The North California World Service Area Conference in Sacramento, CA

hi my name's Corey

I'm a real great for member of the worldwide fellowship of Alateen Allen on and I'm really happy to be here this weekend the weather's gorgeous the committee's been really good to me I you know I got him I can spend some time with my dad it's it's been a good trip so thank you to the committee he's an awesome job it's a fabulous conference

okay so

I started working when I was seven both my parents are alcoholics although they've both been sober since I was two and

and I never really thought that I wasn't affected me very much because you know my parents were sober I yeah I just thought you know there go to meetings you know that if they're out of the house a lot whatever my mom talk about these crazy twelve steps all the time I don't know she drives me to meetings with their sometimes I've seen like a smoky awana club and listen old man fiction smoke cigars I don't know what this whole thing is about

and but I didn't have a lot of friends when I was younger and and my dad was was probably my closest friend and also put my higher power at the time and he said well there's now I mean I want to go to on Friday night so you're going to be all team meeting so I went

and you know I honestly I've tried to say a lot of times what made me stand Alateen and I'm not sure I know that there are people there who are being really honest with each other and that I'd never seen that before I know that but I've never been a part of that I always lied to to everyone else and to myself

maybe it was just because they were warm and welcoming and I felt like I didn't fit in in social situations you know I felt like I did just didn't fit in with people maybe it was because there was really warm and welcoming and maybe it was because the colored you know I don't know

really I really honestly this day don't know what made me stay but I did stay maybe it was because there was an hour a week where I got a house and I got away from everything that I knew and I could be whoever I needed to be during that hour

and I spent a lot a lot of time in my life being who I thought I needed to be for a social situation rather than who I was and and for that hour I could be whoever I need to be whatever whatever the reason was when I left an Alateen meeting I felt better than when I got in there

and and that was why state I think and and they can be there for five years and also the promise of a sack you can't go to a second tier twelve and I really wanted to go and I had all these like these like dreams about going days I really want to go to a sack and that and it lived up to all of my expectations and more is that he's a really incredible conference Alateen conferences are really incredible thing there that they're different genre from anything else I've ever seen they're they're kind of their own monster and they're wonderful

and I got to a

I got a second twelve I was a pretty miserable twelve year old I think although I think most people are miserable at twelve I'm not sure in retrospect I think most people are miserable at twelve I don't think that was just me but

what I found there what I found in a sack at is that for people who are really working the steps and involved in service and they have sponsors and they were you know they were working the steps in writing and they were doing all this stuff and they were really happy and and that's when my story really starts my story really starts when I am when I found service and I and I found the steps in writing and I got myself a sponsor and I started getting addicted to conferences and I'm traveling a lot and

so I I did a few years of that I did a few years of you know I got a sponsor and started working the steps and

and at that point what really kept me coming around was no longer that it they got me out of the house or or because my parents were alcoholics it was because I needed the friendship I needed that kind of fellowship

I needed to feel that

that love and that that acceptance I spent you know my whole life thinking that I wasn't good enough for

whatever you know I just wasn't enough I wasn't thin enough or pretty enough or perfect enough or smart enough or

whatever anything you can put in enough at the end I wasn't you know I just wasn't and

and I really thought that I wasn't lovable at all or that wasn't worth other people's love and so an Alateen they just Love Me they didn't try to find out who it was that you know they saw my flaws and they just Love Me

it across the board Love Me and they hugged me and I didn't have to try to be something for them so so I needed that really bad so I stuck around and I

and it kept sticking around and and I got a sponsor and I started doing I started doing a bunch of service work and and reviewing the steps in writing and and hang out a lot of meetings and I'm

and learning what Alan on highland I worked in

and all that stuff in and that's a really amazing friends

and

and then he already had a hit which is a dangerous thing really

kill some people thankfully I wasn't one of them

but it hit me really hard and

I went through a time here in my life where I did anything that would stop my feelings change my feelings

nami are taking out of reality I am

you know I I was never a problem child I was never rebel like I couldn't be a rebel as too much of a co dependent you know so much when Alan not as much in control I had to be in control but I was into a lot of trouble emotionally and physically I I became sexually active at fifteen and I which seems really young to me now I developed a severe anorexia at a very young age twelve through like sixteen or something

