Steps 4 through 9 at the Road to Recovery Convention 2002 in Reykjavik, Iceland September 13th

I've tried to find out information because you imagine get that feeling like I've come true in US when I got to my first fighters at foster homes you got and they selected my anger is I was relocated as me. I sober and and and then you'll put one 30s was told all these position. If she doesn't follow through it. What does you know the application,

you know, miss, because I have a junkyard doll. It's anonymous thief that that I being the alcoholic that I am, I went. Can you believe that? I mean, you wouldn't believe the things that I get exposed to, but it and of course, they, they help me a lot with all of that,

as you well can tell.

Let me tell you this one story and then I'm going to close There was this a possibility of it was called a development position. They create creating a new department. And I thought, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to apply for that job, but I thought, you know, it's really way out of anything that I could ever do. But I thought, well, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and try, I'm just going to try. Why not? I love practice in life. If anything, Alcoholics Anonymous and the steps have taught me is we get to practice life here, you know, in a A and in the meetings and when we get to share and

get to be in fellowship. This is where we died for those balls. Yeah. You know, you see that ball coming. It's like, are you going to go for it and just kind of put your Mitt out there? Are you going to die for that baby? Right. And what I've learned to do with Alcoholics Anonymous, I've learned to dive for those balls. I did. That's it. That's what I do because I like to live my I'm very self expressed and passionate about life. So I went to this interview and I walked in. It was one at, at the MU is in this big conference room with, you know, in a fancy

is in the me room in this room is the room itself is intimidating because it's so large and it's got a real beautiful wood table. And it's a kind where you can see the reflection of people's suits in the table. And, and there were like 12 or 13 people on this, on this committee. And they asked me a lot of really hard questions, a lot of really hard questions. And I did the best I could to answer them. In the end. The last question they asked me was, you know, if you get, if you're the successful candidate in this position, you'll be interacting with a lot of highly educated people.

And we want to know, you know, what is it that you do in your community that is a contribution back to the community that you live in

now? You know, I thought to myself, well, self, you can't tell him that you're an alcoholic,

right? You can't tell him that because they'll think, you know, what will they think of you? And then that other part of me said, you know, if it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous, I wouldn't even be here. So I looked at him and said,

I have a little bit of resistance in sharing with you what I do in my community,

but I want you to know that I'm a, I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm very involved in service work. And I told about the H and I work that I've done over the years and the things that I've been involved in. I said, you know, and I realize that based on this, it might might be detrimental about the possibility of me getting this job, but I want to really thank you

for the opportunity to be here because from where I came from, this is nothing short of a miracle. So I want to thank you. And I left and I never thought that I was going to get that job. And do you know what?

I got that job. And today I'm a Superintendent in facilities at UC Davis. And that is, you know where my last drunk was. My last drunk on July the 11th was in the Medical Center on Stockton Blvd. They had me stop. They had me strapped to a Gurney, right? They had me strapped to a Gurney, had Ivs in my arms and hoses up my nose and I was flopping around like a Deb car,

right. So when you, when they say what's possible in a, a anything's possible because we've been given the keys to the Kingdom. And they say that if you're willing to do that, that great things will come to pass. If you're willing to do the deal. And I've been willing to do the deal and great things have come to pass in my life. I'm going to tell you a story about an Indian and then I'm going to sit down. I went to to the Las Vegas Conference for American Indians

about eight years or nine years ago. And instead of having marathon meetings, they have

talking circles. And in a talking circle, you stay for the whole completion of the circle and the communication. And there was a man that was leading that that was 15 years sober and 90 years old.

Check that out. He's 15 years sober and 90 years old. And he was a medicine man. And he says, you know, as young people,

it's very important that you go to faraway places. He says, you know, as a young child, I used to live on a reservation, and the medicine man always carried rocks. And I knew that the rocks that the medicine man carried were spiritual healing rocks. I knew that, but I couldn't speak to the medicine man until my shoulder was, my head was the top of his shoulder. He said, when that day come, I went to him because I wanted to be able to get these powerful healing rocks. He said, So I went to him and I asked him, medicine man,

you know, where do we get, what are these rocks and where do you get them? And he said that the medicine man put his arm around his shoulder. And he said, well, son,

I'm just moving that route. I'm just moving that mountain one rock at a time,

He says. What we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is American Indians is it says in the first step that we that we get to do this thing together. And on some days, you know, my rocks, I can't carry them by myself. So you get to help me. And over a period of time, it doesn't matter how big your mountain of rocks is, the remorse, the problems with your family, the dreams that you never fulfilled on the things that you never did because you just, it got to be a place where it's too overwhelming. And Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a place where you get to come and every day you can move.

