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Source: Lillie H – From South Portland, Maine – Date Unknown.mp3 File: lillie-h-from-south-portland-maine-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:00:45
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Hi everyone, my name is Lily, I'm an alcoholic. What an honor it is to be here this morning. Although not so much, you know, I've never, I had to speak directly after another speaker and especially somebody as powerful as Angie. I'm also a member of Al-Anon so I'm a double winner and anyway, I thank the committee for all the hard work. I know how hard it is to put on one of these conventions. I just recently was elected out and from doing that job at our, excuse me, in Maine, what we do is you hold the position of round up chair for two years and so I just rotated off from that job and I'm still active in AA. My sobriety date is November the 8th, 1989. There's nobody that's more surprised than I am that I'm still here because you see, the only requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous is the desire to stop drinking and I did not have that when I got here. I did not have a desire to quit drinking. There were a lot of people in my life that had a desire for me to quit drinking. I just wasn't one of them, you know, and I want to thank Bill for taping. I mean, that's an awesome job they do. You know, often it gets overlooked but the tape saved my life when I was early in sobriety and I couldn't get to a meeting every day. If I couldn't get to a meeting, I would listen to a tape and you know, those tapes helped me and I thought those people were like, jeez, they were the gods in AA. You know, the big kahunas of AA and now today I get to do this and I mean literally want to tell you that how does a girl fall off on a bar stool in Windham, Maine and end up in Carrollton, Kentucky speaking? You know, it just, boy, if you don't believe in God after I get done, you'll have a little bit of an inkling of what he has worked in this life. And so unlike a lot of alcoholics, I did, I was a late bloomer. Like Judith said, she didn't stop drinking until she was 28. In the state that I lived in, the legal age to drink was 21 and that's when I had my first drink, you know, because it was legal. But I actually, I had my very first drink and the celebration was my wedding. And I didn't know very much about drinking. I don't come from an alcoholic family as far as I know.
I don't know who, you know, somewhere along the line there are probably some alcoholics in there. But I learned early on that, you know, it's not who in your family you can blame it on. It's what did alcohol do to you and for you? You know, so I don't know who the alcoholic was, but I know it wasn't my parents. I was brought up in a very loving home. My mom stayed home, took care of the kids. My dad went to work every day. Just before my dad was due home every day, mom would go into the bathroom and she'd put on some lipstick. She used to put little dots here, you know, some lipstick and she'd change her apron and comb her hair. And then she'd be standing at the kitchen sink doing the pre-dinner dishes and dad would walk in the house every single day at 4 o'clock. Hi, honey, how was your day? Where are the kids? And she would turn around and give them a kiss on the cheek and then she'd report where we all were and what we were all doing. So that was my childhood growing up. I went to parochial schools. I don't have an issue with the Catholic Church. You know, if you're one of those people that get up here at the podium and you talk about all the issues that you have with the religion of your childhood, it's my personal belief that you still have some work to do. And I mean, I don't have an issue with it. It's funny because in my home group, there are at least 10 of us that all went to the same parochial school, had the same teachers. You know, I hear them speak and they talk about the punishing God, that they heard about this punishing God. I never heard that. I've been different from the get-go. I heard God loved me and he was everywhere.
I went with that. So it doesn't make any difference what you do. God's going to love you through it, you know. So it's made it easy for me coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, although I didn't want to come, you know. I'll tell you a little bit about my past. I was the girl that had her first drink at her wedding reception. We went in, it was at a place called the VFW, and my dad walked me up to the bar and he said, honey, what are you going to have? I
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don't know anything about drinking. I mean, it's not my experience at home. My dad might have come home once in a while on a hot summer day with two quarts of beer. Now, I grew up with four brothers, two grandmothers, my mother and my father. We all lived happily in this home. Sometimes not so happy, but anyway, after I started drinking, I thought, what was the point of coming home with two quarts of beer on a hot summer day if you have to split it with four people? I mean, that's the part that bothers me, you know. That's the part that bothers me. Anyway, so what are you going to have, honey? I don't know.
Daddy, what are you going to have? Daddy's going to have a whiskey. By the way, I had this gorgeous wedding gown, the big hoop skirt. I was like Scarlett O'Hara. Anyway, I immediately gave myself away because when you sit down, you girls in the South probably already know this, but I didn't know this. You're supposed to like daintily pick this thing up and sit down. No, I just sat down and the whole thing went poof, you know. So, now you can see my underwear, you know. But anyway, Daddy said, what are you going to have? I don't know, Daddy. What are you having? He's having a whiskey and ginger. Good. I'll have the same thing. I don't know if you've ever drank in a service club, but the service clubs in New England, when you say you'll have a whiskey and ginger, it's like this much whiskey and this much ginger. And the next words he said, I believe, are the words that turned me into an alcoholic because he said, here's to you, kid. And what I knew about drinking, I saw on TV, Lucy and Desi were going to cocktail parties. I know some of you are new in here.
You have no idea who the hell I'm talking about, Lucy and Desi, but if you're lucky enough to have cable TV, you get TV land, you see those two crazy people. Lucy, that's me in a nutshell. Anyway, here's to you, kid. I downed that drink. The next thing I remember is taking my dress off on the front lawn, and that's the way my drinking was going to be for the rest of my drinking. Every time I drank, I would lose articles of clothing.
