Mary P. from Orlando, FL at the Crested Butte Mountain Conference in Crested Butte, CO

My name is Mary Parker. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Mary. My sobriety date is November 27, 1981. My home group is the College Park Triangle Group in Orlando, Florida, And I'm as high as you can get and be from Orlando, Florida.

This is really something else. It's just an amazing experience to be here. I found out a month ago I was coming. I am a permanent sub speaker, in case you didn't know that. I'm kinda like I look at myself like a really great pinch hitter, you know, and, it's real exciting to be here.

My husband could not come, and so he gave me instructions this morning. I am ignoring them. He's a member of that club called Lawyers, and, that's the way it goes. I wanna thank Judy and Jim. They made this so easy for me.

I would just have a thought and it would all be taken care of. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to arrange anything. I didn't have to pick up anything. I didn't have to drive anything.

It was wonderful. And, we went to dinner the 1st night we were here and just met some terrific folks. And last night I earned a new title. I went out to dinner with Joe and Beth and I am the mashed potato queen of slow gars. I'm real excited about that.

That is not because I look so good, it's because I eat so many mashed potatoes. I sat in the corner with my bowl and growled and people stayed away. I reserve the right not to get over everything all at once. That's kinda how it is for me. But I'm here to tell you what it was like and what happened and what it's like now.

And it's amazing to me that the life I led gave me the opportunity to do something like this. That's just amazing. That this wild, crazy, out of control drunk girl gets to do this. And I am just incredibly grateful to be here and thank all of you. I was born in Ohio, and, I have parents.

I'm a baby boomer. I'm the first wave of the boomers. I'll be 60 in December. And, my parents were my father was a World War 2 veteran. My mother was his childhood sweetheart.

They got together and got married. And I was a much wanted and expected child and was the first girl in many generations on my father's side. That was very exciting for them. They just loved me and wanted me. Years later, all these good things I'm telling you, I felt disqualified me for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I had a list of things you had to have happen to be here, and I hadn't had them happen. So I wasn't supposed to be here. Just kind of like this conference. I wasn't supposed to be here, but here I am. That's kind of how my alcoholism was.

My parents had 2 more children. I am not sure why. I was sufficient. Boys, there you go. And, I was a scared kid.

I don't know where that came from. Again, I was loved and cared for and terrified. I just lived terrified. And my first memory of that is in the 1st grade. I am, if I do say so myself, quite a fine little reader.

And I had a lot of reading ability. I was very proud of that. I'd cry in school, but when I got to read, I wouldn't cry anymore. And this girl moved in to my neighborhood and her name was Joyce English. If you're out there, Joyce, I'll make the amends after I'm done.

And Joyce began to read, and she read with much more expression than I. And I was very, very upset. I was not only fearful, I was fiercely and it is a bad combination. And so I hoped and prayed and tried and began to read better than Joyce, and I felt much better. And that was sort of the story of my strange little life.

And, my father got real tired of the cold and we moved to Miami. And it was beautiful. This was in the early 50s and I went to school there and I cried on the way to school. I was afraid I'd be late. And I cried on the way home because I was afraid I didn't have my homework.

I was just afraid. I was just born afraid. But I found out I had this little talent. I had a talent for taking tests. I'm a real good test taker.

It's like playing the piano. It doesn't mean you can do anything. It just means you can do that. And, in high school, that began to work out for me. And I was part of the generation that we were gonna beat the Russians.

It was the Sputnik era. Some of you are way too young. Just don't worry about it. Anyway, so they throw me into all these math classes and science classes and I was taking tests and doing all this sort of thing and, I'd get up to say something in class and I'd say something. And the teacher would start yelling at me because I wasn't speaking loud enough and I'd stand up and I'd speak and I'd cry.

And that's just what I did. I was afraid. I was just always afraid, but I was more afraid of not getting to be something really spectacular. I had this strange belief that I was destined for greatness. I was destined, all right.

Not quite for what I had thought. And my family was sort of hanging on to the edge of middle class, and they did the best they could, but money was tight at our house and I just didn't know how I was going to get to college. My best friend was real smart. When I say she was real smart, today she's a full professor at Penn and the medical school, so she was real smart. And she was my baseline for what I should be like, and I wasn't getting it, you know.