And when you're tired, somebody else helps you move that rock. And I thought that was a beautiful story. And then he said, you know, the other thing is young people, you love to go to far away places. My, my nieces and nephews and always want to go to Hawaii and Jamaica and Mexico. He says it's good to go to faraway places. He says that I ask of you that when you go there that you, that you, you get the soil and you take the soil and you, you hold it and you feel the texture of the soil and you smell the soil and know the vegetation. It's important to know,

to know Mother Earth and all the different things that Mother Earth provides, he says. But I want you to know that the longest journey that you'll ever take will be from your mind to your heart. And that's a journey that we get to take. An alcoholic synonymous. So I want to thank you. It's been an honor and a privilege to be with you. I can't tell you what a wonderful day it's been for me. Thank you.

Happens all the time.

I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is June 30th, 1981. I am an active member of the Living Life One Day at a Time group in Duluth, GA,

and my sponsor is Maggie H. And

those statements, those are the most important, most truthful statements I can make about myself today. And they remind me of who and what I am and because of what they've enabled me to do, whose I am. So anything else I tell you today is going to be the best that I can do under the circumstances where I am right now. I am so grateful to be here. I'm always grateful to participate. It's an honor

and a privilege to participate in any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, to be standing up here, to be alive, to not be locked up or covered up. And that's where I know without question I would be had it not been for Alcoholics.

I wanna thank the committee for asking me to come here.

It's just, it's amazing. My sponsor there was a gentleman who is dead now from Atlanta named John Fenister, who once said that when you play the 11th step, you think you're being humble, but in in actuality, you're asking for the whole world because you don't know where God's gonna take you or where he's gonna lead you. And I've had the privilege of, of being able to go all over this country and to speak. Why, I do not know, except to know that

I am healed every time I come away from from one of these gatherings. Because to me this is just God, your God in this room. But I'm grateful to the committee for asking me for Allison, Butch, everybody who Bob. It's good to see Bob got friends here from Atlanta, Kim and Sean and I. I saw Harold and Jenny. It was a privilege. And I'm traveling with my husband. God knows where that man is. I haven't seen him since I got here.

And I want to make an announcement right now that not for him not to leave this room before I see him this morning because I got a feeling I'm not going to see him for the rest of the day.

But that's a privilege too, because he and I just celebrated 14 years of marriage in this program. And next week he'll have 20 years sobriety. And we met when we were four and six years sober. So, and now we're 18 and 20. You might say we're in our teenage years. We're kind of in a rebellious stage, too. He retired a couple of years ago. And I said I'm going to have to have him put to sleep if he didn't get something to do. But I am very, very grateful for him.

I met him as an alcoholic and what he did for me in the beginning is a sober member of alcoholic synonymous. I will always be grateful for and no matter what happens to us,

I will always remember the things that he taught me through this program. Let's see, I'm very nervous. I'm always nervous. That's nothing new for me. I'm just one of these who just about to come apart any minute. And I say that way most of the time, but you can well imagine what I was, what I was like when I was drinking. But I am here to tell you what I was like, what I was like, what happened to me and what I'm like now. And a lot of times lately I've got some notes up here because I get, I get a little bit lost. I had some

recently and I like to blame everything on anesthesia.

My my mother-in-law says every time you go under anesthesia you're never quite right again. And I've never been quite right anyway. But my memory just can get really

out there. But

my whole life has turned upside down in the last few years. It's just, it's just been in the most amazing situation for me. On the one hand, I've been through experiences that I just simply never dreamed that I would ever survive, that I would ever care to, and I wouldn't have been there to even participate in.

