The 17th Annual Southeast Louisiana Spring Roundup in Covington, LA

Yep. Here. Because I was scared that I might slip, and I don't wear under drawers, so I had to be a real careful thing. This is the, too much information. That's what my mother always told me, and I was like, what?

This is the audience participation. Duh. Duh. T. T.

Hi, y'all. My name is Duhalti. I'm an alcoholic. Grateful to be sober and grateful to be here by God's grace. Wait.

One second. I have to write down what time I stopped talking. Okay. I am grateful to be here by God's grace. I've been reborn an alcoholic, synonymous.

I'm not the same woman, thank you God, that I was when I got here. And, my home group is the same home group that Chris and Dolores belong to. It's the Miracle Group in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. My sobriety day is January 1, 1983, and I have a sponsor named Anne who has a sponsor. And, I'm just so delighted to be a member of Alcoholist Anonymous and to be here.

I love Louisiana. Tuesday well, Mark and I, some of you know my husband, Mike. He's from Boston. Well, we met in Alcoholics Anonymous. He couldn't be here this weekend because we sold our house in we live in Navarre, Florida.

We sold our house, and, last Thursday, the movers came and took everything away. And the only reason we haven't moved yet is because, I wanted to fulfill my commitment and come here to Louisiana. So, when I go back today, tomorrow will be a holiday, and then Tuesday morning, we're going to jump in the car with our 2 semi feral cats, our 2 rescue parrots, and our rescue dog, and some plants, and and food and clothes, and head off, we're moving to New Mexico. So, that'll be quite an adventure. Another we always call them the Mark and Hulke.

Big adventures, so it'll be another adventure. And last weekend, we, were up in Northern Louisiana. I'm not gonna say where, but it was Northern Louisiana and the folks were really nice there. But, there's nobody like Southern Louisiana people. Nobody.

They don't have any Cajuns there. There was no Cajun Joe there. And I I Mark and I kept talking. We're going, boy, it's so different here. It's not really like Louisiana.

It was kinda like Texas or something. And we just missed the, the hospital they I shouldn't say the hospitality. They were real hospitable too, but it was totally different. Northern Louisiana is totally different. And we just love, you Southern Louisiana, and we're gonna really really miss you, but we're gonna come back and come back and visit.

I wanna thank the committee, Mark and I, and Chris and Dolores, we've both been on, the, little, convention we have over in Fort Walton Beach. We are both been on the the convention committee for several years and it takes a lot of work, a real lot of work. For those of you who have who have never served on the committee, I suggest you do it. Get off your butts and go to that meeting and help out doing the convention. It gives you a whole different insight into what's going on.

And, Bob is just great. He, bought me a he bought all the speakers a present. He bought me this beautiful beaded pink flamingo, and it's gonna sit on my fireplace in New Mexico. It's just great. I loved it.

And then Julie and I had a great time talking, did we talk at dinner? Or, well, sometime yesterday, it might have been dinner. And I just want you to know that Julie painted this. Isn't this beautiful? This is the kind of stuff that didn't just magically appear that, you know, the AA magical person may disappear.

People do all this stuff and put it together for us. You know, here we are, down and out, mooch losers, and we get to be reborn in Alcoholics Anonymous and be useful, and we get together and have a good time. And that part that Susan read this morning, we're not a glum lot, and you people in South Louisiana know that. I don't know if you have any folks here, but I've run into a lot of folks in AA. They'll be like, yeah.

I'm really grateful to be sober. Damn it. And it's like, well, why don't you tell your face and start acting like you're grateful, you know. It's not about being all, serious and, we get it to do 24 hours. It's about being active in service and being act useful to God, and, being useful to other people.

Not just acting, you know, all spiritual in the AA room and then go outside and talk ugly to somebody or kick somebody or do all that. It's about living the principles that we've been taught in Alcoholics Nonness. You know, it's, it's just a wonderful, wonderful way of life. My mother has a picture of me, we I don't take pictures of me. That It's, it gives my spiritual nature.

