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Source: Nancy W – From Toronto, Canada – Date Unknown.mp3 File: nancy-w-from-toronto-canada-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:00:02
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Good morning. I'm an alcoholic. I belong to Ancaster 12 and 12. My name's Nancy. Hi. I want to thank Mary. I want to thank everyone and thank the committee for inviting me here. I have been looking forward to this for a long time. And sometimes when you're on your way to a conference in an airport, people will, they just talk to you. You know, you strike up conversations with all sorts of different people from all walks of life.
And there was this man in Toronto sitting at 7 a.m. in the waiting room and he sat by the gate and he said, well, did you enjoy your time in Canada? And I said, well, I'm actually in, I'm Canadian. I'm heading to Kentucky. And he said, well, I'm from Kentucky. And that's, you know, and I've enjoyed my time in Canada. So we struck up a conversation and often I won't tell people where I'm going in the airport, but sometimes I do. And so this man, I did share with him what I'm doing and where I'm going.
And he quickly, like 90 seconds in, he's talking to me about his sister in Al-Anon in L.A. And, you know, there's no family tree where you don't shake it hard enough and a couple fall out, right? You know, and he told me about, he doesn't belong to a program, but he says he likes to carry a rock. And he carries a rock because he likes to be reminded, may he never be the first one to throw it. And that's pretty good. I liken that to fellowship wisdom.
But truly, thank you very much for having me. This is a beautiful venue. My goodness, this is not an airport Bez Western where a lot of the roundups are. I've loved it and I had a wonderful time. I ran and walked the trails yesterday and have really enjoyed connecting with Mary. You are a wonderful host. Just lovely, so hospitable. Well, let's just get right to it. I come from a big family. My parents emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland and they came to Canada to build a life. They were to have a big family.
They had a son and then they had five daughters. And I'm in the middle of the girls. I have two older and two younger sisters. When I was growing up, we moved around a lot. You know, my father has been in and out of this program for years and is currently out. And he reminds me of a man. There is a play called Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and the lead in that play is a character called Willie Loman.
Willie's always looking for the big break. It's always going to be better around the corner. He needs to be well liked. And that was my dad. That was my dad. My mother is an educated woman. She had gone to the University of Glasgow in Scotland and she had a professional career and always sort of kept the family together. She kept money coming in. When I was growing up, my mother was very invested in education.
And it was very important to her that her children were that way too. And my older siblings were these really successful kids. You know, they were very academically inclined and they were always getting good grades and they were athletic and my brother was editor of the school newspaper. And, you know, I was very busy shoplifting. I was. I was getting detention and I was the one that acted out and I was the problem.
And we used to have family meetings around the living room about Nancy. Everybody would gather around and I would be much more of an observer than a participant in those meetings. But that's what they would do, you know. I was the problem. What are we going to do about Nancy? And I grew up not feeling smart. And I tell you, that is my secret. That is the pain. That is the shame. And I don't even really remember being told that directly.
But this is a disease of perception and that's what I internalized. And I just grew up feeling that way, you know. And I don't know, if that imprint in cement doesn't get erased early, it's there for life. And I just felt not smart. And it hurt me. One of the things that I did that was different than these very successful kids was acting. I liked to act. And in a very serendipitous route in my adulthood, I'm back doing a little bit of that.
When I was growing up, Carol Burnett was my hero. And I would love, love, love Carol Burnett. And I would put on these living room variety shows when I was a little girl. And I would make my younger sisters be Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway and Harvey Gorman. And that's, you remember, right? And I would put on these great, and I would do all of Carol Burnett's sketches. And we would reenact them. And I just, I loved that.
And when I was in grade 9, I was in the school play. The high school, the big musical was a big deal. And my friends and I were in the play. And at the end of that run of the play, there was a cast party.
[00:05:00]
And the cast party is a big party. It was in the field. We called it a kegger, you know. All right, oh, I'm in the right neck of the woods for you guys know what a kegger is. And I got really drunk. My friends and I, we all got drunk. I remember I got drunk on beer and rye and creme de menthe. I know, I know. It did not look any better coming up, let me tell you. It was awful. Creme de menthe is green, right?
So it's awful. And at the time, I had this big aching crush on the lead in the play. You know, his name was John. And John was fabulous. And with all this liquid courage and being drunk, it gave me the ability to go up and start talking to this boy. And then I started flirting with him. And then I started kissing him. And then I threw up on him. I did, I did, I did. And I was just, oh, mortified. Somebody had to drive me home.
And that was on a Friday night. And the following Monday morning, in the halls of that high school, I could feel people looking, you know. Word had spread. It was not good. And I could feel them looking at me. And the look that they were giving me was a combination of contempt and pity and curiosity, you know. My sister Hillary in Al-Anon calls it the Al-Anon look. It's, you know, it's that combination of do you know what you did or like, oh, that was bad, you know, or do you know what you said.
Hate it. I hate it. Hated that look. Hated those morning after questions, you know, especially when you would have to guess what the deal was going to, you know, what did I do or how did I say or when you'd have those flashes of memory from the night before. Anyway, that was my first really, really bad drunk. I don't remember my first drink. I was always sipping drinks off at a dad's scotch glass. I went along in high school.
