Michael (M.) E. Sunday speaker at Road to Recovery Convention, Reykjavik Iceland

Michael,

Hi, my name is Michael Manning Earl and I'm a female alcoholic

and I'm just overwhelmed at being in Iceland. I just can't. I just hope I don't start crying before I get into my talk because it's very emotional for me and I'm really, really nervous. I think if, if nobody ever heard of me, I wouldn't be so nervous. But every time when I got here, everybody already knew my story. They were quoting stuff in my story.

And so it's made me really, really nervous. And it made me think. Just a little while ago, I was sitting there thinking about this woman that I was speaking with at a convention. And it was her very first a a talk at a convention of this size. And she was so nervous. And she came up to me and she was telling me how nervous she was. This was her very first talk at a convention and she asked me if I had any advice for her.

So I gave her the advice that was given to me at my first a a convention. I was told to always remember the two. PS

Pee and pray before you talk.

So I went up to this woman just before she was to get up and talk, and I whispered her in her ear. I said, did you pee and pray? She said Oh my God, I even pooped.

And that's how nervous I am this morning.

So anyway, thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be here. I get to do this a lot. Not nice, Lynn, and not in other countries, but all over the United States and Canada. I get to share my story a lot. And I just feel like it's a gift from God. I do not feel like this is my form of service. This is not my form of service. I've never read anywhere in the Big Book anything about being a speaker. The only thing I've read in the Big Book is

about 1:00 to 1:00 with another drunk getting out of yourself and carrying this message 1 to one to another drunk. And that's my form of service. I'm very fortunate that I'm married to the man I married because he is also in the program about Collects Anonymous. He's passionate, passionate about a A. He doesn't like to speak, though. I don't know if you've noticed him walking around and picking up everybody else's sobriety station. He's been picking up cups, straightening out chairs, cleaning up after people. That's the kind of service he likes to do.

And I'm very proud of him for that. You know, I'm very proud of him. He's really a hands-on man. And we have an AA home and our home represents the chapter in the big book, working with others. And when I first read that chapter 21 years ago, when I came into this program, I looked at that chapter and it didn't make sense to me because everyone that was coming in day A, we're coming out of treatment centers. And they were, they were 30 days sober and they were handed to us on a silver platter. And so I didn't identify with that chapter, but now I don't know if it's happening

out here, but in the United States, we're we're losing our treatment centers because Alcoholics are so therapeutic slick. All they do is they go into treatment center, come out, get drunk, go into treatment center, get out, get drunk, go into a treatment center, get out, get drunk. And so we're losing our treatment centers, you know, insurance companies and everyone's getting sick of paying for drinks, getting sober when they're not staying sober. And so we're losing our treatment centers. And So what we're getting to experience is having to work 1:00 to 1:00 with Alcoholics, as it says in Chapter 7,

we've had em vomiting in cars. We detox them in our homes.

This one lady we took into our home had a grand Mal seizure 3 days after she had her last drink. I mean, it's really, really a serious thing. It's a dangerous thing. I mean, I we really do need hospital treatment. I'm so sorry that we're losing these treatment centers because a lot of Alcoholics need to be medically detoxed. But I do love what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. So we detox anybody in our home, but we don't let just anybody in our home to live. We always take newcomers into our home. We have

one to six newcomers living with us on a, You know, there's always 1:00 to 6:00.

Right now we're down to 2 and that's manageable. It's really hard having six newcomers living in your house. But we, you know, the book says we use discretion. And so we'll detox anybody in our house, but we use discretion when it comes to letting somebody live with us. And we watch people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous for a while. And if we see him coming to meetings and not drinking and really trying, but sleeping in a car and they don't have a job, we will take him into our homes. And I'm the, what I do is I get them through their steps. And what Ted does is he teaches them how to

live. You know, he gets them to DUI school to get their driver's license back. He gets them to get their high school diploma. He helps them get a job. He teaches them how to balance a checkbook. He teaches them living skills, which I never learned as a little girl. He's teaching me living skills. Aren't you, honey?

