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Source: Polly P – Sunlight of the Spirit (2017) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: polly-p-sunlight-of-the-spirit-2017-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:00:23
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Florida. Thanks Bill. Wow. My name is Polly P. and I'm an alcoholic. By God's grace and a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven't had a drink since April the 11th of 1977 and for that I am eternally grateful. I want you to know in a little group I have been the most sobriety but this is the very first time in a large group I've had the most sobriety. That impresses me. I don't know what it does to you but I'm like wow just don't drink and don't die and it can happen to you. I have a home group and that's the West Connette group in Jacksonville, Florida. We meet on Monday nights at 7 o'clock. If you're ever in Jacksonville, Florida please come see us. I have a sponsor. My sponsor has a sponsor and I sponsor and I am an active member of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am so excited to be here. I am so excited to be here. Look at all these women. Cleveland AA women rock. Absolutely rock. Cleveland women rock. I've known Chris and Dolly before this conference got started and I am privileged because you talked about it after being at a Ladybug and Dolly and Chris said as I think it was Dolly who said first we can do this in Cleveland because we were at the Ladybug and Ladybug next month celebrates 20 years and what happened was is I was privileged to be here for your very first one and Darlene was my roommate then for the very first one and it has been and has just grown from there. Has just grown from there. Look at it but we still had Michelle and her jewelry. Yeah I mean it's like there's a lot of the tradition that's still here that started 12 years ago. Was it 12? Yeah 12 years ago and I'm just privileged that I get to come back. That is what is amazing. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I absolutely love this program. I am so grateful that I got sober and I had a passion for Alcoholics Anonymous and by God's grace I have not lost that passion and for that I am truly grateful. I'm gonna preach for about two minutes and because I feel like this is so important. One of the things that happens is is I believe that at 40 years of sobriety I am more I don't believe I am let me put it this way I am at 40 years of sobriety more active in this program than I have ever been. I sponsor more people than I have ever sponsored and I'm into more service than I've ever been into and I'm a really good reason for that and it's a very selfish reason. I love my life. I love the life that Alcoholics Anonymous has given me. I am so grateful for that but the other thing is is this big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me I have a progressive illness. If I have a progressive illness then at 40 years of sobriety I am more alcoholic than I was 40 years ago. What that says to me is at 40 years of sobriety I don't need less meetings. I need more meetings. I at 40 years of sobriety go to a minimum of four meetings a week. At 40 years of sobriety if I have a progressive illness I don't need to be sponsoring less women
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I need to be sponsoring more women and at 40 years of sobriety I don't need to
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be into less service I need to be into more service because today I need Alcoholics Anonymous more than I have ever needed it and let me tell you I don't know when you the last time you've seen somebody with longtime sobriety take a drink but it's a long fall it's a long fall and very rarely will the ego release to let that person back. So it's important that I remember that I have a deadly disease that gives me only a daily reprieve that's all I get. So I cannot rest on my laurels I cannot sit here and say I have 40 years and go to my home group and said well I've done my part I just need to let other people do that you know do the work now. Let me tell you something I have a job in my home group I have had a job in my home group for 40 years I am the speaker getter we have a discussion meeting and a main speaker once a month but we have a person who leads for about 10 minutes and gives us the topic I have the privilege of getting that person I always have a job and if I don't have it like an elective job I'm your greeter and I promise you I'm gonna do like Dr.