And in my last year of high school, you know how sometimes this would happen periodically in my life where I would just kick in and self-will would, I would get my life together, you know, and for a while my life would be okay. And my last year of high school was kind of like that. I got very good grades and was something called an Ontario Scholar. And I got a lead in the play that year and it won a bunch of awards.
And I got very fit. So there, my life was good. My life is great, fine, everything's all right. And I went to university the following autumn. I went to a university in Hamilton, Ontario called McMaster University. And in the first week of university, they have this thing, we call it Frosh Week. It's that first week of all the initiation games and the drinking games and the resident rivalries and everything.
And I loved it. There was so much drinking. I quickly gravitated to the party crowd. I got a job in the campus pub in the bar called the Downstairs John. And that's where I spent a lot of my time and money and that's where I hung out. In university, I took a full course load and I got straight A's in all of those subjects except one. One, I had to fail. And I have a very painful pattern of behavior, something I still struggle with to this day, where I sabotage success.
I will get close to getting what I think I want and at the 11th hour, I will just do something to screw that up. I will change direction. I will make sure that I don't get that normal life and that success that I want. I remember an old-timer wise man. He said, we will choose the certainty of pain over the pain of uncertainty. It's much more frightening to know what's uncertain. When Dr. Silkworth says in the doctor's opinion, to him the alcoholic life is the only normal one, I get that.
I get that. I understand what it means to live a chaotic and unmanageable life. Crisis I know. Love crisis. I know the pain of that undercurrent of anxiety where you're driving the car and you don't have valid driver's license insurance or sticker on the back. I know that. I know collection agencies. I know crisis. I know that constant crisis. That is what I live in. That's where I'm comfortable. That's where I drop anchor.
When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and initially my life started to get good, I got really uncomfortable and needed to do something to screw that up. You know? Anyway, I went along in university and in university I used to drink and drive a lot. Drinking and driving is a huge, huge part of my story. May I mention that two days ago was the anniversary of your Kentucky worst ever and I learned a little bit about that.
Mary, I know where I am.
[00:10:02]
I know where I am and could have been, should have been me. My car was full of those drunk bumps. I have lost my car more times than I can tell you. I had a very nasty habit of getting in the car, putting the tunes loud, windows down and in a complete blackout speeding and just going, going, going, going, going. Once I was on the… I grew up in an old farmhouse north of Toronto in a wealthier suburb of Toronto.
It was always horse country but my mother had told my father that she was not moving one more time. We were not moving one more time so we settled in this very old farmhouse. It happened to be the second brick house built in Ontario and it was condemned at the time but she set upon fixing it up and that's where we grew up and I always knew that I always felt the difference because we were poor. We didn't have a lot of money and I was one of the many Watt kids who moved into that old farmhouse.
One time I was drinking and driving in the north Caledon roads and the roads were newly graveled and I was just all over the road. I was really, really loaded and so I pulled over and I put it in park and I put the seat back and I passed out. And when I came to in the morning, I was in front of this house and there were children playing on the front lawn and the mother was hanging her laundry on the line and the children were edging closer to my car and my car was kind of parked awkwardly and the mother and I made contact and I knew that she knew.
I knew that she knew. And she was shooing her children away from the car saying, don't go near there. And I remember thinking that she was wise to keep her children away from me. I had a little while ago, I was driving in Toronto and there was something wrong with my eye contact so I had to drive like that for a while and I thought, wow, I haven't done that in a long time. Just saying, you know. Some of you know what that is.
So one night, one morning, I had partied on campus at university the night before and I came out of this dorm. I was with this guy. He had had the party. We come out and in the parking lot, lo and behold, is my car. And he immediately starts giving me grief because once again, I had been drinking and driving. Only this time, there is something hanging underneath my car. And he had not seen it, but I did.
And I couldn't draw attention to it. And he's going on and he's telling me, get at home, meet me in the cafe for lunch. I cannot believe you've done this again. And I cannot get in that car. But you know, because I have that ability to live in pain and live in the crisis and the chaos and that's where I'm comfortable and because I could not bear to look at what I might have done, you know, I got in that car and I pulled out dragging underneath whatever it was.
And I came around the edge of the campus and the man in the parking kiosk stops me and he says, Miss, you've got something hanging underneath your car there. And so someone sees it, so I have to look and I do and it was, what it was, was a huge clump of landscaping grass. I took out a chunk of campus. And I immediately tried to let myself think, wow, you almost blew that out of proportion. But the truth.
Alkalogic, right? But the absolute truth, the absolute truth is that I know how much harm I can bring. I know how dangerous I am. I knew for years that I was making it very difficult and dangerous for people to love and trust me, you know? And the only thing, I knew that when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I heard people say that they thought they were bad, I knew that I was toxic. I knew that there was something so fundamentally broken in me.
And the only thing that I could bring it home to was that I do not possess, I do not have the DNA, the ability to love and be loved. I don't, you know, it says in our 12 and 12 in the fourth, utter inability to form a true partnership, an authentic human relation. I don't have that. I don't. And, yeah, I just grew up feeling that never connected. On campus, I was at a party one night and I was sexually assaulted.