I mean, I have no idea what possesses women of our ilk that drink alcohol and then think we should expose body parts to you. But if you're a real alcoholic, I can assure you that you've probably done that at some point in your drinking career. So, anyway, so the man I married was alcoholic. I didn't know he was an alcoholic. This is how I figured out he might have a problem with drinking. I sat him down before we got married, and I said, listen, my father comes home every single day at 4 o'clock, and that's what you're going to do. You come home every day at 4, you get out at 3.30, there's no excuses. You'll be home at 4 o'clock, and that's how it's going to go. And he was like, okay, I can do that. What I didn't know was that every day he would come home and he would have a case of beer. And this man used to sit on the floor. We had furniture, but he used to sit on the floor in front of this easy chair. And one day he got up to go to the bathroom, and there was a perfect outline of his body in beer cans, and I thought, how long have those beer cans been there, and where did they come from? And Jesus, maybe he's got a drinking problem, you know. And after that, and see, there were signs all along the way, but I never knew that. I never knew that there were signs. He would try to quit drinking, but I would think to myself, well, he's got a drinking problem, but I don't. I mean, I can still have a drink. It never occurred to me that it might make it difficult for him if I was drinking, and he was trying not to, you know. Anyway, the marriage was doomed.
We had four children in five years, and we lost our second child to SIDS. And he never recovered from that. And the reason, I think, that he never recovered is because when they went to find him, he wasn't at work. He was in a bar at 10 o'clock in the morning. And I just think that, you know, he doesn't drink today. He doesn't have the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's none of my business. As Angie said, my name's not in the sentence.
But I really believe that he just couldn't forgive himself, that he wasn't where he was supposed to be that morning. Anyway, we went on, and we had two more children after that. And then what happened was he became a violent drunk, and I was brought up with four brothers. And all my life, you know, they used to tease me, and they'd call me names, and I would cry. I'd get all upset. And I lived with two grandmothers, and one of the grandmothers
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took me in one day, and she said, don't let them know you're afraid of them. She said, if you don't let them know you're afraid of them, she said, they won't do it anymore because they're not getting the reaction they want. So after that, every time they started teasing me, I'd fight back. You know, I'm not afraid of you guys. Ha, ha, ha. I'm not afraid. So anyway, he became a violent drunk, and I became a fight back, defend yourself girl.
And the last night we spent together, we tried to kill each other. And if the cops hadn't come when they did, I probably would have been successful in killing him. He came in, I was six months pregnant, and I had on, back in the day, they had these granny robes. They were like patchwork quilt, and they were just ugly as hell, but we all had one. And he came in, and I was moving furniture, six months pregnant, because that's what people do. You decide, I'm going to move the furniture today, make it better. And he tripped, and then he got up and he kicked me. And when he kicked me, I saw stars, very first time, and only time in my life I've ever really seen stars. And I thought to myself, you've got to fight back. You know, something flashed through my head, and I thought, if I don't fight back, he's going to kill me, and then he's going to kill these kids. And that's going to be the headline in tomorrow's paper. So I went into the kitchen, and I put water in a frying pan, an electric frying pan, and turned it on, and then I coaxed him to come to the kitchen. And when he did, I threw the boiling water at him. And he went like this.
To this day, he's got scars here from that burn. He then went into shock, and I dragged him from one end of the house to the other, pushed him out a second-story window. When the cops got there, I was standing on the roof with a vacuum cleaner, which I was going to drop on his head, because my thinking was, if I killed him, it would be self-defense and I'd be able to get Social Security. You know, and I wasn't a daily drinker yet, you know, so this is going to let you know what kind of trouble I can get myself into. Anyway, that marriage ended in divorce, and we're lucky we didn't kill each other, you know.
And I don't know where that came from, but it just was, you know, it was part of my life. So anyway, it became very evident to me that he really was an alcoholic, and he was an alcoholic of the type that could no longer really work, and he wasn't able to support us. And so then I knew I had to go to college and get a college education, because it was going to be up to me to support those kids, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you're a single alcoholic woman, you probably have suffered from the big S syndrome, that's what I call it. You know, we get the big S on our chest, you know, we're super mom, we're super girl, we're super lawyer, super doctor, super nurse, super teacher, super, we're super everything, you know, because we don't need no man to help us figure this out, we're going to figure this out on our own, you know. And what happened to me is that's when I began to drink the way I wanted to drink, you know. I bought a house I had no business buying, and pretty soon what was happening for me is I was going out to drink, and I would get a babysitter and I'd tell him I'd be home at one, but I was never really, well, this is how I justified staying out all night. I wasn't really clear with the babysitter whether I meant one o'clock in the morning or one o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't know why you're so upset I didn't show up here until noontime, you know. And I realized that that was a problem, you know, that was a problem. And I needed to come up with some kind of a plan where I could drink and be home with my children. So the plan that I came up with was I'll go to the store and I'll buy a 12-pack of beer, and I will strategically place it around my backyard, and then I'll go out and mow the lawn, and when I get to one, I'll stop and have a little break and have a beer. And Dan's over there going, where's the translator? Beer and yard and car. Let's get that out of the way, right? So, but what happened was I mowed the lawn, it looked great, I drank a whole 12-pack of beer, I was at home where I was supposed to be, and I figured it out. I was like, oh, my God, that worked. I mowed the lawn every single day. Sometimes there was, you couldn't mow it because it was so short. I mean, it looked like a golf course, it was pristine. But then I would trim, you know, how like they have, what do they call those things?
We'd trim, you know how, like, they have, what do they call those things that you use that?