At the same time, with the

suffering that I have experienced, not just on my own but also watching other people go through things, the most incredible experience has been to to see the reverse side and to experience God of an even deeper level. So what I'm going to talk about today, I don't even really know because I don't know where this will carry me. I hope I don't get too emotional. I'm very emotional and I may just cry, but I've long since

stop apologizing for that because that's just part of the gift that God's given me to express appreciation. But this program has taken me to heights that I never dreamed possible in my life, and if I had ever myself tried to put limits on what I thought my sobriety would be, I would have really sold myself short. I can tell you that today. But I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA

a middle child. I used to blame that at one time thought that was the reason I was an alcoholic because I read a book that said being a middle child could be very devastating to us emotionally. And

I was wedded between between two brothers. One, my older brother was the most popular kid in school. He was a captain, the football team, the president of the senior class and all his classes. He had unbelievable scores of friends and just everything he does just seemed to to work for him and outgoing. And he eventually would become a highly decorated military man and have a a fine family. And he drank a occasionally, but it's not anything important

to him. He could take it or leave it. And I've never really seen him drink that much. He's had lots untold tragedy in his life and yet he seems to have survived it. Well, my younger brother was essentially the same way. He had lots of friends and he was in a very athletic, we come from a very athletic family. My dad was a very athletic man. He was a coach and among all the other things that he managed to accomplish in his life. And my younger brother got along well. And but here I am somewhere in the middle and I became

alcoholic, a drug dealer, a drug addict, a prostitute, a liar, a cheat, and anything else that you can think of. I went to the gutter and I never could quite figure that out. You know, we were all raised in the same house, what happened here? But, and I was mentally ill. Mental illness is my thing. You know, you can go to Skid Row physically or you can go to Skid Row in your mind. And I'm just never quite sure, almost wish sometimes that I had acted out

physically some of the things that had gone in my own in my head

and gotten caught early on. And maybe the the hell that I went through would have not had to have lasted so long. On the other hand, I wouldn't have what I had today if I hadn't gone through everything that I went through. So I'm quite grateful for that. But my personality was split from the start. I was thinking alcoholically a long time before I took a drink. And as I've always said it, Thanksgiving, nobody ever knew quite how many plates to set because they didn't know how many of me was going to show up.

And they never knew, never knew which one was going to show up. So they always kept everybody on edge. I have affected people in my life all of my life,

and I was thinking of excuses as the why wasn't an alcoholic and that's what just about killed me in this program. As Kim read and more about alcoholism is nobody likes to admit. Well, I couldn't admit. I simply couldn't admit and, and I mentioned the excuses that I used to use and one, I had proof that I wasn't an alcoholic necessarily because I have last year I went through some boxes that contain papers from all the doctors that I had been to like 15

colleges and psychiatrists in my life. And I had, and I listed all of those things because just fascinated me as to what doctors have been saying about me all my life, that I was neurotic, which is very neurotic. I'm the poster child for neurosis today and obsessive compulsive. I seem to grow more so than I ever have been.

Passive aggressive ahead, attachment disorder, abandonment disorder, skit sword alienation, that's pretty serious, paranoia, manic depression. And even some guy said that I had a responsibility disorder, that I took too much or not enough. So that and I, you know, with all those labels, I just say I'm a passionate person. I like to cover it all with passion. I'm just

I'm passionate, but you know, just that

that tomato. And not one of them said was an alcoholic. Now, I never mentioned that I drank. Nobody asked. They just I remember once going to a marriage counselor with my husband and we were there because I thought finally somebody going to see what this man is like and we're there to supposedly save our marriage. And the first thing out of that guy's mouth was to my husband. He said now you go home

because we don't need you here. I got to deal with her first. She's a time bomb over ready to explode. And it's like, damn, nobody understands. And that's, that's the story of my life.

You just don't understand and most people don't understand and it's not important that they do what's important that I understand who and why I am. And that came that true in recent years. I've had an absolute privilege as a result of what you've given me. I've always been so self absorbed. It's just incredible. And I've only there's been no room in my life for anybody else but me for a long, long time. I drank for 25 years. And this is just all about me. Everything in life is about me, but

fortunately you've been able to pry me open somewhat and make me realize that that ain't it at all. And that's not what's going to save my life. It's going to be getting out of me. But one thing I've been privileged to be able to do is to be able to be with my my parents and,

and my mother. I have recently, and I'll tell you about this a little bit later, but I've recently discovered this woman. And there in front of my eyes, all these years, the most incredible example of anything you could ever dream of, just a really incredible, remarkable human being.