So I took some more tests, and she did better than I did, she always did. But I got a scholarship to a fine private Southern University, Baptist School, and, I was on my way. That was good, I was gonna go to school and get my degree and do something fabulous. As long as I've never had to talk to more than 2 people at a time, it would be fine. So I went to school and took my tests and sort of hid out in my room.

When I got there that first day, my roommate was already there and I had not met her. She was from Alexandria, Virginia. She had long, dark hair, and she was smoking a cigarette. She had cutoffs and a guitar and she went, Hey! And I went, My role model has worked.

This is who I want to be when I grow up. And I just thought she was the coolest thing. We actually had fire escapes at this school. And she would sneak out the fire escape and get drunk and do whatever, come back in and hold her gorgeous long hair. Up, and I thought, why can't I have a life like this?

Why can't I have fun? I'm not having any fun. What's going on here? But I was a real good student, and I needed a ride home 1 semester, and I found this boy who had a GTO. You may not know what that is.

4 on the floor. And I thought, I'll never get to ride in a car like that, so I'll just do that once. That'll be kind of cool. And I did. And he kind of took a liking to me.

That was different. Now you have to realize, when I was in high school, I was a good girl. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I didn't wear black eye makeup.

I thought smoking would get you pregnant. I mean, I didn't know about all that other stuff. I was just not I was very, very naive. So I had no frame of reference for what boys were all about. And he liked me, and he was kind of sophisticated.

So he took me out a few times, and we kind of got to know each other. He came from a family that had, let's just say it, they were just filthy rich is what it was. They just had a whole heck of a lot of money. And I had never been around people like this. It was very odd to me.

And after we went together a couple of years, he said, well, I have an idea. Why don't you go on vacation with us?' And I'm thinking, well, that's nice, we go up to Georgia or something. He said, no, no, we're going to go on my yacht to the Bahamas. And see, in my house, we didn't use words like yacht and Bahamas, we weren't there at all. And so talking my father into this was a real big deal, and so we went to my dad and we were getting pretty serious by this time, and he somehow let me go.

And so I go in this yacht and I go to the Bahamas, And I'm 19 years old, I've never had a drink, never been around drinking. My grandmother was a member of the WCTU, Women's Christian Temperance Union, and we just weren't doing that kind of stuff at my house, you know. And, we get to the Bahamas on the yacht. I like to say that. It sounds so cool.

Even today, I haven't been yachting in the Bahamas since I was 19, let me tell you. We kinda went downhill from there. But, so we go to this this place, the a club, kinda looked like a bar to me, on Bay Street in Nassau called Dirty Dick's. That was the name. I had the ashtray for years.

I was really proud of that. And, so we go and we go in this place and his mother said, what would you like to drink? I said, oh, no. I don't drink. I'm not that kind of girl.

And she said, oh, honey, it's legal here. Well, God forbid that I break a law and not drink if it's legal comes with comes with a little umbrella, little piece of orange, you know, little fruit, and it's got a nice, refreshing taste, no air conditioning in that place. I had one, I felt significantly better. I had 2, I felt even better, And that fear began to go away. I hear people talk about I got taller, I got prettier.

Not me, not me. I got louder. That voice that had been way down there, it was it was booming. And again, I told you I was a good reader. Well, apparently, I had read some off color material at some point because I cussed this guy up one side and down the other, right in front of his mom and dad.

I just found him woefully inadequate to a woman like me, at my stature at 19 years old, and, I just cussed him out. And then I threw up, And then I blacked out, and then we went back to the yacht in the Bahamas. And, so I got up the next morning feeling like you feel after your first drunk, and I thought, what do they do now? Do you walk the plank? What do they do to you when you do something like this?

I was horrified. I was just horrified and scared. We didn't have the money in my family to fly me back home to Miami. And his mother sat me down, we had a little family conference, and said words to me that changed my life. And she said, Honey, that wasn't you talking, that was the alcohol.

And I went, Of course. And you know, unfortunately, I took that that to the bank for years. It was not me, it was the alcohol. So we got engaged, and we got married. We had a lovely country club wedding, even though I'd never set foot in a country club before that day.

