The Texas Roundup in San Antonio, TX

everybody

because this program has worked in my life where nothing else ever did and I have been kept sober since November the sixteenth of seventy nine and I'm very grateful for that

right before the meeting started

Allen and I feel privileged enough to sponsor in the program said do you want me to force laughter while you're talking if you're not getting any

and it reminded me of something that Gail W. Sander that first Houston roundup in eighty two when she spoke and she said

there before she got up there she wanted more than anything to be

and she said you know I never heard in a speaker yeah they wanted to be good that was honest

and all my life all I ever wanted to do was to be funny so that was inappropriate remark for Jeff to make to me because I wanted so much to get up here tonight and be funny and I thought of several things that I have been through both drinking and sober so I found it necessary from about seven forty five to eight thirty to go up to my room and be alone physically anyway and quiet in turn this whole experience over to my higher power because one of the freedoms that this program has given me is the freedom from the need to be funny and I share that because it was a big part of my life and it was a big part of my sobriety for many years and I used to sit in a a meetings and think of funny things to say all the while missing anything else that was going on and when I told my story I had several stocks stories that were always guaranteed to get a good laugh and then I had this last year of sobriety and there was not a lot of laughter for me in this last year of sobriety and I've found it important for me on my birthday night

Atlanta and Dallas last year to be honest about things that I have gone through and a lot of people were surprised some people who need perhaps a little more work were critical that on something as joyous

and so important for the people who are brand new today that eight years of sobriety I shared some pain from the podium and one of my best friends said Christ I thought we were going to have to play a funeral dirge while you were at the microphone

and when Hillary called me and asked me to speak at this around

I knew there were reasons for that and there are a lot of people in this room who have known me for a number of years sober and it has been

a difficult year but the irony is that I didn't know when he asked me to speak what the theme of this round up was going to be and when I found out it was another experience and what a wonderful woman named Levi Collins guard winking at us and it was god winking at me because I don't want to get up here and talk about all the pain that I've been through in the last year and not tell you that through that pain there has been an incredible amount of freedom because I'm coming to understand that my pain is directly related to my unwillingness to accept life on life's terms and to trust that there is a higher power guiding my life in guiding other people's lives and that when I am free from my ideas about how things ought to be I am a much happier person I was told for a number of years I hate this expression by the way hi my name is the touchstone to spiritual growth my first sponsor used to tell

and things like when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired then you will grow and one of the freedoms that this last year and a half particularly have brought me is a new understanding of the promise that we will know and you happiness and a new freedom and I no longer believe it's necessary to experience deep emotional pain to grow spiritually what is necessary for me is to surrender the moment the pain starts and I am not someone who has surrendered easily in sobriety

but to not get ahead of myself I do want to before I forget thank you can ring and the committee for the privilege of letting me speak at this round up I do consider

a lot of the service work I suppose I should be very spiritual and say I consider all service worker privilege and on a certain level it is

I do consider it a privilege to speak as well as I consider it a privilege to sponsor someone in Alcoholics Anonymous and I truly do believe that it is the relationship of sponsorship there has been a key part both as a sponsor and being sponsored and you will probably hear me harp on that a lot because it is so critical I do not understand or relate to people in Alcoholics Anonymous they do not have sponsors or who don't sponsor people after they've been sober long enough to have done that because it is been absolutely key

foundation besides the twelve steps to mastering sober so I thank you for this privilege

hi yeah

am grateful to say to that because of this program I've kind of been reinstated in my family to a title I held for many years and I was born in Dallas in two days before Christmas in nineteen forty eight and being from the family that I was from that makes me thirty nine I see some people going like this

fact I'm coming up on my fortieth birthday and I want you to know it doesn't bother me bother

anyway I am grateful on one level

a day at a time I have the opportunity to celebrate its over

and that is not

some people in my life I have had or seem to be about to have but anyway when I I was born on December twenty third in my family found it necessary to bring home from the hospital and put me in a big Christmas package with the big red ribbon and a little card that says this is the best Christmas present god ever gave this family and I'm here to tell you they came to regret that later

but thanks to the program my mother told me last Christmas I joked with her about

and she looked at me and she said honey you are and for her to be able to say that after all those years

has been an incredible healing process in my family and in my life for which I'm very grateful I don't want to take a great deal of time to tell you about my drinking career you've had it I hope as I hoped that a day at a time with the help of this program none of those reasons that career suffice it to say that I drank a whole lot I fell down a whole lot

was kind of like

one of those old lands out of scripture that says that which I would not do I do that which I would do I do not

and that was pretty much the way it was when I drink and it was pretty much the way it was for a while after I got sober

but three to healing and forgiving process of the stamps and the and the people in a