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A yard weed whacker. Yeah. No, my weed whacker was a pair of scissors. And because, with a pair of scissors, you could strategically place the beer around and then get down on your knees and cut, cut, cut, and when you get to a beer, you'd have one. And, you know, so, that's just how, and then, you know, Maine is pretty much like Kentucky right now. You know, we're just coming through our fall season. There's a lot of leaves on the ground.
So, in the fall, I raked those leaves every day. You know, and in the winter, I shoveled every day. And that's just the way it was, you know. And as my kids got a little older, I became a barroom drinker. You know, and I need to back up a little and tell you about, after I got out of college, I had a really good job. I was working for the federal government. And if I had stuck with that job, I'd be all set today.
But now I have my own mind and my own thought system and the big S on my chest. And I think I'll quit this job because I really want to be a cowgirl. I've always wanted to be a cowgirl. And I wouldn't know what riding a horse was. But, you know, I want to be a cowgirl. I was very serious about this. So I went to my boss. I asked for a raise. He said no. I said I quit. And he said, what are you going to do? I said, I think I'm going to be a cowgirl.
And he was, I mean, you can just imagine this guy, you know. And he's looking at me, I'm dead serious. He's like, well, good luck with that. I said, you wait and see. You'll be sorry. I'm going to be a cowgirl. Well, I went out that day and I got a job in this place called the Silver Spur Saloon. And guess what? I'm a cowgirl. I'm a cowgirl bartender, waitress. I got a uniform. It's a little denim skirt, a little vest, a white cowboy hat, white cowboy boots.
I'm in. I'm all in, you know. I'm all in. And I like this place because if you're drunk like I'm a drunk, here's what the real deal is, you know. By this stage of my drinking, I needed to drink a lot more than I could afford to pay for. So if you're smart, you get a job in a bar because then you can drink all you want. And who's to know? And, I mean, that's called stealing, but I didn't know that, you know.
You could have an after-shift drink and I would have the before-the-shift drink and the during-the-shift drink and the after-shift drink. And about this time, I lost the front seat of my car. And I'm still not really sure what happened. I have a very, very vague memory of it was an old car and it had a bench seat in it. And I have a very vague memory that I think we took that seat out to put around a bonfire somewhere.
So if you're ever in Maine walking through the woods and you come across this old chair, that's mine. But, you know, I said to my friends, well, I don't know what the heck I'm going to do, but I know one thing, you can't drive a car without a seat in it. So we bolted a milk crate to the front and I got a pillow and a bungee cord and there was no back. So I got a piece of two-by-four and I propped this piece of wood up, jimmied it between the back seat and I had a car seat.
And that's how I drove. I had a little pillow on it, I had a bungee cord for a seat belt. And I go to work and I'd be all dressed up in my cowboy outfit, you know. And I'm on my way home from work one day and the blue lights come on and I'm really smart. I mean, I know right off the bat, I intuitively knew how to handle situations which would baffle most of you. I said to myself, Lily, do not open the car door because it's probably illegal to be driving around sitting on a milk crate.
It never occurred to me that it might be a problem that I'd been drinking. I just thought, he sees you sitting on this milk crate, he's probably going to not be happy about that. So, and he comes up and it's February in Maine, it's cold, good lord is it cold. And he knocks on the window, like they do, you know, irritating. And I roll down the window, crank window, roll down the window, yes, can I help you?
And he says, where have you been? And I say, what every woman of, you know, if you're an alcoholic like me, do you want me to tell the truth? Yeah, we like the truth. I start crying and I go, my horse died.
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And I've just come from burying him. And it's February in Maine, I mean, you ain't going to get a shovel in the ground, nothing, you know, forget it. You've got to have dynamite to get the dirt up in the, you know. And I actually think that this man believes me, you know. I'm so sad my horse died. Oh, you have no idea. And he said, where do you live? And I said, just down the road. And he said, well, why don't you get there?
And that's the way it was going to be for me. I would get pulled over by the cops all the time. But they always say things to me like, where do you live? And I'd say, oh, just down the road. They'd say, why don't you get there? You know, in the last summer of my drinking, I'm still working in a saloon, but I also have a job as a bus driver. I'm a school bus driver. Think about that. I was a good driver, Joe.
Anyway, so this one hot summer night, I decide that we should go skinny dipping after we get out of work. Never been skinny dipping, never jumped off a bridge, but it was my idea. And if you're a real alcoholic and you come up with what you think is a good idea, you've got to follow through on it because you don't want people to think you're a loser. So we go up to this place. By now I have a van because I'm an athlete.
Did I tell you about being an athlete? Yeah, I'm an athlete. And I've got to get this vehicle that can carry my athletic equipment. So I get this big van, which I put an oogle horn in first thing I do, you know, because that's got to be cool when you're driving a van. You've got to have something cool, you know. So six of us pile in this van and off we go to this bridge. And by now I have this habit of putting the keys outside the van on the top of the passenger tire because you can't get arrested if you don't have the keys in the car.
So we take our clothes off and we fold them all up nice and neat, set them on the road. Why? I don't know, but good idea, you know. And we jump off this bridge naked, you know, like 30 feet down. I don't know if you've ever done that when you were naked, but I had never done it before naked. I'd never jumped off a bridge with my clothes on, you know what I mean? Did you hit? I mean, you know like when you see those divers on TV?