Oh, let me tell you a couple of things about myself. I'm Cherokee Indian. I'm from, Tennessee. And, if if any of y'all in here are Indian, this is important for you to know, my clan is the wild potato clan. And if you're not Indian, it doesn't mean anything to you, but if you are, we all tell each other that.

So, you know, I needed to to tell you that, so I don't really have many pictures taken, but my mom had a picture of me when I was 2 years old, and in the picture, I'm kind of smiling a little bit, not much. My mother said, I just love that picture. That's the last time I saw you smile until you got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, is that testimony to to what happens here? Oh, believe me, I laughed when I was drunk, you know, I could laugh, you know, with ridiculous stuff and if, you know, if you fell down, look at that loser, and, you know, I could laugh or I could laugh at bawdyness.

I could be really bawdy. I know it's hard to believe, Bob, that I could be bawdy. But, just that real deep gut laughing. When I first came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I came in. My first AA meeting was, 1981.

And I haven't drank since 1981, but, that's not my sobriety date because I continue to do other things. My sobriety is January 1, 1983. But when I came in, one of the first things that struck me was that y'all were laughing. And, first of all, of course, I thought you were laughing at me, because you know how we are. If somebody's laughing, it has to be at my expense.

And then I figured out that nobody was even looking at me, so they weren't laughing at me. And, then I figured it maybe, you know, the coffee pot, somebody put stuff in it, you know, maybe it was Irish coffee or something that everybody was laughing. But I liked the laughter, and that kept me coming back, you know, time after time that I would, keep coming back to AA because the laughter, even though I was really down and out and I was just broken, the laughter was already starting to heal me a little bit. The speakers this weekend have been great. I loved, I loved hearing everybody.

Now I've got some serious brain damage, so my memory is about this big. So when I things that the speaker said, I was like, oh, I wanna mention that it was so good, but I've already forgotten it because I'm just I'm not passionate. That's just the way I am. But I remember Chris. Chris is a member of my home group, and he's a guy that, I'm 59 years old, and Chris is 40.

Are you 40? And Chris is, like a son to to Mark and I. We just love him. He he's, watching him come in and and watching the the changes in him and the things he's going through. He's he's just a wonderful member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and, it's real special to me to have him in his life.

And I love his wife, Dolores, as well. Dolores had a real struggle. She's, you know, still in a fight with God, but she's a wonderful woman. And, and I think that we all are, you know. We come here with our stories and our experiences and all that stuff.

But, a friend of mine, John Paul is a Catholic priest, but he's also a member of AA. That just happens to be his job. And he, he's been sober quite a long long long time and he says that I used to go to this women's retreat and, he would be the retreat master. It wasn't a Catholic retreat, it was just a retreat that the Catholic, monastery was kind enough to let us have an AA retreat at. And he would be the the retreat master for the women and he would talk, with me for hours and hours at night, and he said that he really believes to the bottom of his heart that alcoholism is a sacred illness, and that only, a spiritual remedy will help with this sacred illness.

He further went on to say that he thinks that don't let any of this go to your head folks. Just remember the last time you peed in your pants. He thinks that, that we are alcoholics, that we are fallen that we come into this world, into this life, and I know this is my story. I got here, I'm like, who are these beings? Who where am I?

What world is this? I just I didn't know how to relate. I just didn't know how to relate. So that's what John Patrick says, that we're fallen mystics and we have a sacred illness, and and we just push everybody away from us because our illness is so severe. And then we have to, if we're fortunate enough, if we're blessed enough to accept the spiritual help of Alcoholics Anonymous, we can be reborn.

So let me tell you the big book says in a general way, we tell what we used to be like, what happened, and and what I'm like now. I'm the oldest of, 7 children. There were 4 other children that, didn't didn't my mother wore as an eight, but carried full term. I'm the only girl. I have 6 younger brothers.