She's 88 years old and I've been around her and I've been around Bill's mom. Bill's mom is 83. And watching these two people operate, one of the things that another thing no doctor ever mentioned was maybe why I was so goofy was being Southern. And

this is important because when in relation to this program, because I came in here and you talked about being restored to sanity. Well, the truth of the matter is in the South

being saying is not that does not necessarily impress Southerners because being crazy is kind of a little bit or a light part of the Southern pride. You know, and we don't and schizophrenia, we've raced to a fine art kind of that, you know, that back and forth and that split personality and and you always you've got to think of the people, the Southerners and you watch your movies where Southerners are involved and you listen to them. You listen to them

carefully. As far as gossiping goes, they don't gossip. They just tell stories and they tell big stories and they exaggerate stories. But honestly, you talked about having to get honest. And I've mentioned this before because I think it's so precious. I heard my mother-in-law, Bill recently asked her. He asked her one day about a particular

pot in the kitchen. He said, mom, where did you get that? And she said, oh, so and says this friend of hers, she said he he just laughing and I said, did you steal it? And she said, well, of course not. It just took up with me. Well, that's the same thing. My mother's the same way. She sees things like that and they rationalize and justify and that's subject close.

You talked about me having to write an inventory. Are you kidding? An inventory and tell it to somebody else. Talk about those things to somebody else. That goes so much against the grain of of the way I was raised. It was incredible. You don't tell those things. I had a cousin who was divorced for 15 years before we ever knew about it and my mother and he was remarried and my mother just whispered, we just didn't want to talk about that. You know, it's just, it's things like that, that

as far as grandiosity and pride, you know,

dealing with that my, my mother, she will you never talked to her and mentioned somebody saying that she doesn't ask who their people are, where they came from, lineage, you know, it's just real important Appearances and manners are absolutely everything. My mother was recently in the hospital. She fell and broke her hip. And even though she's laying there in pain, she was introducing me to every nurse that came in that room. And it's just that kind of stuff that you grow up with. And, and I've watched it so carefully over the years. And I always said,

I thought the reason Southern women didn't get involved in orgies was because it'd be too many thank you notes to write. And this is good. We write thank you notes for everything absolutely important. It's important. And cursing, Cursing is not okay. It's okay to throw a fit, to be petulant, to be vindictive, to be high strung.

My heroes early on and my life are always, you know, all Southern little girls see Gone With the Wind when they're little girls. It's almost a rite of passage

and Scarlet O'Hara and then later on Blanche Dubois, who make being mentally ill this look real attractive. And you. These women are not shallow and they are not really crazy. They know exactly what they're doing and they get away with it. And the perceptions of reality is not not even bad. It's necessary to change it sometimes. So you know this. These are things that as far as the cursing goes, I said that I spoke at a place in Pennsylvania one time. They had a rule for the

curse from the podium and I thought I was indignant because I said I wouldn't curse from the podium. I might steal your husband or kill somebody, but I'm not going to curse some sodium. It's just my mentality. You know, it's just it's. But anyway, and of course, the Civil War, the past is not only not passed, it's

it's not dead, it's not even past. And we still, we get Confederate Memorial Day off by the way, and Robert E Lee's birthday. And

it's just stuff like that. And it, it's all comical. But I can see the, I can see more the older I get. And Atlanta has grown to be not the charming place that it used to be. Atlanta was the only safe haven that I ever had. It was my home. I was born there, raised there. I never left there. I never tried a geographic. Somehow I felt security there. But Atlanta has become so cosmopolitan that I can't, almost can't wait to get out of there one of these days.