If you don't go in it, you know, that hurts. You slam up your butt. You know, it's like whoop. And so next thing I know I see blue lights and I get another great idea. I say to all my friends, let's swim downstream. So the six of us and we swim downstream and we're in the river and we're treading water, right? And we watch and we watch and pretty soon the cops leave. Okay, cool. So we get out of the water and we're running up, six of us, all naked, running up through people's backyards at 2 o'clock in the morning, being really as quiet as six drunks can be at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Hey, you guys, it's hilarious. We get up there and the cops had taken our clothes. One of the guys that was with us was married. And he says to me, Lily, my wife is going to be really pissed if I show up at home and my hair is all wet. See where this story is going, right? So I said, Gil, I got a great idea. You get in the front. You stick your head out the window. I'll drive really fast and you can blow dry your hair.
Okay, so we're all piling, driving down the road. He's got his head stuck out the window. Blue lights come on and I say to my friends, let me handle it. So the cop comes and it's hot. It shines the light. He looks at six naked people. He says, what are you doing? And I said, it's really hot. We're just driving around trying to get cooled off. And he said, where do you live? And I said, just down the road.
He said, why don't you get there? Now, I got to tell you, I saw Gil about three years ago at the mall at Christmas time with his wife. And he sees me and he goes. Like I'm going to tell, right?
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Anyway, so I'm a drunk school bus driver and I'm an alcoholic. And the night before my last drunk, I dyed my hair purple. I know it's popular today for you to run around with your hair turquoise and green and purple. But back then, not so much. And I had this purple hair and I wore it sticking straight up. Right straight up. And it would stop traffic. It was so purple that if I went out in the sun, people would be driving their car and go like that and it would be an accident.
But anyway, I dyed my hair purple. I had no idea why because I thought it was cool and I should do that so I'm going to do it. And the kids love me because I'm crazy just like they are. And they all have parents that are alcoholics and they relate to me and I relate to them. Anyway, I told the bartender I thought I might be an alcoholic but I wasn't sure and he should keep the drinks coming while I made up my mind.
And then sometime in the course of the evening, I distinctly remember saying to this man, I'm going to ask God to give me a sign. And if he gives me a sign, I'm going to quit drinking. And I knew that I was an alcoholic because I made that promise that every alcoholic makes. You know the one that you don't make aloud to anybody? The one where you say to yourself, tomorrow I won't drink. And you don't ever say that out loud to anybody because you know that the chances of you not really being able to not drink tomorrow is slim and none.
And you can't tell people something you're not going to be successful at. I mean, that's the kind of drunk I am. Everything I did, I did perfect. You know, so I'm not going to tell you that I'm going to quit drinking. I'll just tell myself. And then tomorrow would come and as with all alcoholics, you make the next promise an alcoholic makes and that is tomorrow I won't drink till four. And it never happened for me because I could never not drink the next day.
You know, I had every intention of the world. This is it. I'm done with this. I'm never going to drink again. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm talking to myself. But, you know, I can't even keep a promise to myself that I won't drink. Because the next day at two o'clock, as soon as I get out of work, I'm in the bar. Anyway, what happened for me was the next morning I'm driving school bus and I go and I get the kids.
I'm driving a 15-passenger van. I got 15 kids on board. I'm driving across this long country road. I worked in an alternative school, which is really short for kids with behavior problems. And I was as bad behavior as they were, but it was okay. We all worked together somehow. Anyway, what happened was I broke out in a sweat and I was like, geez, what's going on? I was really sweating profusely. And then I got this pressure in my chest and I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.
And I thought, man, I don't feel good. And I said, please, God, don't let me go off the road with all these kids on this bus. And I made it to work. And the next thing I remember is waking up in the ambulance thinking it didn't need to be that big a sign. And I got to the hospital and they had called my family. And I didn't know that they told my family. They didn't think I was going to make it. But they were there, and it was my mom and my brother.
And I came to and I had tubes and monitors and all the stuff that goes on when you're in intensive care because you've had a massive heart attack. And my brother walked over to my bed and he said, Jesus, what happened? And I said, I don't know, but whatever they're giving me, it's turning my hair purple. Because I wasn't hanging out with my family at the end of my drinking. Those people don't drink like I do.
So I would go, I called them the MFOs, mandatory family outing. You know, I would go there and they would be, you know, and they might have a drink or they might not. Or they might have a half a drink and I'm done, I don't like this, I'm beginning to feel not too good. And I'd be like, nothing is more irritating to an alcoholic than watching people pour booze down the sink. Okay, I want to be under the faucet.
And I always had an excuse why I had to leave. So they really hadn't seen me. But I want to tell you the state of my alcoholism at the end of my drinking. The beautiful house that used to look beautiful and had the pristine yard that looked like a golf course was now in a shambles, absolute shambles. There was no carpet left anywhere on the floor. I know in the South you have a saying, you're going to cut up a rug.
I took that serious. I cut up the rug every time I drank. So there's no carpet left on the floor. The potties were all at my house. So there's no carpet left on the floor. The potties were all at my house because you could spill drinks on the floor and who cared? Although, let me not forget to mention that there were 13 windows in that house. Thirteen
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windows in that house had bullet holes in them. I don't know if I was shooting out, the neighbors were shooting in. I have no idea to this day how they got there. But every single window in that house had a bullet hole in it. I don't know. I didn't know if they were outgoing or incoming and my brother noticed them and he said, what the hell is this? And I'm like, what are they? He says they're bullet holes and I go, is that serious? Like are they outgoing or incoming? And he's just standing there shaking his head because he's, I'm, you know, I have no clue. I still don't know how they got there.
Anyway, and you couldn't tell the clean clothes from the dirty clothes. My idea of doing dishes was wait until they got piled up this high, get a black trash bag, throw them all in, throw them out, go buy some new ones, you know, and start over. So anyway, I got released from the hospital. I had my last drink on October the 28th, 1989, but I consider November 8th to be my sobriety date and this is why. On November 8th, I was released from the hospital.
