Grace H. from Woodland Hills CA at Palm Springs CA

good morning

my name is great thank you and I am very grateful alcoholic

I am grateful for my sobriety to god to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous to all of my sponsors and all of my agents

and that

they dominos I can prepare

notice the name all right

and July the second nineteen ninety one my then sponsor Alabama brothers passed away many of you

new hire her she

spoke around all over the country I came down to palm springs love palm springs

and yeah unfortunately

she we had planned a wonderful trip to come down in Alabama is going to stay with the bill and Steve

and he never did quite make that trip

but I have a new sponsor him on the

my new sponsor who's twenty nine years sober her name is Blanche Wilson's

and usually still be welcome

I have never spoken in palm springs out of that join you for you Sunday night meeting

and I was a little nervous and there might have power at the wonderful sense of humor

I put in my meditation or reading that I do each morning when nine year that

when the medications was about you know you can't run from yourself if you do a junior graphic and you haven't solved the problems they're gonna take him with you and your bottom line at the end of that medication was there and you can't leave their functional anywhere

for those of you who haven't

I don't know what this word dysfunctional it is that simple word for **** up you know

so I figured if I was gonna **** up in palm springs I would pack up and bombs maintenance stayed home in Woodland Hills I would still back up there so you know

thank you invited me I guess the euro came and whatever comes out comes out

I was born in fifty two years ago next Friday Jan nineteen is my natal birthday

and Montgomery Alabama

and

during the years when I was a child in Montgomery Alabama the mayor of the city's name was tacky Gayle

so my inner child is not ruled by guilt or shame but by khaki

is that something you get a lady to run around waiting on

my brother look like a right mug my mother looked like ava Gardner and I've turned out he looked more like Rhett Butler but frankly I don't give a damn

my father went what the alcoholic in the family and you are as a bartender and honky tonk

in a place where you used to come

when that Freeman on national Tennessee three

and he would play randomly get halfway sober and you go back to Nashville to the grand Ole Opry

and I had my first drink in that bar when I was five years old it was a drink of something called red cafe overnight thank you for a man on a horse with direct gap jumped on the fans

as a child I like sodas and you know we used to something that came in a bottle tasting sweet and most beers are on more better site and so I took about halfway

make a funny face there are about the work that made out on the

I didn't have too much more to drink for awhile after that

and then line them

when I was there

about seventeen years old I went away to an all women's college

call nine about allowing them to the same college at Outland brothers attended strange land after

we never planned that we just met in California many years later those are the coincidences that happen in Alcoholics Anonymous Terry

well you know you don't put fifteen hundred women in the middle of nowhere

well out expecting him to come out to be a lesbian you know they don't

I will entertain themselves

Montevallo happened to be the place where I took tennis lessons and my hearing is perfect there was a very interesting woman who does the family she was a lesbian and he wanted to major in physical education

and her parents thought that you know

a college degree in physical education with a college degree and play and they are like that

so she had the determination to get a PhD in mathematics to prove to her parents that she could get a real degree turned around and got a degree in women's college education there was a world champion

and there she used to say my name is Dr Bernice finger and it's the middle finger girls

Montebello was was where I started drinking

and that Manuel was in a dry county in Alabama and so my first

again was white lightning

that's right you can get in a dry county is moving trying was given a bit longer

so I'm not one of those alcoholic

that can you know use alcohol because it was illegal drug in Alabama in a dry county was an illegal drugs

you've seen signs that he was born in Los Angeles Adam out here in in palm springs or not back to all other Los Angeles billboards June eleventh

June eleventh

and then a few weeks later I had a picture of a dinosaur up there lookin they'll eleven which was Friday I just celebrated fourteen years of sobriety it was my birthday

you know I think that that that picture that down towards me

because I feel that way now all I ever use with alcohol I apologize the number

damn I love early in life and you know I'd rather fight than switch

and then I just kept drinking

anyway and I'm you know

all of you have got some wonderful stories about Norton Cole can do and they're doing that and all this other stuff and you know I'm not willing to go out and use something else to get another story you just start with what I got

yeah

I

I made sure that Manuel even hours drinking but I got bored with it real quick and tell us I left my mellow one of my college roommate was known as Frank J.