And I remember stumbling home that night knowing that I can no longer trust where I go, what I do with whom once I start drinking. I did not sit final exams that last year. I hid out in my room and I didn't come out. And it came time for the finals and I had to go to the gymnasium to write. The finals and I had to go to the gymnasium to write with the rest of my classmates but
[00:15:01]
I couldn't do it. So I went to the fourth floor of the campus library and I hid way back in the resource section where nobody goes and I just hunkered down and hid. So life is getting late, my drinking and life is getting bad and that usually queues up a geography cure in my world, you know. So when I, to back up a little bit, when I was growing up in the country in that old farmhouse in Caledon, when we moved to the area, my friends, my family befriended this old elderly couple that lived up our side road and we became good friends.
They were a childless, retired farming couple. Their names were Charlie and Sadie Campbell. They liked all of my family. They liked all of my sisters but they especially liked me and I love that they loved me. It made me feel special, you know. Sadie was a kind and lovely woman. She was a great cook. She would embroider exquisite things. Charlie was a retired farmer. He was a square dance caller and he was a water diviner, if anybody still knows what that is.
Oh, look at you. Okay, he could not only find the water, he could accurately determine the depth needed to drill. It was an amazing, I know, and it was an amazing thing. And I grew up going to all of these, you know, appointments that he would have to help people as they build a house that they needed to find the water. And when I was 16 years old, Sadie had died, so I started to drive Charlie to all of these appointments and stuff and I started to take care of him more and more and more.
When I, when my life is on fire at university and I need some excuse to take a geography cure, I use the falsely altruistic reason that, well, you know, Charlie's health is failing and he needs someone to take care of him. So I went home and that's, and I quit school and I went home and that's what I did. Charlie was old, he was opinionated, he was often cranky, and oh, I have a big soft spot in my heart for grumpy old men and good thing because in AA, I'm just saying, holy cow, that's like kicking an anthill, it's like they're everywhere, right?
And if you are new and you don't have a soft spot in your heart for grumpy old men, you're going to be lonelier than you need to be because, you know, and listen up, they have some great things to say. I loved meeting Bill, 48 years sober, but he just has today. And Keith from Canada is here, wait until you hear him, oh, you're in for a treat. And anyway, Charlie and Sadie always called me kid, Keith called me kid this morning, and I grew up, they never had any kids of their own but they called me kid.
I was, you know, Charlie would be putting the pitchfork in the back garden and I'd be putting the potatoes in the sack and he would say, count them out kid, count them out, you know, and we would tie the cans for raspberry picking around our waist so we could pick with both hands and he would say, you know, stop eating them kid. And I, and that's, and that was Charlie, that's how I grew up. It was, I went home to take care of this man and I think the pain for me, the worst pain for me of being an alcoholic is living a fraudulent life.
It is a painful way to live. Charlie is thinking I'm some sweet young thing for helping him out and the truth is that I am hiding my scotch underneath the frozen peas in the freezer and I'm smoking hash out by the asparagus bush. That is, that is the truth of what is going on. And it was so hard, you know, it was so hard to take care of him. I was riddled with guilt for not doing a good enough job, being a 23-year-old woman living in this rural farmhouse far from the road, not having enough help to do the job I should be doing.
Tremendous guilt over that and genuine fondness for the man, you know. Your late great American artist named Andrew Wyeth did a very famous piece of art called Christina's World and that is, that was my life. I have a picture of it in my office. It is in the New York Museum of Modern Art. It is a picture of a woman in a field looking back on a farmhouse. That was my life. I identify very strongly with the pain and the emotion in that piece of art.
One night, it's about 10 o'clock at night, Charlie had been asleep for about half an hour and there was a party in Toronto I wanted to go to. I hadn't seen these friends in a long time and I thought, you know, it's only 10 o'clock, I'll whip to Toronto, it's only 45 minutes into the city, I'll see these friends, I'll have one drink, two at the absolute most and then I'll be home by one, he won't even know that I'm gone.
So I get to the party and one tastes like more and before I know it, I am waking up
[00:20:02]
in a strange place beside a strange someone and it's 7 o'clock in the morning and I just freeze, you know, Charlie would have been awake for at least half an hour by now and I am not there. So I have to get out of there and I have to find the car and I finally found the car and I will never forget hearing the bottles clank behind the driver's seat as I tear out of that parking lot and speed all the way home and when I get there, Charlie is not there.
He is in the hospital, I know, and he had fallen, he had gotten up in the night and had fallen and literally called for me for hours and I was not there. He finally made it to a phone and he called the neighbor. The neighbor came over, took him to the hospital and that neighbor was waiting for me and he told me what had happened and that I should go to emerge at the hospital and I did and I am talking to the nurse outside emergency and she says, we're running tests and we think, you know, we think he'll be okay and you can probably take him home later.
And I went into that room to Charlie and he just looked at me. He looked at me and he said, where were you, kid? Where were you? And I do not have the words to tell you what that did to me. I hated my life. I hated it. I bring such harm. I bring such toxic wreckage to relationships. That is what alcoholism does to me. I wreck it. I just wreck it. I stayed with him for most of the day and I was so hungover.