I couldn't let my own family members take me home because I didn't want them to see the house that I lived in and the condition that it was in. I'm talking about a pigsty. I mean, I'm talking about a house with bullet holes in it. I'm talking about a house with no locks on the doors. I'm talking about a house that had a pumpkin orange living room because one night on Christmas Eve, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. It couldn't have been me, the drunk that was there. No, there had to be something wrong and I mixed all this paint together and it came out pumpkin orange and I painted everything in the living room, the fireplace, everything, the ceiling, the walls, who cares, the floor. Anyway, I got a friend to drive me home, dropped me off at the end of the driveway. When I got up to the door, there was a note on the door from the bank and they were foreclosing on my house and there was no heat, no lights, no running water, no telephone, no groceries.
November 8th in Maine, it's cold. It's cold here. I didn't bring any clothes for cold. I brought clothes for the South. Anyway, I went in that house and I thought, I'm not staying here. There's no heat, there's no lights, there's no running water, there's no telephone, there's no kids, there's no groceries. I went to the bar where I always drank. I doctored my hand all up to do a shot of tequila. The drink of my choice at that time was shots of tequila with beer chasers. Doctored my hand all up to do that shot.
I looked up. There was a mirror behind the bar. I sat in the same seat I always sat in. But that split second, like that, that little window of opportunity, I saw me and what I saw scared me to death. And I'm telling you, this whole thing happened. It could not have been 30 seconds, but in my playbook, it was an hour-long movie. You are disgusting. You are pathetic. You are a drunk mother. And your kids deserve way more than they're getting.
Who are you? And I put that drink down and I put the money on the bar to pay for it and I walked out. I was lucky enough that somebody at my work wrote me a letter. I went to work. I got that letter and in that letter she said, Lily, we love you very much here. It's breaking our hearts. You should have seen those kids when they took you in the ambulance. You know, the teachers here love you and the staff loves you, the kids love you, and it's breaking our hearts and I think you might have a problem with alcohol and if you'd like to go to a meeting of AA, it would be my honor to take you. I'd like to tell you that I thought, isn't she just wonderful? But I didn't. I thought, well, she ought to just mind her own damn business. My drinking has got nothing to do with them. But I had just enough people pleasing left in me that when she invited me to her house to have dinner and go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I said I would go. You know, that night that I told the bartender I thought I might be an alcoholic, I got in the back of my van that night and I knelt down beside my little bed that everybody has in the back of their van and I said a little prayer and the little prayer sounded like this, please God, give me one-tenth of the faith that my mother has. That day, I'm going to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, going to this woman's house for dinner and I knew I wasn't going to go. Because, you see, that's the kind of a drunk I am. I'm sitting on the barstool, you come in, you got a sob story, oh, I got to move tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. Oh, I'll come help you.
But when tomorrow comes, you got to come get me at the bar because I'm still going to be sitting on the barstool, you know. Anyway, I knew I wasn't going to go and this is what
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happened. I heard this little voice. It was my mother's voice and the little voice said, if you're not going to go, you should call her. It'd be really rude not to show up. Now, my mother wasn't there. I went to my phone to call her and the phone was dead. The phone company had shut the phone off. It never occurred to me to go to a phone booth and for you young people, there were these little structures they had on the side of the road and you went in and you put a quarter in there and you dial somebody's number and lo and behold, on the other end, somebody would actually answer the phone and it would be a real person and they would say, hello. Anyway, it never occurred to me to go to one of those phone booths and call this lady and say, I can't come. So I drove 15 miles to her house, rang the doorbell, she opened the door, I said, I'm sorry, I can't come. She said, come right in. She had a gift for me all wrapped up, had a big bow on it, I unwrapped it and I'll never forget how I felt. It was this big blue book and in white letters it said, Alcoholics Anonymous. And I remember I had sweat on my lip thinking, how am I going to get out of this? Boy, you've got yourself into a mess now, Lily, and all this is going through my head. And she said, why don't you open it and see what I wrote. And inside the front cover she wrote, to Lily, my friend with love, may you someday know how important this day is to me. Fasten your seatbelt. Welcome to the greatest adventure of your life one day at a time.
We went to that first meeting. I want to tell you what it's like if you're a newcomer, you'll identify. You meet somebody, they take you to a meeting, you go to this place, people are standing outside, they grab your hand, they shake it, they go, welcome, you're amongst your own kind. And you're like, I don't think so. I don't think so, bucko. That's what happened to me. There was this little guy standing outside the meeting, he was shaking all over.