I didn't know I was a girl for a long time. Sometimes I still wonder, you know, I feel kind of weird. But anyways, I didn't know I was a girl for a long time. I have these 6 young younger brothers. My father, bless his heart, he's passed, but he was an alcoholic.

He was a functioning alcoholic. And he, he was a lifer in the military. He, Indian boy from Tennessee and, our our men are very, like like the other men, our men are very, patriotic conscious and very willing to take their place as warriors. And I'd like to salute and thank all of you who are veterans. Thank you so very much for the the sacrifice that you gave to all of us.

Especially, this weekend, we need to remember, you know, what this weekend is really about. It's not just about, you know, having barbecues and being at a nice a a thing. There's people having sacrifices made right today, you know, in the Gulf War, and we have so many others that made so many sacrifices, and we need to remember them. And I do, part of my amend process later on was I worked in a VA hospital for 5 years. Not the patients, but the other people that work there.

But, that was part of my immense process to, to honor the veterans and, and I did that. Well, anyways, I've got these 6 younger brothers. My dad's a lifer in the military. Here was Corinne Boy that came out of the back hills of Tennessee. Dirt poor.

I'm talking dirt poor. My dad, and his family grew up in a dirt floor shack with, no windows or anything like that. My, my grandfather was a a bad drunk, and he'd just go off and be drunk. And my grandma he'd come home once a year and and, get my grandma pregnant, and she said she had a bunch of children, and and, my grandmother hunted and and, and grew food to feed her and her children. And it was it was poor living.

They were they were poor. So my dad, left there and he joined the at the time, it was the army and then it became the army air force. And he went into the military and, he didn't know how to read or anything like that. And so, these children start coming along and, I was this little kid. I was a scared little kid.

We always hung around, the military is very segregated back in the in those days. And my father, was in a unit and hung around with, other soldiers, either the black soldiers, the Indian soldiers, or the, Mexican soldiers. They we all always hung around with other people of color. And, my father would drink and he'd be drunk all the time, but he was a functional drunk and he'd go to the Air Force every single day and he would have his boots polished and he'd look sharp and and he'd do his job. He was a firefighter.

And, I was a scared little kid. I I was a broken child. I don't really know exactly what happened, but I was a broken little girl. I just didn't relate to other children. I'm, and it wasn't, so much because my parents, my mother drank a lot, but she's not an alcoholic, she was a heavy drinker, and there's big difference.

And I I don't think I don't know if I was broken because my father was an alcoholic because everybody else's dad and mom were too. So it wasn't that, but I was a broken child and I I just felt like there was so much injustice in the world. I was a little girl and and, the way that we were treated, and the way that our friends were treated, and there was so much hatred in the world, and and, I just didn't understand. And I'm talking 4 or 5 years old. I saw this, and I felt it.

I felt the pain of the world, and I didn't wanna be here. And I think it goes back to what John Patrick talks about of Patrick talks about of us being fallen mystics because we we're so sensitive, we're so overly sensitive. And, I taught myself to read real young and I fell into the world of literature and I I escaped through that. And my dad asked me one day if I would teach him how to read, but it had be between us. I couldn't tell anybody.

And I taught my dad to read, very basic reading. I mean, certainly didn't go into reading anything heavy, but basic reading And he learned to be able to sign his name, and he learned to be able to read his orders and stuff like that. And, I started feeling shame because I saw that other people's dads, moms could read, and that other people their lives were just a little bit different than us. And, I started feeling the shame. And my mother was a heavy drinker and my father would get chips somewhere, and my mother would go out drinking and partying at night, and I'd feel ashamed about that.

So I started having all this shame stuff coming up. So when I was 9 years old, was for, some stuff happened, there that, just stuff that happens to some children that shouldn't happen to them and it happened, frequently. And at 9 years old, I just had it. And I had my first suicide attempt, and it was obviously an unsuccessful attempt. So I decided that, well, that didn't work, so I was gonna, drink some of that stuff that my mom and dad drank and see if, they seemed to drink it and, you know, have a good time at first before the things got ugly.