I was so hungover. I kept having to leave to dry heave. My tongue was like sandpaper. My head was rattling around in my head. My stomach hurt, everything, you know? You know how the Texans say, a hangover with skin on it. Have you ever heard that? I heard, I was down there, a hangover with skin on it. And so I went home to the farmhouse at the end of the day and my mother, by this time my parents' marriage had dissolved.
Dad had kept drinking. He was living somewhere in Toronto. I went home to the farmhouse and I was talking to my mother and I heard myself say in the kitchen, Mom, I think I have a drinking problem. And she heard that. And I do not know if you have ever tried to share with a non-alcoholic about a drinking problem, but let me tell you, they blow that way out of proportion, right? Right? Because let me tell you, I spend 10 seconds being honest and the next hour trying to rationalize why it's not so bad, you know?
But my family, we are academic. We are academic atheists. We like to work very hard and put forth a lot of effort. So to make a long story short, she knew someone who knew someone who was starting a pilot project at a Toronto treatment centre for controlled drinking. I know, I know, you are way ahead of me, right? And that is what, you know, so I dredge up some crocodile tears and I had to pretend that I am concerned and I get signed up for a course that is going to teach me how to drink.
And the deal, so I went to this Toronto treatment centre once a week and the deal was I was allowed two drinks three times a week. I know, right? So I would save them all up. I would save them all up or they were not explicitly clear about alcohol's cousin in leaf form so I had to manage it with that. So I did that and yeah, I remember doing the telephone interview follow-up. They were, at the end of that 10 weeks, they were saying, how are you?
I'm saying, I'm great. Learned so much. Thanks so much. I'm all good. I was so in touch with ice that I needed to keep away from the phone. They probably shouldn't hear the ice clinking as I'm saying, I'm great, thank you. Anyway, shortly thereafter, Charlie died and I knew for a long time that Charlie and Sadie were intending to leave their house to me. I inherited their house. I was living with two girlfriends from university and we were working and commuting to our respective jobs but they were quickly on my case about drinking.
And I knew that there was something wrong with me. I knew that there was some ill-defined void in me that I couldn't figure out but what I thought was that I never finished my education. If I was educated, I would feel better. So I sold Charlie's house. I moved back to the university town in Hamilton.
[00:25:01]
I bought some real estate there and I went back to school and I finished my degree but I did not feel any better. So I thought, well maybe I need to make a lot of money. People who have money tend to look good so they must feel good. So I set about making money and at first I lost money trying to make money and then when I made some money, that did not change anything. I did not, that did not change how I felt.
So I thought, okay, it's not education, it's not money. I know, I need a man, right? I need a relationship that, you know, I need a soul mate, someone to complete me, had you it, hello, all of that. I bought into that and oh what a mess, oh my God, what a mess. I took a bunch of hostages and I made them, the deal was they were completely responsible for my happiness which is the quickest recipe for disaster, right?
And when they did not make me happy, I immediately, I did not only not love them but I actively resented them but I couldn't be alone, no, no, no, no, no. So I had to make sure that there was someone else in the wings to go to, right? Because we don't, no, we're not alone, no, no, no. So you know how Tarzan swings through the jungle and he's always got a hand on one vine and he doesn't let go until he's got a firm grasp on the next, right?
So men are a little bit like that which is a polite way to say relationships started to overlap a little bit. Oh my God, what a mess, what a mess, what a mess, what a mess. A cruel thing to do in a men's to be made, you know? Yeah, it was December 1992, I was in this new job. I am reasonably intelligent and I interview very well. So I get good, I'm in pretty decent jobs. They invite me down to a conference in Orlando for the weekend where I'm to meet the rest of the branch offices and we're going to work really hard and we do that on Friday and all day Saturday and on the Saturday, there's a banquet and the banquet has an open bar.
I know. I got so drunk. I got, I got bad drunk. I got stick in my index finger in the president's chest drunk. I got legless drunk, pour her into a cab and get her back to the hotel. She is an embarrassment drunk. That is a breach of corporate protocol, you do not, do you guys know CLM, career limiting move? Okay, CLM, big CLM, big, big CLM, bad, bad move. So there was something about swimming races back at the hotel later too that I barely remember.
So the next morning, as I haul my sorry hungover body out of that hotel room and I have to drag myself down to the hotel lobby to meet these relatively new co-workers as we're to travel to the airport together to fly back to Toronto, I'm in the hotel lobby and they're looking at me. They're looking at me and they're giving me that exact same look I got in high school, contempt, pity, curiosity, only this time I am just, I am humiliated.
I feel transparent. I know that they see me. I cannot believe that I've done this again. And this man in the company comes over and he says to me, hey, I hear you were quite the party girl last night. And I said something like, oh, yeah, what, I, yeah, I don't even really remember. He said, you don't remember, wow, you know, a block out is a real sign of alcoholism. And there was that word, you know, he said the A word and he slapped me with that.
I felt struck and I, and it landed. And my God, my higher power has these coincidences in my life because this man just happened to have a boarding pass with a seat assignment next to mine on the plane. He just happened to be wearing an AA ring. He just happened to talk to me for the next three and a half hours on the flight, right? And it's not like I was that willing. I was buckled in. He kept going on and on and on and on and on and on.