and I got involved in drugs

and and none of them because I wanted to rebel against my parents you know not or against anything society I don't know banner next you is because I want to feel control over something and I want to be perfect somehow and

the drugs are because they numbed out my my emotions and I didn't have to feel anything and I stopped the committee in my head for a little while and that the sex was because I didn't feel like I could be emotionally intimate with anyone and it allowed me to be physically intimate on a level that you know I wasn't able to do emotionally so

so I did all those things and I got involved in a very kind of had a relationship with practicing alcoholic who lived with me and I like I said I was telling my dad about this today and yesterday I don't think I was crazy at the time to live with someone that I was involved with it fifteen and sixteen you know I didn't think that that was weird and now it seems like you know it's crazy the person was was using and I was trying to get them sober trying them to a a meetings and you know I was trying to do anything I could to get them sober and I was really obsessed in and really in a bad place and it was at this time the Alateen took on a whole new meaning for me I read somewhere that the definition of a codependent is someone who's addicted to alcoholics and I said to myself oh my god that's me you know like I just take a college I have radar you know like I will go through a room of people and pick out the child in a holic and the alcoholic and a drug addict and close above you to like instantly I know them you know anyone who has any disease that I have I can pick them out anyone who grew up in a family like mine I can take them out I have radar you know I find them I love them I think the man I try to fix them I get obsessed with them that's what I do it's amazing there's like no one in my life that I'm close to who's not really screwed up and you know has it what does have one of those disease in one way or another

I don't think it's because everyone has them I think it's because I find them

and and so that was me you know I was addicted to alcoholics and so I started coming to Allah team because I realized that I was addicted to alcoholics and I don't want to be addicted to alcoholics anymore

but what was true was I really wanted to keep the alcoholics in my life I just want to learn to pick the healthier alcoholics

can they teach me to think that hope you're on the home

which they have kind of actually

I usually get the sober ones now no

but

I so when it is really this this period of time where I don't know if I was any more unhappy than everybody else who's fourteen and fifteen I've come to realize that that most people just really unhappy the time kind of like twelve I just it's simple puberty time I think most people feel like they don't fit in and they're not comfortable especially children up Holik's but but I didn't fit in with anybody nobody understood you know nobody understood that my head was trying to kill me and and I

I didn't know how to be a good person and I didn't know how to be a person

and and so nobody understood that and I don't know how to talk about it to anybody because I was still so afraid that if I told somebody what was really going on in my head or if I told somebody like this is what I think you know this is how I feel about the world around me first of all I was afraid that I would just fall apart that all those pieces of me that I was just pulling together like you know with claws they were just all fall on the floor and I have no way of putting it back together

but I was also afraid that people would not be able to Love Me at all that even the people on our team who Love Me unconditionally would not be able to let me if they knew what was really going on in my head you know because who can Love Me with the craziness that went on in the committee in my head I Love Me I don't know how anybody else could

and

I had god sends me things when I need them and

in January of ninety nine I met a group of people called coming to who is think a group of you young recovering addicts to put their stories into a play and take it to high schools and they asked me to be a part of their their show as a child of an alcoholic

and so I got involved in their show and I had to go to a lot more meetings and and a bunch of things happen to me and sort of like a for a five month period I broke up with the person who I've been with who was really in love with but he was really bad for me

I

I stopped starving I

admitted that I had an addiction that I needed to deal with in a program other than Allen on

and I got how sucks sought help for that and

I came out as gay to my parents

and and all this within like four months you know and and after that I had this epiphany about fear

because you know what those were like before serious things in the universe you know I lost the person I thought I was supposed to love forever my alcoholic you know the person I centered my whole universe around for six months eight months was gone out of my life and

and I just everything happened everything was scary and I realized something about fear was that I could walk through fear you know fear didn't scare me anymore sure I was afraid of everything but I was able to walk through that fear I walked to the for scary things in my life in a period of four months and I have lived through all of them you know I

join the program that I swore I was never gonna join because it was my parents and I didn't want to be my parents love my parents but I don't wanna be them you know I had given up the one addiction that I really loved which was which was anorexia I'd given up the one thing I had control over my life and the one thing that I felt could make me perfect and make me lovable I had given up the only thing I thought could ever make me level I just and I just given up all my secrets all at once and

and everything was okay I mean I was not okay I was falling apart everywhere but the the my world wasn't my life wasn't and and it kind of hit me that