Shoemaker says I'm going to be standing at the door I'm going to be standing at the door when the alcoholic walks in that's where I'm going to be because I love this program and I love Alcoholics Anonymous and what I especially love is I love women I absolutely love women and it has been my pleasure to work with women to do women's conferences I've had the privilege of being able to go all over the world I mean I don't have a window or a pot and I've traveled the world that's what happens if you come to AA you know I have one qualification I drank too much whiskey that's it that's the qualification but I suited up and showed up you taught me suit up and show up for Alcoholics Anonymous get a commitment I didn't I wouldn't sober 30 minutes and the my AA sponsor it was more than that because I was in treatment for six weeks so that's a lie but I got out of treatment and my sponsor said if you have 15 minutes more sobriety than that newcomer that comes in share that 15 minutes we all can be of service in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous somebody says to me when should you start sponsoring my answer is stay a step ahead there is thank God we didn't have those kind of rules when we started because it was just Bill and Bob there is no length of sobriety just stay a step ahead start sponsoring the best way to stay sober is to help another alcoholic get sober I promise you you can't kill them just keep just keep helping them can't hurt them just take them to a meeting my sponsor said you have a car you get to drive people to meetings so right from the get-go I was busy in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous one of the things I'd like to tell you is when I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous I didn't even know another alcoholic I knew nothing about the disease of alcoholism I'd seen days of wine and roses and I'll cry tomorrow but that wasn't my life it was just a movie that's all I can tell you that's how the impact it had on me it was just very sad movie I did not even know another alcoholic I am living breathing proof that you can come to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and be a real alcoholic as described in the doctor's opinion and not come from the disease of alcoholism I do not come from the disease of alcoholism I have heard that shake an alcoholic's family tree and an alcoholic will fall out I don't know of another alcoholic I don't know of another alcoholic in my family the only person who drank was my mother's father and I promise you he never drank like I drank so I don't know if that's true my
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daddy was 60 years old when he died he had 60 years of sobriety my mother was 87 years old when she died she had 87 years of sobriety my mother has always said Polly if you just didn't drink alcohol alkyl that's what she called it alkyl you just wouldn't have ever had those problems she just didn't understand anything about alcoholism I knew nothing about alcoholism or the disease of alcoholism and I had it so I'm grateful for that today because I can tell you right now if I had one excuse for being an alcoholic I probably wouldn't be standing here tonight I had one excuse and I didn't I did not even begin to know what was wrong with me I knew I was crazy but I had no idea I was an alcoholic didn't even know what alcoholism was when I was 18 years old and let me put it this way I haven't finished that I want to say one more qualification of my childhood I am a loved cherished child not only am I a loved cherished child I am an only child and someone said I didn't even think about this to whoever shared today said they were an only grandchild on my mother's side I was an only grandchild so all I got all the love and all the attention now my parents were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination my dad had a ninth grade education and he was a contractor my mother was educated she was a nurse my mother worked and what happened was I didn't like that I was embarrassed because my mother worked I'm 77 years old and my when I was a little girl mothers didn't work they didn't work but my mother did I was a latchkey kid before it was ever popular and that and I did I was embarrassed because my mother worked and we didn't have a lot of money and my parents worked to give me dancing lessons gymnastic lessons they wanted me to do the things that I loved and I loved those things and my mother would sit up at night and make my costumes or make clothes for me and then go to work the next day that's the kind of parents I had who sacrificed for me but I was an ungrateful child there's another big book that says there's nothing worse than an ungrateful child and that's what I was my mother would sacrifice my parents would sacrifice for me and I would look at my mother and say I don't want those clothes I want I want to go buy my clothes at the store like other people do no gratitude absolutely a spoiled brat that is who I am now I have no basis for being the person that I became as a result of the disease of alcoholism the only thing I can tell you is my parents were abused children and they got together and they swore that they would give their child and they only had one child me and there wasn't stuff like you know birth control and stuff then so they just had the one child and they wanted to give me everything they didn't have but you see what my parents could not pass on to me and I know that today as they couldn't pass on to me self-esteem and self-worth and feeling good about yourself because you see they didn't have it and what I've learned today is you cannot give what you do not have but my parents loved me and I said earlier today about what Marcy White said I was given the blessing and when I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and my disease of alcoholism was being treated a day at a time that gift of love was returned to me because it had been given to me by my parents I had been given the blessing the gift of love Blessing, The Gift of Love. When I was 18 years old, I married an Air Force officer.
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I had, I married this man, and I'm here to tell you today, I get to ride on airplanes from time to time, and there's a lot of military people that get on those airplanes. I'm here to tell you that every time I see a man in a uniform, it still gives me that flutter. I am so proud that I was a military wife. It's one of the greatest, I am proud of that today, that I had the privilege to be a military wife. I was a military wife for 22 years, and I am so grateful that I had that experience. I married this man. I had no idea what I had signed up for. My husband was a bomber pilot, and I had no idea what it was going to be like to be married to him. What I was going to learn was that this man was going to be gone, and he was going to be gone for years at a time, and I was going to have to learn to be responsible for myself, and I've never wanted that. Now, I do not come from any wealth at all, and I don't know where I got this idea. My mother used to tell me this all the time. I used to hear her say this all the time, and I didn't know that I had an alcoholic brain, but my mother used to say, Polly, wherever did you get that idea? Nobody said that to you. I mean, I just thought things up, and what happened was, is all I ever wanted was money, men, and mansions. I have never wanted to be responsible for myself, and if I were to be honest, my husband and I, neither one want to be responsible for ourselves, but we're in Alcoholics Anonymous, and here we are. We have to be accountable and responsible for our own actions. Speaking of which, Dave gave me a message this morning, and I haven't given it to you yet, because he was sleeping. I talked to him after I did the morning meeting, and he said, Please tell all those ladies in Cleveland that I send my best. I send you.