You know, God had to sit me down there for a while and say, listen up. But I was very interested in what he was saying. He was saying things that were frighteningly interesting. He was talking about the way that he hid drinks that I thought I only knew but you knew. He was talking about getting three drinks before he gave, three drinks to himself before he gave any to his friends and I did that. He was talking about all the, you know, the tricks in the trade and it was very interesting.
And he was, in our big book, just a man well-armed
[00:30:00]
with the facts about himself. He didn't say anything. It wasn't judgmental. It wasn't anything about my drinking. He told me his story, and thank God that I was 12-step that way. And so a week later, I came down the stairs of Ancaster 12 and 12, that is my group. Took me a week to get there. I came down the stairs, and the first thing that struck me about you people, Alcoholics Anonymous, was the laughter.
You people like to laugh a lot. And I remember thinking, that's pathetic. Oh my God, you can't even drink, and you have to pretend. You have to pretend that your life is good. How sad is that, you know? It was, I tell you, it was a conscious decision with me that I knew that I was going to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and that I was not going to drink again, and the price that I was going to pay is that I will never laugh again.
That my life was not going to be good. I absolutely understood that. And then, you know, I was at the ORC, our Ontario Regional Conference, and there was a woman there, Patty. And Patty was talking about the old-timers who helped her get sober when she first came in. And there was this one crazy old-timer, like we don't know a couple of those. And there was this one man, and he was a bad driver. And he would drive her to the meeting and try to explain the entire big book in the eight minutes that it took to go from door to door, you know?
And he would pick her up, and he would screech out of her driveway, and she'd go, ah, you know, and he would go right through a red light, and she'd go, ah, and he would cut off a pedestrian, and she would go, ah. And they'd get to the meeting, and they're in the parking lot, and they're walking to the church, and this old-timer says, you know, I'm just a recovering alcoholic. I'm no medical person, but I do something about that asthma.
Oh, Keith, you old-timers, I know. And I found myself laughing, right? I thought, oh my God, I'm laughing in an AA meeting. This is crazy. The truth is that, so I stayed with you for six months. The truth about me and my fear and my pride, which are synonymous, is that I did not get powerlessness. I did not concede to my innermost self. I was not beaten into a state of reasonableness, what it says, you know?
I did not, powerlessness is not a big dinner table conversation where I come from. That is not my family. We do not, I had, I remember the first time I read that, I had a physical reaction of repulsion to the word powerlessness. I did not get it. I did not get that. And so, and I was sort of only, I was all half measures. I had a sponsor, but told her things selectively, you know, what she should know.
And I wasn't heeding all of your advice. You had said, stay away from the men. We are a fellow ship, not a ship of fellows, you know, I get that. And I get that, but the, it was only one, but of course I did get into a bad relationship, and it quickly turned into a frightening relationship. And the quickest way to get rid of that was just to drink, just to get out, just to get out. And so on a beautiful May day on a patio bar, I had a beer.
I had a beer, six months spun dry. And that set off four months of pain and darkness that I did not know existed. By this time, there were real fissures in my life, real cracks, I couldn't, people were starting to notice, people were talking, I missed a ton of work. For the next four months, I drank and drugged in my basement every single night. And I was a TV junkie, you know, and I just, the denizens set in.
I just wanted everybody to leave me alone. The phone would ring and I would freeze, you know. I just needed that implosion of being alone. And the, and I was a TV junkie. I just watched TV around the clock, missed a ton of work. I would watch television late into the night and I would watch David Letterman, this was back on when it was at 12.30. And then there was this music, jazz, global thing. Then I'd pass out for a couple hours and at 4.30 in the morning, there was this early claymation thing called Davian Goliath.
Okay, so it was like a Christian thing, right? And the dog was the kid's conscience and he would say things like, don't steal the apple, Davy. And I, and that's how I, and I would watch this half buzzed and that's how I spent my miserable, pathetic life. And I couldn't, I could not get out of the basement. I couldn't get out of the basement. I desperately needed you, but I couldn't get out. And every once in a while, I'd sort of take a deep breath and try to be fine and look okay, but the excuses for missing work were being ridiculous.
Everyone knew I was lying. Everyone knew that my life was on a thread except me.
[00:35:05]
And on August 28th, 1993, it was my birthday. August 28th, 1993, I was turning 29 years old. My friend Kyle had come home. We had gone to McMaster together. He came, he was back in town and he called me up and he said, Nance, it's your birthday. Let's go out to dinner. So we did, he came over to my place and we were smoking drugs and drinking. And we went out to dinner where we had a lot of wine to drink and then we came back to my place to smoke and drink some more before we were going to hit the bars for last call.
After dinner, back at my place, when we were drinking, Kyle was loaded. He was loaded and he was sick and he was throwing up off my back deck. And all I remember thinking was, is that man, if this guy keeps throwing up, I'm missing last call, right? And that was going to be a problem because that's why I went out with you. So he did, he went home. He went home and I missed last call. And for some reason, I just went to bed.
And when I woke up, I was 29. I was 29 and I had that moment of clarity, that moment, Ivan Gilbert would call it, that moment where God paralyzes the liar in us just long enough to let the truth shine in. And I saw my life clearly at 39 and 49 and 59 and nothing was changing. I absolutely saw the rest of my life. I absolutely saw it. I do not think that I am an alcoholic who would die of alcoholism, maybe, probably in a DUI, but ultimately, even more painfully for me was that I was going to have to live.
