrees of brokenness, you know, and some of us are a little more annoying than others. But like, you know, I mean, my sponsor says, somebody said it last night, we don't shoot our wounded here. You know, we do not shoot our wounded. We can't afford gossip here. You know, gossip kills people. This was the last house on the block for me, and if I feel like I can't walk into an AA meeting because everybody is talking about me, where do I have left to go?
You know, I tried everything else before I got here. I did not want to be an Alcoholics Anonymous. My dad got sober when I was seven years old. You know, I knew about AA, and I knew it had a lot to do with not drinking, and that did not interest me at all. You know. But they say, you know, if you're new, you have probably been told that, you know, if you make a list now of what you want out of sobriety and throw it in a box and pull it out in a year or two, you will laugh when you read it, because so much more happens.
And truly, when I finally just gave up and got sober, I wanted my driver's license back. I wanted to stop getting arrested. I wanted maybe, someday, maybe to remarry, you know, preferably to a guy with a job this time. And that just never comes up at last call, you know what I mean? It just… Are you married doesn't come up at last call, you know. Love is love at 2.30 in the morning. And I don't know about you, but I did most of my dating when I was sober.
And I don't know about you, but I did most of my dating at last call, so there you go. I grew up in Oxford, Ohio, down the road from here. That was my first resentment. I was pretty pissed off about growing up in Ohio because I was born in California, so I thought I should be a California girl. And, you know, I was moved here against my will at 2.30, and… And I will never forget the first day of first grade.
There was a big United States map on the wall, and I looked at it and I saw California where I was supposed to be with the Pacific Ocean, and I saw Texas with the Gulf and Florida, and, you know, and then I saw Ohio. And I just remember thinking, you could look at a map and tell that nothing is happening in Ohio, you know. I mean, it seemed like we didn't even have any cool history, like,
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oh, the Canadians attacked in 1812,
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you know, my God. But… And that was up here. We didn't have crap in, you know, southern Ohio. Nothing's going on down there. And, you know, I mean, what I know now is I grew up in a great place, you know, good, solid Midwestern values. It was a clean, safe place to live. I grew up with a love of college sports because I grew up in a college town where the students outnumbered the townies two to one.
You know, when the students weren't there, we were a town of 8,000. When they were there, we were a town of 20-something thousand. And I, you know, it was so safe there that two friends and I, we could walk to the football game unescorted at six years old that was on the other side of town. You know, it just, it was a great place. But, you know, what I know now is I was already restless, irritable, and discontent by the time I was in first grade.
You know, I had already had a couple, few years of, if we lived somewhere different, if my mom didn't work, if I had a bigger room, if it was this color, if my bike was this, if I had a brother, if I didn't have a, you know, all, I'm looking at everything on the outside. If you would just do this or if you just wouldn't do that, then maybe, just maybe, I could be happy. You know, but it depended all on you and everybody let me down all the time.
And I didn't know, you know, if you'd asked me what was wrong with me, which occasionally people did, I mean, I, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't tell you I suffered when I was younger, you know. I mean, you just can't articulate that when you're six. And I just thought I hated Ohio and I pretty much hated you, you know. I never, I hear people say they used to wait for the mother ship to come pick them up and take them back to their planet.
I never felt like that. I wanted the ship to come take all of you off of my planet, you know. I mean, this is planet Beth, okay. And I, but I just, you know, my favorite promise in the big book comes after step five. And it says we can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Because I could not do that. Long before I drank, I could not be alone at perfect peace and ease. If I was alone in my bedroom, I was in bad company.
I had a chorus of voices in my head. None of them liked me. You'd think you could get one friendly voice in your own head, but no, you know. And they would tell me things like I was playing kickball two years ago. You know, I mean, like nobody has anything else to think about but me. And when I, and I also, I'm not one of those people who walked through the doors of AA and said, oh, thank God I'm home.
You know, I just was like, I did kind of drive by AA for about five years. I never was one of those ones who came in for a few months and then drank a weekend and came back. I was more apt, well, more apt. I would go to AA to get out of trouble and then, you know, give it a good week or two and be off and running for another year. And then I would go to AA to avoid going to jail and then, because I go to treatment, then I'd come out and then I'd give it everything I had, sort of, you know, for a good…
AA as modified by Beth and give it a good week or two and then I'd go drink for another year and then I'd get arrested and I'd go to treatment to stay out of jail. You know, yearly Groundhog Day kind of a thing. And so I was five years between the first time I said I was an alcoholic in a meeting and when I walked in and said I was an alcoholic and stayed. You know, five years. And I would pass through and I would hear them talk about being self-centered, you know, but I just thought self-centered meant selfish and vain, you know.
And if you'd asked me, I told you neither of those applied to me. You know, I just, I didn't know that self-centered meant that if I walk into a room and two people lean their heads together, I know they're laughing about me. I didn't know self-centered meant that if I can't win, I don't want to play. You know, not because I have to win necessarily, although winning's good, you know, but because you can't see me lose, you know.
I didn't know self-centered meant that I have one friend at a time. One good friend at a time. Please don't talk to my friend because I know she will then like you better. I have to find a new friend and you guys will talk bad about me, you know. I didn't know self-centered meant that I will never ever try anything new in public because you might see me fail at it. You know, this is how I live my life.
I had this Zoom camera in my head that watched the entire world watch me because I have to know how I look to you to know how I'm doing. I don't know how I'm doing based on what I think. You know, the inventory has a lot of self-esteem in it, the example in the book, over the years treatments kind of, you know, invaded into AA
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and so self-esteem, you know, the automatic thought is, well, that's how I feel about myself. Well, you know, an alcoholic of my variety, my self-esteem doesn't have a thing to do with how I feel about myself. It doesn't have anything to do with how you feel about me. It has everything to do with what I think you think of me and if you understand that, you are in the right place, okay. I'm a CPA. And if I said that to them, they would just go, what?
You know, I mean, every now and then I say what I really think in there and it just gets quiet. I've been there 14 years and I still just try not to talk. But, you know, my self-esteem depends on what I think you think of me, okay. So I spent my entire life trying to arrange your perception of me so I could be comfortable because, you know, if I can catch this guy, if I can be on this team, if I can get this dress, if I can go here, if she's my friend, you know, all of that stuff because just on my own, I don't feel like I take up my space in the world, you know.
I do not feel like I take up this much space. So I have to do all of this to take up this much space and I didn't know that that was self-centeredness, like all the other programs, you know, but once I took a drink, it was on. And the first time I drank, I didn't get knee-walking drunk because a lot of my friends were experimenting with alcohol and, you know, they're falling down and throwing up and looking bad.
