The Canada Rally

Thank you, Nancy. Good morning, everybody. My name is Vicky, and I am an alcoholic. And before I get started, I would like to thank the committee for asking me to come and share this weekend. And thank you to John and Marilyn for all your hard work and for the emails and invitation, and, thank you to Angela for inviting me to spend the weekend at her home one one more time.

It's been great coming up here. I've been to this roundup several times over the years, and, it's always been one of my favorites. So, to be invited to speak here is indeed an honor for me. I always get a bit of a giggle when I when I'm told or I'm asked that I'm gonna be the the, spiritual speaker, I just I just find that way too amusing. And you'll find out why in due time.

Are you getting a feedback? I'm getting a feedback. Are you getting a feedback, Bob? Sounds good in the headphones. Can we all have those?

Oh. I'm just a little softener. No joke. Okay. I don't know where to begin now.

I guess I I could I should start by telling you that I, I I started drinking as a young child. I was actually, there's one other person here in this room today who was there that day. And it was, New Year's Eve. I had, just started high school in Northwestern Ontario. And we were, our family was visiting another family and, we kids were out skating on the lake.

And, and and the boy who lived at the house told us that his parents had bottle of dandelion wine in the basement that the adults weren't drinking anymore. And so, we went and stole it and took it out to the lake. And I had a drink of it, and it tasted really bad. And my brother had a drink of it, and I don't know what his thoughts were. And my sister Barb, who's here, and Carl, each had a drink of it.

I don't know whether or not Barb or Carl had any more of it. I do know that my brother and I had several more drinks because after I got past the taste of it, I realized that it did a really nice thing. It changed me from being awkward and gawky and without shape to being shapely and and, graceful and poised. And suddenly, I was very well educated too as I recall. And I was quite witty, I think.

Or at least I thought so. And, and so the next morning, I looked in the mirror and there I was, gawky and awkward without shape again. And I didn't have the education either. So I made a decision. I was gonna get more of that stuff.

Maybe find something that was a bit better tasting, but get more of it, whatever it was. You know? And, and so instantly, I was hooked on the effect instantly. So I am what you would call an instant alcoholic, I suppose. I didn't I didn't immediately lose my husband and kids.

I was 13. That was gonna come a little bit later. But and I neither did I, you know, didn't go to jail that night either. But I had that effect, and I woke up the next morning looking for that effect. I don't remember having a hangover.

I don't think I did. I don't remember being sick. Mind you, most of my life from then till 1975 is hearsay anyway because I was a blackout drinker too. And I don't remember if I had a blackout that night or not, but I had lots of them. So I went back to school after the school holidays, the Christmas holidays that year, and I sought out those kids that I thought could assist me in this quest for alcohol.

And that meant, therefore, that I had to hang out with kids that were a lot older than me. It was in the sixties in Northwestern Ontario, and the drinking age was 21. I was 13. I'm sure you can do the math. And, so, anyway, a few years later, my father decided that we needed to leave that little village and move West.

I wasn't too thrilled about the idea. I didn't wanna leave. But at that time, I couldn't see any other option for me. Well, I tried a few options. I went to the rest of the family, my aunts and uncles and stuff that live there.

And I I asked if I couldn't live there with them and they just said no. And I realized today it was probably a good thing. But but more importantly, who would want a kid like me? I had been drinking by then for a couple of years. I was hanging out with kids that were not doing very well in school.

They were shoplifting. They were getting caught shoplifting. Most of them were on probation. Most of the, well, all of the of the jewelry, and lipstick makeup that I owned had stolen. Most everything I had was contraband of some kind from somewhere, either my own activity or somebody else's in their fit of generosity.

We're really, you know, generous with stolen goods, I think. So so I we, you know, I would get gifts from my friends. So anyway, we my dad decided to move to Ontario from Ontario to British Columbia. And, I remember we were I don't know. Maybe just this side of Winnipeg, just this side of Regina, somewhere around there.

And I made a rev there was sort of a revelation. It was that one of those moments of clarity. By then, I'd had 2 days without drinking maybe or and, because they are you know, I have to back up a little bit. My parents are not drinkers. The the family parties used to take place at our home, because we had the family farm, but they're not big drinkers.

And so if they had alcohol, they had some drinks. If they didn't, they didn't. It wasn't. I don't remember, you know, spending, I remember spending a few times when we were in the car in the in the beer parlor parking lot, but it was never in our hometown. It was always when we were somewhere else visiting somebody else in the family and they would, you know, let we're going to the bar and so the kids will play in the car or in the park next door or whatever.

