Marie E. from Myrtle Beach at Baton Rouge

Give me a hug.

I'm Marie. I'm an alcoholic. God is not up this morning. It's too early.

I'm kind of curious about what's been going on in the back of the room. Everybody keeps talking about it. I'm upset back there tonight.

I'm going to be wobbling all over this podium. I want you to know I do not have to go to the bathroom. I had little knee surgery and it's been on my knees for so many years. I think holding that throne and puking every day, 24 hours a day, and sometimes it gets to you.

Umm, I'm sorry I couldn't be here. Last year we had a hurricane. This year, the night before I was to come, I talked to Leslie and she informed me that that there was a hurricane, but not to worry about. It wasn't gonna hit till tomorrow night

and I said either this girl ain't sober or she don't know me.

So anyway, I talked to Bob when I got here and I've had two invitations and he told me I wouldn't get a third one, so I'm glad I'm here.

Speaking of the hurricane, when I was on the plane yesterday, I spilled a whole Coke in my lap. When I got to New Orleans and Lisa and Leslie picked me up, they went to the second floor of an underground parking garage. There was three chairs at the end of this little strip, and I said, oh, thank God. I think out of the three chairs I sent, the one that had 2 1/2 inches of water in it.

So people were driving by and it's like I was ringing out my diaper.

But anyway, I am glad to be here. And I am to tell you in a general way. And to this day I still try to keep it generalized. George Winking upheld the real thing. And he said not yet, but in a general way, what it was like, what happened, what it's like today.

I'm going to come out of my shoes after a while, and I promise you that's all I'll come out of.

I'm supposed to be an example today of sobriety. And as you can tell, I'm a nervous wreck.

And I remember Mellie, one of our old timers who died with 45 years sobriety, and one of my teachers in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. And if you don't have an old timer in your life, you're cheating yourself. And she used to say when you get to the podium and you're nervous, you said that's just God shaking the truth out of you.

I came, oh, y'all give your sobriety date down here. My last drink by the grace of God was March the 8th, 1979. And that in itself is a miracle. And

I came from an alcoholic home riddled with alcoholism. If you lived in one, you know what I'm talking about. If there was any money, it went for the for the booth. My father was a was a wino. They used to call me a winet when I started getting sober and every penny went for the alcohol. There was my knowledge, no Al Anon, no Alcoholics Anonymous and and there was a lot of

extreme poverty. I always say when I hear people talking about poverty that I still don't identify with it because I always said, well, I haven't seen one yet. It's like how we live.

We literally took baths and washed tubs and we had the old pump in the kitchen sink. And, and I know thanks to hair color, I don't look that old, but that's how how we lived. And my mother and father would take turns going to mental institutions. My father would go for his alcoholism. My mother would go because she reacted to the alcoholism and all of the kids. And there were six of us and we all just grew up hating each other. There was no love in our family

for a long time after I came to Alcoholic Anonymous. I could not.

I could not accept what you tried to give me. I didn't know how to love you back. All I knew was that that I was nobody

and that I hated myself and everybody around me. I never knew what it was like to have a loving relationship with a mother and father. I thought you just hated them and that was how it was. I got to the point where it got pretty bad and I started to run away from home and,

and I would want so bad to get picked up by the police and, and I used to slide bus tokens down the old escalator up in West Virginia, which is where I lived at the time. And, and I'd always find that little token. So I for some reason, I never could do anything right. I couldn't even get, I couldn't lose money. I couldn't get picked up by the police when I was young, I had no problem as I became older. And anyway, they started, I started finally successfully running away from home. And,

and I would tell the police my little tale of woe and they wouldn't listen to me. And we would go back home and, and they would take me back to my parents. And my father would do things like he was gonna kill himself. And one night he was sitting on the commode and the shotgun went off through the ceiling. But we didn't know that. And that's just how it was over and over and over. And I used to say to myself, this is never gonna happen to me. Never in a million years. I will never be like that.

Well, I'm here to tell you that I far surpass whatever my father did. And the alcoholism is a disease that tells me I don't have it. It's a disease that tells me I'm not like you. It's a disease that tells me I'll forever be alone.