I'm not going to look bad so I just put a glow on. I was 15 years old and I took my best friend out to drink with me the next day so I'd have somebody to drink with and the only reason I wasn't a daily drinker after that first drink is because I lived in a 21 state and I was 15 years old and I did not have access to, actually Oxford didn't have anything past 3-2 beer. It's nice to be somewhere where people know what 3-2 beer is at least, sadly, like we're all happy about that.
But Oxford was a 3-2 town because two-thirds of the population was under 21 so, you know, it makes sense but we had to go over to College Corner, Indiana or drive down to Somerville or somewhere to get anything above a 3-2 beer and I'm in high school and I just didn't have daily access to alcohol. My dad was sober. My mom, you know, she'd drink two drinks and get sleepy. I mean, I told her you could push through that but she was not willing.
You know, people say alcoholics don't have willpower. Chuck says, yeah, let them try to drink with us for two weeks and we'll see who's got willpower, you know, but I, you know, I just didn't have daily access. Now, meanwhile, I'm in a college town. I'm a child of the 70s. There were many other things floating around, you know. I always laughed in treatment when they said, what's your drug of choice because my drug of choice was where I belonged when I got here, you know.
I didn't wonder which program I belonged in because, you know, my story is that as drugs began to interfere with my drinking, they had to go, okay, because anything between me and a drink has to go. So one by one by one, drugs interfered with my drinking, you know. I never really liked, you know, the whole sober class if I got to where if I had had two beers before I smoked any dope, I was paralyzed for two hours and you can't drink if you can't move.
So I quit smoking dope, you know. I do miss the diet pills sometimes because it's the only time in my entire life that I could drink for days I was skinny and my house was clean. That was a trifecta I never achieved again. But after two or three days of that, I didn't even like me so they had to go, you know. I lived in the Keys for a while and there were a lot of people down there doing a lot of white powder.
I've never met so many people that did that that didn't drink. But when I moved to Ohio, I was on probation, imagine that. And the statute has run, by the way. We're good. So I couldn't be around town just getting a little here and there so I got hold of an old contact that's got a big pile, you know, for personal consumption. for personal consumption and you know it's bad when somebody who has never
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turned anything down I called him up I'd had about a week later and said hey what are you doing and and he goes I don't know are you out of cocaine yet and I said no and he goes call me when you run out click I was like oh maybe this is worse than I thought you know but anyway all of that went around my alcoholism too because even that drug that was my I'm not drinking drug because nothing tastes good after the first two seconds that you drink it you know a beer is too warm a second you open it and so all of that was about my drinking I didn't do these because they interfered I did these so I could drink longer I did these if I wasn't drinking you know it was all about the alcoholism and when I was done you know not only were the drugs gone my children were gone my integrity was gone my employability was gone you know I didn't sell it for a drink I pawned it because I always thought I'd go get it back you know I always thought I could just get it back whenever I wanted I didn't understand you know Tom Weston says that that when you're in the cage dancing with the gorilla you are not done till the gorilla says you're done you know and then he's like if you make it out of the cage for God's sakes don't go back in again you know even if he's humming your tune I love that I can follow thinking like that you know but I drank from age 15 to age 29 and I you know like I said I was totally self-centered before I ever picked up a drink the drink I could well when I first drank I didn't know I had been holding my breath until I exhaled I didn't know I had been holding my breath as far back as I could remember and when I drank I could breathe I could breathe I could relax before I drank I was busy busy busy because I can't be alone if I'm alone in a quiet place it's unfriendly so I'm in the band I'm on the yearbook staff student council Honor Society pep club cheerleading I was dancing as fast as I could because if that music stopped I could hear my head and when I drank I didn't need all that stuff anymore you know some of it I gave away some of it got taken away some of it I didn't even notice was gone till I got it back you know when Chuck got his degree at UC they gave us free football tickets to the first game and that's back in the 0 and 12 UC days and we figured out later they're on the quarter system so classes didn't start till September 25th so they wanted somebody in the stands you know but all of that aside we got free tickets to this college game and we went early because we learned to go early in AA so the band was warming up and the cheerleaders were running around warming up and I realized I had tears streaming down my face because here was an entire piece of my life that I hadn't even known really was missing until I got it back completely unexpectedly because I love college sports you know I grew up going to college sports and at the end my idea of a nice day was sitting in a bar where they kept the door open you know that's as far as I went was to the bar stool by the door and I would watch sports on TV but I didn't you know my life got smaller and smaller and smaller while I thought it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I I had two kids when I got sober they were four and six my daughter was four Sarah and Robbie was six and they have been in my mother's custody for three years already when I got sober I had gone to Florida we always joke there should be a sign at the state line that says this state doesn't work either you know we could just save ourselves a lot of time and trouble and turn around and go somewhere else but I I met a him down there and of course at him that didn't really like to work but that doesn't come up at last I I said for a long time there shouldn't have been a second date and then I realized there wasn't a second date he had a he had a keg party and I stayed and and when you grow up living with mottos like never ever admit you're wrong that's how one night stand turns into a five-year marriage you know I was not gonna admit that I have made a mistake and apparently he wasn't either and so five years later you know we're in South Florida and Bonita Springs because I finally escaped Ohio and went down to Bonita Springs in 1978 Bonita Springs was three bars a dog track you know two traffic lights the only place you could get a mixed drink was at the bowling alley it's like I'd moved to Oxford South on the Gulf and you know by the end of eight months I couldn't support myself down there I you know there I was out of people to date when there's three bars that's a pretty limited dating pool and I was probably gonna have to come back to Ohio because I couldn't you know I was by now I'm sleeping on a friend's couch I can't even afford rent anywhere so these three guys moved to town from California and they're all all three of them like six