And off we went to our new and wonderful trudging the road of happy destiny not, You know, and, lived in Miami in a lovely home, and he had a very social family, very active in the community, and we'd go to these big parties. And so I got into this habit which everybody in here will go, well, maybe not the Al Anon's, but everybody else will go, okay. And my husband used to make him crazy. I would before I would go, I'd get my dress on, I'd look real nice, I'd go to the sink, I'd grab the scotch, I'd pour it in a water glass, drink it down, like Alka Seltzer, you know, and then I was ready to go to the party. Calm me down, gave me my voice, was ready to go.

If they were short supply, I was already on board, you know. So he came out 1 night, and I've got my glass of Scotch, and I'm I mean, I just downed it, you know. It's not real tasty right off the bat. And he said, what are you doing? Said, I'm having a drink.

Why? We're going to a party. I said, that's why. I'm having a drink because we're going to a party. He said, but why are you having a drink?

Because I'm going to a party. You know, and it was like one of those who's on first deals. He just did not understand pre drink drink. So I had an MO. What I would do is I'd go to the party, I would pick out somebody, somebody's boyfriend or husband preferably, I would make a pass at him, I would make a fool of myself.

I would throw up and we would go home. And that's what I did. And then I learned about amends very early, then the next morning I would cry, I'd pick up the phone and say how sorry I was. And I would do this every time we went out. And I guess that's not amends, because amends are not supposed to keep doing it after you make amends.

But I did, and that marriage wasn't going well wasn't going well. And I realized what the problem was. I I it came to me. It was him. It was him.

So I had to get out of there, and I got out of there. I was in my noble phase. I took no money, no clothes, no jewelry, no nothing, just my crummy car, and away I went. I'll tell you what, I was young, you know? And so away I went.

But my test taking ability was still there, they were to kind of recruit women for big companies back in those days. And so, I took some tests and I got a job in sales and marketing in this big international corporation based in Cincinnati, Ohio that we will remain nameless. And, they hired me to do marketing around the country, and how we did that is I get a telegram on Friday to tell me where to be on Monday. And I didn't live anywhere. I lived in Stouffer's Hotel, and so I do that.

And I found out that if you booked at the very last minute and the flights were full, you could fly 1st Class. Well, the good thing about 1st Class is you can drink. And it went very well. I was very good at that job. I was still at the point where I could control well, I couldn't really control it, but I could back it down once in a while, except when I get off in San Diego when I was supposed to be in Los Angeles.

Now that was not a good thing, but I did. You know, I'd do that. But I never got caught, you know, I was just kinda rolling through life. On one of my trips to Columbus, my hometown, I met my next victim. I had the trap and keep syndrome, where I would find the victim, set the trap.

I found out later what I was doing was called a paradoxical intervention, but I didn't hadn't been to school again yet. I didn't know what I would just tell him I can't possibly get married, I'm over that, I can't I'm I'm a free bird and he'd have to have me. So I found this gorgeous artist and, he was just a lovely man and we were going to settle down with something. And so he decided he would marry me and, that was nice, and so I quit that job and I married him. Keep count here, because this gets real out of control real fast.

I'm sorry to tell you. You know, I tell this story now and I keep thinking, I'm really gonna have to talk to my grandchildren before they come to one of these meetings. But, so I marry him, and I work for a living for about 6 months, and I am not liking this go to work every day thing, this is boring, you know, I'm a free bird, I have to fly. So I still had this great engagement ring, and I talked to him and said, look, we need a bigger life here, so we will you're an artist, you need to see the great paintings in Europe and everything, we will sell everything we own, and I will sell my ring, and we will go to Europe, and we will travel around. Well, what happens when the money runs out?

I don't know. That's later, you know. So we did. So, we took off. My families thought we were crazy, and away we go.

And we travel around Europe, and, you know, it was raining in Paris, so we go to Barcelona. I was so god. Just I can't even if I had a child like me, I'd just lock myself in a closet and never come out. And that was before email, or cell phones, or anything. So I'm over there and we went to Africa and I met the hash cookie man in Barcelona, and he was down in Casablanca.

