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Source: Kay S – From Akron, Ohio – Date Unknown.mp3 File: kay-s-from-akron-ohio-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:48:33
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Thank you, Dale. Well, I guess these want us to get serious now, and that's what we're going to do. My name is Kay S., and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. It's so nice to see all of you here. It really is. I haven't been speaking much at AA meetings for the last year. I developed emphysema, and so I've really had a lot of problems, so I would be scared to death if I didn't look around here and see all of you and know that you are with me, you know, no matter what. So if I have to sit down and Dale can just finish it, and if you don't want to get that serious, we'll let old West Virginia Ross back there.
AA's absolutely fantastic. Let's start the meeting with the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. There's another little prayer that I like, and it goes something like this. I thank you, God, for all you have given me. I thank you for all you have taken away. But most of all, I thank you for all you have left me.
And that's exactly the way I feel. I'm so very grateful to the God that I've come to know and to understand for all the wonderful, wonderful blessings that he has given me and that he has left me. I don't always, you know, when things get a little bit tough, you know, sometimes it's hard to be grateful, you know, and everyone says, well, just show a little gratitude and do a little praying and things. Well, you know, those things are easy to do if everything's going good, but sometimes they aren't easy to do if they aren't. So we just, you know, have to hang in there one more day and just try a little harder. And that's what I've tried to do since the day I've come into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, because when I came here, things wasn't good for me. I was absolutely, I thought I was dying. I just didn't think that there would ever be anything for me. I didn't think to begin with that I could ever quit drinking, and number one, and I really didn't want to quit drinking.
I just didn't want to have the pain that I had with drinking. I wanted to, you know, drink and just not get drunk and get in all kinds of trouble and things. So that's just what I'm still trying to do, just work on it one day at a time and try not to get in too much trouble. And I think it's important for me to go back to the beginning and tell you how it was for me, because you probably wonder what a nice girl like me is doing in a place like this. And, you know, you could never, ever know how much the program means to me if you didn't know how sick that I really was. You see, I believe alcoholism to be a disease. I believe it to be a fatal disease if it is not treated. I believe it will kill you just as sure as God made little green apples. But you see, I suffered from this disease for so long, and I didn't know what it was. I didn't know that I had anything the matter with me. And it always gets worse. It never gets better. You know, the only way that we can ever get any relief from this disease of alcoholism is total abstinence.
But I didn't know a lot of these things. But today, I believe, I believe, I know how it was with me. I'm from wild, wonderful West Virginia originally. I was raised back in those hills with good, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth kind of people. They were good folks. They were a big family. I had four brothers, and my parents wanted my brothers to grow up to be gentlemen. That was their goal in life. And there were we four daughters, and they wanted us to grow up to be ladies. And along came Kay. Now, I blew their program sky-high from the very beginning, because it seemed like I could never do what my parents considered a lady would do. But the important thing to me then and now is that I wanted to. I wanted to be a nice lady. But I just never seemed to be able to make the goals. Someone
[00:05:00]
was always getting me in trouble. Never my fault, you know. My parents had a lot of values, and they tried to instill those values, because they just wanted to raise a decent family. They weren't drinkers. They weren't opposed to drinking. They were just good folks. I started drinking that old White Lightning. I was probably 14, 15 years old when I found that, and man, I loved it. I mentioned once that I drank that White Lightning. Someone thought it was a laundry detergent. But you know, I loved that White Lightning. That's that old homemade booze. God, maybe you don't even know what it is. But that old homemade booze that they make back in those hills. And I liked the taste of it, and I liked the smell of it, and I liked what it done for me. Now, you see, at this time, it was no problem, really, because we have to remember that alcoholism is a progressive disease.
So I came to the big city of Akron. I was 17 when I hit the big time, and boy, it was big time, because where I lived, it was 13 miles to the nearest town. So when I hit Akron, man, I had arrived, as Bill Wilson says. And so I started going around to all these wonderful places, you know. Boy, Akron was so big. They had tall buildings, and they had street lights, and people just were running every which way, and cars. God, I'd never seen so many cars in my life. Down home, if you'd see four cars in a row, that must have been a big funeral. So here I was in this great big city, and wanting to become a part of it. It didn't take me too long to find the truths that I could understand, and we started going around to all these wonderful places, these nightclubs and these beer joints, and man, I loved it. I loved everything about drinking. I liked the bright lights. I liked the good-looking boys. I liked the dancing. Everything about drinking I loved, and I was going to drink until the day I died, and I almost made it. But anyway, I ran onto this fella, and we were married, and I had two children, a son and a daughter. And after 13 years of marriage, we were divorced. Now, drinking had nothing to do with this divorce.