But it wasn't, you know, it's not a big part of my life. I don't remember me being neglected. I don't I don't remember going hungry. My father has a problem with rage, I think, sometimes, or he did then. I don't know if he still does.

But, you know, for the most part, I had all of my creature comforts taken care of. So I'm not a product of of environment in the sense that I it was it was something that I saw as a solution in my home. That was something I discovered all by myself. I thought that made me a little bit more clever than them perhaps. So anyway, we start out and I'm on the prairies and I get this this moment of clarity comes in it and it was sort of like, you know what?

Here's an opportunity for me to make some changes. Maybe I won't do it the same way when we get there. Maybe I'll do it a little bit differently when we get there. Maybe I'm not gonna hang out with those kids that are always on probation. So I don't didn't know how that was gonna happen.

I didn't know what that looked like. It was just I just remember having that feeling. What I didn't realize was I was gonna have that same feeling many many times in the future, but and they always had to do with being on the move from one location to another. And, I came to know that that was called geographical cure. However, we go we we arrived out this way.

We stopped in Hope for a short time, and I realized we weren't gonna be staying in Hope because I'm quick. I can figure things out. My dad was not looking for property in the Hope area. He was looking in Littleford up around Kamloops, and he was looking in around Aldergrove, Abbotsford Way. So I thought, okay.

One last party. And so I partied hardy while we were in in Hope. And we when dad told me that told us that we were moving to Aldergrove, I, I had that blowout party with those kids and I never told them where we were going. And we left hope and I had no more contact with those kids again. So we moved to Aldergrove, right in the heart of Mennonite country.

And so there was my solution. I was gonna go to the church with these kids, those Mennonite kids. So I started going to church with these Mennonite kids, but they just didn't quite cut it. And then, you know, and then so I found the excuse. Well, they all always will.

I realized they were hypocrites. And God, spare me from hypocrites. I may be many things, but I'm not a hypocrite. Because there they were preaching on Sunday, and these kids were sneaking out partying on Friday night Saturday night. And, and and, you know, their kids were getting pregnant too out of wedlock, and they were being shipped off to places and stuff.

And so I thought, well, who needs this? At least I'll go back with the real people where there's drinking and we're not we don't pretend about it. And so I found the party kids and I went right back to the party again. I don't know how long that, cure lasted, but at least what I do know is that was 1963, 64, something like that. I was in grade 11.

I somehow finished high school the next year. I graduated from high school. A bit shy of credits that I got out nonetheless. I was partying solidly for the last year and a half that I was in school, and, and I just moved on from there. Around about that time, they were doing things like Woodstock and the Aldergrove, bee in, it was called.

And so there was this magic little, substance introduced to our neighborhood called marijuana. And, I had escalated. I you know, of course, as as I said, I was I was 13 when I started drinking and so I had to hang out with older people in order to get my supply, and that didn't change. And there I was. I was graduating from high school, and I was hanging out with people that were in their late twenties.

And they were a bit more conservative and they didn't want to do this substance as they call it, you know. And so, I didn't I didn't I didn't get involved with it right away, but some few years later, I did. But in the meantime, I did get married and I had a couple of kids. And I was pregnant with my second with my second child rather, and I realized that I didn't wanna stay married with this man, that I needed to go. It It was another one of those alcoholic ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time.

And, it was time to go. And, however, I was pregnant with this baby. And so I carried on and when she was just a few months old, I left. And I I left our our oldest child, our son with his dad, and I packed up the baby and put her in the car and we moved to Prince George. And we were there for a while and we moved to Kamloops.

And her dad took her on holidays, the baby. She was by then a little over a year. And, he took her for a few weeks in the summer that year, and she came back a changed child. And even in my alcoholic state, I realized that I was not a very good mother and that she would serve she would do better if she went to live with her dad and he wanted her. And so I sent my daughter to live with her dad.

So he had both kids. And that was in a time when, you know, the fathers were not the single parent. And, you know, I I carried that shame around with me. By that point in time, I was drinking daily. I was drugging regularly.

Whatever. I was one of those, you know, you hand me something to put in my mouth, I'll put it there. I don't ask questions. I don't care where it came from. I don't care if I know you or not.

