Ocean City, MD

Good evening. My name is Bonnie Karen Megenson and I am an alcoholic,

so I'd like to tell you that I'm nervous. I'm not nervous, but I am as you can tell.

I went from being petrified to anxiety attacks to being nervous.

And I heard a tape today and a gentleman said he was nervous when he spoke for a long time until he realized God was always holding his hand no matter what he did. And I'd like to tell you that thought maybe not be nervous at all. Well, it calmed me down to butterflies. Someone once said if you're nervous when you get up your talk, that's God shaking the truth out of you.

I don't know whether I'd buy that or not.

For me, I'm nervous because when I get up here, I'm supposed to tell you in a general way what Bonnie Karen would like, what happened to Bonnie Karen, and what I'm like now. And I don't really like to do that because that means I've got to trust you enough to share a part of me with you.

And I'm an alcoholic and I'm not a real trusting person. I have to learn to trust and to share part of being. To give you part of Maine is not an easy thing to do. And it makes me a little nervous. And I'll admit to that right off.

I've also been accused of being a little preachy sometimes. And sometimes I think I get that way with this program because this program saved my life. You know, my mother and father are both ministers, and I was raised up in a household of ministers. And I always wondered when all this controversy went off lately. I went and I asked my father, who is now retired. I said, Dad, what makes a difference between a good minister

and a bad minister?

He said, well, it's like this. He said if you go in here an excellent minister, you find out if they're paying that guy

and if they're not slipping him any money and he's fantastic and he's vibrant, you got a real good indication he believes everything he's saying to you. If they're paying him, you can always wonder whether he's saying it for the cash or whether he really believes it. Well, I'll tell you tonight, I'm not getting paid.

I really do believe everything that I'm going to tell you this evening.

I am not an alcoholic because I was raised into dysfunctional family. My family was very functional. Thank you,

I am an alcoholic because I drank too much and the actions and reactions to my drinking caused my life to be in a horrible mess.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking psychiatrist or counselors or anything like that.

The Big Book tells me that there are times when there are other problems than alcoholism, and I need these people.

What I don't believe in is a dysfunctional family theory, and I'll tell you why right off the bat. According to them, I don't know of one family in the United States today that isn't dysfunctional.

And I believe this program of Alcoholics Anonymous is for those of us who are Alcoholics, not want to be Alcoholics. I am totally amazed at how many people in society want to be Alcoholics. When they told me I was going to be an alcoholic or I was an alcoholic, that's the last thing I wanted to hear. I was not beating down the doors to get in and join you people.

As I said, I was raised in the home with ministers. I'm not an only child. I have an older sister.

I was raised in the mining town.

Alcohol was not a part of my family life.

I do remember laying at night and listening to the Honky Tonk down the street and thinking what wonderful music came out of there and how much fun those people must be having

and often wondered why we never went there.

But being a good child, I never asked too much.

I had a normal childhood, his most normal childhood go. My parents did the best they could with what they had at that given time. But

loved me. They took care of me the best they could and I went on about growing up.

When I did start to drink,

I drank to make my life manageable.

My life had become unmanageable. I had so much pain inside of me.

You've heard the story of the hall in the Soul. I didn't have a hole in the soul because I'm not too sure I had a soul by then to have a hole in.

I drank because my life was unmanageable and the alcohol made it manageable. It made the pain go away. It made the hurt go away. It let me be who I wanted you to think I was.

It didn't make me who I wanted to be, just who I wanted you to think I was at that given time.

My problem developed when that alcohol no longer let my life be manageable. When you drink, and I drink and I drink and the pain still there and I can no longer be anybody.

I always wanted to be top of the heap #1 the best.

And that's what I strived for through all my years.

I always wanted to be the upper crust.

And you know, I didn't know this until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous and heard it, that the upper crust is nothing but a bunch of crumbs held together by a bunch of dough.

Well, I kind of fit the first part. I might have been a little crummy, but I sure didn't have all the dove.

But I wanted to be that upper crust. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the one that was noticed, the one that stood out,

but I didn't want to have to do anything to get there. I wanted it all given to me on a silver platter

because growing up have been easy for me, so therefore life should be easy for me.

Life wasn't easy for me.

I married young, not really young, but young. I married into an alcoholic marriage.

I did all the things that good Al Anon's do. I hid the keys I covered at work,

and then I drank with him, and then I drank at him, and then I learned to drink real good.