So we just make, we just make a perfect couple of getting some of these people on their feet, you know, and most of them get on their feet and go out and become useful members of Alkaloids Anonymous. We do have a few that that go back out

and it's heartbreaking. A couple of them we just dearly love. And just because we love them so much and they love a a so much, they just keep coming back. You know, we're willing to keep taking them in, but we do use discretion and it's just, it's just a wonderful way to live. But I feel like speaking as a gift God gave me, it's not my form of service. I think God's allowed me to speak in Alcoholics Anonymous to he's allowed me to walk through my fears. It's one of the scariest things I've ever done is stand up at a podium and share my story. I know you all probably think that this is real easy

for me, but it is not. It's very difficult. I couldn't even read how it works when I was four years sober. It was terrifying for me. I'd get up here and almost throw up. I'd be so I just couldn't stand up in front of people and I couldn't get on airplanes for 12 1/2 years of surprise. And I just feel like this is a gift God gave me to walk through my fears. And if I wasn't willing to walk through my fears, I would never have met my husband. I would never have met Carl. I would never have met Mickey Thor. All of you wonderful people in Iceland, all this is a gift

because I've been willing to just walk through my fears no matter how afraid I am. And I'm just thankful that you invited me to Iceland. And I'm thankful I got on that airplane because I didn't want to get on it. Oh my God, we're going to fly over the ocean. So

anyway, I met my husband. I was living in Long Beach, CA, and my husband was in South Carolina and Georgia, which is on the other coast of the United States. And I was speaking at a convention and that's where I met him. And you know, I just felt passionately in love with him just just from seeing his smile,

just from CNN smile. And we had a long distance relationship. And it's really funny. God has a real sense of humor because I had just finished another sex inventory, you know, and in the sex inventory it tells you that you ask God to mold your ideals for your future sex life. And so my sponsor had me write out what my ideals for my future sex life. And I wrote out, OK, my ideal now is, and I'm really clear on it, my ideal is love and marriage. I did not want sex out of marriage. I wanted and I didn't want marriage without love. So I wrote just those simple little words, love.

And shortly after that, I met my husband in Georgia and I'm in California, so there's no chance of sex. And

I learned everything I knew about him on the telephone and by letters. And that was a wonderful way to get to know somebody. He turned out to be everything that I thought he was. We got married on the beach where I met him. It was a fairy tale wedding. You know, we had six dolphins out in the ocean and a rainbow came out. It was just a fairy tale wedding. And, and this is really corny. I don't even know if you guys are familiar with Shakespeare, but

this is really corny that we actually live on a street called Sir Lancelot in a subdivision called Camelot.

And I'm embarrassed to share that with people, you know, but it's the truth. And he's been there just waiting me for for me to come. But anyway, so I went back to California and I packed up my stuff and I moved to Georgia. And I wish I could tell you that I lived happily ever after. That wasn't the case. Something set in something called reality. And I'm telling you, it was a culture shock. It was an absolute culture shock. I'm used to Los Angeles, you know, it's a big city.

I moved to. If I moved to Atlanta, might have been different. But no, I moved to a little suburb right on the border of South Carolina. And anything I know about a deer is Bambi. Do you have deers out here? No deers out here. OK, Well, anyway, we have deers and I just love them, you know, And there's a Walt Disney movie out called Bambi, and it's about deers. And I just would look at Bambi. I just love Bambi. And I moved to Georgia and everybody shoots Bambi.

There were dead deer everywhere. If something moves, somebody shot it,

you know, And you know, I just wasn't used to that. And I was sitting there looking at this cute little squirrel. Do you guys have squirrels out here? No squirrels, huh? I was looking at this cute little squirrel. It's a little fuzzy thing with this big old tail about this big, and it's crawling up a tree in my yard. It's got this big nut in its mouth. And I'm just thinking how cute that is. And the next door neighbor shot the squirrel.

And that squirrel was my squirrel because it was in my tree. And I was so upset with, I told my husband, I said, well, at least in Los Angeles, we don't shoot the animals. And he said no, you just shoot each other.

And that was a hunk of truth.

But anyway, the hardest thing that I went through at that time was I also went into menopause. Do you guys have menopause out here?

How many of you know what menopause is? Oh, look at all the men they live with menopausal women, right? Well, that's for you that don't know. Menopause is going through the change of life for a woman and it's very dramatic. Your body starts doing all kinds of weird things on you and you don't know what's going on. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown. I didn't know I was in menopause. And it was just I sunk into a very, very deep depression. And I also started having some physical ailments and, and I have a lot of shame behind this. In the last six years,

I've had eight surgeries and I have shame behind that because I used to judge my mother. And I have found for me, judge being judgmental is very dangerous because my experience is if I judge you, I end up walking in your shoes. Experience your experience to get over the judgement. And that's happened to me many times in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I pray on a daily basis for God to help me with judge millness because I don't, I'm sick of walking in your shoes. You know, it's, it's been a powerful lesson for me, but I used to judge my mom.