But

when I was thinking of one of my most favorite jokes about when we were coming to the Atlanta airport yesterday about southern women and I just love this joke and y'all forgive me because it's just funny to me about the I'm find myself bitching about Yankees in Atlanta now. You know, I'm sounding just like my mother. But they've been, they've invaded Atlanta. But

there were three women sitting on a bench in an airport

in New York. And to North, two Yankees in a Southern lady. And she looked over at him and in her cheerful way, you know, she just asked him, we always talk to everybody but said, hello, where y'all from? And the one of them looked at her and said, we're from a place where we don't end sentences in prepositions. And so she thought for just a minute and she smiled cheerfully and said oh OK, well where y'all from bitch?

We do have our way.

All you need for delusion to be a reality is to be around other people who are similarly deluded. So don't don't sell ashore. But anyway, one thing to in

it seems like, and maybe these things cut across the board and go across any, any nationality, any culture or anything. But Southern women love their daddies and they love their granddaddies. And we're named after me. But I was named after my grandfather. And indeed, these two men would play the most important, vital roles in my life, and they would affect my thinking, my action, my behavior and why I'm here today.

In this past year has it's been just almost come full cycle? I know I haven't, but

it feels that way to a degree. As I said, I was thinking alcoholically a long time before I ever took a drink. And the first, the first memory that I have, I think is probably one of the most vital memories I ever had. And it had to do with my grandfather. And my, my grandfather that was named after his name was Marshall and I was named Marsha. And apparently I was very, very special to this man and very, very loved by this man because I remember it and I know it today. I feel it today. And for most of my life, until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I never

that feeling. I never even came close to that feeling because it was as close to unconditional love as I could ever imagine what that would mean. I know today also that no human being is capable of unconditional love. I myself am not, and nobody in this room is. But God is the only One who can give us the unconditional love that is necessary in this vital to our lives. And He can indeed do it. He has to do it through us, and we have to be available and clear enough for Him to flow through us. But I remember this man so vividly.

Everything about him physically, I remember holding his hand. I remember being with him and the memories must be very deep and very strong because he died when I was three years old. And I remember the funeral and again, being from the South,

this

situation and people do it in other places too, but we have the open, open coffin funerals and the songs they sang. And I remember the undertaker picking me up to look at him in the coffin to see that he was really gone. And that must have made a big difference in my life because from that time on, if I look back at my life and when I had to do a four step and had to, I could see that even the earliest years of my life, I was, I was not destined to live this life as this life would demand of me. I did not

have the emotional strength or whatever it takes to be able to do it. And the fears of being abandoned, the fears of of loss, the fear of death, the fear of fear, every kind of fear began back then. And it was only accentuated because I remember that one of the earliest prayers I ever learned was now had laid me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. And I was so afraid. I was afraid to sleep.

Years later, the way I would handle that was I would become addicted to amphetamines, which ran hand in hand with the alcoholism. So I didn't have sleep and I would go go for just one time. I went for almost a year it seemed, without sleeping because I was scared to death and I didn't know what a soul was. My dad is a southern bad, this minister,

and I used to blame that. I used to blame the fact that I was Southern Baptist minister for being alcoholic or I yeah, I just kept using it, just kept using that. That was my biggest resentment and my biggest excuse. But there was never a drop of alcohol served in our home. My parents didn't drink. There was no, no alcohol in the home. I'm not from an alcoholic family, but I could ever see. Now I know I have uncles and and relatives that drank and got in bad trouble, but they were good

were just curious. That's what people used to call them and there's a lot of insanity that ran in my family, but it was never labeled alcoholism. That word was foreign to me that we didn't curse, we didn't smoke, we didn't drink. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday night and that's the way my life was. My parents encouraged education. Both parents were

my dad was a a biblical scholar and he had masters degrees and PACs and my mother was highly intelligent. And these people encouraged education and that we do try to make something of ourselves and that we go to school, we be part of the community and that we take music lessons and that we do all of the things that give you an opportunity to have a decent life. They didn't have much financially, but they used every bit of it to enable us to do these things. Of course, I never saw that. All I saw, you know, people talk about how

some people who do come from horribly abusive homes and that this does affect us, this affects our thinking, it affects our behavior later on in life. And I was all resentful because I came from a good home for heavens sake. So an alcoholic, you know, how can you figure it? But early on I had all of these feelings and emotions and my daddy was my most Oh my God, I love that man so much. And I would try every way I could possibly do to please him and to make him happy and to make him say I love you and let him know and have him

arms around me and tell me how important I was. That was necessary for me for some reason early on. But I also wanted to be a part of. And I, I wore glasses when I was seven years old. And back then in the 50s, they had this. I think it's Dorothy Parker who said men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses. And that's true. But was then

they do now. Hmm. But I didn't anyway, back then that was not it was not the, you know, glasses were considered just something ugly. So I took that to heart. And I took to heart that I couldn't be like the other kids. Little things like the other girls, the cheerleaders. I always hated cheerleaders.