I have less and less done that I didn't realize till I got to a anything that I was a terrified little boy

I was the baby in the family I got everything that I wanted

I was my parents divorced when I was five months old and my grandmother helped raise me and I learned at a very early age how to manipulate the two most important people in my life my mother and my grandmother and fortunately or unfortunately it really doesn't matter today they spend a great deal of time trying to convince me that the one you love to be more than the other one and I really didn't give a **** which one let me the most I just learned how to manipulate them both to get everything that I wanted and then my hateful mother remarried when I was six years

and it came to a sudden end for a while and I mention this because I hated my stepfather passionately and this again has been a guest of Alcoholics Anonymous when I got here in the fall of seventy nine

I can remember thinking in my first five or six months of sobriety if this program keeps me celebrate never gets me to the point that I could say I love my father it truly is a miraculous program

and I guess it truly is because I can say today I love my father and I hated it for years and years and years all that I could see in that man was that he was from the wrong side of town from the wrong kind of background with the wrong kind of attitudes and he certainly had a very wrong attitude about me poor innocent loving lovable jazz just didn't think and act the way he thought I did

and I remember how many times he used to tell me that if it was if it was going to kill him he was not going to help me grow up and be a snob and arrogant and all the things that I learned to do when I found alcohol and I came out of the closet

but I can't love him today for that because he was trying the best way house and seeing even at six years old the behavior thinking patterns that those years of manipulating my grandmother and my mother were already setting up in my life and he knew better than that that it was going to cost me a great deal of hardship when I got out there in the world and had to make it on my own

anyway I did as I said I was born in Dallas and when I was thirteen we were upgraded and moved to Austin and that was very upsetting experience for me and I look back on it sober and I see why because first of all I was separated from my grandmother and she was the most influential person in my life

I thank god today for her she was human but she was the most spiritual human being I have ever known

and then I came day

and thank god god put some people in my life so I could let go of the memory of my grandmother S. the only spiritual person walking the face of the earth she was a devout Christian scientist and she taught me about a loving god and I'm very grateful whether you embrace any form of an organized religion and today I do not I follow a particular spiritual path that I find works for me

but it has nothing to do with her being a Christian scientist I don't suppose but it has to do with the fact that she showed me

unconditional love and she taught me at a very early age about a loving god and that was very important to me later because my family when I was about nineteen years old

B. came very caught up

in the reborn fundamental Christian movement and having a homosexual son did not exactly fit in with what they were all doing with their lives and at nineteen years old I began to hear about a different kind of god a conditional guided judging gada condemning god

and I guess I decided somewhere in there that since I was pretty screwed up at that time I was in college I was doing a lot of drinking

drugs were not a big part of my life for my college life back then that came a little later

but I just for some reason

decided it had gone out and all that stuff had nothing to do with me and I didn't want any part of it and by the time I was twenty three or twenty four don't ask me how I can manage to graduate from the university of Texas and what is

for the public school kids in the state of Texas I have managed to land myself in teaching job right here in San Antonio

at Randolph Air Force base and I taught high school juniors and seniors and it was kind of a nice start to realize that I lived in San Antonio for three years during some of the worst of my drinking and drugging and I never spent the night in this hotel and that such a cleansing

down the street another story but anyway

so I

I decided the third year that I taught school that it was the strangest year of my life I really do believe that my family had you know

intervention is not just something that happens when a family and friends decide you've had too much to drink or drugs they do it in the fundamentalist movement and they did it to me and I was so overwhelmed I just went along with it bringing up of course our patterns of people pleasing and it was easier just to go along with them to try to resist it because obviously spiritually I was in no place to resist and emotionally and mentally I guess in some sense I still didn't want to lose my family as much as I disagreed with them and as much as I didn't want what they were offering I went along with it