You know, I used to think that that she had, I used to think she was a hypochondriac, that she imagined all these illnesses, that she imagined them because she wanted to take pills and she wanted to drink. And so I was very judgmental of her. And now today I'm walking in her shoes. I'm having some of the same problems. You know, some of the stuff is passed on in your genes. And I'm having some of the same problems and some of the same complications that my mom had. And I'm getting to experience some of the pain my mom experience.

Good thing about that is I've got a new love and a new respect for my mom. But you know, it's a heavy price to pay and it's been very difficult and I feel very shameful about it.

And I just have a lot of shame about having all these surgeries. I thank God. Do people think I'm a hypochondriac that I don't work a good program? But it's just, you know what I'm having to walk through and it's been very challenging for me. One of my favorite, favorite sentences in the big book is at the very bottom of 14. This is in the the English version of the big book is the bottom of 14, top of 15. It says for if an alcoholic fails to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self sacrifice for others, he could not survive those certain trials and low spots ahead.

That sentence tells me two things. First of all, it tells me if I'm not working with others, I fail to grow spiritually. I can pray, I can meditate, I can even go to church, but if I'm not working with others, I fail to grow spiritually. And then it also tells me if I'm not working with others, I'm not going to survive those trials in low spots ahead. We are guaranteed to have trials and low spots. Some people think you just quit drinking and everything gets perfect and that's just not the case. People still get sick, people still get old, people

still die, accidents still happen. And working with others is going to get you through these trials in low spots every time. My husband and I work with a treatment center in Georgia. It's at a military base. It's called Fort Gordon, and it's one of the last treatment Centers for the military. And Ted goes there and he just gives them, you know, a introductory on Alcoholics Anonymous. And then on Wednesday nights, the Fort allows this whole treatment center to come over to our house. We have a BBQ

and then we go into what we call our AAA room. It's just a beautiful room. It has all kinds of pictures of all the founders of a A I've a board off a Doctor Bob's porch that says love and service. I have a plant growing all around it that was a plant that had actually belonged to Bill Wilson. And I brought cuttings for Thor. So I hope he gets them around Iceland of this plant that belonged to Bill Wilson. But anyway, it's just a spiritual things happen in this room. And we go in this room and we get to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and we get them for a four week period. So we get 4-4 Wednesdays to work with them. So we get into the big Book

with step one. First of all, the very first week, I give him a history, about an hour of the history of alkali synonymous because if you have if if God's hard for you to accept. When you hear the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's hard to deny that we have a God and we have a loving God and that God loved drunk so much that he gave us the 12 steps to recover. So we get into the history. Then we get into step one, we get into Step 2. And by the time they leave, they're on their knees in a group saying the third step prayer and on their four steps. So by the time they get to whatever state they're going to,

they're ready to do their first step. And it's one of the last treatment centers. So because the military is sick of paying for drunk skins over and they go back out drinking. So these these soldiers come from all the different militaries, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army, all the different militaries and all all the different states, even Alaska. So anyway, I'm going to tell you a story about one of the guys. I don't know how many months ago that we were on Step 2

and this guy just got on my got my face. I mean, this big old soldier and my, my rooms, my room's full of soldiers. I mean, there must have been 25 soldiers there and maybe

seven or eight Alcoholics from the neighborhood, you know, from our Home group. And he just gets in my face and he folds his arm like this. And he says,

yeah, well, if there's a God, it's going to take a burning Bush to prove it to me. And I thought, I wish Mickey was there. He was on fire last night, wasn't he?