And yet when I picked up that drink, I could become any fabric of my imagination. I wanted to become. I could become the prettiest girl, the skinniest girl. All the things you hear in the meeting halls. That's what I believed. I remember after this all happened in my family, I went before a judge and I was 13 years old and my my whole life has been one extreme to the other until I got the Alcoholics Anonymous. And the judge looked at me and and he sentenced me to two years and nine months in a state reform school.

And when I went to this reform school, I can remember when I got there, when I was driving there with these cars, I thought, oh Lord, how scared I was. But when I got there, I swear it was the best thing it ever happened to me. I loved it. I'm the only one that loved reform school. We had lots to eat and clean sheets. And I just thought it was, you know, them how they did everything. And I used to tell them later because they would take us and they would put us like on on big flatbed trucks and put us out to

work in the gardens, in the fields that like it to crack a dawn with arm shotguns. And I felt just like that Bonnie and Clyde, you know, I just thought, she ain't got, she ain't got nothing on me. Because I had developed this thing where I wanted to be this tough, tough girl.

And I know today that if I could be tough, then nobody could get to me. Then I wouldn't have to give back. And when you don't know how to love somebody, that's how you live. And eventually I started trying to run away. That didn't do anything. I caught a couple of rides that got me in a straitjacket. And all my life I have been a fighter. Fighter. I'm going to fight back. And none of that stopped when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I remember the day that they wanted to parole me and how I cried because I did not want to go back to my family.

And when I did go back, it was the same thing. I remember being home. And I'm just telling you this graphic and it's it's just how it was. My father was drunk and I remember he was in the kitchen. He was sweeping up cockroaches by the dust pan full. Three rats ran across my feet. They started fighting. And my mom handed me some money and said, go get you a six pack of beer. And that's how I lived.

And I remember going to the judge and I said, I want you to send me back to reform school. And he said, no, we can't do that. And I was at that time, I think I was 16 years old, and I wanted away from where I was at. I didn't know that this alcoholism was just sitting there ready to blossom. And So what they did, and I just left this reform school, but they sent me to a cloistered monastery, a convent up in Wheeling, WV. So I had now I had to try to become the best girl in this school. And after I

hard for three years to get this reputation of being a bad one, now I had to become like Saint Marie. And I remember when I went there, the very first night I ran away and I ran to the,

it's a little parish down the street there and I went straight to a priest. And I don't know why, but they brought me back. And later while I was there, it was the first time ever that I had had any kind of beginning with the God as I understood him. And it was very, very short lived. And I graduated from there and

I went up to my, they wouldn't let me go home. So I went to my aunt. My mother would write me letters and tell me she was dying with leukemia and she didn't have leukemia. And, and the, the, the sickness from this disease had literally just eaten her up over the years. And I didn't understand that until I got sober. Because if you're an alcoholic and you live with an alcoholic and you react to that alcoholic, you're going to be as sick as the alcoholic. And I believe that with all my heart, because my family was just tore apart with this disease.

I went up to my Aunt Nohaya and it didn't workout. I remember somehow I found a little pint of liquor and I downed that liquor and caused all kinds of trouble. And I remember all they had to say, and this might be true with some of you, was you're just like your mother. My husband today, and he'll be sober 31 years, does not look at me and say you're just like your mother because that just got me crazy.

And my aunt would do that. So I would drink at it. And I remember they did not only move me out of the tank or out of the house, they took me to another town and moved me there. And, and while I was there, I got it. I'd been out one night to a party and I was drunk. And I remember thinking, I'm going to become a nun.

And it was a real bad snowstorm. And the next morning I felt like Joan of Arc trudgeant and my boots to go find Mother Superior at this convent. And I went in and I told her I wanted to, you know, in my way of thinking, I said, I'm, I want to marry God and I want to become a sister. And I want to, you know, join the novitiate and just do everything that because I had all that in the convent and they wouldn't even let me be baptized there because I was under their influence.