I don't hold my world together

and what they've been telling you know looking for a number of years but I didn't really believe them until

you know I really don't hold my world together okay

and

and that became really clear to me and what also became clear to me was that no matter how scary things are

with the help of a higher power I can walk through them and I will be okay on the other side eventually some day I will be okay

and and if it hadn't been for Alison I never would have made it through any of that Allison's gave me the courage to be somebody that I had to be or die you know I I had to I had to do all those things of my life I had to take care of me or I would have died and without the friends I made an Alateen and the love that I found now teen I wouldn't have done that I'm not a very courageous person but allergies are courageous and they give me courage and when I get to do now is is give other people courage when you know when they need it that's kind of how it works or not all sick on the same days you know are not equally sick on the same day so

we get that we get the opportunity little bit a light

and

and I was pretty incredible that that those people would give me that kind of love and for the first time it started to occur to me a couple things I took her to me first that the people on our team really did know all of the bad things about me

and they still loved me they knew me and they Love Me see before I was thought that they just loved everybody but it was the thing you Corey thank you all of the bad things about Cory and they left me

they love to I was

and I didn't understand at all you know I really didn't understand that

but they kept telling me that if I could find a higher power who loves me that I would learn to love myself

because I don't know as well as god does you know I don't know what god knows so if god can love me I must love myself because I'm not god you know they got smarter than me if god doesn't why cannot you know and it made sense to me like will god loves me why can't I Love Me you know

and if if I was lovable to I found a higher power really through a lot of a lot of third step work I found a higher power who I trusted and who had all of the the characteristics that I wanted who is you know loving and forgiving and and all that stuff my sponsor many write down a list of what the perfect higher power would be and then she said that's your higher power that's gone now

and

in this perfect being loved me for me knew everything and Love Me for me and if if my god can do that and Alateen could do that

then I knew that I could figure out how to do that

and it's taken a lot of work

and they're still days when when I don't really love myself but

the second thing that I learned was that Alex he is not about a place for me to go for an hour and it's not about needing addicted alcoholics and it's not even about the fellowship that I find here that I need Alateen is about meeting once sick messed up little kid and I'm I'm the same girl you know I have a disease in my head I have a disease in my heart I have the family disease of alcoholism I have a spiritual reality and even if all the alcoholics in my life went and jumped in a lake I wouldn't know anybody but

but on

but I would still be messed up I would still not understand how to have relationships with other people and how to be a member of society and how to get along with other human beings I don't know how to really have relationships just simple every day like I don't know how to bake transaction relationships you know I don't know how to talk to people on the telephone I seriously had to learn to talk to people on the telephone like to call like like a pizza place anything I had to learn how to do that because I didn't know how to talk to other people that I didn't know on the phone that was that's how much I had this disease of not being able to have relationships with other people I had no connections all my connections have been numbed or broken or weren't there or I don't know where they were but they I didn't have a you know

and and I was so isolated and I live so much in this world that completely revolved around my head and my feelings and my feelings were all filtered in and weird and they came in sideways and they weren't true when they told me things that couldn't make any sense in the real world and and that was all that I knew at all I don't know how to have relationships more communicate or

or just have intimacy with another person on a friendship level if nothing else and

so I started working the steps and in again this time I had dealt with all the other stuff in my life that was holding me back from working Alateen program and then Alan on program I heard a really amazing thing from mental member the other day who told me that a taught them to live sober but Allen on talking to live and what happened to me was that even after I got sober and I stop starving and I dealt with some of the other stuff that was going on in my life I still didn't know how to live you know now I was feeling again which sucks yeah I have all these feelings I still don't know what to do with them this is a problem I had to begin with I do know what to do with them before I still know what to do with them I just helping them again you know I didn't want them to begin with so