Anyway, And I thought, well, I'm just out of burning bushes. And then I thought about this man. I asked this guy said, what's your name? And he said his name was Lee. And so that made me think of another man named Lee that wrote me a letter. He wrote me a letter two years after he had a spiritual experience and he had a spiritual experience during one of my AA talks. And please, I'm not taking credit for this. This is between him and God. It has nothing to do with me. But anyway, I was speaking in a in Alabama, Gulf Shores, AL, and the name of this conference was Gulf Shores Jubilee. Some of them are called Roundup

since this was called a jubilee, a big celebration. And so on the stage in Mardi Gras, a colorful neon lights on the stage above the speaker or behind the speaker was this big neon light that said jubilee. And so the whole time I'm giving my talk, first of all, this man was at the jumping off place that you heard talked about this weekend that somebody who's got some sobriety under their belt, but they they really haven't thrown themselves into the program. And he didn't believe in God and he was trying to make, he was just miserable and he was trying to make the decision whether to commit suicide or

drink. And for some reason, he decided to go to one of the meetings at this convention. And my, it just happened to be my meeting. These are all these little God coincidences if you look for it. It just happened to be my meeting. And he was the first one in the auditorium. And so he just picked any seat. And if he'd sat in any other seat in that auditorium, he would not have had the spiritual experience. He had to sit in the seat that he sat in. And the whole time I was talking, he is just looking down at the floor, not paying any attention to me because he's into self and all of his problems. And then I always close my story with how I came to terms with

what I have in my life today. And I'll close my story with that today. But it's, it had to do with my daughter's rape. My daughter was kidnapped from an, a, a dance, brutally raped and almost murdered. And she was three years sober. And it took me a long time to, to process and get through that and come to terms with God. And I'll just tell you basically what the end result was a series of spiritual experiences I had. What I learned from all this is that God is good and good is God. And if it's not good, it's not of God. And that there is a difference between

world, man's world and God's world. And in everything, God's world is perfect, but everything in man's world is not. So anyway, I'm sharing the story about my daughter's kidnapping because it was a tragic story. It caught his attention. And so he was sitting there just listening, but still not looking up at me. And finally as I was closing and I was saying the words God is good and good as God, this force that he couldn't explain just started to pull his chin up. And no matter what he did, he couldn't keep his chin down. So this force is pulling his chin up and echoing out of his ears. Are the words

good and good as God? It's just echoing in his ears. And by the time he looked up at me, my body is blocking the whole part of the sign that says Juba. And the only part of the sign he could see was Lee, which was his name and neon lights. So it's God as good, good as God. Lee, I'm talking to you.

And that was his spiritual experience, and he so doubted it. It took him two years to write me a letter. But things from his life changed from that point on, and that's when he came to believe.

And so I'm telling this, I'm telling this story to this man, namely who's sitting in a chair right here next to me.

And this is the honest to God truth. On this side of Maine is an artificial Bush about this high on the other side. And we had to move stuff around to get get all the chairs in the room. So this artificial Bush is shoved over a little bit and on the other side of it is a halogen lamp.

And honest to God, I'm saying the words God is good, good is God. The halogen lamp caught on fire and a flame went up.

And you should have seen this soldier come out of his chair.

He was just, why does it goes? And he jumped up and he's looking at the person. He's going, Oh my God, Oh my God. And I'm going, Oh my God, Oh my. I didn't care about his spiritual experience. I'm afraid my house is going to burn down.

I'm going, oh, I got it. I'm trying. We're trying to get this lamp in the Bush straightened out and get the lamp out in the garage. And it's just chaos, you know? And by the time all of us came back into the room, we sat down

and we settled down, it was like, Oh my God, all of us in that room had a spiritual experience because he demanded something and it came about. We all witnessed it. So it was a spiritual experience for us, all of us. And you know, that was a day right after I had a surgery. And I can remember that morning telling my husband, I just don't have the energy to do this tonight. I just can't do this tonight. And when I suit up and show up, no matter how bad I feel, something wonderful happens. And it gets me through these situations every time. And I'm telling you, I

feel any pain. I didn't feel any, any sickness or any illness. And that lasted me for several days. And that's why I keep doing what I'm doing is, you know, I just guess, well, that's why I used to keep doing what I'm doing. Why I really keep doing what I'm doing now is really, there's nothing like seeing the lights go on in somebody's eyes. And there's nothing like it. It's a feeling that you must not miss. You know, they talk about it on the the top of 89, saying to watch people recover, to see them help others.

This is an experience you must not miss. And these are the things that I get to experience

because I keep suiting up and showing up no matter how I feel, and it gets me out of myself. And God gets in there and takes care of the situation when I'm out of myself. Anyway, when I crawled through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous over 21 years ago, I had a formal 9th grade education.