So anyway, she looked at me and she said Maria, and that was my name. Then she said, Maria, if when you find your place in this world, you come back. And I don't know that I took that as rejection, but I took it as see, I knew how I was. They just confirmed everything that I was not wanted by anybody and therefore I wasn't going to need anybody. So I went back to my little apartment. And this was close to when John Kennedy was killed and, and he was my hero and, and

Doctor Kildare, I had their pictures all over my little one first time apartment. And I remember locking myself up and that and that apartment for the whole weekend and, and just grieving and grieving and grieving over what had happened. And, and I packed my clothes up and I said that I was going back to West Virginia,

that I didn't like it up there. And I was, I was still young. And I remember that there was like, I don't know how many boxes I had packed, but I had this thing where Jacqueline Kennedy was just my, oh, she was everything. And I remember putting on the pill box hat and the white gloves and the the raccoon collar,

the long coat. And I wanted acceptance and approval so bad from the six family. And when I got there, the cab driver would not take me to where they lived, they said, because it had been condemned. So I just picked out a house that I thought they might live in. I said, well, that's probably yet there. That's my thinking.

And I remember walking right in, the door was open saying, Mom, I'm home and some strange woman come out and I could have been killed or anything. That's just how I did. I just could not, did not want to accept the fact that nothing had changed. I had a lot of pride, a whole lot of pride. And I remember later that front porch, it was a huge, it was a storefront and the whole front porch caved in and it made the headlines of the Charleston Daily Mail, the town that I had lived in.

And I was just devastated. I remember going downstairs after it had caved in and, and what I saw to this day just keeps me, I just can't believe I remember my father, he always spent a lot of time, time down there. And I looked over in a corner and there was, I mean, literally two or three foot high, just cans and cans and cans, cans of it's called Solo paint thinner. My father had been somehow diluting that stuff and drinking it because of the phenomena of craving. He had

had the alcohol. And this is the man that I condemned over and over and over because he was a sick man. I heard it. I heard someone say that when you're trying to get somebody do something that you want them to do and they won't do it or they can't do it for whatever reason, it's like asking a man who has no legs to carry you. I was trying to get this man

to do to be this father and her to be this mother, and they had no more idea of how to do that than than I did later on in my life. Anyway, after all this happened, I remember thinking, well now what I need is a baby. I didn't need a husband, I didn't need a boyfriend. I just wanted a baby.

And one of the few things that I was proud of was that I was a virgin and I was 19 years old. And I believe even today that's a little rare. And

so girlfriend of mine, we went out to this farm and we came back and we stopped at this little drive in restaurant. It was a, you know, we're literally a little drive in

and this guy walks over to me and he had this 50 model Ford station wagon called Sky King. He was on crutches. He was drunk. He had a tooth knocked out. And he told me I had pretty brown eyes. And we got pregnant and then we had a shotgun wedding. And I was grateful to have this man

because when you come from where I came from, anybody was better than what I had. And you know, today with with and I'm not speaking for alcoholic women, but with the women that I've shared with, there's no difference than the kind of that they're attracted to their

sober sometimes than the kind I was attracted to drunk. Were just desperate to have somebody in our life. And then when we get them to chase us over and we don't want them, you know. So anyway, I had a child by this man and the marriage didn't work out. I had two children by him and he had a couple of allergies, severe.

One was working, the other was women. And this man ended up having fourteen children and only two of them were mine. And I had sort of a problem with that. And I would come home from work and there would be an eviction notice on my door. And I never could put two and two together. And I have a big, big Bible that when my daughter was 16 days old, I wrote

this fantasy and about how her parents truly loved her and how we would always be there. And I remember I read it last week,

my dear, if you ever need counseling, please come and seek us out. Jesus. She'd have been in a whole host of trouble. Anyway, my husband decided that he needed to change the scenery and, and he chose the redhead and they relocated. And one morning I, and I'm going to tell you this and get past all this and what I'm about to tell you, I used for 11 years to get people to circle around me and, and feel sorry for me and I could

them. And, and I know today that I just hadn't dealt with it. But I turned on the TV one morning. There was a picture of a little girl on the TV. And I knew it was my sister, my baby sister, because mom had tried to cut her hair one day and half was up to here and the other half was down to here. And they said, have you seen this child? Well, the anger that I had was my family just kept building and building because I knew, I knew somewhere down the road that they were just rotten parents, that I just, in my heart, I just, there was just nothing. I just, they were terrible.