It was just one of those things that happened. But it's important for me to know that once I took a drink, I never, ever wanted to stop. I was never one of these girls to break up a party. I'd say, let's go to your house, let's go to my house, let's find an after-hours joint, but let's keep it moving. I never, ever wanted to stop drinking. But after this divorce, well, I moved in with my parents, and Mama and Daddy took over the care of the children, and I worked long hours. It was necessary that I did, that after work, I could just do my thing. Well, you know what my thing was. It's drink, dance, let's live it up.
And that's what I did, and I've had to live a lot of it down, too, I'll tell you that. And so, it was about this time that I was running into this old boy, and man, he was just my kind of people. He could drink, and he was a loving drunk. He wasn't one of those fighting drunks, and we'd just drink and love and love and drink. And he said that I got him drunk and got him married, and I don't know what happened, but that's when I married K.C., and a lot of you know K.C., most of you do, and boy, that's when my problems really started, and that's the God's truth, because I was a real good wife. I used to take him any place he wanted to go. He didn't drive at that time. I used to take him any place he wanted to go, and we started having the usual problems that, I don't know if you had them or not, but I had a lot of them, so I'd lose my car. Boy, that's an awful feeling.
You get up in the morning, you look out, and you don't have any car out there, and then you have to get your friends to go with you to help you find your car, and people start looking at you funny, like you drink too much or something, and then, but it wasn't my fault, you know. I think, well, I'd take him wherever he wanted to go. It didn't make any difference
[00:10:02]
to me what beer joint it was. If he didn't suggest one, I would, but I figured he ought to watch where we parked the car, and he never would, and, but then things got a little more serious. I started hitting other people's car, but it wasn't my fault, because they'd think that they'd never give me a signal. I didn't know if he was going to turn right, if he was going to turn left, if he was going to stop, and I'd just hit him, and I tried to tell the insurance company that it wasn't my fault. I'd say to Casey, did you see that guy give us a signal? He didn't see it. I didn't see it, and I figured both of us couldn't be wrong, but the insurance company, they didn't buy into that, so I was canceled with a couple different companies. But things just kept getting worse. Now, if you are an alcoholic, as I was, and it just progresses. It just never, ever gets better. It just continues to get worse. I believe, for me, and I've worked with a lot of women, and it seems that it's something that happens to a lot of women. It's when you lose pride in your personal appearance. I hear you men tell me how tough it was getting up in the morning shaven, and you don't know nothing. You get up in the morning, and now it had come a time, you know, that I had to get up and have a drink in the morning. You get up and try to get your face on. If you were as much pain as I do, I'm telling you, you've got to have a real steady hand to get all these eyes on. And I didn't have them anymore. I was kind of shaky. And I tried to go to a hairdresser and sit under a hot hair dryer for an hour. Now, I'm going to tell you, there's no way you can do it. I'd tell that girl, take those things out of my hair. I'm a getting. And I got. I just kept right on drinking. Well, now my hair was a hanging, and I couldn't get my face on, and I wore a pair of old baggy slacks, and they were not in fashion at that time. And, but they come in pretty good, because I usually slept in them. And people started saying to me, you know, they'd say, well, Kay, you look bad. I said, you look sick. And I said, well, I am. I tell them I had sinus, and I'd tell them that I had the virus, and when all else had failed, I'd say, I'm going through a change of life. Now, I had been going through a change of life ten years before I ever heard tell of alcoholics in my life. Society demands a woman alcoholic tell them something. I can't say, oh, I've just been laying over the house drunk for about a week. You try it, folks. It just doesn't work. And I was getting sick, sick, sick. You know, we didn't have much booze in the house anymore. Some place about this time, we decided, well, if we don't have a booze in the house, we won't drink as much.