I don't nothing matters. So my kids are I'm free now. I had absolutely no responsibilities. And, and when I was crying about, you know, having had these responsibilities, now I'm crying about, look at what he did to me. The son of a bitch took the kids away.

You know, it that kind of stuff. And and and, you just couldn't win with me because it was always gonna be your fault. And, I wind up I was living in Kamloops at that time, and I was working in a high school, a junior high school, on the front desk. And, I was quite often drinking with the kids from the school. That year, I, towards the end of the school year, I decided that Kamloops was too small.

Obviously, you know, I'd been there for almost a year, and too many people were knowing too much about me. It was time to move on. And so I, I was getting ready to leave the town, and I thought it would be a really good idea if I didn't have to pay rent anymore, so I moved into my car. It was a 60 63 chef, so it's a pretty big car. And, you know, I could sleep across the seat without too much injury and I was pretty young and supple.

And it just made a lot of good sense to me. Thanks, Ange. And so I, I was living in my car. You know, I I was sober a long time before I realized I was homeless. I never thought of myself as being homeless because I had a a Chevy and it made sense to me.

Thanks, Nancy. Anyway, I did move back down to the coast, to be closer to my kids, who were living by then with their father in Aldergrove again. I'm not gonna belabor this story. It just goes on like that. More and more of the same old same old.

The people were the same, you know, different names, new new faces, same behavior. I drank in the bar. I loved bars. You know, I my first encounter with the beer parlor, I think I was 16 years old. It was a mad passionate love affair for a long, long time.

That was the place for me to go. I loved beer parlors. First time I drove a car was another one. I, you know, I love driving cars. I was a driving drunk, Drinkin' drunk.

Driving drunk. And, it was not uncommon for me when I lived in Kamloops, especially for some reason, to come to in Kelowna, Prince George Vancouver, have the keys to the vehicle in my pocket, and I have any recollection of the trip whatsoever, and, have to go and look and see if my car was outside and realize, yeah, there it was. And I must have done the driving because here I am, and I have no recollection of the trip whatsoever. My last recollection would be being in the bar in Kamloops the night before somewhere. And I'm not one to ever leave before I had to, so I know I never left the bar till closing time.

I just know it. Unless they kicked me out first. Maybe that would've happened. I might've got a little early start, but but, that was it, you know. And so that was my life.

Now I worked. I always worked because there was no damn way I was gonna count on you to supply my alcohol. You were probably not gonna supply it soon enough or long enough for my satisfaction, so I had to have income. And that was my only source that was my only reason for working was to have the income so I could drink so I could drink the way I needed to. And I'm and even I knew at that point, it was no longer a want to.

It was a need to. I needed to drink like that. There was just no other option. So I could have figured out a way to make sure that I could have alcohol without working. I guess I might have done something, but but I couldn't think of a way.

I thought about I thought about going into prostitution at one time, but then I thought, no, that's gonna take way too much work. It was way easier to be a secretary. So, you know, but I the last year of my drinking, I did fall into a wonderful job. I went to work in a foundry. I was the only woman there and I was the only one in the office and so I could have my bottle at my desk.

And I wasn't bothered by anybody about it. And in fact, I would go at lunchtime quite often. I would go for lunch with my bosses and we'd start drinking at lunch, together at the restaurant, and sometimes I didn't even get back to work. And somehow they tolerated that, and I don't know why, but they did. So in 1975, I'm back living in Vancouver or Langley, actually.

And by this time, I've moved in with another man. And you know something, all that time I'm thinking, there were there were men kind of in and out, but nothing permanent going on. Most of like Larry talked about those long term affairs that, you know, the the the overnighters. The serial monogamy overnight. And, but, you know, but the but that was just it was too much bother.

It was just too much bother to have men around. They took grooming and feeding and things, and I just couldn't, you know, I didn't even have plants for Pete's sake. It so, but for some reason, at the end of it all, it was like Easter of 1975, and I'd moved to Langley. I thought I'd moved out I'd moved to the city for I'd grown up in the country thinking I'm in the wrong place. I'm the wrong person in the wrong place, and I moved to the city.

I always thought I was a city person. And I lived there for a while and nothing changed and thought, well, we really I guess I've made a mistake. I really am a country girl. So I wound up back in Langley again, and I was still working in Vancouver. So I'm driving back and forth, and you can imagine the shape I was in because I was drinking till closing time or whatever.