And, you know, just stupid, crazy, out of control, weird life. But the drinking hadn't really gotten to the place where I couldn't, still, I could hit the I could hit the handbrake and I could back it down. Well, I was having a good time carrying a 40 pound pack, walking 10 or 12 miles a day, but my jeans didn't fit anymore after about 5 months. That was a problem. And I was just eating right and drinking a lot, but then I got real homesick and then I started getting sick sick and we went home.

I'm 4 months pregnant. The Al Anon's knew that already, didn't you? Never occurred to me that was going to happen. I don't know why. And so, here we are pregnant.

So I can't go out to California and be a hippie like I wanted to be. I had to stay in Ohio and have a baby. So we moved to Mansfield, Ohio. I don't recommend that, case you're thinking about it, especially if you're from here and I have this baby, and he's going to work and I'm staying home, and this is not working for me. This is not working.

So I tell him, we have to move to Florida. So we moved to Florida. I mean, I just geographic was just my life, you know? So I got down there and, he had a job and I didn't. And again, I'm in a house, I'm by myself, and I just always had this feeling there was more.

I had this hole in my soul, and I just had to be more, you know, and I didn't know how to find it, and I didn't know what to do. So I got a job. My daughter was 2, and I became the assistant director of the Polk County Bicentennial Committee. This was 1976, and we were putting on this show. Nice bicentennial show, a little medicine show, and Uncle Sam was the MC.

He was tall, he was good looking, and, he was a lot younger than I was. I was in my late 20s, he was in his real early 20s. And I looked at my life and I knew what was the matter. Him again. You know, I just made bad choices in men.

That's it. My mother agreed with me, by the way. And, so I decided it was time to throw my lot in with Uncle Sam, and away we go. My husband was not happy with this decision at all. And he tried to talk me out of it and what kind of life would my daughter have, but I said, it's going to be fun.

It'll be fun.' So I worked until the middle of the bicentennial year and the most exciting thing happened. Our little bicentennial medicine show got picked up by a promoter, and we were going to go to every state fair east of the Mississippi. And we traveled with Dan Fleener's Hurricane Hell Drivers. And on the breaks, I would get in the car we would go to places, and I'd get in the car, and they taught you how to flip. Oh, it was so great.

You know, I just loved it. This is my parents must have been so proud of a cum laude graduate of a fine university honing her skills with the Hell Drivers. We lived in a motor home. No, this is an honest program. We lived in the truck house, as my daughter used to call it.

Had kind of like that cab over the truck and it was great. And we lived one day at a time. You got paid every day, you got drunk every day, you moved every day, and I went to every state fair. I really did, I was all up and down the Eastern seaboard and over to we got almost to Iowa once, and then we turned around and came back. But the bicentennial year is all good things must ended.

Work again. Where where to go? Where to go? So we go to Orlando because I have a brother there who isn't too fond of me, but he is there. And in the truck house and I whip out my skills and I put on my nice little suit and my heels and I go out testing and all that stuff and I end up the executive director of a parenting program at a community college.

I was creative. I had a lot of novel approaches to parenting, as my daughter will tell you. And, it was hard because you had to drive you had to unplug all the stuff from the truck house and drive it to the inner room, kind of, around the corner. I had to sneak out, pull up my pantyhose, and away I went. You know, that was the deal.

So I got this job, we moved into like a normal place and, life is clipping along and I am starting to drink a little bit more. My husband's in college, he's getting his master's degree now and I'm getting that old feeling, getting that old feeling And I couldn't control it. When that feeling came, it was like being on a roller coaster and I had to do something. So what I did was that one of our board members came up to me and said, you know, I think you could do more than this job. I'm like, absolutely.

What did you have in mind? He said, I have the perfect job for you. He said, I believe you would be wonderful on my team. I said, What is your team? He said, I am in pharmaceutical sales.

You are going to sell drugs. I'm like, yes, indeedy. That works. You got a car, you got an expense account, you got insurance to pay for your gas. And I didn't realize I'd probably be a single mother a few more times, so I better get some money going here.