And I thought, gee, somebody ought to get this poor guy a drink. I think he's got the DTs. And he stuck his hand out to me and he said, welcome, you're amongst your own kind. And I thought, I don't think so, bucko. And then I went in the room and it was a room like this, you know, people were in there and they were happy and they were hugging each other and they were, oh. And I'm thinking, what a bunch of losers, you know. They're all in here, Bill, they're all happy, they're alcoholics. Well, I ain't happy about it and I'll tell you that right now. The next guy I saw was as tall as the first guy was, short, he had this belt buckle, this, like, this big belt buckle. And he was tall and it was like right at my eye level. And the belt buckle said, bullshit. And I look up and there's this big guy with big toothy grin and a shock of white hair and he goes, honey, you just keep coming back, it gets better and better. And I'm like, yeah, I can see that. And then they did an amazing thing, they went around the room and they introduced themselves, you know, and they said, I'm Bill, I'm an alcoholic, I'm Joe, I'm an alcoholic, I'm Chip, I'm an alcoholic. And I'm sitting in the third row in the end seat and they get to me and I'm thinking, it's going to be your turn in a minute. What are you going to say? And I said, I'm Lily and I'm an alcoholic. Oh, my God, I'm an alcoholic. And everybody started laughing, you know. But it dawned on me I was in the right place, you know. I didn't want to be with you guys. No, thank you. You're weird, you know. This lady got up, she said something, I don't know what she said. But I remember this. She said, here at the Portland Group, we have a way to help you start a new way of life by offering you a white chip. And I'm thinking to myself, you have got to be kidding. You don't drink and they pay you in poker chips? No, thank you. Now I know you're weird. I'm like, yeah, right. They're all happy about being drunks and now they're even more excited about a poker chip. Man, I have sunk to an all-time low now, you know. But what happened was this woman said, the next word she said saved my life. Because what she said was, if you're too afraid to pick up this white chip, see me after the meeting and I'll give you one. And I thought, not on your life. My whole life. Don't let them know you're afraid. So I look around the room and I thought, yeah, I'm going right up there and get it. I marched straight up there and I got that white chip and everybody started applauding and I'm thinking, wow, this is cool. And then after the meeting, I remember this beautiful woman came up to me. I've never seen her again. She came up to me and she said, keep coming back. I have a disease of perception. Angie talked a little about that earlier. I thought she said, keep
[00:40:02]
coming back, we need you. Because I'm looking around the room, taking your inventory, thinking, these people have not a clue on how to run a meeting. They don't know anything. They need an exalted ruler and I think I'll stick around until they make me one and then that'll be that. I had no clue. Early sobriety, people would say things like, did you get a sponsor? Did you get a sponsor? I got a sponsor. Because I knew if I didn't, there was something wrong about not having a sponsor. But then this woman started teaching me things about me and I'm thinking to myself, this is the honest to God's truth, just a newcomer in AA. I have a sponsor. So now when you ask me, do you have a sponsor? Yes, I have a sponsor. Are you working the steps? I don't know what the hell we're doing, but I think we're working the steps. I don't know. She tells me to pray, I pray. She tells me to stand on my head, I stand on my head. Whatever she says, I do. But in my head, this is what's going on.
I wonder if they have a special school for these people to be sponsors. Schools where they teach you idiot stuff to say to the newcomer. Because my problem is that the bank is going to foreclose on my house and my sponsor says, her suggestion, she says, why don't you call the bank manager and make an appointment to go see him and then tell him about you being an alcoholic. So here's the deal. This is all in my head. I'm a newcomer, remember.
Okay, so you get a sponsor and then they tell you idiot stuff to do. And now I got it figured out. All the rest of you people that are in here are spies. You now know that I have a sponsor because you've asked me a hundred times if I had one. And I've been so proud that I got one that I even told you her name. So now I know you're all spies. And now she's told me to go to the bank. And if I don't do it, one of you is going to know that. Then you're going to report it back to my sponsor and then I'm going to be in trouble and you'll probably kick me out of AA and by now I'm having a good time and I don't want to leave.
The pressure. So I go to the bank and I sit down with the bank manager and I go, I'm an alcoholic and he says, we know. But what do you think we can do about that? And he goes, we don't want your house. And I'm thinking, well, I don't want it either. I mean, I'm thinking we should bulldoze it over and start new, right? And he says, how about if you pay me $80 a month extra? Can you pay $80 extra a month till you pay back what you owe?
Yeah, I probably can do that. So I go home and I call my sponsor, got a report in. Oh, I went, I did what you said. What did he say? He said, I have to pay him $80 a month. What do I do now? She says, pay him. I can't tell you how good I felt when I went to that bank with my $80. And it got to the point that it was such a big deal for me personally that I wouldn't give that money to anybody else. Nope, the manager better be there or nobody else is getting this money because I'm bringing this money and I made the deal with him and I'm giving him the money. You know? And they got so, at the bank, they'd be like, oh, it's the 30th of the month, Lily will be here, she'll be here with her money and she's only going to speak to John and that's that and da-da-da-da-da. I paid all their money back. Then she told me I had to clean my house using the three-foot method.
And I'm thinking, three-foot method, I've never heard of that before. Okay, this is going to be some other new thing you learned at Idiot Sponsor School, right? Three-foot method, right? So I say, what is that? She says, I want you to open the front door and I want you to clean the first three feet. After you get that done, she says, I want you to clean everything in that three feet, the ceiling, the floor, the walls, whatever's in that three feet, decide if you're keeping it or getting rid of it. If you're keeping it, find a place that you're going to keep it forever from now on as long as you live there. And if you're getting rid of it, take it to the dump now. When you get done, put a chair in that three feet and call me. I was like, you have got to be kidding. But I'm driving home. She said to do it, so I'm doing it, right? So I do the three feet and I get the chair and I put it in, slam it down and I, you know, I said, I did it, what next?
And she says, tomorrow you can do the next three feet. I said, what are you talking about? She says, tomorrow you can do the next three feet. You see, she knew about alcoholics. We've been going through people's lives, our whole lives, creating chaos and havoc and then we get sober for 24 hours and we think we can fix this whole mess like that. can fix this whole mess, like that. And she knows enough to know that if we can't, then the drink is right there. Yeah, I tried it, but it didn't work for me. So she only let
[00:45:03]
me do three feet at a time. Three feet at a time, I restored that house, you know. Then the opportunity came for me to be able to help my mom, you know. And my mom had lived with a roommate since my dad died. Her and her best friend moved in together, so the two of them lived very happily in this house for nineteen years. And then Jerry had to leave, and Jerry was her very best friend, you know. They went through everything together.