and she had that nickname because her mother around our house down in New Orleans

and I decide to go do some graduate work with them thank you mother

that's where I learned about a drink all the hurricane

can you call zombies out here but in your arms are served in a hurricane Jamie

hurricane lamp chimney just

and I'm

it's just a wonderful drink

after I did my graduate work down your audience I went back home to

now I'm down and I actually interned in the hospital that I was born in St Margaret's hospital

and then

I ran into some things when I was interning

that the

yeah I drink and I am an alcoholic I believe

simply because my but I am battling mainly different from from people

and when I take one drink of alcohol I just want to drink the whole thing and that the

when I was driving down here

there's a sign on a Miller Miller's on the way down here

if he's saying if you drink thank

that's what normal people because I didn't want to think when I drink you know

I decided not to drink

if I had to think on our second put

I never want to control any John my drinking can't enjoy interconnected components

well I was

anyone

but I do think that there are some things are

I was saying that I'm an alcoholic because I'm an alcoholic in environmentally different that you know there are things when you're young it's sort of a statue in and then when I had to do in my year internship was alight do autopsies and ma'am

one of the things that that definitely I went home and drank a lot over it was a founding this little two year old child I've been running over by one the steamrollers

you know

then there was a wonderful male nurse friend of mine who isn't in trying nine Burton log in now

calmly down two to go the more

and I walked in there was Burton

because this was in the Bible belt in the heart of Dixie

and then like careers down there and somebody had told his mother and and she had rejected him and then

he took some time

as a result of that

and so those are some of the reasons that you know I really drank a lot that year no the reason why I left

Deep South and came to the state of California

and I've been here

for that I came in nineteen sixty three and

I drank for twenty two years

my drinking took me thirty five years in prison centering in on institutions

I drinking worked for a long time and live by satellite phone I am grateful for every drink I have a great

I'm grateful that I'm an alcoholic because the bizarre behavior that I displayed when I was drinking if I wasn't an alcoholic they were calling me a lot about their character names you know

and then you know I don't mind the venerated the littlest alcoholism

and

I had been hit by the time I finished my drinking I have been asked to leave kindergarten Skid Row parties

I had tried Friday in therapy I tried with at transactional therapy I had tried Ralphie and therapy and Adler I had tried primal scream you scream the nice going

I'd love to hear your answers

in the town of Los Angeles you can bond every form of spiritual program that you want

and I went to churches and temples and synagogues and I have in depth and sprinkled in most of them

only to go home and do it and Michael myself with Scotch one more time

I like you need a liquid that was brown let me tell you

if it was better than ours Dr southern comfort

right now

I have to admit to you that I even drank vodka

and I get there I just don't have any in in is just clear

no date yeah

Zacks father lives in my house like ours in an alcoholic you know that and now that we we we say to ourselves they denounce

well I get this bottle of that game my house and I would during the Manila flavor before I catch in that game that

that was an alcoholic because I wouldn't drink anything yeah finally I did drink the vodka

and that on the morning of June eleventh nineteen seventy nine I had down there now and not to take care of me

in Allentown if finally gotten disgusted with me

and they told me I had to do something about my drinking or that was it

dot com valleys in Caracas

of the machine Fernando Valley they told me if I would show up at eight o'clock that night hello psychiatric hospital across from valley Presbyterian Hospital there being there at eight o'clock not to drink between them now

nobody came out hold my hand to take me to your manager does that mean I don't know I just want the person was on the phone that day I guess that was it but I was worried

because I was desperate

and in order not to drink from medical lock in the morning to eight o'clock that night

I had a friend who was a pot dealer her husband

are there had died from alcoholism so if you had an alcoholic you've been trying to get me just what

and I knew that this person just didn't have a single drop of alcohol in the house because they hated it and I was saying goodbye and went over to her house I went over to damage happened I shook out

for that length of time and I appeared at the meeting

at the end of psychiatric hospital they won nine straight man and there was a queen Ralph Peters was late in the meeting

and I took one last look at Ralph and then use that gay people were welcome in Alcoholics Anonymous

those those can man

we were very wonderful very loving and very kind to me that night

and they tell me they apologized in great profusion but there wasn't a woman there to work with me

and they promised me if I wouldn't drink and I'll come back next week that they would hand me a woman