I went to work for a illustrious division of our government called the United States Navy, and the big boys taught me how to drink like a big boy. Because if you're going to play with the big boys, you drink like them. You work hard to play hard. And people just kind of look at me like I'm a little off my locker. My drink of choice is a Mai Tai followed by a Boilermaker chaser

and I still think that is the most elegant way to drink.

You satisfy the lady and you with the Mai Tai and you satisfy the big boy in you with a Boilermaker. Chase them. What better way to get drunk? What better way to end the pain?

What better way to make a fool of yourself?

That marriage ended

with an accident.

I woke up in intensive care and one of our naval hospitals,

and I wasn't sure whether I was dead or alive.

By that time, I had achieved everything I thought I wanted. I had three biblical children, a husband. I was on my way to a recording contract

and I felt top of the world.

And in one moment, one drunken, angry moment, all that came crashing down.

30 days in intensive care

and they took the bandages off and the tubes out and they looked in the mirror and they said you look fine. And I looked in the mirror and didn't know who was looking back at me.

And I can tell you the other sense,

a female winged, the wildered, a feeling lost, a feeling so totally unknown and unwanted came over me at that instant that I decided I would never hurt again.

And the best way to handle that is when you start to hurt, you drink

and you drink a little bit more and then you feel remorse in the morning because you drank the night before.

And then you heard a little bit more

and had a real dear friend. She said, listen, this marriage is over, but you still have to deal with a lot of things. Why don't you go back to Al Anon? You see, I have been introduced to all of you in 1976 by the courtesy of a doctor named Doctor Joe Kirsch, who had started a rehab program for United States Navy. They had sent my husband there

and as a good faithful wife, I went along too for the family program

and I always got tickled at doctor person. Someday I'll be able to shake his hand and tell him thank you because he planted the seed. I'm sure God sent him to plant that seed. After talking to me one day, he said, honey,

don't ever pick up that first drinker, you'll be in the rooms with us. And I really didn't quite believe him,

but the man was right, you know, I guess it takes someone to spot an alcoholic to demonstrate. And it didn't set me straight then. But this friend knew that I knew about Al Anon and they sent me back to Al Anon

and I sat in the Al Anon rooms and I listened and I listened and I listened. And I was telling some people today that it was one of those glorious blame it on sessions when you get a group who newcomers who sit around and want to blame all their problems on their husbands.

And one young girl was talking about how horrible her husband was, the way he drank, how miserable it was.

And the thought crossed my mind, what do you have to complain about? I drink that way. That's not how an alcoholic drinks. If you had been in my place. So I went to someone and I said, do you know what I heard?

I heard and that's how I drink. And how dare they say?

They stopped me real quick and they said, sweetheart, why don't you next meeting night come up and sit in our room.

If you can relate to what's being said and you can understand the feelings that are coming across, there's a real good chance you belong up here with us.

Now I'm going back to this people who want to be an alcoholic. The last thing I wanted to do was come up here and sit with you Alcoholics.

Now, by this time of my knee, that you weren't the little bums out on the street. By this time, I knew that most of you were living fairly decent lives. But just the thought of that brand, you know, I didn't want somebody to put that big A on my forehead and make me walk around town. I was scared to death of what my boss would think, but my boss knew that I tied one on with all the other bookkeepers on Friday night anyway. I mean, they found me drunk, no big deal.

I tried that room and I stayed in that room

and this program of Alcoholics Anonymous has saved my life.

And I did get preachy about it because I don't like people messing with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

To me, in the program, like Alcoholics Anonymous is the way it was written down in the 1st 164 pages of the big Book. Everything I need to know is right there

when I decided to come in these rooms with Alcoholics. Mom, if I heard get a sponsor, get a sponsor, get a sponsor. I picked the meanest looking person I could find at the end of that table, a fiery redhead who had a temper to go with it.

And bless her heart, she knew where I was coming from. She sat and talked to me for a whole day.

I don't even remember if we ate that day. I know we drank a lot of coffee and at the end she says do you have a big book? I said yeah. She said give it to me. I gave her my big book. She ripped out the 1st 164 pages of that big book and handed it back to me and threw the rest in the trash can.

And she says, honey, this is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and this is what you're going to work with. When you're ready to try to relate to the stories in the back, I'll bike into a big book,

I thought. The audacity of this woman.

But do you know this woman sat down with me and said this is the way we're going to do it and we aren't going to play around.

Let's get busy with steps 1-2 and three. Have you done them? Yes, let's go over them.