so I started getting really involved so this work again in Allah teen and I started talking to Alice jeans again and going to morality meetings and going to al anon meetings and talking to Allen aunts and talking to people about the Allen on program and and working the steps in Allen on and and learning to live and to exist in the rest of the world as a human being

and it's been pretty amazing I

you know

I have a higher power now who I love

I

I have a relationship with both of my parents now I'm eighteen years old normally teen girls not her relationship with the parents not you know not good relationships with their parents I love my parents my mom like the coolest lady I know she's not but she's really cool and my dad

you know

my girlfriend loves my dad like they hang out you know it's great and and and I love hanging out with my parents and I like seeing my dad you know

we don't

I love my parents so much and that is a miracle like that is a miracle because I am able to be honest with them I am able to tell them things that I need them to know about

about who I am and I'm able to to let them Love Me somebody said something to me just a couple of hours ago about how if I don't let other people if I don't let in other people's love I'm stopping them from loving me

and then made so much sense to me you know because if I couldn't let in my parents they Love Me you know they would Love Me anyway but now we got to love me as a person as who I am is the person that I've grown into and I'm really proud of that person and I really like that person

and and now they get to love me for real you know I'm different kind of love than than any other kind because it's it's about the love that I you know whatever my little things that I do they love that the things that I choose to do with my life decisions that I make the way that I think they love that they love who Corey really is rather than loving me because I'm their daughter

and and that's how I'm able to have relationships with the people in my life today and it's it's because

I love myself and I like myself and that's something that I never thought that I would say honestly you know I might be asset I mean I love myself like I die which was let everybody in our team

and it's closing love love

but

but I really didn't like

I when I started you when I started to do some really serious inventories just this time around in the steps I I learned some things about myself and my behaviors that I really didn't like

you know I just thought that was a pretty nice selfless person it turns out that I'm a pretty malicious selfish person and there's a part of me

that really likes to hurt people that I love to prove that they Love Me

and that really scares me I really don't like that about myself I really don't like that in the past I have purposely hurt people who I love so that I knew could tell that they left me because if I get hurt and then they I knew that they Love Me and

I did a lot of tearing through people's lives trying to feel validated and then loving me you know trying to make sure because I needed them to Love Me but I could never really believe that they did so I did a lot of tearing through their lives to validate that they Love Me which in my head really made sense at the time although it doesn't really matter

when I found all this stuff out about myself and and I really didn't like that part of me and and two things happened one was I realize that I had always been more malicious to myself and I'd been to anybody else that I tore myself apart all the times that I was vindictive and and judgmental and malicious to myself constantly

I don't think I really want to like myself because I knew I was gonna let myself down

and

and I really needed people always tell me that I have to learn to love myself before I can love other people my mom sponsor always says that I had that that we have to learn to forgive other people for we can forgive ourselves and that made sense to me you know it's just same is that I can't think my way into right acting I have to actually arrange right thinking when I started acting behind and and loving towards other people I was willing

I gained self esteem when I started doing it seem mobile access you know so I was able to love the person I was when I was able to be kind to other people

I think I'm passionate towards other people and and I learned to forgive myself and to like who I was through being compassionate and and doing it seem mobile access and to being of service in this program and

there's something else that happened to me when I

to doing that I I think it was at a point

I am

I don't know I just I really found a compassion inside myself that I didn't know was there and I really was able to start liking myself and and when I started liking myself I was able to let other people and and I was able to let god in more fully and

this is all kind of cyclical little step by little step you know and the next cycle around I get it a little bit more and then the next cycle around I get that a little bit more it's like that on you know sure I don't have it yet but I've got a little bit more than I did a year ago you know and

that's pretty incredible so

what happened with all of this was that

I was doing a lot of service working Alateen again making amends behavioral amends for having basically flaked out on them year after year for a couple years three years there and and I was doing so much that they decided to elect me is that chair

this is a big deal for me because Isaac is probably the most important thing in my life and and it saved my life just over and over and over again and the people that are on is that committee are my best friends and the people