So, I took some Turpin Hydrate, that's GI Gin. We were poured, we'd go to the dispensary and they'd give you this Turpin Hydrate for everything. They give you these, pills called all purpose capsules. I am not making this up. Okay?

They give you all purpose capsules. So I went to the bathroom and I took a few of these all purpose capsules, which really did nothing. I brought in some airplane glue. My brothers and I would make model air airplanes and stuff, I brought in some of that. I heard kids at school talk about it.

I brought in some of my mother's cool cigarettes, and I put on one of her brassiere's. Now, at 9 years old, I was not developed at all. I see some girls today that are. I was not developed at all. If if I didn't have any clothes on and had my hands in front of me, you'd think I was a boy.

I was not developed. So I put on this bra and I stuffed it with socks, and put my clothes on, and I'm standing in the mirror in the bathroom, and I had never back sassed my parents up to this point. I'm just a quiet scared kid. And in the bathroom, I'm drinking this turpent hydrate, and I did some of that glue, and I'm smoking these cool cigarettes that like to kill me. I'm coughing and coughing.

But after the 3rd or 4th point, I kinda liked them. And then, I did that Turpen hydrate which is a real real lot of alcohol and then it went down to my stomach. Boom. I'll tell you what, I had a spiritual experience. I mean, it was fabulous.

It was just fabulous. I just wasn't this skinny little kid anymore. The world, yeah, alright. Whatever. The world's a bad place.

Those babies were mine. I was a woman. I'm 9 years old. Nobody's gonna boss me around anymore. I'm taking control of my life, and, the change.

It was like doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde, that change just came over me. We had, a lot of people living in base housing in this little apartment, and there was one bathroom. And I've been in here quite a while now, so people are knocking on the bathroom that, and on base housing, you couldn't we didn't have outhouses. So, you know, there was one bathroom. So, knocking on the door.

Hey, we've gotta come in. What are you doing in there? And that that was the first time I ever said something ugly to my mother. And I don't remember what I said, but I had never been a sassy child before. And I said something ugly to my mother, cause I've got alcohol in me now and hey, nobody's telling me what to do.

And, so I told my mother's smugly words and told her to leave me alone, and my mother was like, girl, when you come out of there and I you're paying. And I came out of the bathroom and, I had a look in my face that my mother didn't do anything. And she just sent me to my room, and that's fine with me. And then I went out to the living room and I my father was reading the paper and I said, I'd never called my father. My father didn't know our names.

He knew us, but he never called us by name. It was girl, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy. You boy, you girl. So, his name was Joe, and I went and I said, Joe, I wanna talk to you. I'm 9 years old now, and I'm wearing a bra stuffed out to here.

And I got some alcohol in me, and I'm reeking a cigarette smoke. And he's not looking up. He's continues to read his paper, and I said, did you hear me? I wanna talk to you. I got something to say.

He probably never even heard me talk. He didn't even know whose voice it was. And he didn't answer me again, so I grab that newspaper and I ripped it in half, and I said, I said I wanted to talk to you. And my father looked up at me, and I've never seen this happen before, but fire came out of his nose and out of his eyes, and, I knew I intuitively knew, uh-oh, something bad's gonna happen. So we lived in 3rd floor based housing, and, my father got up, and I knew that I was in big trouble.

So I ran out to the balcony and I stood up on the railing. I had never behaved this way before. I was a frightened, scared little girl that obeyed everything and everybody. And now I'm standing up on the balcony. I was reading Wonder Woman and Superman at the time.

Now I'm Wonder Woman. I'm standing up there, you know, all Wonder Woman. And, my dad says get off that back of me, girl. I'm gonna whip your butt. And I said, if you come one step closer to me, I'm gonna jump.

And I know that if I jump, you're gonna lose those 2 stripes that you have. So I'm learning some manipulation here. So I made him swear to God that he wasn't gonna hit me or do anything to me, and that I'd commit I'd come in. And, he looked at me and he goes, girl, you're the craziest little I've ever met in my life. And I would in my head, that was the nicest thing anybody said to me, because it meant that they acknowledge my presence.