And she did. And she said now let's go to step four. I said I don't want to do Step 4

now. She wasn't one of these. We'll do Step 4 when you're ready,

she says. We're going to do Step 4:00 and you're going to be back here next Saturday. The guys are all going down to work in the field and chop the trees and we're going to do Step 5. I did that inventory to the best of my ability.

I did the way the book said to do it

and I was scared

and I felt like a load was lifted off of me

and this sponsor got me into service work real quick. Now, at this time I was in the state of Florida and they do things a little differently down there than what a lot of people are used to. And she believed in hauling me off immediately.

We went to halfway houses,

we went to slum meetings,

and I did unusual things. I was given the honor and the pleasure of cleaning out ashtrays,

and when I was well enough, they gave me the honor and the pleasure of picking up coffee cups.

Now see, I thought I was ready to go straight to handing out chips or something,

and somewhere along the line they thought I needed to clean up ashtrays.

I look back on that now as a healing process

because it's some of those old timers who stay around and clean up ashtrays too.

It was then that I learned a certain little gems, the experiences, the strength and the hopes that these older people in the program shared

the one-on-one.

You know, when I came into this program, I was in pretty bad shape mentally.

Now let's get real on size. In real bad shape mentally.

I could go to work, I could function, I could clean a house.

But see, when I had my accident, they rebuilt part of me.

And sometimes the little things up here, there's a lady in a Peggy that talks about how these little things talk to these little things.

And she says a lot of people who mess around and they're real bad Alcoholics. Sometimes when they go, they go like this and they don't connect.

Well my little things still talk to my little thing but they couldn't connect and they had to find new paths and I'd be eating and pick up a fork and couldn't remember if I was picking up the fork or putting the fork down.

When I came out of that 30 days in terms of kale I could not talk. I had severed 1 vocal cord and damaged another one and they told me if I whispered for the rest of my life I would be lucky.

I still stutter sometimes when I get real nervous and it's real high anxiety. People who know me real well catch me real quick and calm down. What's bothering it?

You know, I wrote a statement the other day and said

I am the biggest monster

and I'm also the brightest miracle that I've ever seen in my life.

And that's how I feel about myself.

But my little things don't talk to my little things sometimes,

and I get off on tangents and I go here and there. And my sponsor knew that

my sponsor understood.

So she laid down things I could do, basic things, and she would call me in the morning and say, what are you wearing to work? Have you put supper out?

Did you make sure to pack your husband's lunch?

And after a while these things got a little monotonous and I finally went to and I said why do you call me all the time with this simple stuff?

So you must be getting better.

You're getting angry enough to come ask me. If you ask me, that means you remember. If you remember, you must be getting better.

I thought I was getting better and I got transferred. The whole family got transferred

and I came to an area where sobriety was different.

Now for those of you who live in one area, get sober in one area and have your roots ripped out from underneath of you, and you go to a new meeting and it's all together different in that area,

hang on, you'll find the right meeting. Don't give up.

It's there somewhere. See, I wanted to give up when I couldn't find the same thing I'd had in Florida.

I wanted to give up completely, but I didn't.

I had enough people in my life who wouldn't let me. And I'd like to tell you that I moved to this area we went to and life was rosy and kind. Everything went well. I developed such magnificent knowledge of the program of Alcoholics manners.

Well, that's not quite true either.

I kind of flitted from sponsor to sponsor. Have you ever heard of a sponsor butterfly? You know, they're the ones of us who split from sponsor to sponsor to sponsor to sponsor because we really can't find what we're looking for, what we had before that relationship, that knowledge, whatever.

And then I got into the educated meetings.

I was an alcoholic, I went to AA, I was married to recovering alcoholic. I needed Alan on.

I came from a dysfunctional family, so this this other.

Over here sent me to a CLA. Do not get me started on ACLA.

They sent me to Weight Watchers, They sent me here. They sent me there

and all of a sudden my inside started going

and I felt pulled 100 different directions

and I didn't know which way I was going or coming.

Now I'm going to tell you, newcomer, something that you don't hear from behind the podiums a lot.

If you're on a rosy cloud, bless you,

but grab hold of somebody who knows this program inside and out and goes by the Big book. Because somewhere down the line in sobriety, you got to be prepared when your world falls out from underneath you and there ain't nothing left and there's nobody left and you don't know whether you're coming or going.

And that had happened to me.

It is a real mind boggler

when you've got six to eight years of sobriety in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and suicide becomes a viable option again.