I didn't know how to work, I lived on welfare, I was reduced to prostitution and I was a thief. And all of that was before I took that first drink at the age of 25. Do we have any newcomers here? We had a lot yesterday. How many people with less than a year?

Oh, a lot. Great. I like to welcome the newcomers, and I like newcomers to know that the absolute highest you get now clicks. Anonymous is sober of the sobriety kind. Sober. It's not a speaker

and this is the truth. It is not a speaker and I'm not an authority on a A. I'm just up here sharing my personal experience, strength and hope. And the things I say from the podium are the things that had a profound effect on my personal sobriety. Now, I like to welcome those of you who are not so new but are having difficulty with this program. I saw a sign in an A, A club that always gave me a lot of hope. And that sign says you're not a failure unless you quit trying. And I believe that to be true. So please, whatever you do, just keep coming back.

But I was told early on in this program that this program is not for spectators. This is a program of action. And those actions are the 12 steps as laid out in the big Book of Alclex. Anonymous Doctor Bob, one of our Co founders, said if you boil those 12 steps into two words, those two words would be love and service. And before he said that, he said I want to emphasize the simplicity of this program. Let's not louse it up with freighting complexes that are interesting to the scientific mind but have little to do with our actual A A work. And I see a lot of things

in and out of a A today. They might not be Freudian, but they're just as useless. You know, what they do is they just complicate this very simple program.

I like to talk about Doctor Bob because I come from a line of sponsorship. I talked about it a little bit yesterday. I come from a line of sponsorship that came down from Doctor Bob. And I'm very thankful for that line of sponsorship because it it, they paid a great deal of attention to step six and seven, and a lot of people missed those steps. You know, if you know the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know that

that they were in a hurry to write the big Book. They always did the actions of six and seven at the moral inventory. The sponsor did it with the alcohol, with the sponsor E. They discussed these character defects at great length because they really did believe that you would drink over some of your character defects, especially the Galerian character defects. So they went over these character defects at great length and the sponsor got on their knees with the sponsor E and prayed to have these defects removed. And there's only two paragraphs in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and 6:00 and 7:00. That's because Bill was just in a hurry to get

stretched into 12 and to get the book published. And he elaborates more of it in the 12 and 12 on step 6. And he says the man that repeatedly worked on his other defects of character grows in the image of his creator. And he says that God will not render you white as snow without your cooperation. And then he addresses the fact that some of our other defects are harder to remove than alcoholism. When you're ready, if you're really ready,

he can just get in there and expel the obsession for alcohol because alcohol is not

a natural instinct. And Bill says some of our other character defects are natural instincts have gone back and God gave us natural instincts to survive. And so he cannot remove a natural instinct. So Bill says sometimes you might have to just, you know, settle for patient improvement. And, you know, some of my character defects were removed right away, well, within, you know, a short period of time. And two of those that I had to give up, my sponsor I had to give up right away

was stealing and prostitution.

She said if I continued those two things, I was going to drink. And I'm I have shame behind this, but the last time I prostituted, I was sober. Now collects Anonymous. I was six months sober and and I had a spiritual experience behind that. But since that day, you know, I haven't prostituted. And stealing was very hard for me. It was habit for me to steal and I'd have to call my sponsor on a daily basis and tell her I commit not to steal today. I had to really work with my higher power on that. But those two character defects were totally removed, totally removed.

And I can't believe I was ever that person, but I was. But one defective character that I struggle with right now is an eating disorder, you know, and that had to go on my list of character defects. I've had recovery in that, in that area of my life. You know, I've had 12 years of healthy eating and being very thin. And just, and when I moved to Georgia, just with all the chaos and all the surgeries and medication that that puts weight on you and just, you know, and even been on pain pills that makes you not even care about your weight, which I took, you know, appropriately,

you know, I struggle with my weight again. And so that's a defect that I'm, I'm really working on again. You know, I'm having to surrender to that one more time, but I'm very thankful for that kind of sponsorship. So anyway, that's the way I sponsor. You know, I sponsor that way when I listen to a fifth step, I always do 6-7 and eight at the same time. And I was working with this woman named Amy. And I learned so much from the women I sponsor. I learned so much from the women I sponsor. I learned a lot about me, but I learned about things. Things in the big book