So, Dave and I, on the 27th of October, which is just a few days away, will be married 37 years, and I'm telling you, that's a great event that's come to pass, is to be married that long. Anyway, I married this man, and I had no idea what I'd signed up for. I didn't know that I was going to have to learn to be responsible, raise children alone. I did not know that these were the things that were going to happen to me. We had been married a couple of weeks, and we were stationed in Sacramento, California, and I received an invitation in the mail, and on this invitation was a big red mandatory stamped on the envelope, and what it was was an invitation by the base commander's wife to attend a coffee. Now, I had no idea what this was like, but I already, you know, I was already in fear. We talked about fear today. I was in fear. I knew that these women were educated. I knew they were sophisticated. I knew they were all the things that I wasn't, and I was this person who was absolutely afraid of everything, and I had these feelings of overwhelming inadequacies.
That was who and what I was. No self-confidence. Always felt less than. It seems like every alcoholic I ever hear share says the same thing. Those feelings of absolute inadequacy, and those were the feelings I had. I have those feelings a lot today. I can have those very same feelings today. One of the things, there's a man in Alcoholics Anonymous. I kind of have ADD. There's a man in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm going to talk a lot about him, and he was from Long Beach, California. His name was Frank Honeycutt. He was the sponsor of my first sponsor, and Frank Honeycutt was sitting many years ago, and somebody was saying, well, do you ever get over that feeling of just not ever being enough, and I was probably 20 some odd years sober at that time, and I said, well, you don't have it at 20 years of sobriety, and Frank walked up and said, well, you don't have it at 35 either, so I don't know if that ever goes away. All I know is that we just keep moving forward, and we just keep asking God for help. I don't know that that's a bad thing. I don't know if those feelings are a bad thing, because what those feelings do is keep me reaching for God, just
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keep reaching for God, because I always need his help. I always need his help. So, anyway, I got, I went to this coffee, and the base commander that morning was standing at a podium much like I am tonight, and we were sitting, all of us little second lieutenant's wives were sitting at tables, and she was getting, she was beginning to tell us what our responsibility was as an Air Force officer's wife, and what we were going to be responsible for to enhance our husband's career, how we would have the right dinner parties, we would attend the right functions, we would always be appropriately dressed, we'd wear the right length gloves, all the things that we would do as an Air Force officer's wife, and I'm sitting there horrified. I am a hick from Texas. I do not know where the forks and the spoons go. I know none of this stuff. What I do that day is I leave and go to a bookstore and get every book I can find on etiquette, because I don't know how to do this. Well, about two weeks later there is an Air Force officer's wife's luncheon, and I'm expected to attend it. Now, one of the things that I think is amazing is most non-alcoholics do not remember their first drink, but I remember my first drink. I remember it as if it were yesterday. What happened was, is I went to that luncheon, and there was a long table just like that, like two of them put together, and on that table was a fountain with liquid coming out of it, and it had all these little glasses lined up, and what those ladies would do is they'd pick up a glass, and they'd put it under that fountain, and they'd take a drink.