And anyway, to make a Long story short, I was pregnant at that time and I thought, well, it was a sort of a good piece, but I thought, well, I'll just walk up there and see what's going on. Well, anyway, when I got up there, they were like taking windowsills off the house and bits of wood and, and they had someone had gone in the house that night and taken her from there and, and just it was a brutal killing, raped the whole nasty thing.

And I remember

I was just a few feet from her and, and I couldn't look and, and they had taken her that day in a Jeep ambulance. And then I miscarried that night. My father came back and for the funeral and said he was going to kill himself. And I'd laugh that off and, and 21 days later he did. Then my brother couldn't handle so he went to Nam. Both of them did. One didn't come back. And I used every bit of that for years and years and years to get people to to condone my drinking and my

behavior. It was the only way that I could find to live amongst anybody, Alcoholics, non Alcoholics. It's the only way. I'm one of those that I believe for a while, alcohol kept me alive. Now, when I started, after I had these two children, I

to my mother's and the living conditions were no worse. So the husband said his mother would want to take care of him and I wouldn't let her any way. She came to get him. And one was three years old, one was five months old. And that's the last I had of my children. I never got those children back. And it was an Alcoholic's Anonymous

that I finally began the relationship with them. And and that is still still today getting better. I have a good relationship with one and the other one if we're working on it. So it it takes time. And after this happened, I got it my head that what I needed to do was not think. And I knew I had fairly good education. I made good grades in school, but but I thought I needed something where I couldn't think. So I saw this ad in the newspaper and it was wanting

bunnies,

cocktail waitresses and that type thing. And I was pretty homely, you know, and so I worked with what I had to work with and and I remember I went up there and I applied for the job and I couldn't believe it. I got it. I got this job. It was like to me that just the epitome of everything I ever wanted. Now that's pretty sick on

you want to do is be a Bunny, you know, and so I went into this club and I ended up staying in there 10 or 11 years and and and I got to the point, you know, the suicide attempts, I had four of them and and I remember one of them, I had a red fake first sofa and I just had real long hair and I went in and dolled all up in this three piece black negligee and and laid down to die. But before I did, I called everybody. So they come and save me. You know,

I'm kind of like my husband. I didn't want to do anything seriously because I might hurt myself. But anyway, I remember going to the hospital and they had me talking to this rank and I remember looking at him and saying, oh, I just needed a little bit of attention and a bummed a cigarette and asked for a dime to make a phone call. And I called a cab and I walked out of that hospital,

went home in a three piece black negligee. And I often wonder who needed the help most at that time, him or me to let me go like that. Anyway, I came back there and and everything started going from bad to worse. And so there was a lady that took an interest in me and she said.

Marie, I think you need a change. And I was starting to gain a lot of weight and and I know today, I know that when I would go into these bars and I would get all this instant, what I thought was respect was fear from people because if they didn't speak to me, I would start throwing chairs or fighting or threatening somebody. So it was just easier to say hi, how are you and then to not speak to me. But she said that she thought I needed to change. So I began a new career and, and I went to work for the for the IT was

Black Diamond Girl Scout Council. And when you come from where I come from and you go to work for the Girl Scouts and there's little cookies sitting on your desk and you're in the little uniform, it is a nightmare. I was a full blown alcoholic and the phone call started about possible OD had been drinking or some woman would call up that I got my boyfriend mixed up with her husband, something like that. You know, all this stuff

started happening and I, I lasted there for one year.

And then things, of course, if you drink the way I did and I was drinking at this point of my life because I had to drink, I had to have the alcohol. I was losing everything I had. I had, I mean, everything was going, the car, everything I had was going

and this woman again changed jobs. Now, I don't know how Alcoholics excel in getting jobs, but we get the best jobs there are, you know, in our 12:00 and 12:00, it says we have the ability to earn far above the average income. I, I guess it's my, you know, I've just so used to manipulating. But anyway,

I had gone from the clubs to the Girl Scouts and now I'm going to work for the governor's office

and I'm an alcoholic with a big ego. And when they gave me a state car and a briefcase, that was all she wrote.