You know, I was destined for movies because these movies about the girl who wants to get even because she was the cheerleader has made her feel bad. So she goes and kills all the cheerleaders. And I wanted to at some point in my life, but they could turn cartwheels and I couldn't I but I'd wanna kill myself. I learned later to want to kill somebody else instead of myself. But anyway, that's just a childhood. And I mentioned all that stuff because I took my first drink of alcohol when I was nine years old. So it's it was just thank God for that drink of alcohol. Alcohol and Alcoholics

have been the two else in between has been in response to I took a drink of alcohol because a friend of mines mother having to have a tea glass of alcohol of bourbon and said did I want some? And I took it just to yes because I wanted to be a part of wanting to fit in. And I took the drink. And from that time on for the next 25 years until it began to turn on me, I would chase the feeling that that drink gave me that very first drink. I remember the feeling. I've always been so anxious,

so full of frustration, and I think frustration could probably be the word that could define me. I've always felt like I had one footnail to the floor. I could never quite succeed in anything I ever did. But what alcohol did for me, it may. What it did to me was what it does to every other human being. It makes you sick. But I was willing to endure that. I was willing to endure the indignities. I was eventually willing to endure the total insanity that it brought about

because I began to believe the lie that alcohol

would solve my problems and would not only solve my problems, but would give me a whole new way of living. And it did. It did. It gave me a whole new personality and I was able to feel OK and eventually not only OK. You see, I've had these feelings of inferiority. Eventually they would become feelings of superiority

and I would grow to and I would soon, very early in my life, develop a system of defense against the world, against you, against God. And I could defy everyone of you. And I would do anything I wanted to because I would have that friend. And alcohol was the best friend I ever had. And when you asked me, told me that I had to not drink anymore. You see, the first step of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that I can't drink and I can't not drink.

Well, after all the years of drinking, I did not have the power within me to generate the ability to not drink. And that's where you came in. But I was able to drink successfully for a long time and to control the world outside of me because I knew that if I could just do that, then I would be all right. And I looked outside of me all those years for the comfort and for what I needed to be, whatever it was that I wanted to be. And I had some dreams and hopes. I used to want to be a singer. I used to be. I want to be an actress

and a writer. And during those years, Connie Francis was a big singer in the 50s, and she had a song, Who's Sorry Now? And that became my theme song. Somebody'd going to pay for this, but Who's sorry Now? Elvis Presley. The last time I was in Las Vegas was in the early 70s. And I sat just right here and he was just right there. And I just about died. He was my first love. And I've never gotten over Elvis Presley to this day. I just, I miss him terribly, but

just one of these emotional, sentimental people. But you know, eventually all of that would be killed too, because alcohol numbers of pain, but it also numbs the feelings that we're supposed to have and the things that make us human and make us good and help us to grow. When I in high school, I added to the alcohol when you, when I started drinking alcohol, I had to start lying, of course, to get alcohol to sneak around and to do it. And I began to develop

these character defects that I would have to come to deal with, come to terms with later. And it would be very difficult because they were so ingrained in me,

the lion, the cheating and eventually added stealing and the shoplifting. And I was part of a theft ring in high school. And I got away with all these things. And alcohol would fuel this false notion that I, that in the power it gave me power or some sense of power and strength and courage, courage to do the things that I needed to do, all to fit in, all to be a part of. And that feeling of superiority. By the time I was I, I skipped a grade in high school and I just was going to have to go to college. That was demand