who go to exact change my life every year and the the fact that the conference trusted me trusted me enough to put me in charge of that for a year

says so much to me about the pro about the miracle of this program because two years ago they never would have trusted me enough to put that program in my hands you know to put that that that any part any part of a second my hands you know to put on

and and you know it's like it's really important to a lot of people and they trusted me enough they saw my recovery enough to to trust me that I wouldn't screwed up too bad

and

and I love being an actor it's really incredible

our

I'm a graduate from high school which was kind of questionable there for awhile and

and I'm in a relationship now with this incredible girl who yeah she's not him I matter now teams which is a little bit crazy she's a lot hazy but but she loves me and I love her she's not a drunk this is a good start she

and she teaches me something about myself every day you know she teaches me how to be a different person and and how to be somebody that I like more every day and I never thought that I could be in a relationship that taught me that much you know I was sad that my relationships at all it's just be me trying to fill up the whole inside of me and trying to get enough from that other person because that's how all my relationships everyone registering into people until the point that they kind of flag you know I have like this series of like year long friendship probably like best friends with this person for like a year and they would just be drained and they would leave and there's a lot of them and this person we learn from each other and

and we have fun and and you teach me how to play again and be a kid and you know we have like craft days and we like Heller and stuff it's really exciting and she like because a single person you know it's fun we have fun we get to act like we're kids we don't have to act like we're you know forty all the time I mean eighteen you know I don't forty and I did nothing wrong with being forty I just don't want to because I'm eighteen

you know I just don't want to be right now

and

but I spent a lot of time thinking I had to be you know I spent a lot of time thinking that I had to be really old for my age and you know I had to be the responsible one involved no I don't have to be I mean I have to be vaguely responsible because I need that chair and you know and

but I don't have to be responsible as I was that I had to be so

so all of these like amazing gifts are in my life right now you know like I have the spirituality and and I do maintenance work I get down on my knees twice today's since I wake up right before I go to bed I'm afraid and I you know I asked god for help in the morning to get through the day and I thank god at the end of the day forget me through that and I do a ten step every night I do a gratitude journal every night I go to a lot of meetings I do a lot of service work I do maintenance work I do stuff I believe that the ten step

is one of the most important that they're all really important but the ten step is you know is that one that just keeps me

keeps me from going off the edge again because before I know it my brain has run away with me I am crazier than I thought I could be again I have regressed two hundred steps in my recovery and I'm starting to do things that I haven't done for five years you know like that's what happens when I just learned to let go for a little while and think that I'm all recovered and well instead of healthy now

center I'm

so

yeah I just

I'm having this I mean this place right now where I need to transition you know I need to go from from Allentown Allen on and and that's really hard for me because I've been out here for like eleven years now you know and it's my whole life I've grown up and Alateen they've they have grown me up you know they kind of took me by the hair and pulled me up a lot of the time and I

I don't really want to transition in a lot of ways they're a lot of things that I think you need to Alateen that I really love their real rambunctious as you may have noticed it being in a meeting and I love that there's a lot of really rigorous maybe brutal honesty and there's just like this is where I'm at

this is where my life that there's a lot of sobbing hysterically there's just a lot of of real and and I know that they have that in in Allen on meetings and I know that there's also a lot of people in Alyn and have had more time to build up their walls and they're and they're harder to tear down and

it's just a very different talents different but at the same time sometimes I go to Allah teen meetings I don't really understand I don't really connect to what's going on people are talking about you know junior high and they're talking about what's going on with their grandparents and and having to live there all the time and nothing else get out of the house and I've been there you know with the nothing else get out of the house and with that when you know it's just I've been there but I'm not there anymore and I go to al anon meetings and I really connect and I hear people have a lot more time than I do and there aren't a lot of people on our team have a lot more time than I do you know or are any more time than I do I'm kind of at that phase where I really need to be

just take the next step in my recovery in Allen on and that means that means transitioning

and

that's pretty incredible that I can do that I love Allen on

just for existing right now because if I had to kind of just step off the rock face into it you know oblivion I

even if I have another program that I'm a member of I still would be lost without the Allen on program I would be insane in like a week without Allen on so