I was acknowledged. I was alive. Somebody took note of something bad, and I was gonna be the bad, and I was gonna be the baddest girl in town. So at 9 years old, I learned that if I manipulate people and I act like a total psycho, people will do what I want. And so my dad didn't hit me, and he he let me in, and I heard him and my mother talking.

He goes, we're gonna have problems with that girl. We're gonna have some real problems with that girl, and they did. So that was at 9 years old, and, I I wasn't able to drink a lot at that time because my mother and father didn't have a bar. They just drank their wine or their, whiskey or whatever, and and, you know, there wasn't any left. But by 13, I I found out that I could go to the town of Wino and, give my lunch money, my school lunch money.

Now, my mom and dad worked hard. My dad went to the Air Force everyday. My mother was a cocktail waitress. Sound familiar to any of you island owners? She was a cocktail waitress and, I wish my mother had gone into heroin, she never did.

But, they worked hard for their money and to give us lunch money. Once I started in junior high, we I get lunch money because the all the other kids had lunch money and they, you know, they just wanted to do that for me. And I took my lunch money and gave it to the wino, and he bought me, Colt 45. So, by 15, I'm a I crossed over the line and I was a full blown alcoholic. By 15, I was dancing in the bars at night, and, I was the girl in high school that, you weren't allowed to hang around with.

The boys wanted to hang around with me, but I was already seeing men, and the girls weren't allowed to hang around with me. I was that girl. Oh, you're not hanging out with that girl. That girl's bad news. I was a girl that called to the principal's office because I'd be half drunk every day in school, half drunk from the night before, and half drunk from the pint that I had in my locker with me.

So they tried some child psychology on me. They they were gonna give me a job and make me feel important and that maybe I, you know, act act right. So the principal called me in and told me that he had heard there was girls smoking in the bathroom. It was me. I always want smoking in the bathroom.

And that he wanted me to be the bathroom monitor and, you know, take care of it so the girls wouldn't smoke in the bathroom. So, I said okay, and I went to the bathroom, and a couple girls are smoking, so I just beat the hell out of them and told them they couldn't smoke anymore. And he called me back to the office and said, no, that's not what we had in mind. They couldn't smoke in the bathroom. I could.

As soon as I beat them up, I smoked, but they he didn't want me to have them smoking. And so that's just the way my life went. You know, I'm dancing in the bars at night. I don't really remember high school at all. My father worked a job as a firefighter.

He'd worked 3 days at the base as a firefighter and stayed live in the barracks, and he'd come home for 3 days. And the 3 days that he was gone, it was just open season for me because my mother would be out working. And I could either get in before she got home. She usually got home about 2 in the morning. Or she'd come home and have a few drinks after work and be half tank, so she wouldn't know that I wasn't there anyway.

So it it worked out. It was perfect for me. It's just perfect. And, and that's when I learned, just how to be sneaky, and how to be a psycho, and how to manipulate people, and other people in school were making plans to go in the military, or to get married, or to go to college, and you know, Chris talked about nobody said they wanted to grow up. You know, you hear counselors saying this.

Nobody ever said they wanted to grow up to be an alcoholic. Well, I'm like Chris. I'm a total burn out like Chris. It was fine with me, you know. I I didn't have any plans or aspirations other than, doing what what I was doing, and what I was doing was, I started prostituting at, you know, at a at a pretty young age.

It seemed like an okay thing to do. And, for any of you gals who have done that or if you haven't yet and you thought that it might be a good way, it's not like the movie Pretty Woman. Let me tell you that right now. Okay? It's not like the movie show.

It's ugly. It's really ugly. And, the more you do stuff like that, the more I'd have to drink to not know what I had done. And the more I had to drink, the more I have to do that to get more money to drink. And it was it was pretty ugly, and it wasn't, you get these really cute guys and stuff.