and I committed my life to Jesus Christ and I tell you that from up here in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because it's very important for me to share that experience because it taught me again about a loving and forgiving god because what I did with that experience cause me such deep seated guilt and shame that I never thought I would let it go

and it has been through the steps that I've been able to do that

and my point is not to reflect on that spiritual pathway it's to tell you I took it and what I did with it and how I felt about it as a practicing alcoholic

because I was taken on that pathway by people who believe that my sexuality was wrong and was an abomination and so they wanted me

twenty five years old to turn my back on this line and I lasted three months I came this close to a nervous breakdown as I ever have

simply

I'll get to that later

and

I made a very profound

direct personal

statement

to him

and what I said was I don't want you in my life anymore leave me alone and keep these people out of my life I don't want it

and that was seventy five and seventy five I didn't think it was possible to drink anymore than I was already drinking

but I did and I began to use drugs

I don't know I'm I'm grateful that I don't know why because I have friends in the program who are drug addicts whose choice

reference was drugs the only thing that I liked about drugs were was speeding because if I did speed I could drink more and that was always the objective when I got into you know the hallucinogens it was it was too strange for me and I was always afraid I wouldn't get back over several times when maybe I shouldn't

and Nancy grace that's great to me

one other thing that I will tell you very briefly about that have a great deal to do with my guilt and shame and I mention that because

I find today that we don't talk a lot at least I don't hear a lot of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous about letting go of the guilt and shame and I think that's why we have some wonderful other support groups that are dealing with that more directly

but I carried a great deal of guilt and shame about turning my back on the lord in about doing what idea and which well I thought it was terribly humorous

and I had moved back to Austin in seventy five now don't ask me why I have turned my back on the lord and I turned my back on my my Baptist family and they all live in Austin but I leave San Antonio and I moved to Austin makes sense doesn't

and

I I just felt like I thought this was a real funny thing to do because everybody in my family was telling me that the lord was coming again and I just had to give this up so that when he came I wouldn't be lost forever and so I went in this all night

of his global church in Austin and I laughed at empty bottle of Mogen David wine on the altar and a half a loaf of French bread

I left a little note stuck in the French bread and it's and I came no one was here I laughed sorry Jesus

I thought it was very funny at the time

and then when I got sober I felt terribly guilty about doing

in fact it was the hardest part of my for my first

when I got that experience I thought

I can't tell anybody

I mean that

that's true I mean

that's beyond tacky I mean that

whatever I I was going to use the word they use on that side of the religious stance called blasphemy I had it directed at me so often it's not

but anyway

that's the wonderful thing to me about the program about how it's anonymous is that I struggled with that and I knew I had to include that not because it was so blasphemous or so terrible but I felt so guilty about it and I felt so full of shame for doing anything

and when I got to that point when I was taking my step with my first sponsor

I couldn't read it I said Sharon

I can't read this it's it's horrible

and she just looked at me

and I said no really I you know she had that look sponsors have

it says I'll sit here silently until the sun comes up if necessary but you're going to read it

and you know it's that strange communications that we discover in sobriety in the fellowship for this program and we just look at one another and nothing needs to be said

and I thought

I have to read this and so I do

and she did the strangest thing she burst out laughing

and I looked at her

maybe she's lost

that's seven months and I was still buying that message to a certain degree and

I look back on it now you know the wonderful thing about staying sober sometimes is looking back on an experience I had sober and seeing what it was really all about not what I thought it was about at the time but what it was really all about and I told her a long time later I said you know Sharon that was the first time I ever saw shares of really painful secrets with somebody in a

and he laughed and I look back on it and I realized that that is so much a part of my healing is the ability to laugh at myself and the ability that we have to laugh at ourselves

when I first got back from the reception tonight I turned on the TV in my room and they had an article on stress

and these people were making millions of dollars talking about things and it's like a lot of other things you watch these programs and you think my god the people in a and he gave me that for free they went on for fifteen minutes about how the scientists and researchers have discovered how laughter reduces the level of stress