I love Alcoholics Anonymous

for about thirty years by that time and I never had nine straight men to queen Robert

it was the most hospitable place everybody

I

I did go back the next week and they had a lady there by the name of patients

apropos for making him he didn't become my sponsor but he was very nice

and she had a a directory of the meeting

and you tell me about this Wednesday night meeting

Dr Creech because the round robin made in naked rage and then have to decide

at that time it was the only meeting in the San Fernando Valley did how did you buy it

and so naturally I'd immediately took myself there

now if you have never been to the mob is

center

I'm catching on how they react you don't know that there's a chain link fence around the entire complex

and there was a gate that had lower labor like this you know you can note labors were you just left out the part that's why you're left out that way

hours so you know we're down

and brain dead

that didn't go out because there was a change or looked over and I thought that Kane was around

and I didn't know I had to do was lift up this this labor right so I walked around the entire training like look in front of the open entrance

by the time I got back there somebody had hit Reno was walking in and they pulled it up for me and I went in

and that became my home group

and you hear a lot about people who go out

in Alcoholics Anonymous

analysts say this the condition is

right with their anonymity at the level of prince rodeo family TV because I'm just gonna name off a few of those people who got me sober he kept me sober

and you were still sober today

personally is one of them here today and who is the one that contacted me about speaking down here

you know and when one person called me

I thought you know no where in the world have not met friends that wanted to hear me talk fourteen years later

the nine one

and then I take a look at him and procrastination a bit later on

and Dave Hahnemann

regulate read Darryl who's out here in palm springs

thank you for

I

usually your home group doesn't ask you to speak at a convention but that was my hunger and his mom how great living here in palm springs

then anyone else in the country right now yeah

consequences are like my hunger they are moved out here

Lois here Campbell is in Maine

always in the Oklahoma

and Jerry eighty Mariel how they spent their summer still summer

and Roberton Richard out there still sober reminder of that here

there's just so many more players deals over here now I like to tell that

because you don't hear about all the you know I started out with it with this group of people now I'm the only one left well I'm not the only one thank god

his program that does work

and when I was six months over I got my first commitment in Alcoholics Anonymous I was elected secretary of that meeting and that meeting has cancer are

no longer there the firm that meeting we started Sunday night meeting at the Moorpark church

in the studio thirty in that meeting is still going and I'm gonna take a break there nine

in every cannot one when I go that many I think you know

in that wonderful that you could do something in their first years of body is racked up it's not working it's still going on

you know survive in spite of me

their time is going to help me because I don't remember if it was my first on my second year

and he can tell me that I was sorry brain dead when I got here

when I was about six months over

this ninety day wonder came to the Wednesday night meeting with town name resting

the camera good friend of mine and now

in those years they used to have a great convention out here along with the with the straight commission is going to be next week

we used to have in a one sided down and let them in on the morning on the other

and

and it was a day my first or second year that that rusty asks me and my lover to come out to palm springs

and and join them for that and we do yet and rusty Harmon my birthday is

what do you use a nine

let it not saying all right I knew is grounds and

well you got it okay both of those K. right

but man he turned upside down

now this is that it could you find out that come okay you got the one with

I remember one time was the back nine years sober he was delayed it was not you're committing and the topic was procrastination

and you know that's not soften products over any explained there are two reasons why he wanted some help need pick that topic was that he needed to clean out his garage

and so we all tell him procrastination

and when time was seventeen years program he moved out of the valley in the call to tell me he cleaned out his garage

well they they first healing

so I am glad

then I had when I was over I was about six months over

and

during those days it took about two but copyright dis donc op and I still sort of we come to you in the morning

and then I may need a couple more putts copy

I was living in the now non lover and a great man I got to get up an hour early to prepare

because all our ninth get up thing and all were beautiful Mardi member when you on our

and that particular morning I was sending out a dining room table and right opposite where I was sitting with the wonder that looked out on our back yard in right at the end of the backyard with the fans

they are not at a slip that morning and got up early and all of a sudden I begin to hear the shrieks in the carries on in the