Well, what I did is I took a glass, and I put it under that fountain, and I took a drink, and I can tell you, I can still feel it. It's just talking about that, how warm it was going down. It just seemed like it just went out to the end of my fingers, and it seemed like this, I was just this uptight, I'd always been this uptight kid, screaming, having fits, carrying on kid, and I was just uptight, intense, and I took that drink of alcohol, and it just seemed like that all went away, and what happened is, is I put my glass under that fountain again, and I took a drink. Now, I didn't get drunk that day, but something happened to me that day that didn't happen to any other person in that room, and that is, I put alcohol to a disease called alcoholism. I ignited the fire. I have a theory. My dad was a very angry man. He was restless, irritable, and discontent, and I often thought if he'd ever put the alcohol to the disease, he would have also been alcoholic. I think alcoholism is an equal opportunity disease. I have had the privilege of being in the Beverly Hills Hotel when a woman named Betty Ford, who was an admitted alcoholic, was the speaker, and I can remember a friend of ours saying, here we are. We're alcoholics. We're in the Beverly Hills Hotel under the chandeliers, and we're with a president's wife. That's where it is equal opportunity. It can take the woman on the streets, or it can take a president's wife. I don't know where she came from. I don't know where I came from. All I know is I have a disease called alcoholism. I know that there must be a genetic component to this disease because I produce alcoholics. So I don't know. But for me, I am so in touch with the disease of alcoholism. I don't think, I have known, I have not, I work with women
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who have tragic, tragic backgrounds. But we all know, you can read about, there are many people who have had tragic backgrounds, and they're not alcoholic. So that's not the component. Then there's somebody like me who hasn't had that, and they're alcoholic. And I am a really bad alcoholic. I am a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I change personalities totally, just like it talks about in the doctor's opinion. I am privileged to have two little boys. I have these two little boys, and I have ignited the devil in me. I have ignited this disease.
And this disease, I take a drink of alcohol, and I change. And somebody who loves these little boys with all her heart turns into this mean, angry, abusive, battering mother. That's what alcohol does to me. I don't, I've never been to jail. I wasn't even divorced when I came here. I've had none of those things happen to me. But what I did is I took a drink of alcohol, and I abused my sons severely. I am a woman who never should have been allowed to keep her children. That's what I did to my sons. That's what alcohol did to me. It turned me into a child abuser. When I got sober, and I, my sponsor was a man, I'll talk about that in a little bit, who saved my life. And he had, this man had been a Monsignor priest. He had been a captain in the, in the Navy, and he was an only child. He was perfect for me. He was absolutely perfect for me. And what happened was, is when I got out of treatment, and I had asked him to be my sponsor, and I had done this inventory and treatment, because it was a five-step treatment center, and he told me that that was, you know, that that made, it was one of those Hazleton inventories. It was all around, and 40 years ago, it was still around, a Hazleton inventory. And he said, that makes a great novel, but it does nothing for inventory. And when I got through doing my fifth step with Frank, his name was Frank also, and he was sponsored by Frank Honeycutt. And he had come from Long Beach.
He'd gotten sober in Long Beach Naval Hospital. It's this, my, my path, you can't make this stuff up. And he looked at me when I got, when I had finished that, and he said, Polly, you are a child abuser. I could never say those words to myself. I would say things like, I've hurt my children. I could never use those words. And he says, you're going to go make amends to those boys. How do you do that? How do you go do that? I did what he told me to do. I went and I made amends to my sons. I was early in sobriety, and I went and did that. I have done it many times since, and many more things. But I took the tip off the iceberg when I was about two and a half months sober, two months sober. And I went to my sons. Now, my sons were 14 and 16 when I got sober. And I had written out my amends on a three-by-five card. And I have the women I sponsor do the very same thing.
And he told me, if the amends is emotionally charged, you better write it out or you won't get it out, or write it down or you won't get it out. And so I had written out the amends. And on another card, he had me write, I'm so sorry that that happened to you. I will spend the rest of my life being the very best mom I can be. And I went to my sons. Now, I'm not sure that I did the right thing. I've done it differently as the years have gone by. But I went to them both at the same time. And I had, I told them the amends. And I did exactly what I was told to do and what the book tells me to do. I asked them if they had anything they needed to say to me.
thing they needed to say to me. Those two boys were angry. They were very angry. And
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they came at me like two little guys with Uzis. They had a lot to say to me that day. And what I continued to say is they told me, I never defended myself. I was told, don't defend yourself. None of that. I just said, I'm so sorry that that happened to you. And I will spend the rest of my life being the very best mom I can be. For 40 years, I have done that. I have done that. And I have a son who's sober in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. James is 33 years sober. He got sober when I was six years sober. And we've kind of grown up in AA together. And I've learned a lot from his story about the kind of mom I was. I've learned from him. And one of the things he, by him telling his story, and one of the things that he said is that when he was a little boy, here was his reality.