the fact is there and I do get transition is incredible incredible

homing note for me and

it just asking this thing that has ever ever ever happens to me you know I yes I'm I'm sober today and I have about a year and nine months over and that's a damn nice

either you know that's pretty good too but I but I never would have gotten sober without Alateen or not not this early yet anyway and

and it would be a live anyway I would've made it to sixteen if it weren't for Alateen

and my parents might not service

I

everything that I have in this entire world from my bed with my sponsor gave me to

in my life everything everything is because of this program everything that has ever happened to me is the direct result of the twelve steps

everything that ever mattered to me I have been able to have as a direct result of the twelve steps my entire life

has been there's a huge blessing from god because for some reason I got lucky enough to have the twelve steps early and

and I stayed more because god wanted me to them because I wanted to and and because I needed to

and

I don't I can't think of any other America any greater miracle today than me standing in front of a group of people and being able to honestly tell them that I am happy

because I really didn't know what happy was

I really didn't know what happy was and I really didn't understand what it was to be happy and

and I do today and I understand what it means to love people really really love people like love people so hardcore that did it makes me cry you know and and not in a bad way not in that I don't know where they are I don't know if they're drunk I don't know if they're dead way not in that way of like I don't know if you're ever going to love the fact that that way that

it lights up my whole soul and it lights up my whole life and I can see them glowing back in there's just this like incredible spark of of understanding between us when we hug you know I can love people like that today and they can Love Me back and I can let them and and I can be really truly happy and I can love my life

there are days when I don't want to get out of bed I hate trigonometry I

and the reason I really don't want to get out of bed in face trig

but

but there most days I really want to get out of bed just so I can call someone and tell them that I love them just what I can hang out with my cat you know I don't know

like like the fact that I'm not dead is is really a blessing I want to get up so that I can talk to god and say oh my god I woke up in the morning you know I got out of bed another morning

yeah the whole thing is this huge miracle and and it's hard work and there are days when I really wish it wasn't hard work you know I don't want to do the maintenance I don't wanna do the ten steps I don't want to do you

I don't want to go to a meeting that day I really don't want to miss monster because he always makes you an inventory no matter what I call her about

hi Tony how is your day right

sorry

she does you know all right

there's days when I when I wish I wasn't so effective with this disease you know I wish that I wasn't so crazy and that the people who I love hadn't been forced to suffer so much from my disease and there's I wish that the world didn't destroy that alcoholism didn't destroy families and that I didn't have to watch little kids coming out of the meetings and not be able to speak because they've been screamed at their whole lives to be silent you know I wish they'd have to see that

but I also know that if I stick around long enough and I guess you know the team sponsor and

and maybe you know I I get to keep allowing conferences to happen and keep allowing there be places where people can go my first is like I'd never let anyone hold me while I cried in fact I'd never let anyone see me crying before not really cry you know not like not like just break down and sob and I stood there for the whole conference and I just solved and the trusted again across it the first time in a really long time and

and I got up I get up at conferences and I read my poetry and that's a huge trust issue for me and I and I tell people things that are very you know they're part of my soul that I never thought I would share with anyone and I share that with our teens because maybe it'll help somebody else you know

Anna

and I don't know you know

just just so many people have been so kind to me and I just want to be able to do that for somebody else you know like decent Matt I'm sure many of you know Jason Matt

I was looking for a long time you know he

you know he bought me he bought me lunch one time and he said you know there's been a lot of lunches bought for me you just buy some other kid lunch some day you just you know that's all I want you to do I want you to pass that on when you got a job in urine our Jeanne sponsor you by some kids lunch you know and and you know I can hold some some kid was this your first a second I've never cried in front of people before I can hold them and tell them that it's okay or I can just be really warm and welcoming the first time I came up to know pack like Tommy was here my first year and I and just a bunch of these some of these kids were there some of them weren't they all just came up here so warm and welcoming and like and like hi who are you you know let me hold you I mean how do you do anyway I go you know everywhere that I go there their and they're and they're opening their arms and I can be that you know I can I can open my arms to other people