I don't know if you ever tried that or not. It didn't work for me. I just got severe joints. You just drink it faster, and you get drunk quicker. That's all. But things was really, really getting bad. I'm going to tell you one thing that happened, just one among the thousands of things that happened to me. It was a real hot summer day, and I was going to have all my friends in that night for a cookout. Now, all of our friends drank. If they didn't drink, they didn't come to our house. It was just that simple. And so I had on a bikini outfit, and I was just a little down here and a little less up here, and I was having a few drinks and making the food for the evening. And I decided I better go to the liquor store because they was real drinkers, you know, and I didn't ever want to run out. And I took off for the liquor store in my bikini outfit. Now, I usually don't run around the streets dressed in my bikini, but drunk, I would and have done just about everything. And this day was no exception. I took off for the liquor store. Well, on the way up there was my favorite little bar. Now, this is where all my friends went, and I decided to better stop and see who was there and what they was doing, making sure the girl was sterilizing the glasses and putting all the money in the till, strictly minding other people's business. And I had a few, it was probably quite a few, but I did make it on to the liquor store. But the next thing I knew, I woke up and I looked around, and I've been a lot of places in my time, but I'd never been in this place before. But it didn't take me too long to know that the little lady was me too long to know that the little lady was in jail, in her bikini. Oh my God, I was so humiliated. I said, this will never happen to me again. A little bit of bad luck. It could happen to anybody, but it's not going to happen to me no more. And I meant it. I really meant it. But you know, it was only about three weeks later, and it seemed that I was over in Barberton, and I decided to take a nap. And
[00:15:27]
I woke up, and I looked around, and baby, I knew where I was this time. I'd been there before. And I called my husband, and I told him where I was. And now he tried to protect me. He really did, but God, he tried to protect a drunk. And so, since he didn't drive, our son had just turned 16. He had just gotten his driver's license. And now, my friends, this is something that I'm not proud of, but this is just the way it was. And he got our son to come to jail to get me out. And I never, ever want to forget the day that I walked out of that cell, and I saw my son, and a lot of you know my son. He was a handsome boy, and he's a good boy. Anyone would have been proud to have called him your son. And I wanted to go up that day, and I wanted to put my arms around him, and I wanted to say, son, I love you, and I don't want to hurt you, but I can't quit drinking. I just can't quit drinking. I knew I couldn't. You see, that's just the way it was. I don't remember what I said to my son, but I do remember, or I don't remember what he said to me, but I remember saying to him, come on, come on, let's go. I need a drink. And I didn't tell him how I really felt. And I continued to drink. I've been arrested four times for drunk driving. You can't think it can't happen to you. You know, I didn't wake up one day and say, you know, my goal in life is to become an alcoholic. My goal in life is just to hurt everybody that's near and dear to me. I never wanted to be that way. I just wanted to be a nice girl. That's all I ever wanted to be. But you see, I was suffering from this disease of alcoholism that always gets worse, and it never, ever gets better, because it's a progressive disease. And things just continued to get worse. It was after a particularly long binge. I drank every day, every day of my life. There was no decision, am I going to drink, or maybe I'll drink. I knew I was going to drink. I knew I was going to drink.
Then I'd go, you know, and do absolutely nothing but drink. And this day, well, Casey and I were up and we was trying to get better. And my drinks wouldn't stay. Well, this in itself was no big deal. I had trouble every day of my life keeping a drink down. Every morning I had trouble, but you just got to keep trying. So I tried, and I tried, and it just wouldn't work. It was the blackest day in my life. And so, you know, the thing that had always brought me up, could make me be anything at any time, had finally let me down. And I didn't know what to do. And so we came home, and I said to, my mama was there. She was always there when I didn't want her. And now I got to lie to her again. And I said, oh mama, I'm so sick. I'm so god-awful sick. And my mama said to me, if you are so sick, why don't you go to the hospital? Now, my mama didn't mean an alcoholic ward, because bless her heart, she'd never heard tell of such a place. But I had. I had heard that there was a place, and it was called St. Thomas Hospital, and you could go there and get the cure. See, I didn't know that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, there's no cure for our disease.