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two and and you know the one I picked was six two with tattoos and long hair and a motorcycle yes you know and and me and my two friends just went to a party and stayed all three of us and we became a household of six like that and so you know Kurt and I got married and then we you know we had one child there and and then we moved to the Keys because it was like you know we went well first of all when I went moved to Bonita Springs I really ran away from home I didn't move so I didn't tell my parents I was going you know because when you run away you don't notify people and I go down there I get a job in a convenience store because I'd worked in one in Ohio so I had experience and down there I didn't know it was so transient that if you went to work three days in a row you were management material so I just thought I was a superstar you know so two weeks later I finally called my mom to tell her where I am but don't worry I'm assistant manager at this store and she said why didn't you tell us you were moving and I'm thinking I ran away that kind of would defeat the purpose right and so it gets very quiet on the other end as it does when we say what we really think and then she she said honey you're 19 you could have just moved I had no idea I was on the run I have wanted to run away since I was 12 it just took seven years to get up enough momentum and a plan to go so now we go down to Key West on 4th of July weekend we come back we stop in Almerada we like it we come home on Tuesday we move on Friday with a four six month old baby and 400 bucks hey let's move to the keys call mom hey we moved to the keys don't worry I'm assistant manager at this restaurant you know and she said how can you do something that's stupid and land on your feed it just made her nuts but I did you know I always landed on my feet always it was like there's a cartoon a long time ago and this guy's kind of toddling down the street and the safes new pianos are crashing behind him and he's just completely oblivious that was me you know I just a lot of near misses you know a lot of seconds and inches and every now and then I might get clipped you know but I just never got crushed like I should have I totaled a car at 16 years old with three other people in it driving drunk and I got hurt the worst so that seemed you know like that's how it should have been I ended up with three pins in my ankle and you know a cast from my toes up past my thigh all summer long and you know I didn't get a DUI for that I didn't even get a ticket for that I got a bill from Butler County Ohio for the repair of the bridge itemized one guardrail eight feet four nuts four bolts one hour of labor hundred twenty seven dollars and sixty cents I will never forget you know that was my consequences for what should have been the first DUI and there were many after that that should have happened that didn't you know and so I'm you know it's just always crash goes another piano and and I'm and it just made my mom crazy you know it made her crazy that I could just slide through this stuff now she finally admitted about five years ago that part of why it made her crazy is because she always got caught so she thought it was very unfair that I never got caught you know again a couple drinks mom that would all be okay you know but I you know so we're in the keys a couple years we start a little business down there because it's expensive to live in the keys and you know so now I never wanted to be a kingpin but it was just like a part-time job you know a couple hundred bucks a week and a little free product and there was much importing and exporting going on down there and so you know local distributorships were profitable and I I mean literally I thought of it as a part-time job and when I said that to the detective after they arrested us it got very quiet again seems to be a pattern in my life she's like gosh Beth we think of that as sale of a controlled substance down here so and I saw every jail in Monroe County it was that don't get arrested on a Tuesday in Monroe County Florida because it was you know it's all one County they got substations all the way down it was the judges day off all the way so I'm in you know substation up where I am I'm in the substation and marathon finally I get to the big jail at Key West which is not how you want to see Key West and that was the first time I was in trouble I thought I might not get out of you know I was six months pregnant with my daughter it was you know but even that I you know my mom sent bail money down and you know because what choice did she have I had a two-year-old son I'm pregnant and and you know crash goes another piano they weren't you know they weren't really looking for us they were
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looking for these guys and whatever they had on me somebody screwed up you know so I slid again and I came out with probation when I should have been spending years in jail and and so I decided finally you know finally Kurt said get out which I've kind of been waiting for for four and a half of the five years we've been together because if he says get out then it's his fault that we fail so now I can go right I can't go if I say but now that he said now it's his fault and sorry you know this is not a cooling-off period this is forever cuz you have thrown us out and he left for work which is an oddity in itself and and I called mom and said can you send me some money he threw us out you know and and she she wasn't she did not send many she's in plane tickets to Ohio and she had moved to Cincinnati she and my dad had divorced while I was gone and she had moved to Cincinnati so in 1984 I moved back to Ohio and you know some I want to go back and talk about the self-centered thing for a minute because you know my daughter was four when I got sober and she I mean I was a liar and a thief long before I drank you know my parents were merchants in uptown Oxford so I had to run a high street and I you know I shoplifted everywhere I stole from my parents you know I was a pathological liar and my daughter could I mean she raised lying to an art form I could only dream of you know I mean you would say Sarah I asked you to put away your clothes and she'd say I did and you'd say Sarah they're right there on the floor and she would say I don't know who put those there I put them away and you're apologizing to her you know so Chuck and I used to say you guys might be saving for colleagues we're saving for treatment and turn out we were saving for the wrong kid but we are saving and you know so so we're just convinced you know she's gonna be joining us one day and and when she was 11 she wanted to be on a swim team a lot of her friends swim so we took her to try out and the coach said well I think you'll be alright you know but she didn't have much experience in the water so he said I'd really like you to practice down in age group you know until you your skills come up to speed now this means this is age group swimming so at 11 years old this guy wants her to practice with nine-year-olds you know I'm like and she was fine with that she was fine with that I was seven years sober dying a thousand deaths cuz my kid is swimming with a nine-year-old she's fine and the first swim meet was two weeks later so she hadn't been swimming very long and these are big USS sanctioned teams so they're big meets with a lot and they post you know results on the wall with your name so everybody can see how you did and her very first race she was 70th out of 72 on Saturday she went back on Sunday I would have been trying to get my parents to relocate you know can't go back there again and we told her well Sarah you know you didn't want you didn't win but now you have a baseline time and in your next race even if you don't win that one if you beat your time that's a successful race because you have beat you know you have a new personal best now the whole time I'm telling her that I'm thinking right you know I mean my parents told me that when I swam I know it's in the self-esteem handbook you know what I mean this is what you tell your children when they are when they don't win and and she beat her time and she was happy and the rest of that story is two years later she was a state double-a swimmer you know she swam all over the state of Ohio Indiana Kentucky you know she swam in the tri-state area for Cincinnati Aquatic Club and you know what I realized was that my swimming career would have started and ended the day he said practice with the nine year old and I'd never had a drink when I was 11 and she hadn't had a drink yet you know she's 11 and we reacted to that situation completely differently you know I could not have you could have shoved me in the water and I would have bounced out the other side I mean I just could I could not have put a toe in the water if I'd had this practice with nine-year-olds because it would have been too humiliating and what would people say and she just was unconcerned about that so now Chuck and I start watching her with interest you know because we're not sure what to make of all this and is this normal I don't know would we recognize it I don't know you know so and she just kind of went on that way she got a summer job and she saved money she you know she my first geographic cure was changing schools after sixth grade because I thought if you'd been with the same you know I was in the Miami lab school McGuffey and and you know we had one grade of every class thought well if you've been with the same 26 people all those you know you