come clear, you know, make more sense to me. But the one thing

this woman had on her list of character defects as she was, she had a eating disorder. She would go anywhere from compulsive overeating to anorexia to bulimia. And bulimia is where you eat and you throw it up. And that's their way of staying thin. And she was very bulimic. And she also was bulimic with exercise. You know, she would eat something so then she'd go run 10 miles. She's very obsessive and compulsive about running. And I had to, you know, of all the people I sponsor, some of the sickest, sickest ones are that have eating disorders there because they're so self-centered. The whole world revolves

around their body. Even though they're alcoholic, they get sober and the whole world revolves around their body. They don't know that there's children out there starving, there's children out there being abused, there's accidents happening, there's earthquakes in other countries. They don't have a clue about that because the world revolves around their body. It's so self-centered and it is so sick. And I had to get very honest with her and just, and usually I'm a very kind, loving, gentle sponsor because that's the way I was sponsored with a lot of love. But I had to get really tough on her, and I had to really get in her face and tell her that she was critical,

that you are absolutely critical. And if you don't address this now, you're going to die, you know, because that's where it was taking her in her eating disorder. And I said, your only hope is to get out of yourself and start helping other people. And so in my grandiose thinking, I thought, well, God's going to bring her a wet drunk. That girl's so sick, she needs a wet drink to work with to get her out of herself because they're really hard to deal with when they're drinking. And so I told her she had to get on her knees every day and pray for God to bring somebody into her life to help.

And so she was willing to do that so she could get on her knees every morning. She'd pray for God to bring someone in her life to help. And then she'd get up and she'd go run her 10 miles. So but she did that for five days straight. And on the 5th day, she got on her knees and she prayed, God, please bring somebody in my life for me to help. And

for some reason, she was inspired to get back in bed and spend another hour in prayer meditation. She never gave God an hour of her time. She was the kind that would say a quick prayer while she's in the shower and maybe a quick prayer in between songs on the radio, you know? But she gave God an hour of her time. And so when it came time to run her 10 miles, but she wasn't willing to give up her moderate. It was 6:30 in the morning instead of 530. And so it was a little lighter outside. So instead of running her normal path up into the woods, she took a different path because it was light out. And she has this dog that she got from

society. Do any of you do you know the Humane Society is it's a rescue place where they rescue dogs and homeless dogs that are in bad shape. They try to rehabilitate them and find homes for them. So she's got this rescued dog that she got from this Humane Society. And this dog is just her, her best friend. And this dog is always by her side. And so they go running up into the woods on this different path. And all of a sudden, the dog takes off and runs deep into the woods. The dog has never left her before.

She couldn't figure out what had happened to the dog. She kept screaming at her dog to come back and it wouldn't come back. So she finally had to run out into the woods and find her dog.

And by the time she got to her dog, she found her dog licking a 2 year old baby in the face. This baby had been missing all night. It was huddled up in the pine straw. It, it was 40° outside, which is cold. I, I know, I don't know what your temperatures are, you know the difference between Fahrenheit and all that. But anyway, it was 40° out, which is cold, not quite freezing, but before freezing very cold and the baby only had on a T-shirt, no shoes, no diaper. It had been missing all night and it was puddled up in the pine straw. And so the dogs looking the baby in the face and by the time Amy

got to the baby, the baby lifts up her arms to her and, and that was Amy's spiritual experience. All of a sudden God was using her to help somebody else. And so she picks up this baby and she walks a mile to a house. And by the time she got to this house, they were so excited because they knew the baby was missing. It was all over the news. Everybody knew about it except for Amy. She's too self-centered to watch the news.

They had bloodhounds out all night looking for this baby, but this baby had wandered at 2 miles beyond. They marked off a distance they thought a 2 year old could wander and this baby went two miles further than that.

And so it was a really big deal. All the newspapers showed up. They wanted, they put in the newspaper, they put her in renters magazine. They tried to get her on talk shows. I mean, it was a real big deal. And it was a real boost for the Humane Society because you know, the Humane Society was struggling and all of a sudden in the newspaper it says rescued dog, rescued child. So it was a boost for Humane Society. Amy had her spiritual experience. She got to feel the the feeling of being used by God. She never had that feeling before. And that's what turned her around to get active in the

of Alcoholics Anonymous and to get active working with others. But the lesson I learned from that is I told you my very favorite sentence. It says for if an alcoholic fails to perfect enlarge his spiritual life through help, work and sacrifice for others, it doesn't say other Alcoholics. It says others. So that means in the program or out of the program. And that's all part of the 12th step, applying these principles and all our affairs. So anyway, in the big book, under doctor's opinion,

it tells me that many types of Alcoholics do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.