They had their babies together. They, you know, they went through all of life's troubles together. And now my mom was going to be all alone, and I went and I said to her, Mom, what would make you happy? She says, I'd like to go out of here feet first. I said, I can make that happen. And I left my beautiful house. I rented it to my brother, and I moved in and took care of my mother for the next fifteen years. I got the best end of the deal, let me tell you. You know, I got to be the daughter she deserved, not the daughter she got stuck with. You know what I mean? I learned how to do things in AA that I never thought was possible. You know, I got to be a really good nurse to my mom. The last three, the first, the first twelve years, we had a ball. We were like best friends. We did all kinds of stuff together, you know. And I got, and I was sober, but my mother really knew, never really knew the drunk, drunk lily. You know, she knew that I probably had a problem with drinking, but she never, I mean, I just didn't allow my family into that part of my life.
But I got to be the daughter that she wanted to have. You know, the daughter that was fun and the daughter that did good things and that my mother didn't want for one thing from the time I moved in until today she went out. And her fondest wish was to go out of that house feet first, and they better not put me in no damn body bag. I want to go wrapped in a quilt. Yes, ma'am, whatever you say, right? And so now I start getting asked to speak at AA conventions. And so in 2002, I got asked to speak at this convention in Cape May, New Jersey. And off I went to New Jersey, and I called my son. I had three children, four children. One died as an infant. And then I had two children that were active alcoholics and one that wanted to be a policeman. And he wanted to be a Marine. And he wanted to be, and he wanted to be, and you know, he did all that. He was a hockey player. He was a Marine. You know, not only was he a Marine, he was a Marine of the cycle. He, you know, he wanted to, he wanted to be a police officer in Washington, D.C. So by now, he is that police officer in Washington, D.C., and I call him up and I say, hey, Sammy, I'm going to speak in Cape May, New Jersey. He says, hey, mom, I can go. He says, I'll drive over to Delaware and take the ferry across and I'll meet you there. And he did. And it was March of 2002 and we went, raced to the top of the Cape May Lighthouse and we had this wonderful time. And he met all these people in AA and he was like, oh, my God, mom, these people are fabulous. And, you know, and then we picked up all these rocks on the beach.
They have unique rocks there and they're white and they're smooth. And I said, I want you to help me pick up these rocks. And we're picking the rocks up. And he goes, why are we picking up these rocks? And I said, because your crazy mother now leads one-day women's retreats and I teach women how to relax, how to find the God that's inside of them. And I don't know what I'm going to use these rocks for, but I'm being told that I need to get these rocks. And he said, who told you? I said, you know, God. He says, all right, I'll pick them up. You know, and we picked up the rocks, you know. And then six weeks later to the day, I got the phone call that no mother wants to get. And that phone call was that my son was dead. And I can tell you this is my experience. This is my experience in sobriety. I got that phone call at ten minutes or two in the morning. The very first thing I did after I hung up was I got on my knees and I prayed to the blessed mother, please come and help me. I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I know that you know what it's like to lose a son because you watch them murder yours. And I had no idea at the time where that came from. But I know today that that came directly from God because I did not know nor was I prepared to bury my son. I wasn't prepared for that.
I didn't need to worry though because you see, I've been in AA and I've been active in service since the very first day I got in AA. My sponsor said to me, you have no reason not to be involved. You can answer 12-step calls. And I went and answered the
[00:50:01]
hotline from my very first day in sobriety. She had me down there. She said, your kids have pretty much grown. She said, they're used to you not being home in the afternoon. Go answer the phone at the central service office. I answered the phone one day. My daughter was on the other end of the line. She wouldn't know how to stop drinking. And I knew that I had to get another woman alcoholic and tell her that if she did as we had done, she'd never have to feel like that again. But you know, that day that my son died, I made one phone call. I called somebody in AA and the next thing I knew, my house was full. People in AA surrounded me. And I tell you this little funny story, you know, because there's always something funny no matter how tragic things are. And so we're at the funeral home and it took a long time to get my son's body back. He was a policeman in Washington, D.C. They were doing an investigation. You know, he died in a hospital in Virginia, so their police department's doing an investigation. My son worked for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. They're doing an investigation. On and on and on it goes. And I have no idea what to do because he's in Virginia and I'm in Maine. I call the funeral home and I go, I have no clue what to do. All I know is my son's dead. I don't know how to get him here.
I don't know how I'm going to pay for it. I don't know any of this stuff. Somebody better do something. And I never had to worry because I called AA. I called somebody in AA and the next thing I know they're in my house. You know, they're just there. Every meal was provided for me and my family. Every meal. My clothes were provided. People showed me how to stand up. They told me how I was going to walk behind that casket in the church. You know, we got to the funeral home and it was packed. It was packed and 70 police officers came from Washington, D.C. My son's police partner comes up to me and he gives me a hug and he goes, Lily, I've been to a lot of cops' funerals but I've never seen anybody with this many friends. And I said, I know and they couldn't all come. And he said, what? I said, well, they wanted to but when they got here and saw all those cruisers, they kept on going.