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would hate them all too so I transferred I transferred out of the lab school into public school on purpose you know because I had to get away from them and and so she goes through the same school system K through 12 does 12 years of school in 12 years has the same friends when she graduates that she had in first grade you know and and she decided at the beginning of her freshman year that when she graduated she wanted to go into the military four years later when she graduated she went into the military you know she served on active duty for ten years she was reserves for another three you know I mean she she somehow internalized like set the goal work for the goal achieve the goal I'm sure they tried to teach me that you know I'm sure they did but my outlook is more like just give me the goal you know I mean really let's if I could just put a lawn chair at the start line of a race and you bring me the trophy I am so okay with that you know if it looks hard I'm really not interested my husband who ended up getting a master's degree in administrative social work told me one time that I had a type a L personality and I was like what is that you know and he said well I have no doubt you're a type a but you're lazy enough that you're not annoying and which is true you know I'm kind of I'm driven but I don't really have the energy to back any of it up so but you know Sarah she just I mean by the time she was 14 we said you know there's supposed to be one mature person in the house we think it might be you and I mean in the army she met a guy they got married they had a baby a year and a half later you know I mean what do you do with a kid like that you know I mean here so here's somebody had a bright future and Alcoholics Anonymous laid at her feet at four years old and she just threw it away you know they're still married you know our granddaughter is 11 years old and you know it's it's an amazing thing but I couldn't make a move without worrying about how it looked and what you'd think and what you'd report to others remember that old Brett commercial you know and I told my friend and she told her friends and she told her friends and pretty soon as a whole screen of talking heads that's what goes on in my head if I think you're talking about me I think the next time I walk in a room everybody's gonna turn and point and say there she is she's the one who did whatever and so anyway I while I was in the keys I worked in this oceanfront resort and I had seven bars and three restaurants I started in one of the restaurants but I got a job as night auditor so now I'm Beth's a night auditor and and I didn't even know when I applied for the job that being the night auditor involved having the keys to all seven of those bars so I got paid to visit every bar every night and ring out their register and we'd have a drink here we'd have a drink here and then we go up to restaurant lock the elevators have a drink and do some other stuff up there all the security guards were bikers I mean it was a fabulous place to work and and one day I had gone to happy hour at 5 and I was still there at 11 when I supposed to clock in they were not happy and so I got fired and which I just thought was so and I mean I was the best night auditor they ever had I was sure of it and so I went to an AA meeting in the keys you know I went to the Tuesday night Key Largo group of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1983 and I talked about a little yesterday you know I went in it was lame these people are old they had to be 30 40 years old you know they're in a circle of chairs so there's nowhere to hide you know and and eye contact is not my thing back then and and they you know they were nice you know they were nice and and they invited me to Perkins and you know I talked about that yesterday and and but I did call my dad and tell him because that's the first time I ever said out loud that I was an alcoholic you know I've heard speakers say they sat in the bar and said I'm alcoholic who cares you don't have that luxury if you have a sober parent you know if you have a sober parent you know intuitively that if you put the a word and your name in the same sentence a big books gonna drop out of the sky you would not hear me wondering if I might be alcoholic you know I might be not drinking that or not mixing those or you know how we are I'm not drinking today I'll just have a beer where else would a beer be not drinking but here you know and but I called my dad and I told him that I had been to a meeting said I was an alcoholic because when I would come up here to visit him he would always take me to a meeting with them you know I thought like to meet his friends how nice and now I know he's like God please let her hear something you know but when they would go around introduce himself I say my name is Beth I'm with him because I am NOT saying that a word
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so I called and told him that I've been to an AA meeting and within a week I get a box from dad in the mail and it's got a big book and a 12 and 12 each day a new beginning 24 hours a day one day at a time a cassette tape of his talk few pamphlets you know it was like he'd been throwing stuff in the box for a while one meeting is it's in the mail right I make an appointment with the boss at the oceanfront resort I go tell him I know I have a problem I'm going to AA you know this is like I went to the Tuesday meeting I meet with him Thursday crash goes another P&L I get my job back you know one AA meeting cuz a works it really does and you know because they had put the the weekend girl up to full time because they you know had to and she didn't want to work full time and everybody hated her so score I get my job back I go to the Friday Key Largo group tell him I got my job back thank you I'm done with AA and you know and I'm sure I didn't drink for a while but it's not a big challenge to not drink in the keys with so many other things floating around you know I used to think the people who said you're just substituting your drugs for alcohol were jealous because they couldn't handle their drugs either you know they just wanted to wreck it for the rest of us but I know now you know it was as long as I had something to do I was okay and so now I got plane tickets to Ohio I'm thinking all right maybe I should go to AA up there you know possibly but I really thought if I quit drinking with bikers life would calm down you know so my mom lived in one of those neighborhoods that stepped out of the pages of an LL Bean catalog very suburban and and and so I thought well I'll just drink in her neighborhood you know and of course that didn't work either and I got to tell you too that in 1984 they were on fire and young people's and in AA down there because Icky Paul which is the International Convention of Young People had been in Cincinnati in 1983 so they were lit up they had a Monday night young people's group in 1984 that had 200 people they had a Friday night live was a young people's group 150 people you know it was active enthusiastic structured sponsored Alcoholics Anonymous but when I walk into a room full of people that I don't know it splits into two groups all of you and me and there may as well be a wall between us because I do not know what to say after my name's Beth I never knew what to say after my name is Beth you know conversation small talk I was gone when God gave those directions you know and I might be I might meet somebody and you know I'll say hi I'm Beth and she might say hi I'm Christina and then I'm just like now the committee has convened you know what I mean and they're up there arguing about what we should say because you're just staring at her whether you say something she's just looking at you it's football season what if she hates football I don't know you know so it's like you know they're arguing I'm paralyzed we just go we just go and and it wasn't any different in AA you know and like I said I'm sure I gave it a good week or two I'm sure of it but I you know with five bucks I can walk into a bar and know who I need to know I know who shoots pool as well as me I know who can drink as much as me I know who knows where the party is after because I always had a huge capacity for alcohol like I said I could keep up with the big boys so that's who I drank with because I love you know sometimes I forget to mention I loved to drink I loved to drink I mean morning drinking why wouldn't you if you could you know my day went better if I could start with a drink and I mean some of my happiest times were those weekend-long keg party things where you just wake up and drink and pass out wake up and drink pass out I mean my god if I could have just done that all the time but I you know so I tried AA briefly by 1985 my kids were removed from my custody because when I put them to bed I realized I didn't have anything to drink and and I didn't know I had to drink you know but this panic set in and I can't get him up out of bed you know they're one in three now and and what do you do with a one-year-old and a three-year-old if you need a 12-pack because you got to put them in the car seats drive to the car if you carry them both in you can't carry the 12-pack you can't leave them in the car you know I had moved up from South Florida in 82 where kids were disappearing out of cars you can't leave a kid in the car you know and and so there was a bar down the street four doors down I just walked down there to get a drink and the police called me there hours later you know I'm sure I didn't mean to stay that long but my three-year-old son woke up and couldn't find me and he came outside on the front porch and he couldn't reach the door handle to get back in because it was a step down out the door and he stood on the porch and he cried thank God thank God he didn't try to go find me you know he stood on the porch and cried somebody called the police and the police called me at the bar and I came