This was reality for him. I could no longer put my sons to bed. I could no longer get them up in the morning. James was probably about 11 years old, 10 or 11 years old. And he had gotten up that morning by his alarm clock. And he had gone into the kitchen. And what he saw was his mother passed out on the kitchen floor with a drink spilt. He just saw me, stepped over me, got his cereal, got the bowl, got the milk, mixed it up, made sure he put it all back. God forbid he leave anything on the counter. Stepped back over me, sat down at the dining room table, which was only a foot or two from me, and ate his breakfast and felt nothing. That is an abnormal reaction to that situation. My oldest son took care of me. Many is the time I've come to. If you take barbiturates and tranquilizers and drink alcohol, I promise you, you're not an active alcoholic. I was not an active alcoholic.
I passed out all the time. And we don't breathe too good. When you're taking those kind of drugs and drinking alcohol, and he would be screaming at me, Mom, wake up, wake up, are you dead? And me to come to and see the fear in his eyes. And you know, for 40 years, I haven't had to come to and see that kind of fear in anybody's eyes because of something I'm doing. And for that, I've been overpaid. James and I had a very amazing experience when we went to the boomerang in Australia. The person who was putting on the conference, we were doing, asked us to do the family afterwards. And James and I have always talked about, you know, our own recovery and the family afterwards and stuff like that. And he said, I want you to do it a little differently. I want you to talk about how you felt about the other one's alcoholism. And that's what we did. And it was really, really hard to hear because James was very honest. He was very vulnerable that day. And it was very hard to hear. And probably the hardest thing, and it was something I didn't even know had happened to him. Because there's a lot that I didn't know had happened to him. And he talked about being bullied at school. Because you see, when you move around a lot, it's really hard to make friends. And there were military kids. And they moved around a lot.
And he was bullied at school. And he talked about, I could not go home and talk about that in my home. Because my home wasn't safe. His home was me. His dad was gone. I was not safe. And that's what I had to hear. That's where alcoholism took me. Make no mistake, I loved my sons. But if I took a drink of alcohol, I have a disease called alcoholism. And I became another person. And I did things I could not fathom I could do. And what happened is, in order to live with that, in order to be able to stand it, I had to take another
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drink in order to be able to live with myself. But I could not bear what I had done to my kids, how afraid of me they were, I couldn't bear it. What ended up happening to me is I had a car wreck in Dallas, Texas. Outside of Dallas, Texas, in a place called Irving, Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. And that car wreck would bring me to treatment for the first time. And what happened was, I had a wreck, and I got out of my car, and I called the police, and I went to a phone booth. I know some of you people don't know what that is. I went to a phone booth and I called the police and told them that my car had been stolen. And here came the police with my husband. And I was taken to the Irving police station. And I got to see that look on the non-alcoholic's face that doesn't understand why we do the things we do. They just don't get it. And what happened was, he just looked at my husband with so much disgust and said, just take her home and sober her up. And on the way home, we went to, we ended up going, my husband said, there's a treatment center and it's not far from our house and I wish you would go. And that night I entered treatment for the first time. Now this was a county detox. It was a seven day detox. I went into this treatment center. It was at night. When I got up the next morning, I had no idea what I had, where I was and what was going on. As I was, I had just like came to, they'd given me some Valium or Librium or something to help me come down off the alcohol. And what happened was, is that this detox center is pretty just, just a county detox center.
And in this detox center, there were people who had been divorced. There were people who had been to jail. There were people who had been to prison. And they were cussing. I didn't even say the F word. And I'm really good at it today, but I didn't say anything. And all of this stuff was going on. And what happened for me as I looked around, Dr. T. Bolt is a little bit harder on us than Dr. Silkwork was. And he says in every alcoholic, there's two characteristics, defiant individuality and grandiosity. And in that grandiosity and that defiant individuality, I looked around the room and I said, people like me don't become alcoholic. I knew I was not like these people. Now I loved their stories. Oh my God, I sat there in awe. They were arrested. They'd been to prison. You know how when you sit up at, you know, in a detox center and you talk all night about all these war stories?