I was going to have to live through it. I was always going to be in and out of relationships. I was always going to be hurting people. I was always going to be in and out of jobs. I was always going to feel toxic. And I just, and I guess I just didn't want to be that. And my last drunk, that was my last drunk. It is not the worst thing that ever happened to me. I didn't wreck the car. I didn't get put into the back of a police cruiser.
I didn't get assaulted. I didn't have my mother crying. I didn't wake up with shards of glass all around me. I was not an incredibly inappropriate bridesmaid. I was, it was not the worst thing that I ever did. It was not the worst thing that ever happened to me. But my God, I was tired. I was tired and I was getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. So I called the woman who had been my temporary sponsor and she came over and we emptied the house of the booze and we went to a meeting that night and I do not remember anything that happened at the meeting.
My first week sober was hard. I got fired. The bank came for my house and a power of sale. I had a doctor's appointment and I had stomach problems directly due to alcoholism and she was admitting me in a treatment center the following week immediately. And my mother had to sign power of attorney papers because while I was going to be in this treatment center and therefore institutionalized, I couldn't make legal decisions on my behalf when the bank came for my house and everything came tumbling down.
That was a bad week. And I remember being up at the old Rock Chapel group and old George Taylor, bless him, I was crying to him and I was telling him everything that had gone on this week and people were not talking to me and I'm losing the house and I don't have any money and things are bad and this old man put his hands on my shoulders and he said, you're going to be okay, you know. And I tell you, I did not know that.
I did not. But George was so sure and he was so right, you know. I loved him, loved that old time. So I went into the treatment center and the treatment center was a good idea for me because they helped me with step one, you know, because they drilled powerlessness into me. Powerlessness, you know, come on, you're powerless. Come to group therapy, you're powerless, you know. I get it, oh my God. If any of you have ever been there, they take themselves really seriously, right?
Like I get it, I get it, I get it. Plus I got, I ended up getting extra weeks tacked on to my time in treatment center for attitude. But I, my attitude problem in the treatment center was due to the fact that I kept getting mistaken for a therapist. I know, I love that, right? Because that is my shtick, that is my shtick. I tell you, there is much pain hidden behind middle class respectability. It is a really, really good place to hide.
[00:40:02]
I was telling my friend Mary, you know how we see newcomers come into the rooms and their eyes are glassy and their skin is yellow and they look beat up and you think, oh buddy, I hope you are in enough pain to stay, you know? I like to look for makeup and a smile. And I wonder, I wonder if she feels as broken as I did, you know? If there's anyone here today and you think you know what I might be talking about, I beg you.
I beg you to leave this conference with a fistful of phone numbers and a renewed sense to work the program because that mask will kill you. I promise you, I have been in some beautiful homes where women die, absolutely die, and they tend to be surrounded by people who are emotionally invested in keeping them sick. Thank God for Al-Anon. Thank this, ah. Anyway, so I leave the treatment center and after my weeks it's Christmas time and I always love Christmas time.
I love Christmas time, I was married at Christmas, I love, love, love Christmas. In fact, before I forget, every year I have an AA Open House Gratitude Christmas Party and you are all invited. I'm serious, right? Many newcomers have their first sober Christmas is a big deal, you know? And I had this one sponsy and she had, her bottom was on Christmas morning and she was drunk on the couch and she didn't get her five-year-old Santa stuff out and the little girl woke up and she didn't have the stocking and I know that we do worse things, I know, but it killed me that that happened.
I can't stand that type of stuff, you know? So we had this big Christmas party. Not this past Christmas, this Christmas party was really great, but the Christmas before we had that polar vortex thing coming in, you know? And we had this huge ice storm in Canada and it kiboshed my Christmas party. And so we had no power, we had no water, and my husband is like, babe, you got to like, it's 3 o'clock, people are going to be here in two hours, you have to cancel the party.
So finally I do and there's a flurry of emails and texts and phone calls saying, so sorry, the party's off. And then at about 8 o'clock that night, the power came on and at 9 o'clock, there was a knock at my door and it was the newcomer, three days sober, that I had met at my home group three days prior. And we sat and talked for two hours and my God just gives me the right place to be in the right time to talk to the right person and that was my Christmas party two years ago and it just turned out exactly as it was supposed to turn out.
She's still sober to this day. She even has a Christmas name, her name is Holly. Perfect. So anyway, I get out and I fall into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and I get in the middle of the bed. I go to a ton of meetings. I went to a meeting a day for the first two years of my sobriety. I do big book studies. I get heavily into service. Service today is my love. I still am heavily invested in service.
I do a lot of public information and CPC, cooperation with professional community. I just had to take out, I was a DCM for our district in Area 86, Western Ontario. Service, if, service means out of self. Selfishness and self-centeredness are the root of our problem and so anything that I can do to get out of myself is critically important. We have recovery, on our logo we have recovery and unity and service.