And, and, anyway, I, I moved in with a man that I had known way back in my teens and his wife had died in a car accident and left him with 2 little kids And so he had a live in, housekeeper, care person for the kids. So there I was. I was living in this new house with a servant, if you like, I suppose, and, I had a new car, a Toyota, and I had all I had to do with my money I was working still at the foundry. All I had to do with my money was fill up the liquor cabinet. Everything else was provided.

It was better than homeless. And so, I would stop at the liquor store and fill up the trunk of the Toyota. And I didn't even have so much pride as to pick different liquor stores. I hear people say that and I'm like, wow. I didn't have that much pride.

I didn't give a shit if you knew I was an alcoholic. It was obvious. I mean, you know, I never even thought about it. I just went to the liquor store. I went to the one I knew.

Why wouldn't I go why would I go to a different one and have to find where I where the liquor I needed was? It just that was too much work. Just went to the same one, get it memorized, go where I gotta go to pick up what I need, and and fill up the trunk of the Toyota, go home, bring it in, put it on the table, drink it, pass out, get up the next day, and do that all over again. Remember I said I had a love affair with beer parlors? That year, some paranoia took hold of me and I could no longer go to the to the beer parlor.

I couldn't go. I don't know what I thought was gonna happen. I had this I had a terrible paranoia about being out anywhere that year. Also, that year before, I had been actually dating a psych professor the year before. And one of his courses, he one of the nights that he had to to give a lecture on alcoholism, it was required.

And so he went down to central office, I guess. That's I realize now. And he came back with these pamphlets, and he phoned me up and said, you had a new batch of wine or a new batch of dope and and, come on over. So I I went over and he's telling me the story about going to this place where these nice people, very nice people, and about, talking to them about alcoholism, and he had all these pamphlets and he said, and take a look at this. And it was what I now know was the who me, and it was the 20 questions.

And he said, do those for fun. So I went down and I'm not he's in he's in another room. I don't want him to know the answers to my answers to these. So I go down. I for the first time, I went from the top to the bottom instead of the bottom up, and I I wasn't gonna cheat this time.

I was gonna be truthful. And so I answered the questions and I got 18 yeses. And it got to the bottom and it said, if you've answered yes to 3 or more of these, you're definitely an alcoholic. And I thought, boy, they're really extreme. They'll go in any lengths to get new members, won't they?

And so I thought 3 is not enough. 3 can't be right. That's not enough. 3 yeses. Everybody's got 3 yeses out of this bunch.

I'm sure of it. So the test is defective. Toss it aside. But for the next year, I kept trying to change some of those yeses to no. And the only 2 that I didn't answer yes to were, had I ever been hospitalized and had I ever been institutionalized.

Well, I'd never been to jail. But I remember one night in Kamloops drinking and drugging all day, smoking dope and and then thinking I was angry about something and I thought, they'll be sorry. I'm gonna go to jail. And so I drove around the city of Kamloops, over every one of those stupid bridges, looking for a roadblock and there weren't any. And it was New Year's Eve.

And I was like, well, that's not right. So I went to the party and I'm in high dudgeon. Imagine with my tax dollars, I they didn't even put me in jail. They didn't even stop me. They're not even there.

Somebody should do something about this. And then I drank. So so that's the only reason I didn't get to go to jail is because I just never got caught. And then the other one about the hospitalization, and these are not things I remembered at that point. These are just the 2 2 nos that I got out of the thing.

The hospitalization one. In 1974 this was yet to come. 1974 at Easter before just before Easter. I had been drinking all day long. Before that, I had gone to my doctor.

And I was not I wasn't one for tranquilizers for some reason. I don't know why. I just never quite got on to them. And I, actually, I used to use them to trade for alcohol in the in the bar. I could get them from the doctors without any problem, but I didn't use them.

So I would trade them for better stuff, street stuff or something. And so, anyway, I had gone I went to the doctor and said I was having nightmares. I was kind of hoping he would send me to a psychiatrist, but I wasn't gonna ask for that. And so he said, oh, well, the the drug salesman was here today and he handed me 3 or 4 sample bottles of some kind of yellow pill and sent me on my way. And, oh, thank you very much.

And then I moved somewhere and so they were sort of in a box. Anyway, that day one day, on a Saturday, I started drinking in the morning, of course, because it was morning. And I, I drank all day long and I was feeling very sorry for myself about some damn thing or other. And, and I remembered those pills, and I thought, there, they'll be sorry. I'm gonna die.