And I mean, I didn't get it. You know, I'm like, that's, you know, something else is wrong with me. But it's not this. And I stayed there for seven days. I stayed sober for 58 days. And what I did in that detox center is I had a jitterhouse romance. You know, we're sick, falls in love with sick, and you walk off into a happy destiny. Well, we walked off into happy destiny for 58 days. And I ended up being 12-stepped out of a motel in Euless, Texas by the man that was the director of that detox center who would become my first sponsor. And he went into that detox center and he took me out and he saved my life. He absolutely went after me and saved my life and brought me back into that detox center.
And I knew when I, I love to hear Clancy talk because he talks about the feelings of the alcoholic. And I knew that day that there was no way that I could live sober. Sobriety was my problem. How do you live with the, what, how do I live with this? Let me tell you the facts of my life when I came to AA, when I came to that detox center. The facts of my life was my dad was dying of cancer in Abilene, Texas, three hours away from me.
My husband was 100% disabled and about 80% bedridden. He was a, he was a victim of Agent Orange and he had congestive heart failure at 36 years old. And he was absolutely debilitated. And my children were a mess. And I could not live with the facts of my life. I couldn't stand what was, I couldn't stand the facts of my life. I couldn't, and sobriety, I couldn't,
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I couldn't be sober and live with that. So what happened for me is when that seven days was up, I got a bottle of vodka, a bottle of scotch and a bottle of Valium and I checked into a motel. I don't think that there's anybody in this room who doesn't have an angel in your life. Someone who leads us to this program. Someone. I had such a woman in my life. She knew nothing about the disease of alcoholism, but she loved me. And she said that day that something came over her. And I know today that something was God working in my life through her. And she drove around until she found my car parked outside that hotel. And I didn't have the door shut all the way and she pushed it open. And I was pronounced dead on arrival in a hospital in Bedford, Texas. And another thing my son said that day was that it was devastated when he heard that his mom had flatlined in the ambulance. He has never said that to me before. And he talks a lot about knowledge, knowing, what is the word I'm looking for? The knowledge of alcoholism. That James knew about the disease of alcoholism.
He knew. He knew that alcoholism killed. Because I had died from a disease. I had died from this disease. And I was pronounced dead on arrival in a hospital in Bedford, Texas. Alcohol. That's what alcohol does. But by God's grace, and I mean grace, the gift that we don't deserve, the gift, the gift of grace, an undeserved gift that we get to have just because we're loved. I stand here today. The gift of grace. We just got through hearing this song, Amazing Grace. A gift unearned. I don't have to earn this gift. I don't have to do anything. I just get the gift. God gives it for me for free. But so many people, so many people get that gift. And what happens is they come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and they lay the gift on the chair and they walk out. Because this gift, it's a gift. I have to cherish it. I have to take care of it. I have to do things. I have to take instruction. I get a sponsor. I do the things that I'm told to do. And when I left that treatment center, I called Frank and he started working with me. And I never in a million years knew that I'd live in Southern California. And I got to meet Frank Honeycutt when I was eight months sober. And he came to see Frank in Texas. And when I was five years sober, I would live and go to meetings with Frank Honeycutt. And he is still to this day the finest man I have ever known. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about him. Because his walk was absolutely beautiful. And I feel so privileged that I had the opportunity to know this man. And to be able to follow in his footsteps. And to be able to learn about kindness and caring and goodness. And that was all the things that he exuded. And it was absolutely spectacular to watch him walk. At any rate, I went to that, I got, what happened for me is when I ended up being, when you try to commit suicide in the state of Texas in 1977 is no different than in Cleveland, Ohio in 2017. If you try to do that, they're going to put you on a little 72-hour hold and court you off to a psychiatric hospital.
And that's exactly what they did to me. And what happened in that 72 hours is my husband was able to obtain a court order from a Fort Worth judge that said I was a detriment to myself and others. And I entered a treatment center in Dallas, Texas. And I entered that treatment center on April the 11th of 1977.
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And by God's grace in this program, I haven't had a drink since. And a vision for you, it talks about if we stay spiritually fit, that great events will come to pass for us and countless others. That is the great fact for us. It is a fact that great events will come to pass. And I have some amazing great events. I just shared one. I got to speak with my son in Australia. I told you earlier I got to, we went to the Great Barrier Reef.
You know, how does that happen? How does that happen? How do you get to enjoy things like that? That's Alcoholics Anonymous. It's no, it's nothing else. It's nothing else but Alcoholics Anonymous. And a God that loves us so much that he would give this program to Bill Wilson and Bill would carry it to Bob. It is no mistake. It is not an accident. It is a divine gift that we have been given. It's a divine gift.