[00:40:00]
back and they said is there someone we can call to come get your children I don't know if I thought they'd say never mind if I didn't give a mom's number you know like oh never mind you keep them because I sure didn't want my mom to catch wind of this you know my god I'd never hear the end of that and and they said well then we'll call two-for-one kids and I said oh wait my mom lives here and you know we fly these banners you don't understand I'm not hurting anybody but me you know but out it's none of your business and while I was out there not hurting anybody but me my mother's life got turned upside down with one phone call you know with one phone call at two o'clock in the morning at 51 years old she became the single parent of a one-year-old and a three-year-old with absolutely no warning you know she took those kids and she kept them out of the system and I was not gracious about it for a long time because it was just one more way she had me under her thumb and she was making me look bad and and I just I hated her for it but she I did sign over temporary custody to her because she just said honey I don't know where you are half the time and if they get hurt I can't even get a medical care so I signed over temporary custody and and I let that was like I don't know how long it had they had been with her it was somewhere in the first six months she had them and I stormed out and she told me after I got sober that she didn't really know if she'd ever see me again after that day you know and I'm her only child and I put her in the position over and over and over of not knowing if I was dead or alive but I'm not hurting anybody but me you know I put her in the position that every time the phone rang after nine o'clock at night her heart stopped before she answered it because there wasn't caller ID back then you know and she she told me when I was a year sober she finally felt like she could like she didn't jump when the phone rang knowing this was going to be the call that said I was dead or I killed somebody else but we're not hurting anybody but us but out it's our business you know I mean the earth is scorched all the way around us and our families you know they bear the brunt of it most of the time and you know I will be forever grateful that she took those kids and so they were still with her three years later when I finally got sober I had run away to Florida one last time I was 29 I had a credit card of hers for emergencies and going to Florida appeared to be an emergency that day I got a one-way ticket because I'm never coming back you know and after a week the credit card was was worn out I was worn out and and I went to the Fort Myers Airport to fly back and the credit card wouldn't take a plane ticket and I just I didn't have a I didn't even have a dollar you know if I had enough for a drink somebody else might be standing here but I didn't have enough for one drink and I just my ego wouldn't let me go to the bar because in the airport because it would have been obvious I was trying to get a drink you know and I my ego just wouldn't let me do that and there were you know like I said that we didn't all have cell phones and ATM cards back then so I'm there's a lot of retired people down there and I'm thinking well maybe I can just grab a purse from a little old lady and get some cash you know but I was so hungover you know just one of those hangovers and I knew that I would pick on the little old lady that was still doing aerobics twice a week and that she would run me down take her purse back you know and I would look bad so I called my mom because what do you do call mommy and you know because by now I didn't mention but my dad died while I was in treatment in 1985 he died suddenly so you know because I was gonna go be Jim's daughter because I don't know how to be Beth so I'll go be Jim's daughter in AA and then he dies you know very I mean I just he could have thought more of me you know so now I can't go be Jim's daughter right so anyway I don't know where I was going with that every now and then I wander off but we'll be back in a minute Oh Fort Myers Airport okay so so I you know I call mom and she said call me back in a couple hours and she hung up and and then she called her friends and Alan on and you know thank God she did thank God she did and and when I called her back two hours later she said I've booked you a plane ticket but I want you to understand I'm not really flying you home you know I'm flying that children's mother home because I'm we're afraid we'll never see you again if I don't and that was June 26 1988 and I got on the plane that day I had no idea that was gonna be my sobriety date no idea you know I used to be a rock star at treatment because I'm a test taker you know if you're a test taker you know who you are I was an early reader too so testing came easily to me math and science all that stuff so if you're a test taker you can ace treatment you know what I mean I mean I just I was always most likely to stay sober forever And I had, you know, I always had my AA starter kit with me that Dad sent.
So I had, you know, the book, I already had a book, I have a tape of his talk if you want
[00:45:01]
to hear it, you know. And so she picks me up and drives me straight to the local detox in Cincinnati. And I was not amused, you know, I thought I was just going to go, I was tired. And she said, go in or don't, but you can't come home with me because we're afraid we'll never see you again. Or she's like, I've done everything I can do for you. You know, you have to do it yourself. And that was the truth because my favorite game has always been let me make it your problem to see that I get my work done.
You know, my parents had to hound me to do my chores. My teachers had to hound me for homework. I expected my sponsors to hound me to work the steps. They don't play like that. They're apparently people who really want to work the steps. So they weren't going to chase me around, you know. And so I went into detox and the next morning I woke up and I'm 29 and a half in detox. And I'm 59 now, so you don't, there's always somebody doing the math, which is usually me.
And so I'm 29 and a half years old. I'm in this detox bed. I'm assessing my situation, you know, such that it is. I'd been staying in a friend's attic because I, you know, couldn't pay rent. And my car was impounded and I had charges pending. I didn't know what those were, but probably something to do with the car being impounded, you know. It was all a little fuzzy, but that's probably why going to Florida seemed like such a good plan at the time.
And you know, none of that was really new. I had been there before. Any or all of that had gone on. But what was different on this day was that I didn't have an idea about what to do about any of it. Every plan I could come up with, I had already tried. And it had failed, you know. And I had tried this and it had crashed and burned. And I really just didn't have a friendly direction. And I realized that I was six months away from turning 30 and that I had absolutely no plans to be 30, you know.
I just never thought I would live to see 30. I used to joke about not living to 21 and when I woke up on my 21st birthday, it freaked me out a little how surprised I was that I woke up. You know, I didn't realize that I really meant that. And I never thought I'd see 30, so I didn't have plans for being 30 because I wasn't going to be here, you know. And if they had told me there, Beth, if you leave here and get a beer, you'll be dead in six months, trust me, I would have gone and gotten a beer.
You know, the reason I never attempted suicide is because I knew I would live. I knew it wouldn't work. I knew I would live. I'd probably be maimed or paralyzed on one side or something and look bad, you know. So no suicide as off the table because, you know, the risk of looking bad was too great. And sometimes our ego saves us, you know. But I realized, you know, it's like this voice came out of nowhere and just went, people like you don't die, Beth.