See, I had gotten some of that egotism back and self pride wouldn't let me go out and drink,

but the pain wouldn't let me go on living either.

If somebody ever tells you suicides not a viable option, come to come talk to me.

See, when my life was so unmanageable and I went to drink to make it manageable,

I had three options.

I can drink and make it manageable.

I could do something about it else change my way of life, or I can commit suicide. I chose to drink

when it was the drink, couldn't hold it anymore. I had two options left. I could either do something about the pain or I could commit suicide and it was a viable option. I would not hurt anymore.

Those options came back in sobriety. Here I am, someone who is supposedly working this program,

someone who supposedly knows what they're doing.

I sponsor people. I can't be this crazy. I can't be out to lunch. I know what the big book says. I do what I'm told,

but if I could have gotten my hands

gun, there were many a days I would have blown my brains out because the pain was so great I couldn't go on.

So I did the next best thing for an alcoholic who's too proud to go drink.

I hid inside myself.

I hid inside my pain.

I hid inside Alcoholics Anonymous.

How are you doing, Bonnie? Oh, I'm doing fine. I'm making 90 meetings and 90 days. Just like you said before. The depression will go away in a while.

Well then go away.

And I kept looking for that one person, that one person who I could connect with

that could say, I understand that you're hurting, but there is a solution.

That chapter, there is a solution in the big book. It's for Alcoholics. It doesn't mean just drinking Alcoholics. It doesn't mean just newcomers. That chapter means there is a solution for those of us who forget to practice this program.

I heard a speaker here two years ago. That speaker kept getting thrown back in my life and thrown back in my life and finally at the point of where I was ready to throw up my hands and say it's over with. I can't go on any more. I can't do this,

I give up completely. Heard that speaker one more time.

Now you got to remember I was trying all these different programs around, and then I was trying none of them, and then I wasn't doing anything. And then I was hiding in AA.

I cannot tell you anything that speaker said except one phrase.

I try to practice these principles in all my affairs and work this program in every aspect of my life. And when I do that,

then it's OK.

And the light bulb went on.

You know, it tells me practice these principles in all my affairs. If I'm practicing these principles and all my affairs as an alcoholic, then I should be able to deal with living with a recovering spouse.

If I practice these principles in all my affairs,

I should be able to deal

with certain aspects of raising children and on and on and on and on. So I went to this person. I said I need a sponsor. This is where I am. This is what's going on.

That person didn't say yes. That person said let me send you some things

now. I got a whole pamphlet full of stuff. This is what I expect out of people I sponsor.

Somebody wanted me to do something.

I'm not a newcomer here and I don't have to do this. Yes, you do. How badly did you want what I have?

Real bad.

I want that solid marriage. I want that gleam in the eye. I want the smile on the face,

I want the Peace of Mind. I don't want the pain anymore. And I once again,

at 8 years of body 8 1/2, became willing to do what is ever necessary

to get to that goal, to get to where that person was in sobriety.

And I'd like to tell you that has been an easy Rd. It has not.

What I had to do was go back to the big books of Alcoholics Anonymous and start from the beginning. I did another four step inventory and dealt with all the garbage that I'd never dealt with before

that I had to trust one person.

One person with every bit of me.

Now even in sobriety

with a sponsor, that's not easy.

And when I was working on that four step inventory, I reached a point

and I'll let that inventory set for like 4 days. And I finally called up my sponsor and I said I can't do this.

I can't go any further.

Yes, you can. No, I can't. Yes, you can.

I don't even know how I got through that aspect.

You see, during that last period, this few years, last years of sobriety,

I had buried a husband with cancer.

I have been locked in a home basically

for six months and one day with a man who was recovering in this program of Alcoholic Anonymous and dying, and he knew it.

And we carried on conversations.

I didn't make meetings. My meetings were with this person,

you know, I had to rely on my higher power

and get out of this depression

and I had to deal with that in my four step inventory.

And it wasn't until just recently

that I said I, I told my sports. I didn't know why I had to go through that.

But you see, the one thing I finally learned was

this program of Alcoholics Anonymous is based on getting out of me and getting into somebody else. And when I took care of that husband,

when I washed him and I felt him and I bathed him

and I talked to him, I forgot about poor body, Karen.

I forgot about the poor means because I was giving me as somebody else.