But I turned around to my husband, and I said to him, I said, would you give me the money so I could go to St. Thomas and get the cure? And he looked at me, and he was as drunk as a skunk, and he looked at me just as cross-eyed as could be, and he said, I'll cure you myself if you'll listen to me. Honest to God, the only thing that ever kept me out of a mental institution, he was too drunk to have me committed. But I wasn't that crazy. I wasn't going to let him try to cure me. And I went in, my friends, with the fullest intentions of calling St. Thomas
[00:20:05]
Hospital. To my knowledge, I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went in, I looked up, and I dialed the number of Alcoholics Anonymous. Today, there's no mystery to that. I know today that God was doing for me what I could not do for myself. And so a man answered the phone, and I said to him, I'm sick from drinking. Can you help me? And he said, well, sure. Send a couple women right out. Well, now, that's the last thing I wound up to my house, snooping around with a couple women, because then they'd go tell everybody. And I didn't want people to know I drank.
And so I vetoed that right away. And I said, oh, no, no, no. I just thought maybe you could help to get me in the hospital. Because, see, I was smart enough to know that I had to be where I couldn't get a drink. I knew that. This man has since passed away, but I'll never forget that day. He says it impressed me then, but it impresses me more today. He didn't ask me what side of the street I lived on. He didn't ask me if I was rich or poor. He didn't ask my political belief. And he didn't ask my nationality. I always say, thank God he didn't, because if they hadn't been taking West Virginians that day, I'd have been dead.
But he told me that he could, that he would make arrangements for me to go to the hospital, and my mother and my son took me to the hospital. The next thing I remember was this lady was sitting by my bed, and she was holding my hand, and I was crying. And I said to her, I'm here because I drink too much. Oh, she says, I know, I understand. She said, I'm an alcoholic. Well, now I didn't know what an alcoholic looked like, but she didn't look like what I thought one ought to. Well, she was a pretty little woman, and every ounce of her was dignity. But as she began to talk for the first time in my life, I knew someone understood how I felt in here. I knew I didn't have to lie to her. And she told me about the 12 suggested steps of recovery. Well, now I'm going to tell you folks, if any of you haven't read that, it would scare you to death. Oh, it says someplace in there you admit to yourself, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs. Dear Lord, I wasn't about to admit my wrongs to nobody. And well, there's just a bunch of stuff in those 12 steps. And you know what I said to her? I said, you know, I don't believe I can do those 12 steps. I just don't want to drink no more. I just don't want to drink anymore.
And thank God for her. She said, her name was Annabelle, Annabelle Tremere. And she said, Kay, maybe for you, if you will just try to the best of your ability to practice honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. But very quickly, she told me honesty is either true or false. Purity means pure in heart, in thought, in motive. And selfishness, you just think of the other person. And love, she said, if you stay sober, you will find love for another human being you never thought possible. See, little did I know that these four ingredients called the absolute are entwined in the 12 steps of recovery. But I, again, I thought, boy, oh boy, four is easier to do than 12. So I said, I'll give that a go. I'll try that.
And then she told me about the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, how many meetings do you go to? Oh, she said, I go to a meeting just about every night. And I thought, oh my God, a revival. Now, I never was hooked into them revival meetings they had down home. I said, what do they do at those meetings? Oh, she said, they just sit around and smoke and drink coffee. She said, they all have the same problem. And she said, they share their experience, their strength, and their hope with each other. Oh, well, that didn't sound too bad. You know, if you smoke and drink coffee, that's pretty good. So I said, I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'll go to one meeting a week, if my husband will let me. And that's the way I come out of
[00:25:00]
the hospital. And I started going to the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I, when I walked in that door, I didn't come to find out my problem. I knew what my problem was. I knew what I was. But they said, those people were so good. And they said that there was an answer, that they could help me, that I didn't have to drink anymore. And they had a solution to my problem. And boy, my husband thought that was just wonderful, wonderful. You know, he kind of thought I had a drinking problem. And he said he'd go to some meetings with me, and he did. He went to four or five. He cut his drinking in half. He gave up water about that time.
But, but anyway, it was, it was wonderful. And they said a lot of, a lot of good things. And I'm going to try to cut this down a little bit. But I, they used to talk a lot about medication. They said that we had to be real careful about medication, because that alcoholics are kind of addictive prone. And well, they didn't need to talk to me about no medication, because I never took anything, I believe, get a 50, cure anything from corns to snakebite. And I advised it for all my friends. If they wasn't sick, I advised it anyway. It was a cure-all. And so anyway, I was sober 10 months, and loved every minute of it. And I went to the hospital. It was necessary that I did. And this doctor gave me some nice little pills.