I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonna eat all those pills. Because I've been drinking lots and they say that even if you eat aspirin after you're drinking, then you can get sick. And I'm sure that if I do eat all three of those bottles of those pills, I should die. So I did.

I think. I don't. I'm not sure how many pills, but I do know. The next day, I I came to it was midmorning, and my phone was ringing, and somebody wanted a ride somewhere. And I picked up the phone, and I realized I can hardly talk.

My tongue was all swollen up inside my mouth. I could hardly talk. Swollen up inside my mouth. I could hardly talk. And this person wanted a ride, and I agreed to go and give it give him a ride.

So I got up, put my clothes on. I can't even imagine what I looked like, and I went and got him. And he was talking to me and I was not responding. I said there's no way. I'm not talking.

I'm just not talking. That's all. And so I drove him where he had to go and did whatever I had to do and I went home, and I never told anybody. I was so embarrassed that I had lived through it. I thought anybody with half a clue would have died.

For God's sake, I can't even do this right. And, so I didn't go to the hospital, but I probably should've. And so that's that's all I know about those two questions. So anyway, I start out, I'm gonna change those yeses to no's, and I worked really hard the next year. I stopped drinking in the bar.

I start drinking at home. I so I wasn't drinking with lower companions anymore. Right? So that's one that I can change. Sometime later, I realized I was the lower companion.

But I was still drinking to blackout. I couldn't seem to get that one straightened out. I didn't know how to do that one very well. So but, anyway, so after a year of my mighty effort, I had changed one yes to no, and that's it. I was still driving cars in blackouts.

I was still, you know, not being able to predict what would happen overnight. Anyway, and by then, it didn't matter that the test was defective. I was beaten up, I I guess. I was just beaten up. So along comes November 1975, and my partner had won a trip for 2 to Hawaii, which is probably why he was my partner.

I thought, if you're getting a trip for 2 to Hawaii, I'm gone. And so to make sure that I got my ticket, I moved in, and, we went to Hawaii for my birthday that year, and and I met a woman who was the bartender, at the poolside bar in the hotel we were staying in. And my routine by then was to go down to the beach, flip around in the beach, because they didn't wanna come home completely white, and I can only, you know, I can only vaunt my Swedish heritage for so long, and after a while, somebody gonna say, but you've got no sunshine at all. And that's not possible. So, anyway, I I, that was my routine.

I would go down to the beach for a little while, and then I'd go to the poolside bar, and I would have a couple of drinks, and I was really rigid about this. I would have 2 drinks at the poolside bar, and then I would go to the room, and I spent most of our holiday in the room drinking or fighting with my partner. And one night and I somehow had developed this relationship with this woman at the bar. We can pick each other out of a crowd no matter what this scene is. And she started to talk to me about alcoholism.

And by that time, the word alcoholic sort of sends a chill down my back. Back. I get I get that oops. It's way too close, way too much identification going on when I hear the word alcoholic. And, she's talking about alcoholism because there's another woman that doesn't have the self control I have, who who gets drunk at the poolside bar every day and flops around there in blackouts and nearly drowned a couple of times and stuff.

And so, Kimi's telling me about alcoholism and I I'm, like, well, how do you know all this stuff and why do you know all this stuff? And she said, well, I'm an alcoholic. And I said, but, you don't I don't see you drinking, and she said, no. She said, I went to a treatment center in, Los Angeles. Oh, I see.

I thought, oh, well, there's all my hopes gone to hell. And she said, they offered, 2 options for and I said, but you're not in Los Angeles anymore, so what are you doing now? And she said, they'd offered 2 options. 1 was, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the other was, transactional analysis. And she had chosen TA because AA made her feel guilty.

You know, I thought it was very logical, but I knew that we didn't have TA in Vancouver in 1975. I just knew we were not that progressive. I did know, however, that we had AA in Vancouver because I had answered those stupid 20 questions a year ago. So my hopes were a bit dashed. I thought, oh, dear.

However, that was all well and good, except she came to work drunk one night. And then the next day, she wanted to know if anybody had seen her. Was the boss into the bar? What did she say? Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.

I don't know, kini. I was drunk. It was the one night that I allowed myself to get drunk alongside of her. And, but it stuck in my mind, And we came back to Langley and and, and I, you know, bumped along for the rest of the month of November, December, whatever it was. And one morning, I got up and I went to work, and it was the last day of work before the holiday, and traditionally, we would have a few drinks at work, and then we would go to lunch, and then we would go home, and we would see each other again after the New Year.