But, I took that job and the one barrier to my drinking had just been removed. We were living pretty poor up to that time, and I was making money like I'd never seen before with this company. Now I had my scruples. I don't want you to think I'm a drug user. Okay?

I didn't do that. I drove drunk a lot, but I felt breaking the law that way was much more reasonable than taking drugs, so I only took prescribed ones. I used to go to a I used to go to a psychiatrist and, pay him in cash. I had a great insurance program, but I felt he might tell somebody. I wanted him to like me, so I never told him this stuff about me.

And he prescribed drugs, and they didn't fit well with alcohol, so they had to go. And that's kind of how it was for me. And I started drinking a lot more. And I was a lot more out of control. And I got to the place where I just couldn't figure out what was wrong with my life.

I just couldn't figure it out. My husband and I were fighting more. He he was seeing me just deteriorating, but I was very good at my job and at the beginning I had done extremely well. You can go a long time on on results when you're in sales and people don't do anything to you. And I get stopped by cops and they'd let me go because I was young and cute and red headed.

And so one day I went out to this the Saints and Sinners' lounge, a lovely place, and I always remember what I'm wearing, which just tells you how shallow I really am, mashed potato queen that I've become. And I'm wearing this lovely blue suit with this little blouse on, blouse. I had a little altercation with a fellow who did not respect me and I I think I threw the first drink, but I am not sure. And then he threw 1 and then I threw 1, and you know how that goes. I was very upset.

And I had left my daughter. I had a daycare center that had evening hours, and she was in the daycare center and, I left her there. And so I ran out of the bar, crying, my usual hysterical self, went to get in my car and I turned the wrong way in a city that I had lived in for years years and I got lost in my own town. I was very drunk. And I pulled off the side of the road, and I don't know what this was about, but I took off my pantyhose, and took my purse and my pantyhose and locked them in the trunk.

I don't know what that was. I was drunk. And I hid in the bushes from something until a car came, and this car had those real dark windows, you know how you get them real dark. And the guy opened the door, one of those real sports cars things, and it had he had sunglasses on. Come on in, honey.

And I assumed that he would rape and kill me. I just thought that was logical at 3 o'clock in the morning. And so when I got in the car, I started screaming hysterically just to prepare myself for the trauma that was going to happen. And he's thinking, I've got this crazy broad, we've got to do something here. So he pushes me out the door in front of the 711, which is like a convenience store.

And in those days, it was open from 7 to 11. And I'm sitting on the bread racks crying until the store opened, and I bummed enough money to make a phone call. My daughter was at the daycare center, and I had forgotten. Now, I had not forgotten to pick her up. Get this part.

I had forgotten I was a mother. That's what alcohol did for me. The most precious person in my life, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. And I went home and I was devastated, just devastated of what my life had turned into and I made a list, kind of like New Year's resolutions, and I wrote 3 things: I want to be a better mother, I want to be a better wife, and I don't want to drink for 30 days, and I might as well have written 300 years. Because I had no idea how people made that happen.

No idea. But I knew I was knowing it was a problem, and I started trying to quit. I'd make it 2, 3 hours. You know, again, I was up to a bottle of scotch a day and then whatever drinks people bought for me when I was out. I'd drive with my daughter in the car when I was drunk.

I would run off the road and I can still hear her voice screaming as I'm trying to get the car right. I'm in and out of a blackout and she's screaming. I felt she was overreacting. I had no sense of what was going on with me. My husband was extremely tired of the way I was behaving.

My daughter's father, the husband before, we're now on 3, was extremely tired of the way I was behaving. He was threatening to take her away from me and I knew I had a problem. And it was him. That's how I worked. That's how my mind worked.

So I, began to look, trap and keep, that's how it works. And, I went to my husband's office one day and I met Prince Charming. I knew he was out there and I met him. He said, would you like a drink? Which to me is like, I love you.

He took me out to his car, he opened the trunk of the car, and in the trunk of the car were call brands and ice and cups. We were meant for each other. Now he had a liability that at the time I was unaware of, and I wish I had checked this out. He had an Al Anon wife. And had I known what kind of amends were coming in my life, life, I tell you what, I would have run like crazy.