Now, I'm not knocking them, folks. They was good. God, they give you so much energy. And my husband's sister came to visit from Kansas, and she wanted to go to West Virginia. Well, now, I had been very sick. I'd been in the hospital for 23 days, and I was able to walk back and forth across my living room. And she wanted to go to West Virginia. It was a six-hour drive. But on them little pills, man, I could have walked it in six hours. Now, they give you some energy, I tell you. And so she wanted to go down there, and I was glad to take her. And my husband was drinking. I didn't have too much problem with him. And so I took her to West Virginia, dropped her off at a relative's house. I checked into a hotel, which was my usual practice, and ordered myself a fifth of booze, and I proceeded to get drunk. Now, when I get drunk, I get drunk all over. My hair gets drunk. My arms get drunk. This sister-in-law come up to visit me, and she didn't even know I drank. And she never saw anyone could get as drunk as I could.
So she called Casey, and she reported the problem to him. Well, he gets on the phone, and he suggested that I come home. And I told him, being the little lady that I was, I told him if he wants me, come and get me. We only have one car, and I had it, but that's where I was. But being the kind of a gentleman that he was, that's exactly what he did. He and our son got a cab and came to six hours to get me. The only thing was, when he got there, he was drunk, too. And that, my friends, was the beginning of our last drunk. For the, our son drove the car back, and for the following three weeks, my husband and I laid in our home. We did absolutely nothing but drink. Just wake up long enough, you drink a water glass full, and black right out again. You think it can happen?
Let me tell you that it can. Isn't any difference in a three-inch carpet or a three-inch gutter when you're all the way down, baby, you're all the way down. I seen these cats. Now, I was hallucinating. Seen these blind cats. They'd jump up on the bed, and I'd reach out to pet them, and they'd disappear. Well, that didn't excite me, because I like cats, and there's plenty of them around, you know. And big ones, little ones, all kinds of cats. And, but now I'm going to tell you that when I get up, and I seen a clear plastic suitcase, and there was a dead man in there. He's packed in ice. Now, buddy, that scared me. And they said that I called my sister and said, you better get over here, because he's going crazy. Not me. He's seen cats and dead people and everything. Well, thank God she knew that I'd been going to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and she called my friend Jim. Jim picked up Juanita, and they came over, and they took me to Youngstown.
And they came over and they took me to Youngstown Clinic and they took my husband to St. Thomas
[00:30:00]
Hospital. At that time there was, you couldn't get back in St. Thomas, it was a one-shot deal. But anyway, we came out of the hospital on the same day. It kind of feels good to me because back there sits poor old Ernie and he was the new guy and he came to Youngstown to pick me up, to bring me home. But anyway, we came home and we laid down in that bed and after we kind of got it cleaned up, I think part of them cats had been in there, that was the sink in the dirtiest place.
Because you think of, just for a second, of one drunk in a bed. Now I'm talking about a throwing up drunk. You put one drunk in a bed for a week. I reckon it could get kind of bad. I guarantee you if you get two real throwing up drunks in the same bed for three weeks, I thought it'll get bad. We had a bucket on each side of the bed but we could never hit the bucket. It was, I mean it was awful. Now we managed to get that bed cleaned up and we laid down and he said to me, he said, you know Kay, they told me at St. Thomas that prayer was essential for the recovery of the alcoholic.
And I said, well you go ahead and pray then. And we shared a lot of things but we never talked about stuff like that. And so he said, well Kay, you do it, you've had more practice at it than I have. So KC and I said our first prayer together. We went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that night. Now we was as sick coming out of the hospital as some people are going in, I'm telling you. But we went to a meeting that night.
We didn't get our AA by sitting home watching guns smoke, I tell you. I know for the next year that KC and I didn't miss more than six meetings, going to the meeting. We went every night and we, ma'am we was, we was trying to save our life. We didn't want to, we didn't want to die. Lord, I'd say for the next 12, 15 years, God, I don't know how long it was that we went almost every night in the week.
That, our sobriety date, September the 25th. And if I don't drink between now and September, that'll be 27 years. I come in 65. Anyway, the old timers in the program seemed to feel, they just seemed to feel how bad that we wanted to stay sober. And they done everything in the world they could to help us. They told us that number one, we had to be willing to stay sober. We had to be willing. Nobody can make you stay sober.