So I just wanna tell you, it's not like the hub. Okay? Just so you know that it it it was a real ugly life, but I was willing to pay that price to to, continue to drink the way that I drink. I moved to, New York City when I was 18 because, I didn't know what else to do. So I moved to New York City, never been there before.

And, and I lived on the street. And what I did was, on 42nd Street, I can make a little money. I'd help make up the drag queens, for their their stroll up and down 42nd Street. They stroll one side of the street, and we'd stroll the other side of the street, and, that's that's how I lived. I started being arrested all the time, brought in, it was against the law to be a prostitute.

And, it was against the law to be drunk in public, and so I was always brought into, jail, and then the nut houses started. I'd be brought in 4 point restraint because when I get drunk, I get real angry. And when I get real angry, I get real angry at Christopher Columbus for coming here and stealing my country. And, I get real mad at white people. I just hated all white people, and I hated Christopher Columbus, and I hated men, and I hated women, and I hated everybody, including me.

I just hated everybody. So I'd get mad, and I just get so ugly, and I always carry a knife or I carry a razor blade. I have to cut you if I had to, and it was a it was a real ugly life. So I started to be brought into the Nut House in Bellevue in New York City all the time. And, and Bellevue is mentioned in our big book that was a hospital that there were some doctors that started helping alcoholics later.

But I'd be brought in there and, I was sick all the time. I had hepatitis by this time a couple of times. I've been brought in with pancreatitis and, you know, always locked down in a nut house, brought in 4 point restraint. I may be a small woman, but put some alcohol in me and let me get full of rage, and by no picnic. Okay?

I'll, you know, I get I'll get hurt. I'll get beat up. But boy, I'll hurt you bad too. You know, I'll take every shot I can. There's no clean fighting.

So when I'm 19 years old, on one of these episodes, I was, I overdosed on alcohol and, I was brought into the hospital and I was pronounced clinically dead. I had eaten for days, weeks probably. I was just a real old girl and and, I brought in on this, brought in debt. The people I was with, I was, somebody waiting for a liver. I was, I was brought in and, of course, I I I always had aliases.

I was always Jane Doe or I had street names and stuff like that. And I was brought in and I was pronounced dead. And I had this experience that I didn't share an AA for a long time because, I just Chris and I were talking about that this morning. I just didn't feel it was right and I didn't know. And a few years ago, my sponsor said, of course, you can share it.

And I started sharing it and and found out that there's other, people in AA and out of AA that have had this experience. So I'm laying there, they're pronouncing me dead. I'm looking down at the table. I'm going, I'm not dead, but those lips, that are mine weren't moving. And I'm getting higher and higher, but my body is down there.

And I ended up going through that tunnel of light. And, some of you may have heard about it, some of you may not have. This is my experience. I went through that tunnel of light, and it was sort of like I was being sucked into it, and on both sides that were just out of reach of me were all these monsters and demons and stuff, and they were grabbing at me. And I felt scared.

I didn't know what was going on but I kept looking at that light that was at the end of this tunnel and the fear was taken away. And I'm like zooming through this tunnel and I get closer and closer and all of a sudden I'm there. And there's these beings there and they didn't look like we looked. They didn't have bodies like we have. I'm not saying they were aliens.

They didn't have human bodies. It was sort of like everybody was behind some kind of white gauze or something like that, but I knew they were beings. They just didn't look like we do as humans. And and I heard people talking to me, and they welcomed me, and they said, we so love you, and then I was in the presence of God. And the presence of God for me, I was always pretty mad at God, you know.

I thought that God had to be this old white guy with a long beard that just hated everybody else. And if you did wrong, buddy, he was gonna hurt you. And that was not the experience I had of God. God was not a man and God was not a woman. God was a being, just a a being of just pure love.

And I was there and I, my life flashed in front of me, all the stuff that I had done, and I was like, oh, my goodness. This is not good, being in the presence of God. And just having that thought, the presence said, yes, it is good. We love you. I so love you.