We have 12 steps, 12 traditions, 12 concepts of service and many of us only get two out of the three and a two-legged stool doesn't stand very well. There will come a day when we need to give back and it has saved my life. That's my soapbox, that's all I'll say about that. It's just that it needs to be, I understand service in my home as a wife and a mother. I understand my service at work. I understand my service as an AA member.
I like to say that I sobered up in meetings and garage sales because there are these two guys in my group, two old timers. Harold is a big guy, he wears a cowboy hat, drives a white pickup. Wayne is really short, he wears a Greg Norman golfing hat and he drives a big caddy. They've been sober, I don't know, a couple days after the earth cooled maybe and they sponsor each other and they go to all these garage sales and they took me when I first came in and they would pick me up at seven o'clock in the morning.
would have their route all planned out, and we would go to 8 or 9 of these garage sales,
[00:45:01]
and by 2 o'clock in the afternoon, my head was full of AA, full of AA, and my stomach hurt from too many Tim Hortons coffee, do you know Tim Hortons coffee? That's okay, that's our temple of Twelve Step Worship, that's where we go, we go to Tim Hortons, and I would come home and I would have all this stuff for 4 bucks, you know, and that's how I, and they sobered me up and they saved my life, they absolutely saved my life, you know.
I fell into you, I did, I did, I did the coffee pot, I did all of the service positions, Canada AA is a lot like you, we have greeters and coffee makers, but we also have snow shovelers, I don't know if you guys have snow shovelers, don't miss the business meeting or you're going to be shoveling, right? Anyway, we okay? Great. The, I have a, I have a life today that is a normal middle class life, but it is one that I find wildly exciting, you know.
I get to raise children, I get to sponsor and be sponsored, I get to be a part of you, I get to do work that I love, I get to write, I get to act, I get to do the things that I was somehow God meant me to do the things, and, and, and my whole life I felt fraudulent and Alcoholics Anonymous, although you initially just interrupted my death, what you ended up doing was giving me a life that is authentic and true.
The big book says, we are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous and free, and I suppose that's right, you know, the big book says it, I get that, but I don't know, happy, joyous and free sounds like Julie Andrews skipping through the meadows, doesn't it? You know, the hills are alive, you know, plus I'm such a self-centered alcoholic, I would need to be happy, joyous and free all the time, but that is not life, that is not life.
I think, so I think what I'm going for is to be sane and useful, because when I am sane, when I do the next indicated thing, we had a wonderful conversation about that at breakfast this morning with Mary and her friends, nitpicking, when you, next indicated thing, when your sponsor nitpicks at you, she's looking for the next indicated thing, whether it's changing a baby's diaper or paying that bill or doing the next indicated thing, loved how Angie put that last night, one thing at a time, once a day, do it one, once a day, don't do 50 things in one day, forget about it for six months, you alcoholic, love that, Angie, love that, that is so true, one thing at a time, and together we trudge the road.
Trudge is a really good word, the secondary definition of the word trudge means to walk with purpose, and is that not what we do here? Is that not what we do? I've been meeting a bunch of you, and I know that you have lost some old timers, and I tell you, we have lost some old timers back home that were very, very important to me. Keith mentioned Bobby Dobson at dinner last night. Let me tell you about a few where I come from who saved my life, and I know that we all have these heroes, these giants who build this path for us, and so sometimes I like to say their name.
Mary Flynn, Mary Flynn was a pioneering woman in Alcoholics Anonymous, she was 44 years sober when she died. She met Bill Wilson, she worked at the Toronto 1965 World Conference, Mary was amazing, she was about 4 foot 11, and she belonged to a tough AA group. These big guys from the halfway house up the street would come, and their pipes would be all tattooed, and she would just be giving it to them, you know?
She was amazing. Mary said the worst thing that ever happened to Alcoholics Anonymous was Styrofoam cups. She didn't like the Styrofoam cups. You take a tea towel, you take a dish towel out of the newcomer's hand, you are depriving him of the service in the kitchen after the meeting. Don't do that. In fact, I've been to a couple of meetings recently where mugs are making a big comeback, and there's a great meeting in the kitchen after the meeting, old AA, you know?
Mary was so wise. She was very elderly, and she had big ears, and she had very thinning hair, and she was so wise, one day I called her Yoda. I know, I know, which was a mistake, but live and learn, right? Live and learn. Anyway, when she died, she left me her big book. It's a second edition, and Bill Wilson signed it, and I treasure nothing more, nothing more.
[00:50:06]
Leona Hudecki. Leona Hudecki was married to a prominent surgeon, and she was a big Catholic matriarch of 12 years, and she was one of the most spiritually inclusive people, making sure that we know that Alcoholics Anonymous, there is room for everyone here, every walk of faith, every believers, non-believers, higher power, spiritual. She would tell us that there are 30 different words for God in the big book, sunlight of the spirit, great creator, universe, all of that.
She was amazing. She would always say, do you pray well with others, right? Do you pray well with others? Make sure there is room in here for everything. On her deathbed, through her oxygen mask, she told me, goodbye, darling girl. George Taylor. George Taylor was a man who wore his pants so high, and he would always wear a sweater vest, and he was always at the beginner's table, and he would reach into his pocket way deep, and he would, and like dice on a craps table, would throw out hard candy, right?