And I've called for me cleaning drawers. I have a friend in Illinois who wrote me one time and I said, she said, call me. So I called her and I said, what are you doing? And she said, I'm cleaning out drawer. And I said, what do you mean you're cleaning out drawers? And she said, you know, everybody's got that one drawer in the kitchen

or the bedroom when you clean house or for you minute maybe in your workshop and

get this one little. You clean out all the drawers and the cupboards and they're real neat. And all of a sudden you find this one bolt and you really don't want to go put this bolt up,

throw it back in the drawer.

Please can you find something else? You throw it back in the drawer,

you don't really clean out that drawer. Well, my sobriety was kind of like that.

You know, I cleaned out all this stuff,

but there was still this one little thing that I left in that drawer, that one little thing that wouldn't matter, that one little thing that I didn't want to share with anybody, that one little thing I couldn't face.

And I said, why are you telling me this? And she says, I don't know, I just need to talk somebody. She and I share the same sponsor

and the fact was she didn't want to tell her sponsor what was going on because it was my sponsor and she knew that. Somehow we both end up catching heck for it.

What ended up happened was neither of us caught heck for it and both of us got rid of all this pain.

I'm too tired to go work with other Alcoholics and I don't know what to do. And I called her up and I said let's find another alcoholic. If you don't have time to go down to the treatment centers or go down on the corners and pull a drunken out of the bar, go open the door for somebody,

go give of yourself to somebody else, whatever it takes, just a little bit.

I was laughing tonight while they read How It Works

and I thought back the first time I heard those steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I thought what a crock of garbage.

How can 12 little steps

change everything? Well, those 12 little steps don't actually change everything. Those 12 little steps are a tool I use to change. By Karen. See, my disease is threefold. It's physical, it's mental, and it's spiritual. If you have 30 days sobriety. If you have 30 days in here without drinking,

physically wise, you are as sober as I am here standing before you with almost 10 years.

That's not the part I have to worry about.

The part I was having problem was with the spiritual. See, I got in. The mental straightened out.

Doctors told me what I could expect and how to deal with it and how to work around it.

They told me that there would be obsessions,

and I dealt with all of that,

but what I didn't deal with was the spiritual.

Now, I'm not going to preach God to all of you.

I'm not gonna preach religion to any of you.

To me, there's a big difference. There's a whole lot of religious people who aren't spiritual, and there's a whole lot of spiritual people who aren't religious. And this program is based on spirituality. And it took me a long time. I kept saying, OK, OK, it's based on spirituality. What is spirituality? Somebody gives me a definition. You tell me I don't have to believe in the same God the same way, the same thing I had when I was growing up.

That spirituality isn't the spirituality we're talking about. Wait, what is it?

I finally found somebody to tell me. My sponsor showed it to me out of the Big Book.

Spirituality for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is service to others and giving to others, giving of yourself, expecting nothing in return.

And if you think that's easy,

that's one of the hardest things I have to practice.

It's real hard

to do something for somebody you're mad at.

Try it. You don't stay mad very long.

It's real hard

to give of yourself

when you don't want to deal with that. That's part of the men's

When I went to make my amends list,

I had to go back and make amends somehow to this first husband

and I couldn't.

I didn't know how

and I came to hear that Amends wasn't saying I'm sorry

and Amends is a fix it.

You broke it, baby. You go out and fix it somehow,

one way or the other,

and I did. I fixed it where it hurt the worst for me. I did it in a monetary manner.

I did something for somebody else in that persons name in a monetary fashion. And you know something? The hate and the resentment and the hurt from that accident went away. It didn't go away overnight. I felt better after I sent that check out

when I sat back and looked at it just recently. There's no hate in animosity there,

and that's a good feeling because I've lived with that for over 10 years

now. I'm not going to go back and and dig up all of that with him ever again. That's dealt with

and I don't like to make amends

because that means I have to go to somebody or do something and put myself on the line. And I don't like being on the line.

See, I don't like being an alcoholic.

I'll admit to it. I'll accept it and I'll work at getting better

and see I don't have to work at not drinking.

I don't drink today.

What I have to keep working at is that spirituality, that giving of me to somebody else,

whether it be in a smile and like I said, holding the door for somebody.

Are taking 5 minutes to listen to a kid who wants to tell you what happened in school that day,

picking up a shell off the beach and handing it to a small child.

I love to watch children

and I'm glad that God gave me the chance to become a small child again

where my relationship with my sponsor is. See, I learned from my sponsor and I feel a little teachable.

They may not agree with that at times,

but I'm like that little child.

Give me something.