And I knew it was true. You know, I knew it was true. I have a friend in Greensboro who says grace is the minute when you see everything exactly the way it is, you know. We see everything clearly. And I knew that was true. I wasn't going to die. I was going to live another 20, 30, 40, 50 years whether I drank or not. And I also knew with certainty that no matter how bad it was right then, it would get worse.
And then it would get worse again. And then it would get worse than that. And I knew a lot of the worse out there, but I knew there was beyond there that I didn't know and didn't want to know. And I just had this passing thought that, you know, whatever those people in AA are doing seems to be working for them. What you are doing is not working for you. Maybe you should just try doing what they do.
And I had no idea that would be the surrender that stuck, you know. Because I wasn't counting 90 days on the calendar and circling it like I did every time I got out of treatment. I didn't have a clue if I was going to drink tomorrow, you know. But I just stuck to that, I'm not going to drink today. I was going to maybe go into a halfway house in three or four weeks. I had to clear up all those little legal issues first, you know.
And so I had promised this woman there that I would go to a meeting every day. And I wrote it down when I got back. I wrote down where I went and what kind of meeting it was. And I never wrote it down until I got back because I knew if I wrote it down before I went and then I didn't go, I knew I'd just fill in the rest of the page and never go again, you know. I mean, let's face it, I'm one of those people that will play golf alone and cheat, you know.
When I got out of detox, it was Friday, the 4th of July weekend in 1988. The 4th of July was on a Monday. My life is on hold until Tuesday. I can't get my car until Tuesday. I made arrangements to go into a hotel for women. That should have been a sign of surrender there, you know. I couldn't get in there until Tuesday. I couldn't do anything until Tuesday. My life was on hold. But I knew if I went where I drank, I would drink.
That much I knew.
[00:50:00]
So I managed to scrape up a little bit of money and get a hotel room in Cincinnati. The hotel's a loose term for this place, but it was right on the bus line. The bus stopped right in front of it. So I just had to walk out, get on the bus, ride it straight down Renning Road and walk a block to 405 Oak Street, you know. And if I'd had to transfer buses, you would have another speaker because I just was, my brain was just fried.
And I almost didn't go the first day, but somebody in my head went, you know, you skipped me. Because I'd been going all week in detox, for God's sakes, you know. So I could take a day off. And somebody in my head said, you know, you skipped meetings before and you drank, maybe you should just go. So I walked out and got on the bus and I went. And the woman that was given the lead last night, it's great to just be able to say given a lead.
Nobody in the South knows what that is. So anyway, the girl, the woman given a lead, told a room full of people, I mean, 405 Oak Street on Friday nights, 150, 200 people. And she told that whole room my biggest secret, you know, which was when I went into treatment when my children were taken, because they said if you go to treatment, you may not go to jail. Good plan. So I end up in an all-female treatment center, God's cosmic joke on me, and because I'm a test taker, right, I can say all the right stuff.
So I'm the one that they would get to talk to other women, and it's six weeks long, you know. So I'm the one that they would get to talk to women who didn't want to leave their kids for six weeks. And I would tell them all the right stuff, better six weeks now than forever later. You know, if we're not sober, we can't be parents. But the AA book, big book, talks about having a double life. We have the one we want people to see, and the one we know is true, and they're far apart.
And as the alcohol was leaving my system, you know, and I was getting my feet under me in treatment, I realized that I didn't want my kids back. Now if you asked me, I would tell you I want my kids back, because what kind of mother doesn't want her children? I mean, you talk about looking bad. But I did not want them back. Single parenting was too hard. I knew I wasn't done drinking, you know. And at my mom's, they were getting real care.
You know, they got breakfast every morning. She got them to daycare on time in clean clothes. You know, she remembered to pick them up after daycare. They got dinner at night. They got a bath every night. They slept in clean sheets. She read them a story every night. I couldn't do, now it's not that I didn't do any of that, but I never could do it all on a consistent basis, you know. And I knew they were better off with her, and I knew that it was just too much for me, that I just, you know, I just didn't want them back.
So now, you know, three years later, I'm in 405 Oak Street, and this woman tells a room full of people that because of alcoholism, she reached a place in her life where she didn't want to take care of her daughter. She just wanted to drink. And I couldn't believe somebody was telling a room full of people my biggest secret, because that one was going to the grave with me. You can't tell somebody that.
My God, what would they think? So I got her number after the meeting, and the next morning, I'm thinking about calling her, you know, and, you know, the committee's in full session again. She didn't really want you to call. She's just being nice. She's going to say Beth who, you know. Phone weighed 100 pounds. Now, in fairness, they were a lot bigger back then. Hello? By the way, you know, anybody who got sober with a cell phone, how many of you right now without looking know your sponsor's phone number?
Ten, maybe? 402-2915-283, that's my sponsor's phone number. Speed dial was coming into vogue when I got sober. And somebody that we both had about 30 days, and she goes, I have my sponsor on speed dial. And we all thought that was brilliant, right? And some cranky old timer goes, don't do that. And we're like, why? I mean, we thought it was awesome. And he said, because if you're out somewhere and your ass has fallen off, memory five won't help you.
If you lose your cell phone, could you call your sponsor? We need to know those phone numbers. I mean, I've had a cell phone since they first came out, really, because I used to travel alone. So back when it was Ameritech and it was $30 for 30 minutes, that was my first cell phone. But I still punch her number every week when I call her. I still punch it out, 402-2915-283, because I don't ever want to forget it.
My life depends on knowing that phone number. If you don't know your sponsor's phone number, memorize it today, because you don't know when you'll need it. I realize there's not even pay phones now. But still, a friend of mine sponsored a girl, and we thought she, literally, we thought she had been kidnapped. Sherry hadn't heard from her for a couple days, so she called the girl's phone.
[00:55:00]
Some guy answered, and she said, put her on the phone. Well, she's busy right now. She called back that night. She can't come to the phone. She called the next day, you know, sorry, she's busy right now. And finally, she said, look, I'm calling the police if you don't put her on the phone. Well, it turned out that she'd set her phone on top of her car when she was pumping gas and forgot it and drove off, and somebody found the cell phone, and cool, free cell phone, you know.
And so, but she didn't know her sponsor's phone number. She couldn't even call and tell us she was alive. Hey, I lost my phone. You know, it's important, it's important. So anyway, I call, and they're, you know, just my luck, she's home. And I just said, you know, I don't have a clue what to say to you, but I know I have to practice using the phone. And she just laughed and said, that's what I had to do, too, you know.