And, you know, everything that you did is forgiven. If you want it to be forgiven, I'm like, yes, I wanna be forgiven. And I I won't tell you too much about what happened because it was really it was my spiritual experience, but it was, it was a beautiful experience and I was given the option of whether to come back and be a human or not. And I didn't wanna come back to this sad world and then I was, I met these 2 beings that said, do you remember us? You agreed a long time ago that we'd come through you and be your children.

And I somehow knew what they were talking about. Anyways, I came back to, I came back to life. I was in a coma for 7 days after that and and, then I was locked up in the Nut House again for a while because, some stuff. I was locked up for a while. And when I get out of there, I had a lot of time to think in the nut house, and I thought about all this stuff.

Oh, my God. I've been in the presence of God. What do I do now? And I was gonna be a better person, and I wasn't gonna do that anymore, and I was gonna repent, and I was gonna treat people good, and I was gonna I was gonna I was gonna And the day they released me, I ran across the street to the liquor store, store, and I got some, Thunderbird, and, I had to panhandle first, and then I got some Thunderbird. And I drank that, and all those I was gonna was gone.

You know? I didn't have a program. I didn't have 12 steps. I didn't have a blueprint for living. I didn't have a fellowship of people I could talk to and say, guess what?

I've been in the presence of God. What should I do? Can you help me? I just came out and went to the liquor store and got drunk and that's my story right up until, you know, I got sober in 1983. I ended up having 2 children.

That's a story in itself. I was in, I won't go into the whole story, but I made a decision, well, if I just had kids, if I could just be a mother, this will change. I won't be this way, and I wanted to have a baby so bad. So I was in the hospital with hepatitis for the 3rd or 4th time and it was, I had 2 types of hepatitis serum and and, alcoholic. I have been pronounced, one of my times in a nut house.

I spent some long times in state hospitals. One of my times I was diagnosed as a paranoid, paranoid schizophrenic with suicidal, homicidal tendencies due to chronic alcoholism. And I'm I'm only 20 years old now, 21 years old. I'm like, what are they talking talking about? This is just this white judge.

I'm just Indian girl wanting to have a good time and they're trying to, you know, say this stuff about me. So I'm in the hospital with hepatitis and my one of my younger Oh, my brother's younger, but one of my brothers comes in. He's got this young kid with him. I'm 21 years old. This kid's 17.

I just been thinking about having a baby. Hey. Okay. I'd never met him before, but I made my proposition to him and, he said, yeah. It sounded like a great idea.

He'd be willing to impregnate me. So, his parents I got out of the hospital a few weeks later and his parents were bringing me up in statutory rape charges because he was 17 and I was 21. So I took him to South Carolina and married him, and, and I, you know, was pregnant with my my girl child. And, when I had my child and I looked in her eyes, oh, they didn't talk about fetal alcohol syndrome back then, and when I went to the doctor, the doctor said, you need a little wine to make your blood rich and to relax this growing baby, and I was like, alright, far out. A little wine to me is a little bottle of Mad Dog every night.

So that's what I did when I was pregnant. And, you know, I'd sit there pulling on the Mad Dog going, yeah, this is alright, you know. This is okay. I can do this. I'm not really drinking drinking, and I wasn't doing anything else, and I quit smoking because, you know, I want my baby to be healthy.

So, I had this child and I looked in her eyes and I saw the face of God. And those of you who've looked into your newborn child's eyes or or any newborn child or animal or whatever, you see the face of God. And I saw the face of God and I knew I was gonna be a good mother. I knew my life of crime and sin was over and I was gonna be a good mother and I was gonna learn how to cook and clean and be a wife, which was not a big aspiration for me, but I was gonna learn to do that. And, several months later, it I was drinking just like I was drinking before.

It just didn't work. And I wanted to be a good mother with all my heart, so I left that kid. He was too childish. He was 17 years old for God's sake. I left that child, told him to, you know, buzz off.