What happened was when I left that treatment center, I started getting active in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I did the steps. I got sober in Texas and it was what we did. It was kind of the norm. When I got sober, you go through the steps quickly and you start sponsoring right away. You start going and helping another alcoholic. I ended up doing detox centers. My sponsor was a man who carried a meeting to the federal prison in Fort Worth.
I became active in the corrections system. I was a member of the corrections team in our area. I did a lot of jail and prison work. And I just got cleared in Jacksonville. I haven't done, the first time in my whole sobriety, I haven't had a meeting going into the prison in six years. And I just got cleared to do it. That's been missing. Do I know anything about going to jail? I don't. I have absolutely no idea.
But I know about the disease of alcoholism. And I know a lot of those people are in there. And I got so interested in doing it again because my son married a woman who ended up going to prison for five years. And she is a beautiful woman. But you know, there are people in those prisons who make a mistake. And they do it because they drank too much whiskey. They're in there because they have a disease called alcoholism.
And if I could do what I did to my sons, they can do the things that they did. And I love what Chuck Chamberlain says, that every one of us are doing the best we can. If we knew better, we'd do better. No matter what it is, we would do better. I am so grateful for the gift of forgiveness. My youngest son really forgave me right away. And then six years later, he came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
He called me up on the phone when I was six years sober. And he said, Mom, I want what you have. And he's been sober ever since. He came here when he was 21 years old. And he's an active member of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. My oldest son is not an alcoholic. My oldest son has had a lot of problems. And I watched my oldest son try to take his life eight times. And I thought I would die in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'm going to tell you, at five years of sobriety, I had a son who was running Venice Beach. We were living in Southern California. James was living with us. He was running Venice Beach. My son was living in Texas. He was taking his life, it seemed like, every 30 minutes. I was getting a call from his wife that one more time he was trying to take his life. And I ended up, he ended up calling, she ended up calling me, telling me that my son was in the hospital one more time.
He had put a pair of scissors in his stomach. And I thought I would absolutely die. And I went to this meeting out in the valley, because I lived in the Simi Valley. And I went to this meeting out in the valley. And I walked in and they said, does anybody have something to share? And I talked about my son is on Venice Beach and he's drinking and he's using drugs. My oldest son, I just heard, my daughter-in-law called me and he's in the hospital.
He tried to take his life again. And this old man in the back leaned back and he says, you just need to turn those boys
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over. And I know none of you have ever done this, but I flew up out of that chair and I had my fist and I said, would you please tell me how to do that? And you know, he didn't know either. He didn't know what to say either. But you know, when the student's ready, the teacher will appear. And God will always send an angel. He'll always send an angel. And what happened is this double winner came up to me that day and she said, Polly, I need to take you to an Al-Anon meeting.
And the next day she took me to an Al-Anon meeting. And those women surrounded me and they said, of course you feel the way you feel. You're a mother. Of course you feel the way you feel. And what we're going to do is we're going to help you love your sons without it killing you. Now, I'm not at an Al-Anon meeting, but I'm here to tell you in this AA meeting, I would not be standing here if it had not been for those Al-Anon women that night.
I was in so much pain at five years of sobriety. My sobriety was on the line. And I don't know if I could have bared the pain. I was losing both of my sons right before my eyes. And I am so grateful for that help and that angel that God sent me that night. And that has been the story of my sobriety, is one angel after another has been sent. Always, always. I was not your poster child for AA when I got sober.
I was 36 years old. My husband had been sick for, he was four years older than me, so he was 40, so he had been sick for four years himself. And I was 36 years old, I'd been living a celibate life, I had been drinking and using drugs. And I got sober, and my libido popped open. And I'm here to tell you that, Hilda, you were not the only one. I was running around AA, and I was a cute little thing. I had long red hair, I wore it a lot of times in two ponytails, and I'd wear cut-off halter tops and kind of frayed jean shorts, kind of like Daisy Mae.
And somebody, you know, a guy would walk into AA, and you know, I would just, hi. The other day, I was talking at a conference not too long ago, and I said, you know the deal is, I've still got the moves, I just don't have the looks. But what happened was, is I would do anything for attention, to anything to make myself feel better. I felt so sorry for myself, for the position that I was in, my husband being sick, me having to care for him, I was so full of self.