I thought they could have gone to an a a meeting and discovered

but it's true and it's and hi I am thankful

the program the people in this program has taught me to laugh at myself because as I said in the beginning of my talk tonight last thing was very important making people laugh was very important but I can assure you when I drank I was never the back of the chair I never laughed at myself when I was drinking you or whoever was unfortunate to drift into my eyes

you know it it was incredible to me that after I got sober I had a friend of mine tell me that he went to parties and he saw me there he either made the decision to leave or stay and if you stay

founded upon his ability to stay behind

the entire time so that I never turned around and saw him and possibly made him the **** of many jokes that evening that's how funny I was when I drink I thought it was hilarious you hear things from friends when you're drinking anything thanks a lot

it was turning away from the sick fearful Unforgiven

sell to this program which has taught me to forgive myself to nurture myself and to learn from myself and I never thought that was possible I got sense of hearing people tell me when I would go through a relationship after relationship

and I will and they would say well you know

learn to love yourself you just can't love anybody else and that would make me very angry

and I didn't want to believe that

today I love myself I'm still single that's okay

in fact I was telling a friend last night this is the first time in my life and I just have to say this because it's on my mind and I don't want to forget to say it again there are some people in this room who have known me a number of years and some people who knew me when I was drinking and I used to joke

that I have been married so many times I had rice marks on my face

and I couldn't imagine even sober living life alone

because I didn't know that living solitarily doesn't mean living alone

and I'm real grateful that this last two years has been a process of learning the difference between solitude and loneliness

I can't believe I'm gonna say this but I'm saying it for me I actually realized earlier this year in a dating relationship that not only did I not need a lover I want one

it was boring

it was boring it was like

once you

morning after morning you know it's like I want my son to I want to get up in the morning and have my quiet time and read my books have my coffee and I don't like you sitting there smoking a cigarette I mean I smoke but not in the morning never do it

I don't understand it's like why don't you walk out the door start the engine get down inside the exhaust pipe

is giving you the lines the same fighting chance you know I'm into denial I wait till the six o'clock meeting and Landon I smoke a pack by the end of the night

with the sicker

anyway the games we play

and I have known freedom from tobacco in sobriety Schering

but I continue to relapse but I say better tobacco and alcohol and that's probably the worst of the denial and rationalization

but anyway I

I am so grateful for this new freedom god I cannot tell you all how much that is freedom to

I was absolutely someone all my life who felt incomplete and the last stand if I didn't have a man

chance there were it's like the old saying what's missing from this picture

and I never knew that nothing was missing from that picture

I don't want to harp on it except to say that that probably next to physical sobriety and a relationship with god that I have today it's probably the most incredible change in my life to to have that and one of the things that I've discovered is what

my mother told me there several years ago when she said after a break she said honey do your friends or for any use Lana Turner lives Taylor and it's like you really want to hear this from your own mother

you can't get an animal get a cat a dog something that will love you unconditionally

to do

anyway

this is an incredible freedom and you may think this sounds strange you're looking at someone who has been physically and psychologically allergic to any kind of cats living on the face of this earth I was raised the good news is coming however syncing we have a we have a less

from the podium I hate cats I was raised in a family that cats we always had dogs man's best friend now I know why I mean dogs are very dependent dogs hauling around dogs do as they're told

dogs jump when you yell at dogs get hurt dogs are not very much different from us cats are very different from

this is an incredible freedom to me in February of this year a friend of mine a man that I used to sponsor

asked me if I was interested in acquiring this cat that he and his lover had to get rid of he and Bob the cat for his lover for Christmas and it did not get along with they're the cat they already have and I said Tom you don't understand I hate cats

besides I'm allergic to them I am

fatally as a matter within fifteen minutes of being anywhere near a cat what kind of cat is it it's a Persian do they make any longer hair than that you know

he said

well just let me bring him over and you should see him it's kind of like what we do and we say to a friend

is kind of open and ready for our program check

meeting and seeing what you think about it that's how we track them

well that's only to me he brought this little Kitty over

and I'll tell you when that little golden Persian Kitty at about six months old came out of that Kitty carrier I sureness I looked at Tom and I said you asked me