And you have to get honest with yourself, put B.S. in yourself, and keep an open mind. When people say something, listen. So I started doing that. And then I'd always believed in prayer, but they, they said that prayer really was essential. But I, you know, I'd start praying, I'd go to, get up in the morning and ask God to help to keep me sober for the day. I didn't always believe. I, I, I just didn't have the faith that I know today is, is important, that you need to have.
But I'd do it anyway. And I'd ask God in the morning, and I'd remember how bad it was, you know, when I used to have to get up to go drink, and I'd ask God, just help me not to drink today. And just one minute at a time, they say, you know, 24 hours, one day at a time, but sometimes you just have to break that down to one heartbeat at a time. You know, at the treatment centers, I kind of get a kick out of that, and I've worked at treatment centers, so I'm not knocking treatment centers, God love them, you know.
Anything will help a drunk. I'm tickled to death about it, but they say, you know, you have to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. Oh, my God, it said it told me I had to go to 90 meetings, I just said, you can forget that. I couldn't have gone 90 days. But you know, I did, because you told me if I just go one day at a time, just one day at a time, and that's the way I still do, just living one day at a time, and it's so much easier.
You know, we don't need to make a big deal out of this, we just don't drink and go to meetings and try to do something good for people. And anyway, everybody was just so good to us, and still are.
[00:35:00]
You know, they say that we need to watch out for, you know, self-pity and for resentments, and boy, those are really killers, and I think that we always have to do those things. They said that any answer that I'd ever need to know, I could find in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I believe that. I believe everything the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous has to say, and there's just a couple things that I'd like to share with the newer people today that I have learned.
I didn't know this for a long time. We used to say, well, you know, how does that program work, and someone would say, read chapter five, or they'd say, oh, it just works this dandy. And so I was sober for a long time before I learned that it is important for me to go back to the very beginning of the book and to read the doctor's opinion, and in that doctor's opinion there is where you can find the exact nature of your disease.
And then the first chapter in the big book is Bill's story. Bill's story, Bill was one of our co-founders, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob, but Bill's story is put in there, the first chapter, so that we can identify, we can read that book, we can identify with another alcoholic. And then the next chapter says there is a solution, a solution to what? It's a solution to our problems, and then if we really believe that we're alcoholic then we should want to know more about our disease, and the next chapter is entitled more about alcoholism.
And then the next one is, that was the one I almost missed, because I didn't think I needed it, and it's entitled We Agnostic. It says in here, I know you can all read, but I want to read this to you anyway. It says in this agnostic, it says, lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously, but where and how were we to find this power?
It says, well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself, which will solve your problems. See, I believe this stuff, I really do. It says, once a person says that they believe, or are even willing to believe, that we can tell them while they're on their way, and I know that, in my case, to be the truth. And then we come to how it works, chapter five, and in there is where you read all about them twelve steps, and I'm going to tell you folks that sometimes newer people, they just get so bent out of shape about those, and just take them just one day at a time.
I believe the day we quit drinking, that we have already taken a personal inventory, we've taken a look at ourselves, and I think that just not drinking, that we begin to work on these steps, and it will come. I've just had so much help, I've had so much help. I had a person that told me once, they said, Kay, don't settle for a half a loaf, go for the whole bunch. And you know, I did. I belong to a home group.
I believe that that is really important. After you've been sober for a while, go around and see, you know, where you feel comfortable at, and then join a home group, and then be there, be a part of, we've been a part from for so long, and be a part of that group. And then get active in your general service, or your answering calls, whatever it might be to help the suffering alcoholic. The very lifeblood of this program is the new people that comes in, and we share with each other.
And then they said, we have what is called general service, it's the mother root of the whole thing. And a lot of people said, I don't want to hear nothing about that office they got up in New York. I got, we better want to hear about it, because it's important, it's the basis for everything that we do. We have the traditions, the traditions are, that's what keeps us united.
[00:40:04]
You know, that we don't go off telling everybody in the world that, you know, on television and everything, that we're in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous. My God, what if you get drunk, and then someone will say, well, see, I knew that place wouldn't work. But, you know, anonymity is really important, and I think that we should never, ever break someone else's anonymity, but within our group, you should know who I am.
I mean, we're one big family. This program is, it is powerful, I'll tell you that it is powerful. You know, I think working with another alcoholic has been the thing that's helped me so very much. I was sober a month. Now, some people will say, you can't sponsor people, you can't work with people until you do the 12 steps. God, I'm glad they didn't tell me that, because you know what, I was sober a month.