We shut the foundry down for the winter, for the Christmas holidays, rather. And that particular morning, I came to, at home at, and I was late for work. So I quickly got up and changed my clothes and raced off to work and grabbed the bottle out of the cupboard on my way to my desk, had a few drinks to smarten me up, and went over to the bar with the guys, had a few more drinks there, and then we went for lunch, and I had some more to drink, of course. And I don't remember, I was supposed to be back at my place in Langley by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and I have no idea how many drinks I'd had, and I still wasn't sober from the night before. I'm sure if they'd have given me a breathalyzer on the way to work, I should have been in jail.

I'm sure I would have blown over 0.08. Well, easily, very easily. And, and, so I had all these drinks and and then I, I was supposed to be home at 3 o'clock so that the the babysitter caretaker could fly to her families in Montreal. And then the next thing I know, I'm driving into my carport in Langley, and it's 5. And I'm in trouble.

And I knew I was in trouble. I knew I had screwed everything up, and I was instantly sober, and I came into the house and my mom was there and, that night, and, I wasn't happy. So I somehow got through that night, and I didn't have another drink. And, the next morning was Christmas, and I didn't drink Christmas Day. I was going through withdrawal, and I didn't know that.

I had violent shakes, and I couldn't control it. And so when I thought somebody was noticing it, I'd grab a kid and throw it on my knee and bounce around with it for a while to kinda cover it up a bit. And I somehow got through that day and that night, and the next day I didn't drink. And we came up here, because a friend of mine was getting married and I was gonna be standing up for her here in Campbell River. And we, we came up here on that day, and I wasn't talking to anybody.

I was terrified to even open my mouth. I didn't know what would fall out of my mouth, along with my dentures, I mean. I thought there was gonna be snakes and worms of kinds I could never control, and I I was I just didn't know what to do. I just kept my mouth shut. I didn't talk to anybody.

And, and we and we arrived here and, it was I mean, it wasn't even all that noticeable by my partner that I wasn't talking to. He knew I hadn't had anything to drink yet. And, but my, you know, this woman that I hadn't seen for a long time, and I was gonna be, you know, standing up for her, and and a friend of ours came up with us, a friend of hers and mine came up with us to Campbell River, and I wasn't talking to him, and, you know, the guys went out to the bar that night, and the girls stayed home, and we were supposed to do girly things, I guess, and I sat curled up on the couch not talking to anybody and not doing anything and listening to them going on about whatever, them being whoever else was there. I honestly can't even tell you who was there. And the next day, the ceremony was, sometime in the morning, late morning, and, and they were pronounced man and wife and the bride's brother started passing out little drinks to do the toast with, and as soon as it touched my lips, I realized I had been dying of thirst for 3 days, for God's sake.

And I moved to the punch bowl and I just started dipping it out of there like I was dying. I thought I was putting out a fire, and I hadn't had a drink by then for 3 days. I thought I was cured. I thought I was cured. And we got into the cars and started heading back down the island, and I was in a blackout before we got to Courtney.

I was I had a bottle, and I was just drinking out of that one. I was in a blackout before we got to Courtney, and and, I know I made a scene on the ferry, because it's what I do. And, and the next morning and I and I believe we stopped somewhere for dinner. This is all. I'm putting this together again from the stories, the reports.

Don't you love those ones? The reports you got the next day. Do you know? Yeah. I do also.

Whatever. And yet, I, came to as we drove into our carport in Langley, and somehow made it into the house and into bed. I don't know how long I was there and came to and, you know, that that sweaty cold, I need a drink, I can't stand it if I drink one more time. All of that stuff, the remorse and the shame, and my partner at that moment said, why did you have to get so drunk again? And I just got up, And I sit I sat in the living room or the kitchen or whatever and, in the dark house and and just, you know, it was as if my whole life was flashing before my eyes.

And, you know, if if if I could stand here and tell you that every time I got into trouble I had been drinking, I wouldn't need to be here. Because, you know, that's the way it is for people. Alcohol has a way of removing common sense and inhibitions, and nonalcoholics get into trouble when they drink too much. That's the way it is. But I looked at my life and I realized some of the stuff I did without having any excuse.