I knew and I said I'll try it that's all I can tell you I'll try

this may sound kind of strange to some of you part of my spiritual journey and sobriety

for a little over a year now has been to embrace I guess for lack of a better way of describing it the unity churches approach to spirituality and I didn't I wasn't going to use the word metaphysics because it's kind of like everything else it covers everything from eight Izzy and mostly what people think about a Shirley MacLaine and you've lost

judgmental problem

but I realize that I had an opportunity with that kid and it was not a coincidence and that's a gift and I learned more than I ever have to go with the flow of life to just go with the flow and experience life and not try to make life happen and there was a reason that god was putting that little Kitty in my life and I knew that it was a lot of and I knew that love was more powerful even than than thirty nine plus years of believing that cats would make me as matic

and he stayed with me on the third night I went to bed I felt an asthma attack coming on and I said god I absolutely deny this I absolutely deny this old idea to have any power over me and this little kitten is a gift of love from you and I believe your love can heal me and I went to sleep and I'm not having as many tax cuts and this is September and that can become such a dear and loving part of my life

and it's not an unconditional

conditionally

I was I was in New York two weeks ago on business and and I was gone for a week and I made a track okay if you're a cat lover and you had a million okay

you know they don't have these anonymous that I can go to to learn about raising

good recovering alcoholic I got all the books on raising cats and raising Persians at random all I like what I did with the big the first year

and go about living in a day at a time

his name is neck by the way

and he was very amused when I got back from New York and he let me know

they have ways you know

the box

I know what you're doing

getting away with

so it's kinda nice to try to parent

but it's been a wonderful guest and it's been a wonderful healing experience I know this may sound strange to you but one night I felt such love for him and I was really emotional about it and I wanted him more than anything is to jump up in my lap and let me stroke him and petting and scratching and I was just looking at in the sitting on the floor looking up at me and he's just the most pictures but not

and I'm looking at him and I said baby you are just the most beautiful

god is ever put in my life

why don't you come up here and dad's lap and let me scratch

now

the room if you don't do things in this little rain on the get asthmatic

you want to talk about getting in touch with your rejection

like this

I have to open

clean

okay

he doesn't care because if I don't think it means the plant and

from the carpet

he's totally in control but

and I guess that's what's making it worse see what I had to be in control and I never was

real clear I'm not in control with neck he's definitely in control but it was the strangest thing that night when he got up and walked out of the room and the went right through me like

Nick is teaching you unconditional love I thought I was going to get it I'm learning together

and that is not something I do with a lover or with family or friends and you just have to and may sound strange I don't question

whatever god wants to send my way

teach me unconditional love even if it's a kitten I am I willing today to learn that lesson

and it was not one I knew anything about

I do want to tell you that I used to drink a whole lot and

by the fall of seventy nine I was ready for this program I thought I woke

get into a lot of it it's just the fact that by seventy nine do you like the smooth transition there in my story

only alcoholics understand

staff but anyway

I don't I want to tell you what it was like for me when I got to because it's real important for me because sometimes it's easy the longer I stay sober to forget what it was like

and I nearly forgot what it was like this year and I nearly got to go back but in the fall of seventy nine

all that I did was drink and party

and all that I ever wanted to do was go to parties and give parties and have a career that pay me enough money to do those two things of course have a lot of

and I managed to do that and I was making a very good salary and I was in hotel management and my lover and I were going on three years together and we

deklerk's in Dallas on

every every fact that's ever lived in Dallas manages to either live on browser sleep on balancer

hearing the case

and

the point in telling you is is that it's it's an important lesson for me to learn that I can't depend on the exteriors I can't depend on how my life looks outside of

and that's all that was really important until I got today and got sober I never looked inside of me and I never wanted to look inside it was scary I mean when you look inside and there's nothing there looking back you say later on looking inside

and so externals were very important to me and they continue to be important to me and all I could see was that I have the mother we had the beautiful apartment

your family friends what is wrong with my life one of my falling down drunk all the time nobody understood it either everybody would say why do you drunk all the time I mean you know you've got a lot

family and friends and I would say online

hardy's

I remember going to

year it was like a little see god plants in our consciousness finally started germinating and take root and I realize that

something that my great aunt said to me earlier that year I'm I went by

actually this was a month before my grandmother died and that was a real painful situation for me I don't know why god didn't let her in another six months to seem to get sober he didn't

sounds kind of weird but I remember Sharon saying to me one night my first sponsor I got real emotional about that this is sharing one with a loving god let that poor woman seeing the fall down drunk all those years and never let her live long enough to know that I got sober and she looked at me and she said she knows your cops over