by our parents. And I was getting ready to go to college and I made a declaration because I got away with things and you didn't catch on to it. So that meant I was smarter than you were. And I sure didn't need that family and I didn't need those parents. I didn't know then that I was going to set out to punish my father for everything he was worth, for every moment that he never gave me, for everything that he ever denied me emotionally. And I would set out to punish him and I would do a good job of it. But in the main,

with that, I would punish myself and, and everybody that I touched. The big book talks about if, if a person has cancer, we just feel sorry for him and we wouldn't criticize him. But with the disease of alcoholism that comes the annihilation of everything that we hold dear and the destruction of people and everything that we've ever cherished. And that couldn't could have meant anything to us. But I made a declaration when I was 16 years old that would change my life forever. And that was that as I went out the door to go to Auburn, which is in Alabama,

that I would never again darken the door of a church that the God that I had been raised with, that I had tried, I'd tried to, to, to do what I was supposed to do. And I'd been to Sunday school, but that hadn't taken. And there obviously was no God. If he was there, though,

if indeed he was there, then he'd given me brains to think and to you. So he meant for me to run my own life. And that's what I did for the next 20, however many years until I came into this program through the just the gates of hell. And that's where my will took me. And that's where my ego began to grow and to flourish. And you know, the ego is the part of the bun that separate, that focuses on the personality and the body and thus separates us from the spiritual. And that's when it began to really happen for me.

And I believe today that for every drink that I would put into my body, and if you've been in and out of this program, every time you take a drink of alcohol, that that instantly separates you from the spiritual, from God. And but anyway, I made that declaration and, and today I know that I can't separate myself from God because God's here, He's inside of me, but I can bury him so alive that he cannot see the light of day and that he's not going to take away my will.

We talk about willpower and giving our will over to the care of God. I don't think that we give necessarily. I don't think he's going to take my will

because he's given it to me as a vehicle in order to make choices, and willpower is simply the strength of the choices that I'm able to make. So I don't know that he's going to take my will, but I do know that I need to turn my will around and align it with his and to do what he's wanting me to do. But in order to do that, I got to get out of the way.

There's so many paradoxes in this program. I went to Auburn and based armed with that idea and that declaration of freedom. And I've talked about it before, but that was a horrible, horrible time. I tried to fit in there and didn't, and I really didn't care at that stage. I would find myself later on in the chapter of the Agnostic, and that was the one chapter that I did not read for years in this program. But I got in trouble with the Auburn football team and I don't even go into that anymore. But that's

the prostitution by then had taken hold. And I went to the gutter. I absolutely went to the gutter as a human being and unrecognizable as the daughter of the people from whence I came and from the community and from the values. And I came home and because my daddy insisted that I have a college education

and so I did get a college degree. I got 4° in psychology and sociology, history and political science, not because I'm so smart, but because I thought that he would be pleased with one of those. And the dad graduated. He said, well, why do you get a degree in history? I mean, in business. The one thing I didn't do, I went, I did open a business. Of course, everything in my life has been either for two in response to, for or against whatever, whatever my dad wanted. And I opened a business and I ran a successful business for a few years, but

destroyed that too. I had a child. I married the right man. I say the right man because my daddy liked him and he was a good man. He's a very loving man. He's highly intelligent, very handsome and very capable of taking care of me. And by that time, by my early 20s, and my alcoholism was full blown. And the way I drank was simply, I love bourbon. I had a favorite bourbon, George Dickel. I don't know if anybody's ever been familiar with that. And I loved beer. And I had set up my life to where I could

and at that time is a reward for me. I would take amphetamines during the week to function and to do things and to be superhuman Superwoman. And this notion of grandiosity and have it perfectionism was all of my defects were just accelerated. And to drink, I would drink to relax eventually and to get rid of the anxiety caused, you know, by the all of this cycle, the cycle of insanity that's building. And eventually I would not have a choice in the matter and alcohol would be

the only thing that it wouldn't work anymore. Actually, it didn't. It stopped working because I was more anxious and more frustrated and sicker and sicker and my behavior was worse and our life was just becoming untenable. I could not hold on much longer and I was going insane

and my marriage though I married the right man and I had the right child, I felt nothing with either one of them. My ability to love, I believe our the ability to reason is eroded the minute I take a drink and and the ability to love if I had any at all, it was dead.