And so I started calling every day just to practice using the phone, because I have found if I don't call when I don't need to, I will never call when I need to, because you'll think I only call when I have a problem, you know. So I just started using the phone. And I started going to meetings every day, because I promised this woman I would. I was around about three weeks, and somebody said, why don't you do an inventory?
You've been around before. I didn't know. I could say I wasn't ready, you know. So I just wrote it, all four columns, as it's laid out in the big book, and the woman who didn't want her kid either, her, my fifth step, became my sponsor. And my life took off. I have never looked back, you know. And I am so grateful that I got sober in the middle of a bunch of people who went to a big book meeting every day and read it and did what it said, you know.
Because I couldn't have gone two months, four months, eight months, two years, five years without writing that inventory, because every now and then I quit drinking, you know, for a day or two. But my head would be almost to the pillow, and they would all get up. Yeah, but you don't even want your kid. Tell that to somebody, you know. I couldn't not drink, carrying all that stuff around. I had to unload it.
And I will be forever grateful that the people who wrote the book told me, you know, they told me, do the inventory, so I did. And this big book meeting I got sober at in 405 Oak Street, it was noon, big book, and they read an entire chapter at every meeting. So they didn't take up a lot of the beginning with, you know, how it works and all that, because we were reading a whole chapter. They would read the first paragraph of the forward to the first edition, and then we would go around the room and read the whole chapter.
And they did the preface and forwards on one day, the doctor's opinion the next, chapters 1 through 11, start over. So every 13 days I heard the first 164 pages of that book, and I heard how people applied it in their lives. And for me, that's the most valuable, that was a foundation. I went to that meeting almost every day for two years. We had a, that was a Monday through Friday, then we had 1230 big book on Sunday, which was the same format, but we didn't necessarily go in order.
And Saturday was a general discussion meeting, but it was almost completely populated by the people who did the big book meeting the other six days a week. So I came up in the solution, and I didn't even realize it. I did that big book meeting at noon, I did a speaker meeting every night, you know, and I didn't know until much later when I moved, you know, I started trying to catch up to the kids, moved out to the suburbs, and there was a discussion out there near my house, so I went.
And they asked for a topic, and somebody said, I'm really angry about this, and the chairperson said, okay, the topic is anger, and I just went, what? You know, because I had come up where the chairperson would have said, okay, so the topic is four-step, or live and let live, or, you know, that whatever the topic is, whatever the problem is, pull a solution out of it, you know, not the problem, do not discuss the problem for an hour.
And I, you know, it was a lot of hindsight, but the other thing that happened while I'm doing big book meetings and speaker meetings every day is I heard what I needed to hear every time. You know, I might think I have this problem, and then I go and somebody's speaking, and I'd realize that's not even my problem, this is. So if I had gone to a discussion meeting and insisted that we all talk about my problem, I wouldn't even have been working on the right one, you know.
I am a big believer in God telling me what I need to hear instead of me telling God what I need to hear, you know. I just, I'm sure they don't do that up here, but in Cincinnati and North Carolina, there's a few meetings that are an hour of the problem, you know, and I mean, we've been to some that you just think I'm never coming back here, and then you think I have to come back here, you know. So I carried a big book into a discussion meeting out in Eastgate, and somebody said, no, Beth, this is a discussion meeting, you know, like I can't bring my big book in because it's a discussion meeting.
I was like, I think I'll just keep it in case we need it, you know. But I mean, this is what's happening in our meetings, you know, and we are the only one, we have to fix it from within, nobody else can. Only One. We have to fix it from within. Nobody else can come in and fix it, you know. I mean, I owe new people the same AA that I got sober with out of the book, you know. The answers are in the book, not as modified by Beth. And, you know, I never have enough
[01:00:03]
time to tell you all the great things that have happened, but, you know, I met my husband in AA. Oak Street had this thing called All Group Gratitude Night on Monday where the area meetings, you know, would come in once a year. This meeting would come in and, you know, they would chair it and one of their members would speak and then, you know, this meeting the next week and so on. And a lot of times it was suburban discussion meetings and, you know, snooze fest, sorry, but, you know, I was a little opinionated on, you know, because we were hopping at Oak Street. And so I'm like, great, it's Mount Washington night, you know, and this really good looking guy got up that wasn't a hundred years old.
That was kind of exciting. And then he gave this great talk, right, great talk. And I tell him that I knew at that moment I wanted what he had and I was willing to go to any lengths to get it, which is his favorite part of my talk. But we actually didn't start going out for another year. We crossed paths a little, but we ran in different circles and then, you know, about a year later we started hanging out and we didn't even want to say the dating word because we didn't want to jinx anything. He had dated like I did at last call, you know, and we did something novel. We did two things that kind of are unusual. One, we invited our sponsors into the relationship. We didn't have a clue how to date, you know, so we got direction from the old timers and we dated with our clothes on. You know, I mean, I kind of came from the attitude like let's have sex. If the sex is good, we'll have a relationship, you know. So this was different and we fell in like and we fell in love and we did AA dating as you do, you know. We had coffee before the meeting and we had coffee after the meeting and you're never sure when it's done if you should kiss goodnight or say the Lord's Prayer. But we dated. He asked me to marry him. I said yes. We set the date out over a year away because we had some credit things to clean up, both of us, and we wanted to come into it clean. And so we fixed our credit. The date came. We wanted more than ever to be married. We didn't break up and make up eight times between when he asked and when we got married. And this past July, we celebrated 26 years of marriage. And, you know, he still does AA too. And I, you know, every now and then I just look at him and say thank you. And he'll say what for? And I just say still doing AA. Because we have a lot of friends that met and fell in love and married in AA. But somehow after they get married, one of them starts staying home, you know. And then the other one starts staying home because you don't want that one to get ahead of you, you know. And we're a little competitive and, you know, I'm just so grateful we have both stayed in the middle. When I was a year sober, my mom and I talked and decided it wasn't in the kid's best interest to come live with me, you know. They, by the time I had a year sober, they had been with her for four years in a clean, safe neighborhood in a blue ribbon school district. I lived in a 10th floor efficiency in a crappy part of town in a Cincinnati public district. There was absolutely no advantage for them to come live with me. So we determined that I would catch up to them, you know, because they were doing what they were supposed to do. I'm the disruption. I'm the one who couldn't follow directions. And so I started going back to school. My mom put me to work for her because I was unemployable, you know. She had a little CPA practice and so I went to work filing and I could go to work for a couple hours and go to noon Big Book and then come back. And, you know, the thing about that Big Book meeting too is hearing it read every single time. Now I went because I knew you had to read your book every day and I thought that would count, you know. And my day's free at 1, yay, you know. And reading that whole chapter chewed up a lot of the hours so maybe I wouldn't get called on because you know they wanted my five days of experience, strength and hope, you know. But God's got a great sense of humor and my day's free at 1. By 4 I remember I have no life and I'm back at Oak Street at 6 o'clock for the 8.30 meeting because I don't know what to do with myself, you know. And I didn't know people who went to Big Book meetings on purpose tend to read the book and do what it says so I had plopped into the middle of an active, active group of AAs, you know. And hearing it, some of it started to seep in. And I will never forget, I was probably three or four weeks sober and I, you know, was headed back to mom's office to work the other two hours that I could work.