I got goose bumps and drop the subject but it was like

original stuff again you know I wasn't all that server and it scared me and it doesn't today

while he doesn't scare me sure scared me when I was

but what might be the answer to me was a scene that was planning

the

rink later

because as I said all I did was want to drink and I wanted to party and I stopped by my grandmother's house one night she and my great aunt lived together they were sisters and they were both within and I went in the kitchen to get myself something to drink and they had voted my great aunt less disciplined woman in the room at that time

she was the one they decided should confront me in the kitchen and she said

Jeff

mmhm

your grandmother and I were just talking about this movie we want if you think you drink too much

now how many times we all hear that and I see anytime anybody ever said that to me I would lash out viciously and they used to say that I could cut five hundred yards with my time when I was drinking

well this was a woman along with my grandmother I would never have lashed out

yeah I just looked at her and I said no I never have and and I was well on my way already that evening I stopped by after happy hour at the bar what could be you know more usual than that

and she said there

every time you come by here you're drunk and we think you have a drinking problem and I said they're very generous line to party in she said honey even the band takes a break

you see that little seed was planted you know

I don't you know all those little things add up I did not wake up one day look in the mirror and say I'm an alcoholic and I need to go

what I did do was get very very drunk and humiliate myself and a great deal of people at a party and the next day my best friend who threw that party said you will apologize to everyone who was at this party or our friendship is over

and at that time it was the longest friendship it was twelve years old at that time it was the longest relationship I've any closeness that I had and I was scared to death of losing Jerry's fringe

of course I had all the usual denial we go you drink as much as I do and he said well maybe I do but I don't insult people like you do **** when you get drunk and you're going to do this or I'm not going to be your friend anymore

and I toyed with brought the phone over and set it down and he started making a dial the phone and call these people

it was a pre experiments and making amends

and I'm taking responsibility for my behavior obviously

within two weeks my best friend my lover and my boss had all confronted me about my drinking and all of them and said if I don't do something about it

it was over the relationship the job of the friendship

coincidentally I had a friend in my life been going to AA for over a year I used to make great fun

parties Royce would arrive Wednesday there's

he's now I'm calling because dairy meetings can you believe it while I'm you know we staggering around the room tell you that because in Royce I was shown the love

it is capable it is not

guarantee

only eight people in a and I just have to say

a little self righteous and I can say that because I've been I've been hateful I've been self righteous I've been judgmental and it's something that I'm willing and sing more freedom from this last year the greatest compliment anyone paid me was my former sponsoring and my roommate who chose to leaving a this past year and to make a CLA and code is primary programs of recovery and we sat and had dinner a few weeks ago and he looked at me and his mouth was hanging open and he said I have never known you to be so free of charge you are so accepting of what I've done and that was one of the nice compliments because I can tell you two years ago I wouldn't have felt that way and he wouldn't have picked up on that it's another new freedom

whatever

approach anybody tanks for me today that is based in those states

we did them folks

bill Wilson was a wonderful man and was used in wonderful ways but the principles of the twelve steps don't just belong to Alcoholics Anonymous and that was a painful loss to let go

in sobriety I want to believe that if I did it here by god everybody has to do here and that is why asking sample to me have limited thinking that we can get into enough of myself

the reason I was telling you about

his

his anonymity constantly being broken I went

and when I finally

M. said Royce I need to talk he was willing to talk with me

I wonder if I would have been that long had I been through that experience and he was in his first year of sobriety

I'll tell you something else to do I've had people ask me to share this from the microphone which of course sets me up to always try to remember from the microphone

anyway we went to lunch

it was Monday after your weekend in Dallas and if you know what that's like I was not a pretty picture and we sat down and I was like this from the business

the waiter asked if either one of us wanted anything from the bar and I looked at Royce would you mind if I ordered a glass of wine