All the way down, would get a handful of hard candy. I will never forget that. George Taylor was the man who told me, you're going to be okay. Ivan Gilbert. Ivan Gilbert was a wonderful man. He was our past delegate, and a man that I loved. He was truly like a father to me. He was, Ivan had a stutter. He had a bad speech impediment, which should give credence to the fact that the man makes it all the way to delegate, and represents our area in New York.
He was, one time, when I was DCM, the first time, I, a bunch of DCMs and I were fooling around in the back of this service assembly, and so Ivan came back to give us hell for that. And he came back, and he said, look it, and he told us, if you do not behave, I am going to say the long form of the 12 traditions, and our 12 concepts. So behave, right? You're going to have to endure that. Pat Smith, Ivan Gilbert, Jerry Canelli, and my garage sale, Wayne.
We lost my garage sale, Wayne. On my wedding day, I was driven to the church in his garage sale caddy. AA was a big part of that day. Dr. Paul Owen, in Acceptance is the Answer, says, acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. Albert Einstein once said, man should look for what is, not for what he wants there to be. But, and I get that, but I only understood it when this old timer Wayne said to me, honey, your problem is not your problem.
Your problem is your problem with your problem. But you get that, right? My drinking problem is not my problem. My problem is my problem with my problem, right? And I get that. Thank God. Oh, thank God for the people who have built the path, and we are the future of this fellowship. We are the future of this fellowship. We have a message to carry and the privilege to carry it. And although wonderful roundups and conferences like this are fantastic and they inject a gratitude and a pulse and an energy like no other, truly the future of Alcoholics Anonymous is in our home group.
It is setting up. It is making sure that coffee is on. It is greeting the newcomer. In the first, when I, the first year that I got sober, I didn't have a, I didn't have a car. I had a car, but I didn't have a valid driver's license insurance or money to repair the thing. So my sponsor said I couldn't drive. So I was on the bus. I had to get a bus pass. And the, we had the Canadian storms on top of storms and schools and businesses were regularly closed, but the city bus slugged its way around.
And every single night, AA was open. And I tell you, you shocked me. I didn't know. It immediately put service in me that was hardwired. I did not know the level of effort that you would go to to make sure that that was open for me. There was always coffee. There was always someone to greet me. There was always the meeting. How can you do that? How can I not have a bigger word than thank you for what you have done?
I am not missing the gene to love and be loved.
[00:55:01]
You have taught me how to do that. I have two sons and a dog. I love, I run. I ran, I ran the New York City Marathon with a bunch of drunk alcoholics in past November. It was like a bucket list thing to do and went to the big Bill Wilson dinner in Manhattan. It was wonderful. And I run with my dog and my God is in the trails with my dog and with worshipping the nature of our planet and the goodness of process and understanding the next indicated thing.
I have my sons now. My Eric is 15 and Scott is 14 next week. They are the love and joy and challenge of my life. I think I am a good mother. I don't know. Hard job. Right? Hard job. I remember once Eric was a little boy. I was putting him to bed. He had a favorite monkey. He had this stuffed monkey. Monkey, monkey, monkey. Monkey went everywhere with this boy. And we were, I was saying goodnight and we were pretending to feed monkey blueberries.
And his father came in the room to say goodnight too. And Eric says to his dad, mama and I were feeding monkey blueberries. And Mike says, oh, Eric, your mama loves you so much. And Eric said, yeah. And I sure love my monkey. Isn't that great? And my Scott. My Scott is very bright and he's very stubborn. I don't know where he gets it. And one time I snapped at him and he didn't deserve it. And so I had to make amends and I apologized and I did.
But all day he was like, remember when you were wrong? And you had to say you're sorry and I'm like, yeah, I remember, you know. Hard job. Hard, hard, hard job. But the love and joy and challenge of my life. If there is anyone new, I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. If I could give you, I'm sober 21 years. If I could snap my fingers and give you 21 years, I would never do it. I would just not.
I couldn't possibly rob you of the journey that you are about to take. I make your feet your friend. When you don't want to go to a meeting, go to a meeting. When you don't want to call your sponsor, call your sponsor. Just do it. As Harold used to say, we don't care what you think. We don't care how you feel. We care deeply, deeply about what you do. About what you do. This is all about the action.
What effort. What willingness you are about to take to save your own life and save another. We have promises in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you are new, I want to remind you that that's what they are. They are promises. These are not things that will probably happen or could possibly happen. You will be amazed before you are halfway through. You will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
Which is my personal favorite. So much richness in the big book. Cling to the thought that in God's hands, your dark past is the greatest possession you have. I want to thank you for inviting me to this wonderful conference. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to live a rich and happy and purposeful life. And it's just a life. It's a life where I have trials and motherhood problems and marriage problems and work problems and everything.
But I have you. Mary and I on the way up, we're talking about how AA is kind of like the football huddle. You know? We come together. We say what the game plan is. Break. We go out into life. And we play the game. And we get the game. And then the next meeting is we come back into the huddle. I don't know what I would do without you. I love Alcoholics Synonymous. I love it with all my heart. And I wish there was a bigger word than thank you.
But from the very bottom of my heart, I thank you for saving my life. www.thevenusproject.com