And I stopped in Walgreens to run an errand and I popped up to see what everybody was talking about, you know, because they meet without me. And somebody in my head was going that was really cool what Guy said at the meeting. And somebody else was going I know I didn't even know that was in the book, did you? And somebody else was going I didn't know that was in the book either. And I remember just thinking God the voices in my head are getting sober, you know, I mean. It's a good sign if they're up there discussing a meeting
[01:05:03]
without you, you know what I mean? So my sponsor said appoint a sober chairperson and just get out of there, you know. And so I just try to keep the gavel in the hand of the sober one up there, you know what I mean? Every now and then somebody else grabs the gavel, usually the drama coach. But I just try to keep the sober one in charge and I leave them alone, you know. Every now and then I'll wake up and they're like thank God you're up, we need to talk, you know. But for the most part we coexist pretty good. And, you know, I went to a ton of meetings and we decided that I would catch up to the kids. And then Chuck and I met and married and we bought a house in the neighborhood next to theirs, you know, because it was kind of pricey where they lived. And Sarah actually came to live with us there for a year because she and my mom, you know, my mom just had some problems with her and so we drove her over to her school. And then it was looking like Robbie needed to come home too. And we said God we're willing, we don't really want to change their schools but it just wouldn't be right to keep driving them over there and use a mom's address, you know. So we said we'll do whatever you want, you know, if we need to change their schools we will. And this house came up for sale in Madera where they lived that we thought the price was literally a misprint, we thought it was missing a one, you know. I mean it was a five digit price in Madera which just didn't happen. And we called and the price was right in the paper, it was a little tiny house, the whole house was 832 square feet, you know, as my mom said the dog wore the living room. But we go and these two women had bought it, somebody died, they bought it and they had redone the kitchen and the bathroom so everything was all updated and new. And it turned out, because God's perfect ballet, one of the women had gone to college and her roommate had been Kathy H., the Al-Anon from Cincinnati. They were college roommates, you know. So she loved AA and they were willing to let us try to get a VA loan which took all summer. And they said, you know, normally we wouldn't do this because the selling season will be over by the time they decide. But because, you know, just because, they waited and we got the house and my kids walked out the front door of their mom and dad's house like everybody else in the fifth and seventh grade. And it was 1993, we gave out candy to our home group, it's a boy, it's a girl.
We'd only been married a year so everybody's like, are you guys having kids? And we're like, we are, they're nine and eleven, is that not cool? You know. And soon after that they were teenagers and we weren't real sure we made the right decision then, but we survived. It turned out our son was the one that needed a little more attention and we've had, you know, I mean, it's Bill's story. Bill says in his story that if we don't maintain our spiritual condition, we will not survive the certain trials and low spots. You know, I hope we don't give people the idea that you're just going to have a fabulous, wonderful God-filled day every day. You know, life is still in session. Teenagers happen, you know. Things happen. Parents die, you know. Kids die. You know, there's car wrecks. Homes are lost.
Jobs are lost. But the difference is we don't have to drink when it happens, you know. We've got this foundation to stand on. And you know, it says daily reprieve and I, you know, thought I knew what that meant. And then a friend of mine was speaking at Girlstalk about three years ago on step 10 and she had looked up reprieve in the dictionary. Reprieve, postponement of a death sentence. That puts a little more weight in that sentence. We have a daily postponement of our death sentence based on maintenance of our spiritual condition, you know. I mean, we have a great time in here, but underneath there's a deadly earnestness because alcoholism will kill us, you know. It is still there. If I quit going to meetings, I probably could go a few months, year, two years without drinking. But sooner or later, because our thought, you know, my thinking changes back. It's like we unwork the steps. I've watched it happen over and over and over. People quit going to meetings. They quit praying. No spiritual condition, no daily inventory. You don't really have to make amends because you're never wrong and you're already back at step three, you know. We unwork those steps. Drinking is the last step in a very long process, you know. We just don't get struck drunk. And, well, that was cheery. You know why they call this a spiritual speaker, right? On Sunday it's got nothing to do with being spiritual. It's having everything to do with getting the last word, which is spiritual for somebody like me. Anyway, those kids that were four and six when I got sober, they're 34 and 36 now, you know. I'm a grandmother, way too young
[01:10:00]
for that, you know. Our granddaughter thinks Chuck and I walk on water and we are not telling her different, you know. And we ended up moving to North Carolina for a job and when our son got out of the Army, he moved to North Carolina. When our daughter got out of the Army, she moved to North Carolina with her family. My mom moved. Everybody came to North Carolina. My entire, now Chuck has like a thousand cousins literally. You could have my family reunion at a kitchen table. I'm the only child of an only child, you know. And everybody came.
And my mom went into a retirement home that was not five minutes from my office and so I got to have lunch with her, you know. Our relationship was restored. Long, slow process, but it was restored. And when she died in January of 2017, I was there and we were good, you know. We were good. Long way from my dad dying while I was in treatment, not knowing you know what would happen. And my kids are good, you know. Our son's currently not speaking to us and you know, that's just life sometimes. You can't make him behave all the time. And you know, he'll talk to us again or he won't, you know. But I don't have to drink over that either, you know. I don't have to drink over that. And we get to, we take our daughter and her family to the beach every year for a week. We get to do that and if our son ever speaks to us again, we'll take him and his wife to the beach, you know. Because we are able to be family members now. We are able to be citizens, you know. I haven't killed a plant for 10 years. That one took a while. I'm a responsible pet owner, you know. I'm a good neighbor. I'm a mother. I'm a daughter. I'm a grandmother. I couldn't do any of that when I got here, you know. And we are so lucky that we get to do this, you know. You can change your entire attitude about something just from changing the words have to to get to. I get to get my kids up for school. I get to go to work. People like me are unemployable.
I get to make a car payment. I didn't have credit when I got here, you know. I get to be married. I get to spend a weekend with women on purpose and be happy about it. So to all of you, thanks again, Dolly. Thank you.