I raised my eyes to the window and I looked out and there was a hole in the back fence where John had driven a car through the night before I recognized it immediately as the work of one of us

and I began my first real lasting sobriety he came from that does and went through the captain at the replies and shook my whole body as

the

well on the floor and I peed my pants

the

you know they are not it's looking like this is another moment of alcoholic in plan they opt out of put up with

the reason I worked the last thing was because I knew to the core of my being that I had not done

yeah one of the great gifts is the variety that I'm grateful for today bye for for today you know whatever I did last night

you know

I may do some bad things in society it's progress not perfection

NO Alcoholics Anonymous broke away from from national group because we don't believe in absolutes

this progress not perfection at least whatever I did last night I remembered today you know

Alana

yeah

I have found a great deal of joy in Alcoholics Anonymous in in my commandments

I have been secretary treasurer of manning's having coffee person

I've been negative person I've been in a group not by any chance are

and one of my favorite commandments when I was seven years over I had to call the commandment London a record for a whole year

and you know I got real possessive about that because the commitment I just didn't want to give it up you know it's not copy back

I feel I am the great land sales lady and wherever I go whenever I don't want to pitch a great management Megazine of Alcoholics Anonymous the guns you every month and a plain brown a plain white envelope just like your partner

and now

thank you twelve dollars year has started in the back of it and just like in the back of the big but they're more up to date modern storage and they use terminology you can understand I know most of you do come in these days poly addicted and they do talk about other drugs besides out calling their salaries they don't talk about John barleycorn

they don't talk about the water wagon

I'm honored you know one of those persons that gets off on it and knowledge and I have unlocked and I have searched in libraries and I think I still can't find the origin of the word awakening is on

so it has all the stories it has a

section on the different conventions around the United States

it has jokes in here one of my favorite joke that a great mind losing my grandmother is eighty years our Angie starters in the crisis she tried out about

Anyanwu

I don't subscribe come prepared

yeah

about my three favorite but

welcome Alcoholics Anonymous

if you don't have one steal one

yep there's a bank when you work yeah

this is what it looks like when you start when you're buying a car today thank you for a cross around

thank you know not get that much more work you got to do

you know I love black when it's new

and then

if you use it it begins to look like that

and it has made it let me tell ya I was secretary of the state is not coal Benjamin valley

one Saturday night I got

I drove up to the neighborhood

help them out at six o'clock because we have to get there all right not all around the entire neighborhood three blocks with his younger tankers Gordon not they've been a chemical spill

thank

then the man dominated know how long it's gonna take to bring that up

there's no way in the route you know that we could just program that entire section and put up signs and say you know the meeting is canceled because the chemical spill

well I am a big but I went over to Ford twenty

and a coffee shop and that's brought down the road something the Big Bird I think she got the coffee I got back in my car go back over there there was no yeah okay

you know we had a meeting when I was planned

this is twelve and twelve twelve steps of personal recovery

well the conditions of the unity

on the twelve concepts of world service is there not a lot of people carry around if you become a general service representative you become more familiar with the with the G. S. R. service manual and bars are three sides equilateral triangle recovery unity and service

are all equal in importance that's fine no side is longer than the other

you aren't sober

you probably won't have a lot of unity

I didn't have a lot of unity when I was drinking at the end of my day you're not call people left to try to be so strong that they are you

beyond the United heck of a lot of service when you're out there

driving a hundred miles an hour down the freeway around there laying around right

some of the wreckage of my past lives that I had

why large numbers on the bill accidents when I was out there doing drunk driving

at one time I went through the windshield I had fifty stitches in my head I broke my leg in a number of places and I lost on my teeth

and I carry miles sat around with me

and when I when I think about drinking

you want to talk about what it was like

so many of you today because we are young and you don't have your team

and I wonder

and then

what time

and I'm just a little bit about the last couple years in my sobriety

that's what I've been going through recently

when I was a

what was it eight years Sarah

I made a decision to go back to school one more time

when I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous I had already collected a large number of degrees