I would be out of town. And it's like Millie used to say, y'all were paying me money, but I have no idea what for. I was supposed to be working. If there's anybody here if the government, please don't tell on me. But I was supposed to be putting together SBA loan packages. Do you have many people got money

anyway? I would be getting on the elevator at the state Capitol and somebody would say, God, I smell alcohol

and everyone being anybody on there but me. And, and I would say, what's the mentholatus or whatever the cough drops or something, you know, and I'd go, yeah, smell it too, you know, and, and I got real good. I'd go in the bathroom and I carried my vodka and a SEPA call bottle and and I would take the lid off and push the the commode with my foot so I could synchronize the noise that nobody could hear it. And then

one day I was at a chamber office and

we had a number at this other office and was supposed to go to chamber office and something happened. I started shaking all over and just I couldn't control my anything about me and and I made an excuse something about it being that time of the month. Y'all not y'all can figure that out. And I went on

down to a liquor store and I remember going in and this was in the morning and not that I wasn't a morning drinker, but it just I remember this got my attention. My God, why I need a drink and I'm one of the Alcoholics that I'd go, you know, I live for happy hour and I plot down on the bar stool and and the only way I felt normal was when I picked up that drink. And I loved the doctor's opinion. But he talks about me. You know, that the only life that to me that I live, the only

normal life was that a way I lived. The alcoholic, he, he said I was in full flight from reality. You know, I was mentally incompetent and the only thing was going to help me wasn't to experience an entire psychic change. And boy, back then, if you told me any of that stuff, I would have just flipped right out. But anyway, I remember I went, I had a couple double Bloody Marys and that didn't work. And I went downstairs and I started chugging out of this

vodka bottle and, and the next thing I knew, I woke back up several counties away in in my little condo apartment that everybody had just this guy had moved me out. You know, that I was supposed to marry. I had, I think two or three serious engagements through they said I did. I don't remember many of them. They come in and find me. I'll be kissing on some other guy. You know, that's a great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous. You can just kiss all these gorgeous men and not getting any trouble. They just look at you and say keep

coming back and, and, but back then they took it kind of seriously. So anyway, that of course the marriage was called off and, and this guy had had a severe automobile accident. And I blamed myself and, and I spent what I hope is to be the last, the very last drunk I pray to God that I'll ever have. And the only thing I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous was a movie I've seen. For some reason, this movie attracted me and it was called The Days of Wine and Roses. And

and when she was looking at that harbor and she had that candy bar in her hand and she said the world is so ugly and so dirty. That's how I felt. And I remember when Jack Lemmon was in the having his DTS and tearing up the greenhouse. You know, I didn't make fun of him when I was watching that. And and I was one that that when Jimmy Swaggart would come on in the morning, I would take my hand with a drink in this hand. And I had

I had the hots for Jimmy Swaggart. I told that when I got sober, I thought he was a cutest thing, you know. And when he got in all that trouble, I thought, that's Shane. He didn't run into me when I was drinking. I wouldn't have told anybody,

but anyway,

when this thing came down, I remember picking up the phone and later I found out I called many people, but I said call AA and, and, and that morning prior to this phone call, I was on the floor and there was a end table beside me and I was still drinking good vodka and I had that smearing off 1/2 gallon and I couldn't get it to my mouth. And I remember pouring it just to try to get it to my mouth. And I was 33 years old and I was in that shape and I thought I

just partying and if y'all leave me alone I would be OK. And I remember after I called, the next thing I heard was Al Anon. Hell, this is an alcoholic if I ever saw one. So somebody must have said there's somebody that needs Alanon. Well

these two gals came up there and I remember I had bought this hot pink nightgown and big block letters all the way down the sides of the floor. It said baby, light my fire and that's how I went to detox.

I often think what had happened, what would have happened to me that day if those women when they got that call said and I've got chills running all over me, said I don't have time

or give it to so and so let them take care of it or

oh, I'm not in a good place today. I have to look after me.

I might have died. I have no guilt. Today. When my phone rings, I go because those women took that time to come and get me. Even though I couldn't hear any message that day, they took me to where I could hear the message. I was in this detox center and I thought I was in heaven.