I need me a real man. So, he left. I moved my child and I moved over a bar, made it pretty easy to, you know, I could just run downstairs and run back upstairs, and I I met the next victim and I figured, only alcoholics think that we have keen alcoholic minds. You ask any Al Anon if they think we have keen alcoholic minds. They don't.

Believe me. So if my keen alcoholic mind thinking, I came up with, well, you know what? I almost had it with that first baby. I almost got it. I was almost there.

So I'm gonna have another baby, and then I'll really do it. I will really do it. So I made proposition to this guy. Hey, listen. I wanna have a child.

He's like, alright. This a different guy now. So, I I married both of them. I never knew I've had 4 relationships that weren't paid relationships in my life, and I married all 4 of them because I didn't know what else to do. It seemed like the right thing to do, and if it didn't work out, I could just divorce them.

That's my keen alcoholic thinking. So we got married and, and life went on. I have these 2 children that I wanted to be a good mother. I really did. Now, I never wet my kids and I never, did, that kind of stuff to them.

My kids always had clothes and my kids always ate. Now, what they ate was sometimes the same stuff that I ate as a child, and it was good enough for me, you know, some welfare cheese and macaroni, or some, beans and rice. We ate lots of beans and rice, or or oatmeal soup. And so my kids did eat. They weren't, they didn't eat the best, but they did eat.

And, but other things happened. I abused my children in ways that I didn't know. I go to the bar and I have these 2 kids with me and I I thought this was very, motherly of me. I put my coat on the floor so they wouldn't have to sit on the bar floor, they could sit on my coat. And I thought that was very motherly.

I never left my children with babysitters because only losers, only alcoholic losers leave their kids with babysitters. So mine would come to the bar with me. And that's that's child abuse because the kind of bars I went to weren't the tinkling piano bars. The bars I went to were ugly, real ugly. And, so this man and I did, decided that we went into the import export business of certain agricultural products.

And and, then my kids start seeing things like that. Things that kids shouldn't be a part of. You know, kids couldn't have anybody over to the house because either mom was gonna be drunk and peeing on the floor, or there was gonna be a big Colombian party happening in the living room. And, my kids and I have been held hostage with shotguns and Doberman Pinschers waiting for, to pay for the agricultural products, and, that's that's bad. That's a terrible thing for children to have to live through.

And I I started feeling guilt, and I started feeling remorse, so I had to drink more and more and more. In the last 8 years of my drinking, my kids would talk about, my kids started off with, oh mom, you're such a good mother, and then, we love you, you make the best peanut butter sandwiches in the world, and then my kids started going public school and they started looking at me and how dogs cock their head and look at you. My kids started looking at me like, And then, as they got a little older and they're they're going to other kids houses and stuff, they started looking at me with scorn and disdain. And they started knowing that there was something wrong with their mother. You know, there was something really wrong.

And, so the last 8 years of my drinking, my kids begged me to stop drinking, and I told them I would. I was gonna I was gonna learn to be a good wife and a good mother. I was gonna learn to cook and clean and to not run away from home, and I used to run away from home. It was so pathetic, you know, and leave my children and one day my 5 year old girl comes in the woods. I'm running away again and she comes out in the woods and I'm doing this slash on my wrist and she goes, 5 years old this girl.

And she goes, oh, mom, you're killing yourself again. But, you know, it's funny to us now, but it is not funny. It is so sad. You know, my daughter is 38 years old today, and that girl is still in therapy because of me. Now thank God for therapy, but she is still in therapy because of of my behavior.

Thank goodness I only hurt myself, you know. Right. So, life went on like that. It was just terrible. I they promised him I wouldn't drink, so I'd only drink a bottle of Listerine in the morning while I'm getting them off to school, because that's not drinking.

And then of course, I go to the liquor store and it just kept going like that. It just kept going terrible. And and, my suicides attempt started coming more and more frequently. And then the day came in 1980 that, I knew I couldn't I just knew I couldn't do it anymore. And, I couldn't be with this man anymore.