So I'm here today to tell you that I'm one of those Alcoholics. In fact, so is my mom. We both tried to recover from this disease through psychiatric effort. Different times, but we went to the same psychiatrist. Of course, the result was nil, but. But the good news is that today that very same psychiatrist is a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

My mom and I both tried to recover from this disease through the religious effort. Different times and different congregations, but the result was the same. And believe it or not, today that very same minister that counseled me is a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I used to joke around and say I think we drove these two men to drink. But the truth is, and this is the truth, my mom slept with the psychiatrist and I slept with the minister

and that is my only qualification for being the Sunday morning spiritual speaker

in the United States this Sunday morning spots considered the spiritual spot and that's why I get this all the time, just because I slept with this minister. I don't know. Anyway, one thing I do know for sure is that psychiatrist at minister and myself are perfect examples that a A works when other things fail. A little bit about my background. First of all, I'm Irish, German and Cherokee, which is Indian, American Indian and I'm illegitimate and being born out of wedlock today is just not a big deal. But when I was a little girl growing up, it was. And my childhood

is pretty appalling. So in my mom's defense, I want to tell you a little bit about her childhood because as bad as mine was, my mom's was worse. And this program gave me the ability to have a very loving relationship with my mom, even though she couldn't quit drinking. And I lost my mom eight years ago. She died of lung cancer. And I had the opportunity to practice love and service at home. We had Hospice come in, My sister and I took her home. We had Hospice come in and my mom died at home. And she actually got to die with a little bit of dignity.

I had the ability to get in bed with my mom, hold her all night, and just love her unconditionally. And I had to watch this woman drink on top of morphine up until the day she could no longer swallow. And it's probably one of the hardest things I've ever done. But one thing I learned from this whole experience is that my whole life growing up, I was so focused on the things I hated about my mom, the things I didn't want to be like, that I missed all of her wonderful qualities. My mom had a lot of wonderful qualities, and I really miss her a lot today.

But my mom came from an alcoholic background, and when she was 12, when she was 13, her mother was murdered in a drunken brawl. A drunk slit my grandmother's throat. So that left my mom out on the streets at the age of 13, trying to raise herself. At the age of 14, she had her first baby, which she gave up for adoption. And then she had me, and she did everything in her power to keep me. She later met this man, got married,

had three boys, gave me three brothers. We all moved to California.

That marriage soon ended in divorce and my stepfather moved back to Colorado. So that left my mom out in California trying to raise 4 little kids and we were raised on welfare. We were raised extreme, extreme poverty, always having lights, gas, telephones turned off, always being evicted, even sleeping in cars. And I had to deal with my mom's alcoholism. I had to deal with her prostitution, and I had to deal with her suicide attempts. When I was 12, my mom got pregnant again,

and this time she sent my three brothers to live with their real dad in Colorado.

Now, my three brothers were my very best friends. When you're sleeping in cars and you're always being evicted, you don't have an oortunity to make friends. So my brothers were my friends. So I feel like at the age of 12, I already had all these feelings that I later brought with me to Alkalix Anonymous. And those feelings were of low self worth, low self esteem, not equal to and just not good enough. And that was a direct result of all that poverty. That drunken psychiatrist told me that I had issues of abandonment. You know, I never knew my real dad. My stepdad went away, my brothers went away. My mom's always trying to

kill herself. And because of some other childhood experiences, I would say I'm a fear based person. I have always been afraid of people, places and things. And the two very important things I learned when I got to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is first of all, I learned that feelings are not facts and all those things I used to think about myself are not the truth. And best of all, I learned how to walk through fear. And I learned that every time I walk through fear, I'm actually exercising faith. And this last 12 years,

I walked through one of my biggest fairs and it's getting on airplanes.

It took me 12 1/2 years

to finally get on an airplane, 12 1/2 years of sobriety to finally get on an airplane. And I found out that I'm not even afraid of flying. I'm afraid of crashing.

My sponsor told me that I'd better be clear on what my fear was when I was asking God to remove it. But I hear I hear a lot of things in the program about like synonymous that are not necessarily in the big book