I mean, some of the people I was drinking with had warrants, you know what I mean? And you know, my son had a hero's funeral. 800 people showed up for that funeral. When we got to the church, it was completely lined. The front steps were lined with police officers all standing at attention in their dress uniforms, waiting for them to bring my son's casket out of the back of his horse. And I walked with dignity and grace behind that casket. And I asked everybody in that church to sing one day at a time. You know, it's not a sad story. It's a heartbreaking story in that, you know, of course I miss my son but I've got to tell you something. He told me that day in Cape May, New Jersey, he said, I don't know why they asked you to get up and tell your story. I don't know why you were speaking but I know one thing, mom. I know that you're supposed to be doing that and you should keep on doing that. And I knew that it's my legacy to him that I should keep on doing that. You know, you can live through anything in this program, but you do not have to drink. People in this program have held my hand. I've got to tell you this, too. We're in the church and my oldest brother leans over to my mother and he says, Nana, who are all these people? And she says, I don't know. I think they're your sister's friends from that A&A. You know? And mama always used to say to me, she'd say, what do you talk about when you go anyway? Do you talk about the family? I said, no, I really don't, mom, because the family would be boring conversation. Nobody would identify with you people. You're all like little good people, you know, do all this, you know? I said, I talk about my disease of alcoholism and where it took me and where I am today, you know? I want to tell you that my daughter got sober. My son is still out there. He's been in and out and in and out.
The revolving door. He's been in jail. He's been out of jail. He's, I've done everything humanly possible. I went to Al-Anon and they said to me, if you could have fixed him, he would have been perfect by now, because I tried every trick that I knew, except the letting go, you know? And this last time when he got out of jail, he sent me a message. He says, mom, do you have any contacts in A&A? And I sent him back a message and I said, I'm sorry, but we've used all the contacts that I had. I don't know what you're going
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to do, but I can promise you two things. I loved you when you were born. I love you still. I have prayed for you every day that I have been able to pray and I will continue to do that. Good luck. And if you have never lived with saying those words to your child, I'm going to tell you from my own experience that there is nothing more difficult in this world, including burying a child, that's harder than letting one you love go and watching them die from this disease. He would rather sleep under a trailer at 20 below zero than come in and keep his seat warm in the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he says he can't stay in Alcoholics Anonymous because everybody knows me. So if you stick around, everybody would know you too. Zip it, Lily. Zip it. You don't have an answer. I don't have an answer. All I can say is for you people that carry the message inside the walls, I'm deeply grateful because there has been times when he's been sober. When he goes to jail, I get to sleep at night. Because like Angie said, he's getting three hearts in a cot. I don't have to worry about him sleeping under that trailer when it's 20 below zero. I love him with my whole heart. I love him enough to let him go. I love him enough that he's out on the street this weekend and I'm down here in Kentucky doing what my sponsor told me that I had to do. She said you have a job to do. She said that's to go there and let them know that AA is alive and well in the grand state of Maine. I'm going to tell you one little short story and end with this. A few years ago, if you get to travel a lot and do this, there are times when traveling is just not so much fun as you think it's all. Isn't that wonderful? You get to travel all over the country. Let me tell you what it's really like. It's really like getting up at 3 in the morning and getting to the airport and waiting for a plane and then getting somewhere else and waiting for another plane and oh, that plane's been delayed. Now you've got to call the person that you think is picking you up at the airport and tell them my plane's been delayed, blah, blah, blah, blah. On and on. But when you get here, it's the most wonderful experience you'll ever have because people you've never seen before, you end up loving before you leave here. So anyway, I got stranded in Detroit one year. In February, I'm stranded in the Detroit airport and it's a rather long story but I'm going to tell you the short version. So I see this little old lady. Three times I'm in the underground thing that goes from the main part of the airport to the concourse part of the airport. I see this little old lady. And the third time I see her, I'm like, okay, God, I know I'm supposed to go over there and speak to that little old lady. So I go over and I say, are you traveling alone? And she says, yes. And I say, well, why don't you come with me? We'll team up for the night and I'll look over you. Because I'm thinking I would want somebody to do that for my mother. So I take this little old lady and I go find the most comfortable chair I can find and I sit her in it and I say, are you okay now?
And she goes, no, I'm cold. I'd like to have a blanket. I say, let me see if I can find you one. So I'm traipsing through the airport with my red cowboy boots on and I'm going through the airport and I can't find a blanket anywhere. And pretty soon I see a pilot and I go, I know they have blankets on those planes and I got this little old lady and she's cold and I need a blanket. He says, let me get you one. So he goes and I don't know where he went but he comes back and he's got two blankets and a little pillow and I go back and I tuck her all in and I go, are you all set now? And she goes, no. And I say, what's the matter? She says, quote, you'd think for God's sakes if they're going to strand us in this frigging airport all night long they could at least leave the bar open so we could get good and drunk. And I'm thinking, of course. I picked up the alcoholic old lady. You know?
But while I was sitting there that night trying to stay awake to watch over her, this thing came to me and I wrote it down and I like to close with it. And it's my adaption of the footprints prayer. One night a man had a dream. He was looking down at the beach and he saw a set of footprints drunkenly zigzagging in circles. And then he saw two sets of footprints. One large, one small. One his, one God's. Next the small footprints stepped into the large footprints and began to grow. Then once again the footprints were zigzagging with wild abandonment.
was Zigzagging with Wild Abandon. This really bothered the man and he said to God, when I asked for help, you came and you walked with me. And God said, yes, I gave you the Twelve
[01:00:01]
Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And as you began to put them into practice, you began to grow. The man replied, then God, I don't understand. If I was doing the footwork, what happened? Why the wild zigzagging again? And God said, oh, my precious one, I would not abandon you. After you learned the steps, we danced. I hope you stick around for the dance. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.