And a sister at the hospital said to me, she said, Kay, I have a new girl here, and I'd like for you to sponsor her. I said, my God, what did I tell her, I've only been sober a month. She said, what have you been doing this month? I said, oh, I just don't drink, and I go to meetings. And she said, well, then tell her. And so, you know, I did. And you know, my friends, after 26 years, that's what I still tell a new girl, I just don't drink, and I go to meetings, and I figured, well, if I can get her down here, maybe you can tell her something that will keep her sober.
But I think that sponsorship is absolutely the most important thing that we can do. I feel kind of like a little girl, she had this little old cat, and she was just always petting that cat, and brushing that cat, and someone said to her, why do you keep brushing and petting that cat for all the time? Oh, she said, I'm going to enter her into a pet show. The little girl said, no need for you to do that, she can't win any prizes.
Well, she said, I don't expect her to, but she'll meet a lot of nice cats. And see, that's what's happened to me. I haven't won any prizes, but I've sure met a lot of nice cats. I mean, really, a lot of nice cats. A little more than three years ago, Casey passed away. And it was a real tough one, folks. And of course, you know, I'm not the only person that ever grieves. I'm sure that a lot of you did, too.
He was a good man, and he was a good, good man. But it was really, really tough. You know, we had it all. But you just have to keep on going. No matter what happens, you have to keep on going. And so, it was with all of your love and your support, then and now, that makes, you know, life really great. Things are good for me. I've learned to do a lot of things since I've been in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Programs should be, as Dale said, serious, but fun, too. Because if it wasn't fun, folks, we couldn't handle it. And here, you know, a lot of people say there's a lot of gossip going on down them AA meetings. Now, you know and I know that isn't really true. Because if we are really practicing the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, then what in the name of God could I say about you? How can a pot call a kettle black?
What have I ever done or you've ever done that I haven't wanted to do? You know, we'd better hang together or we'll all die. I'm telling you, it's just that simple. We have another program called Al-Anon. It's for the family or the friends of the alcoholic. It's a wonderful program. Because I guess we made them real sick. I don't know. I was drunk, so I don't know what all I've done to them. But I'll tell you one thing, that my family, I have four grandsons.
And I have four great-grandchildren. And I have a real good relationship with my children. When my son was in the Navy, I'd been sober two years. I got a part of a letter from him. know how glad Kathy and I were the day that, when you stopped drinking, I forgot, I lost
[00:45:07]
my place here, but anyway, that was just a fringe benefit that I have gotten, I know that I could bring just one drink and that would all be over. My daughter was out golfing, here's where he said, you and daddy will never know how glad Kathy and I were the day you quit drinking, please don't ever start again, and that is a fringe benefit. I was out golfing with my daughter Kathy, and one of her friends said to her, Kathy, how happened you do so many things with your mother, and she said, because mama's my best friend, I almost lost it all, but today I'm her best friend. I golf, I don't golf as often as I used to, I golf, I'm on two legs, I golf, oh, three or four times a week, and I've learned to do a little painting, I do a little acrylic, a little oils. Life is really nice, I've learned, you know, that's what AA's all about, it's to get us back into the mainstream of living.
You know, you told me if I would go to meetings if I didn't drink, if I would walk like a lady, if I would talk like a lady, if I would act like a lady, and if I had a practice of principles, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I could be a lady. I believe that I met with my parents' expectations, and my friends, I hope that I have met with yours, because you see, anything that I am, anything that I would ever, ever hope to be, I owe it all directly to Alcoholics Anonymous. We talk about gratitude, am I grateful enough? I don't know, but if I am, then let it show in my actions, by helping another alcoholic. I really appreciate being here tonight, as you know, I just kind of get a little bit rattled, but that's not unusual, I usually am, but I do appreciate you asking me, Dale, and I've never seen God, but I know how I feel. It's people like you who make him so real. My God is no stranger, he's friendly, I say, and he doesn't ask me to weep when I pray. It seems that I pass him so often each day, in the faces of people I meet on my way. He's the stars in the heaven, he's the smile on a face, he's the leaf on a tree, he's a rose in a vase.
I wish I might meet him much more than I do, and I would if there were more people like you. God bless you, I love you. Thank you.