They handed me a jar. It was like a pickle jar. At least that's what I remember. And 'cause I remember, don't make it the truth. That's just what I remember. And it was full of whiskey and I said, I thought I couldn't drink here. And, and they said drink this

because they detox me with whiskey and Librium or something. And I had been doing some of those as Harold Wu was dead now Harold Wilson used to call him those little pellets. I'd been doing those for many, many years. And and so it took me, I had a hard time withdrawing physically from all this stuff. And, and after I was there about on the second or third day today, I had something called delayed DTS. And for my first year in sobriety, that is the reason I stayed sober,

because I did not want to go through that again. I had seen a lot of things in my life, but I got to wrestling with this half lizard, half the zebra stripe thing about this big under the bed. And it's very real, but nobody could see it but me. So when you're trying to get all these people to catch this thing, you know, I mean,

and there is a woman about this big just laughing, hanging on to the water sprinklers in the room, just laughing at me. And I remember that I could move this pink fog with my eyes. I could move it anywhere. But if it got close to me, I couldn't breathe. So even in my DTS, I was in control. That's how far my control went. I, you know, Alcoholics and their control. I stayed in there. I took

March the 8th as my as my sobriety date. I remember these women saying Marie, we'd like 15. And I said, I'll do anything if you don't force me to do it.

So they came down the hall just by them coming and saying hello Marie, it's time for the meeting. I took that as they were forcing me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. So I said, well, you said you wouldn't force me. And they said fine. And they just turned around, walked off. I said, well, in that case I guess I'll go. And I remember going into this, it was a clinic type situation. And I went into this place and I remember I had this wild Chinese colored, multi colored robe on. That's what I requested and they brought it.

And I thought my hair was clean. I had real long hair. But they later told me it looked like it had been combed with Vaseline and I was dirty. And I didn't know that because I chose to remember the things that would make me look good. And I remember this guy was talking about his Jeep being up in a tree. And I thought, well, if his Jeep is in a tree, then he needs to be here, but I don't need to be here.

And I was shaking so bad that I couldn't hold a cup of coffee. And I shook like that for a long time. And after and, and my first couple of months of sobriety, I used to hold a pencil to try to steady my hand.

And at the end of that meeting, there was, and I don't, I must have got away from the women. You know, I'm one of them alcoholic women that if you were a woman, you were my competitor. You stay away from me because all you wanted was what I had on or the man that I didn't have but I might get or my car or whatever it was that I had you wondering. So you were a threat to me

and I ended up with these. There was a man on each side and they were big men stalking men. And I remember when they started to say the the Lords Prayer, I thought, I am not saying the Lords Prayer. I've done everything else, but I'm not going in for this business. And they took a hold of my hand and I could, I tried to leave and they would not let me go. At the end of the meeting, there was something in me, like a lot of us,

that God, I wanted what you had.

I didn't know how to ask you for it.

There's a girl sitting out there today or a guy that wants what we have. But that pride, or maybe they won't accept me. Don't let that stand in your way. We're all drunk. You take off her. You know I'm cleaned up today because you all cleaned me up. I didn't look like that when I got here. I didn't have to fix myself up or do anything. It was about survival. I have never experienced in my life the love that I have found in the program of Alcoholics

Anonymous with no conditions. They didn't ask me for anything. Do you want to stay sober? And the most powerful line I ever heard in my life from my original sponsor was you never have to go through this again. Never. And again, one of my heroes, Harold W, when he was almost done, a doctor told him all his bad stuff about him. He said, the doctor, you don't understand. There's nothing in the world. It's hard. It's getting sober. He could do anything sober. And I believe that today.

Anyway, I went through all this process. No doubt they come to get me that night. They didn't know who I was because I had makeup on. My hair was thick. I mean, I looked totally different than that maniac running through the detox center screaming, reporting all the nurses for drinking, you know, because I saw them drink. The reason I saw them drink, I was in DT, you know, So I wanted to do the right thing and report it. They came to get me. They took me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous

and I thought, this is just the hoot, you know, this is really something. And of course I had big hoop earrings on. I've left over probably flyer child, big hat on. And, and I thought none of you all cared about me because all you did was talk about yourself.