Now I was sober, but I was so full of self. And the first year of my sobriety, my son said, my mother's first years in Alcoholics Anonymous read like a torrid sex novel. And that's what happened. I was not a poster child for AA. The only thing I can tell you is, is that I stayed sober, and I helped others. That's what I did. And I did it in many ways. I helped other alcoholics too. But that's what I did.
That's how, at two years of sobriety, I sat in an abortion clinic. I am so ashamed of that today, I can barely stand it. I was 38 years old, but I couldn't bear, what would my kids think if I were pregnant? I mean, would I have done enough to my boys? How could I do that? Just one thing after another, and I'm sober. Dave had always been my friend, and we'd been friends for a long time. And Dave came up to me when I was three and a half years sober, and he said, Polly, I'm in love with you, but you need to get something straight.
I don't want to have an affair with you, I want to marry you. And by God's grace, in a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, Dave and I have been married for 37 years, and a few days. And it's one of the greatest events that has happened in my life. I've got to marry the man of my dreams.
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And today, my husband has struggles. His health is a big struggle. And we talked earlier today that we get to do do-overs. And you know, today, I can be there for Dave. And I've been there. I've been there for Dave. And I'm going to be there. And if it were me, he'd be there for me. I know that without a doubt, that he would do that for me. And it's not that I do it because I have to, I do it because I want to.
I want to do it. I want to be there. I want to show somebody, we talked about love as an action. And I want to show him how much I love him. And a lot of times, he sits there and he says, I'm too much trouble. I said, you're not too much trouble. It is my pleasure to do this for you. It is my pleasure. It's an honor that I get to do that. It's an honor. I didn't ever dream it would be like that, because he was a really active outdoors guy.
I never dreamed it would happen. But it's happening. And it is my pleasure. It is an honor that I get to do, I get to be there for him. Dave and I, life's been in session, life's been in session the past 37 years. Just because you're married and you're in love and you have AA, life's in session. Fourteen years ago, we lost Michael, Dave's oldest son. He died of AIDS. He was 11 years sober. Miracles and Alcoholics Anonymous.
He was sober. Our daughter, Kim, has not been sober. She's almost a year sober. She'll be 55 years old, and she's almost a year sober. Great events. Dave and I have had, we have had bankruptcy. We have lost our home. We've lost jobs. Life's been in session. But you know what? We've always been in AA. And we've always had this program. And we've always had each other. It's an amazing journey. It's an amazing journey.
I get to sponsor women. I have no idea what I do for these women. But I am a person. I'm a Bill Wilson. I've read everything I can get my hands on. Different people write novels about Bill Wilson. I've read everything I can get my hands on. Because he suffered from depression. I suffer from depression. And what happens is, is I get to work with other women. I get to do that. I get to do, I get to work with other women.
I get to share with other women who have that same problem. And we get to support each other. We get to support each other. And what happens is, is we get to stay sober in spite of those things. And today, I don't even see depression as something that's bad. I used to think it's my worst nightmare because one of the things it does is it keeps me sometimes from sleeping and things like that. But it's a gift.
Today, it's a gift. And with some of the women that I know that have it too, we share with each other that it's our gift because it just makes us have to work harder. We just have to work harder. I can't rest on my laurels because if I do, I've got a head that's going to take over. My disease is in step three. I'm selfish and self-centered. That is the root of my disease. And the only way that I'm going to get out of me is reach out and work with another alcoholic.
It is my pleasure to be able to do that. It is my gift. Yeah, I do. I sometimes not want to do that and I want to just not take another phone call and all of that. You bet. I'm a human. But I tell you, the minute I answer that phone, just do it. If it rings, answer. And just do it. And when I do and I start that conversation, magic happens. And the magic is, is the thing that Bill brought to us when he went to Bob.
And that's one alcoholic sharing with another alcoholic. I get to give her this book. We get to talk about it together. We get to walk shoulder to shoulder. The miracle of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am so grateful for this program. And one of the things that I'm going to share one more time is something that my young Care, One More Time, is something that my youngest son said when he called me that day on the phone.
He said, I knew AA worked because I saw the transformation in my mother.
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God bless you.