And what I had what I had just experienced the night before, that that desperation, the terrible desperation, and that and that I knew that I would give away my children. I would leave my home. I would give up jobs. I would move out of an apartment into a car. I would do all of that to make sure that I had alcohol.

That's when I knew I was alcoholic. It wasn't because I had 18 yeses on somebody's stupid questionnaire. It was because I gave up a life for alcohol, and I knew it I knew it so clearly that morning, and I knew transactional analysis didn't work. Even if it was in Vancouver, and it probably wasn't. And I knew it didn't pay it didn't make any sense for me to go to California to the treatment center because I knew there wouldn't be any of those in Vancouver either.

I was to find out all that stuff later, but I knew that. I just knew it that morning that I had to call Alcoholics Anonymous. There was one other piece. My aunt is sober in Alcoholics Anonymous now, something like 35 years, but she lives in Alberta, and I had very little to do with her for obvious reasons. As soon as she went to AA, I thought, Oh, you're no fun anymore.

No point in seeing you. And, but in any case, that was I just knew that I had to call AA that day. I but, you know, but I was gonna bargain one more time. Like, the bride and groom were coming by the house on their way to some place else, and so I thought I'll just run it by her first and make sure. So she came in, and I don't think she even had her coat off yet, and they said, I'm thinking of calling Alcoholics Anonymous.

I expected she would say, oh, you know, you just need a couple days. She said that would be a good idea. And, so there was kind of the last escape route, kind of shut down on me. But it was Sunday, and I knew that AA wouldn't be open because it was an office, and so I had to wait till the next day. But I did.

I waited until the next day, and I didn't drink that night, and, I wasn't fun. And I knew I was 20 8 years old. I knew life was over. It was gonna be boring forevermore and dull and painful and maybe God would take me with some kind of a strange illness or something early, but I just I just didn't that was it. That's all I knew.

I was a sum and total. So I called Alcoholics Anonymous the next day from my office. And this woman phoned me back in minutes from Langley and, said her name was Elsie, and she said, do you think you're an alcoholic? And I thought, oh, isn't this too bad? They're stupid too.

Is there another reason you'd be calling Alcoholics Anonymous? But I thought, well, that's your choice. That's it. What are you gonna do? You gotta go there.

So I went to her house for coffee after work, and, and then I went to a meeting that night in Langley. I was actually in Surrey on the Surrey Langley border. And I walked into the meeting, and I met exactly what I thought I would meet, old man. And, old Bob was there, and he was missing fingers, and he was rough and couldn't say anonymous. So I knew I was, you know, that's what my fate was gonna be.

There'd be me and all these old men that can't speak English and they're rough. And they talked about ego, and I said I haven't got any. What are we talking about ego? I don't have any ego. I just told you what I thought.

I don't have ego. I don't know what they're talking about. They talked about brain damage, and I thought, yep. I can see that. Fortunately, I stopped in time.

We talked about God all the time and I thought I wish you'd shut up. I think maybe I'm gonna get out from underneath this god thing somehow. I'm not quite ready to meet meet that one yet. And, you know, I wish you'd shut up because you know how it is. You keep calling somebody's name, they're gonna show up eventually.

And I'm not ready yet. And I have a lot of pain to do, and I'm just not ready yet. But they kept talking about God. You know, they read that that that opening thing that was read this morning and then, you know, and it's all about it. That's all it says is, god, god, blah, blah, god, god, god, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And, and, and then Bob asked me to share. He asked me if I'd come up and talk. So I got up to the front. I'm, you know, I'm I don't know what I'm gonna say. So I stand up and I tell them my name because I heard everybody else say that, and I said, I think maybe I might be a little bit of an alcoholic.

And so everybody that got up talked to me after that and told me I was. I thought, oh, okay. They said, you don't arrive here by mistake, and I went, oh, okay. So I'm stuck here then, I guess. And then I said, is this all we do now?

Go to these meetings? No? No, we have a dance on Saturday night. Oh, good. Dance, that'll be fun.

It's New Year's after all. Well, I'm sorry. I have tickets to something. Anyway, I, that was my beginnings. That's what happened.

What's it like now? Holy moly. What a difference. I didn't stay in that relationship for very long. I'm a quick study.

I learned the language very quickly, very quickly. I also discovered that there's some cute looking guys around here. They weren't all old men after all. Some of them were kinda cute looking guys, and so I thought, well, maybe it would be okay. You know, I could stick around.