You know, you didn't question me or make me feel out anything or ask me things like, well, who sent you here? And you just talked about yourself. And I thought, God, I'm in the wrong place. Well anyway they made the mistake of calling on me and

and immediately I started telling them as best I could all about my sex life. I started getting elbowed, I started getting looked but they couldn't shut me up. And I remember, I don't remember they told me later I was talking about if a bottle of vodka was sitting on the table and I had a gun I would shoot it. Now does that sound like same thinking? I remember Calum, that I woke up with these

three men from another country and but I was fine because all my clothes were still on.

I can't tell you. The rest of that just got well. Anyway,

I said nothing happened because I still have my pantyhose on, George said. Did you tell him your toes were curled?

Sorry about that. I should have done it. Anyway. That night after I left the meeting, I went home and I got that little lecture that a lot of us get when we come to Alcoholics Anonymous. They start telling us about the big bad wolves in AA and they start warning this, you know, and for whatever reason, of course, you know, I felt like most of us felt, well, they just don't want me to have a boyfriend or they're just so old they can't get one or

y'all, you know, I'll do whatever it is that I have to do. Which reminds me about that part in the book that I love so much about the I think it's about the third step. It talks about I will turn my life and will over to God, except when it's something that I really want. Then it becomes none of your business, you know? So that's basically how I was living. Well, anyway, we went out to eat that night at breakfast and I started falling apart and I dropped everything because no one paid intention. They said, oh, it'll be all right, don't pay attention.

And I got through that. That night when I got home, I got a phone call from this guy and he was 13 years sober and I had about maybe 7 hours, you know, And he said, would you like someone to come and watch TV with you? I said, my God, of course I would. So he came up and he started telling me and all about, you know, Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob and

Schumacher and just telling me all about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and bragged on himself a lot. And I thought, God, I've looked for a guy like this all my life. I didn't know. I just had to get sober to get him.

And so the only way that I can tell you what all I got from this guy was everything I knew and I needed from Alcoholics Anonymous, I got that night through injection. That's how I got it. You can't figure it out. I'll tell you after the meeting I began running around with this guy and

of course I didn't need my sponsor then because she was just jealous because I had this guy and I noticed that he didn't have their approval, you know, from the rest of you all, but he was sober a long time so we didn't need it. So anyway, one night us coming out of the meeting and

I had 4 inch spikes on and and I had a satin blouse on, you know, just enough to get that cleavage over there 'cause it's what was about in these tight pants on and coming out of there and Mr. Alcoholics Anonymous on my arm and I heard these firecrackers go off and or at least I thought they were firecrackers. And anyway, he ducked down. And so in my stupidity, I ducked down and when I got up, I was down there like a wobble, like a duck, and there was nobody but me.

And when I raised up, there was a yellow car. And when I did, there was a woman that had a gun pointed right in my face. Now, those weren't firecrackers. She had unloaded six shots at me over top my head. And and when she looked at me and informed me that that was her husband and what she would do when no uncertain terms if she ever caught me with him again. Well, somehow we left out the unmarried part, you know. And so I start running and, and she

mean I run the wrong way and I'm hugging this church. There's a church there and right down the streets, the place I spent half my life in, in this bar. And I had a choice. Was I going to run to that bar if she didn't kill me? Or was I going to try to do something and get the heck out of that mess and get home? Well, I pleaded with this woman and I told her again I could assure her she would never have to worry about me again. And I went into my little tail awoke. Now I have just come from an Alcoholic's Anonymous meeting. I'm

drinking, you know, and I'm supposed to be doing the right thing and I'm getting shot at, you know, that didn't happen drunk. So I've got this instant confusion and and by the way, I I've often said I don't think that Lady was a member in good standing of Al Anon at that time.

So thank you. Female drunks out there to think you can get around this. They mean women.

Anyway, I went home that night and and he called me and and I said get her some help now. And I needed the help, you know, get her some help. I won't press charge.

So anyway, I got that phone call a couple days later that we hear women like me, that my place is with her. And I mean, I don't have the sobriety to handle that. You know, he gave me everything I thought this was, you know, this is supposed to be my big change in my life. And the only thing I could think of, the only picture I had in my mind was a red booth. It was a corner booth with a candle in the middle of it. And I.