Give me a gleam of this program working in my own life and I've had a benefit for the day. Makes the whole day better. Now, those of you who thought you were going to get real lucky tonight

and hear the story of Saint Doug, you're out of luck.

See, I'm married to this gentleman who does the taping,

but I don't know about his drinking. We've only been married two years. We met in this program. We married in this program.

I will tell you this. Do I work this program in the marriage every day of my life to the best of my ability?

Do I work this program every day of my life to the best of my ability? With my children?

With my friends?

Probably not as much as I should.

Some days I'm great at it, some days I fall very, very short.

And that's not because I'm an alcoholic, That's because I'm human.

Do I turn everything over to God?

No,

you see,

God, if, if, if I have a problem with my family, I'm not going to turn them over to God. Got to give them right back to me and say, man, you deal with them. I don't want to mess with them right now. They're your problem, sweetheart. You deal with it.

There's a place in our big book that tells me

that what I do is I get up for the day

and I say, OK, God, here I am today

and I go about doing my due.

I do what I have to do that day to the best of my ability, the way I can, and I leave the outcome of that day up to God.

You see, if I have $1200 worth of hot checks out there, I can't turn them over to God. Ain't gonna deal with $1200 worth hot checks. I mean,

God has all the cash he needs,

but he hasn't let me win the lottery yet, you know, or anything like that. He expects me to do something about it and let the outcome be up to him.

So I go about my business during the day, doing the best I can. Sometimes working with another alcoholic, sometimes just working with another person,

And when I lay down in bed at night,

I try to make a list appear in my head.

And if sheet balances out pretty good, then I've done OK for that day.

I still get that feeling that sometimes there's no soul.

You see, when I came into this program, I wasn't morally bankrupt. I wasn't even sure I had any morals left.

I knew I didn't have any concept of God left,

and I sure didn't like me very much at all.

And I'd like to tell you that I've forgiven myself for everything I've ever done. But that's not true.

And I don't buy the part that says you have to love and forgive yourself first before you can forgive anybody else.

You see, it was easy for me to give her forgive a lot of people, a lot of things, but I still couldn't forgive myself with some things.

But I work on it to the best of my ability.

Did I like having to go back and start over from the beginning?

No. Do I appreciate it

now? Yes.

Now Freda was telling you that I tried to run away.

That's not quite true.

You see, I got real nervous about being up here

the last time I ever talked before group this size,

so I fell out of my shoes.

Now some of you don't go back far enough or you weren't racy enough or whatever to know if Fredericks of Hollywood,

they used to have these 6 inch stiletto heels. Now they've got me on a little box here because if I step off, you can't see me behind this podium. So I used to wear these 6 inch stiletto heels and I was walking across the stage in West Virginia and it was an old stage and the boards separated. Now the reason I was in those was because the person was supposed to talk that night didn't show up. They were fogged in. So I had to switch places

and my heel caught in one of those boards that had separated

and I landed flat on my keister on the floor.

Now that's very ego deflating

and I thought I can never do this again and I did it again. I got up in front of people no problem. You see, I haven't been in front of a lot of you for a long time because I walked into a meeting to speak one night

and the chairman took me aside and I was told we don't tell anybody here what they have to say. But in this meeting we don't like to talk about the steps

and in this meeting we really don't like to hear about the traditions. We like to be entertained a little bit

and my lines going 90 miles an hour, what am I going to entertain these people with? Because some of the things I did while I was drinking is absolutely nobody's business.

And then the kicker was, oh, don't mention God. You may scare off the newcomers.

And I grabbed my purse and said, don't mention my name, I'm out of here. Go find yourself another speaker.

I went home and said I'll never talk in an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting again.

Somewhere along the line we've lost the program.

Somewhere along the line, we've lost all the old timers, the ones who when you go into a meeting and they say,

I want to talk about separation tonight,

an old timer would say, wait a minute, we talk about alcohol here.

We talk about our feelings, our hurts

in respect to alcohol.

I felt we had lost the old timers who would stand up and say don't screw with my first 164 pages. This big book, it's my lifeline, don't change it. It was here for me. Leave it for my kids.

Because you see, at that point I had a kid who was ready for this program.

I wanted that child to find what I had found

and thank God that child did.

And that child picked up a three-year chip on day I got married to Douglas. And I don't know which was more pleasure, seeing Douglas give her that three-year chip or getting him for a husband.

But I didn't know where it had gone. And I was going to be blessed if I would get up and tell you people that everything was fine and rosy and everything else in sobriety, because it wasn't