because I was good at growing disco

and then

I mention that because I want you to know that self knowledge will avail you nothing

there is a greater need for me to be confused and cry to different number of academic areas

and then in my early to Radley I taught I taught her course you need medical physiology biochemistry at Northridge University

as one of the most

Boeing jobs I've ever had in that job still pays me today because my students still send me cards and letters and let me know what's happening in their life

so not every job you will have in life

necessarily pay you a very large salary the camera and the airplane to benefits are more important than the large calorie

nine men every time I get a card from one of them tell me they've got a promotion and I think they're remembered their teacher all these years after that

you know

that's just a blessing just a blessing in my surrounding it

but when I was eight years old I decide to go back one more time isn't time compulsive and then that school yet

and then go to law school and now

you know I I was so

forty seven years now and I thought well maybe I'm too low

but the thing is is that if I didn't go to school to do every four years older after I had gone to school in a

so I decided to go

my mother was living in northern California she had a nice little moment there she just I will with Sarah that she would move to Los Angeles she would move in with me and she wrote would that help me while I went to the hospital the comparison do the cooking and all that stuff well three months after I started law school another movie and not I came in one day and then there's like a term but it was ice cold and that began a series of three years of medical problems which ultimately there were ten major operations that mother went through

the

get a number of different sliding down her legs and arterial bypass

damps dero

he had all kind of cardiac arrest

suppression

and then you know so that was what I did when I went to law school I work full time I went to law school and I noticed a very sick lady and now

on April nineteenth in nineteen ninety one my mother passed away

by the end of the three years of

semantic operations concerning the pain that she had gone through

Hey give me the willingness to know that she was going to be a great deal more comfortable

on the other side

you know had I wanted to trust god to keep her here would have been for my very own very selfish reasons

and I had very loving parents

my I was able because support of sponsors in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and loving god gave him another twelve years of sobriety before she passed away and of all the things I have accomplished in my life that was what she was most proud of that

no in the mother went on a lot of twelve step calls with me

and she did a lot of traffic that workers that

when she was living up in northern California as your number of different women she became friends rather than their husbands were alcoholics he would tell on my daughter belongs to this great group and they get people suffer

my mother was

a practical nurse him on there somebody came over to

her home one day to get our business in Miami some users and Serra park was second I knew he was a nurse and she rocked in their

this lady who had the throne and the woman looked at patterns

MDGs Anthony flat you can let me around

turned out to be a lady by the name Nadine crying second Mormon alcoholic ever so

this girl

you know there's a little miracle that just happening I plan to get in this program

hi my mother

understood

my sexual orientation and I really knew that she had caught on one day we walking down the street back in the days inn Richardson through browsers were popular in Jesus have you ever noticed those who shouldn't round

in the present time the

Hey lance yeah

last may I graduated from Moscow

I have not taken the California bar yet

after those for very dramatic in trying years I came to a decision I wanted to rest and I have taken a year off and then I will be taking the California bar in February

and let's see if I pass or not

you know when I

originally got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous one of my great peers was that I was going to be an old guy in the bar you know the one everybody sort of mastering trying every once in awhile

yeah

and then

nearby study real hard and I passed that examination a run of things I'm now looking forward to is I live in back at the end of the bar

it is it is been a wonderful and rewarding fourteen years I have shared with you that I have gone through some bad things that I had the support in the lab of friends in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in a loving god

and who gave me an ounce of lot of weird sense of humor

but all of that enable me to run through it and if you were to tell me fourteen years ago that I could walk through that that I would have the intestinal fortitude to do that without a drop of alcohol I would put you out of your **** mind yeah no way no way can this inner cared several

the alcoholic have done anything without a drink of alcohol on a daily basis and that I have done it it has been wonderful it is a marvelous

and now

how them Crowther's always tell me the best was yet to be found so far that is the case every year of my sobriety it has been a rough road that is beautiful journey

and the man who got me listening right Hank Williams and one of his sons best describes my feelings

today I passed you on the street and my heart the latch your feet Alcoholics Anonymous I'm still in that movie thank you