But I had no sense. She did, I didn't. And so I decided that I was on to number 4. And away I went. And, my daughter was spending a lot of time with her father, which was a real good thing.

I wasn't a good mother. I wasn't a good mother, you know, and that just kills me to say that out loud, but it's the truth. I didn't have my child taken away from me and I believe it's the grace of God and moments between me and the women who have had that experience. I'm no different than you, if that's your experience. So my boyfriend, my undivorced boyfriend and I decided to go celebrate my brother's birthday, which was in November of 1981.

And we went up to Jacksonville, which is Duval County. And, we got up there and we decided to go out and drink. What a shock. So we go to this club and he and I got into one of our Let's Throw the Drinks fights. And he stormed out.

He didn't come back for a long time. I cannot have this. I do this. So I can't have one let and go if I don't have the other one in the other hand, that just doesn't work for me. So I got up there and went out outside to see what the trouble was.

I'd had a few cocktails by that time. And he was with an off duty Jacksonville police person who was dragging him handcuffed into the car. And I tried to explain to this cop this horrible mistake he was making and he threatened to take me too. And so off I went to the Duval County Jail to try to bail him out. Well, this is very difficult to do if somebody won't give their name or speak English.

And he would not speak English because he felt he'd been captured by the CIA. Now he's a Chicago boy, I don't know what the not English was all about, you know, but he was speaking something. And I'm going to every ATM in town trying to get money, but it doesn't matter because they can't book him because you won't tell him who he is. And, I went into the bathroom at the Duval County Jail. I don't know if you've ever been in a jail bathroom.

I don't wish it on you, but if you have, you know what I'm talking about. And the mirror is kinda cracked, and the smell is real interesting, real gamey. And I had on this lovely little expensive number. I always know what I'm wearing when tragedy strikes. Got this little outfit on and, I look in the mirror and I'm 33 years old and I look at the mirror and I say to myself, What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

And the mayor answered, and I heard, as if it were spoken, Mary, you're not a nice girl anymore, You keep this up, you're going to die. Well, you want to hear that. So finally, my boyfriend came to and asked to give his real name and the Duval County judge suggested we go back to Orange County and leave them alone. So we went back and we had a conference. We sat and talked about this seriously and I said, we've got a problem.' We said, we do.

We have a problem. What are we going to do?' And I said, 'I have an idea.' I love therapy. You have to know that. I just love it. You just pay people and they listen to you.

It's the coolest thing. And so I started speed dialing every therapist I'd ever met, and I could not get an appointment. And he said, I've got a better idea. I said, What's your idea? He said, I think I'm going to go to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'm like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let's not go overboard here. Yeah. We have a little problem, but it's our issues.

We get those worked out. This alcohol thing will just go away, you know. Well, he was pretty adamant. He thought his father had an alcohol problem and he did too, and he was going. My keen analytical mind kicked in, and I said to myself, if he goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, he will meet alcoholic women, and alcoholic women are sluts.

Now, you may wanna know how I knew this, Intuitively intuitively, I knew how to handle a situation that might have baffled you all, but I knew. So I made a plan. I decided to go with him in disguise. I planned my outfit very carefully. I wore a pair of blue jeans.

I wore a man's plaid shirt, big plaid shirt. I had some buttoning issues in those days. I was a little shaky, and the buttons, you know, how they don't quite match up, and you look a little odd, but I thought, what the heck? They're alcoholics. They're not gonna know.

And, I put on a man's a big baseball cap, giant sunglasses, and, away we went, away we went. So we get there, and I walk in, and I think, oh my God, we're in the wrong place. The church people are here. They're all looking like you all. They're clean and washed and happy and smiling, and there were women, bunches of women, and they didn't look real slutty to me, you know, but I could have been wrong.

Appearances can be deceiving as I was a good I was a good example of that. And, so we sat down and this girl comes running up to us. She's got little high heels on even. Hi. I'm Diane.

Are you new? And I'm like, how did she know? What a wise woman. So we sit in a circle, and I have never been to, heard of, I might have read about it some place. We sit in a circle and what I realized today is we had a first step meeting.

And so they were telling their stories, how they got into and I got this really sinking feeling, you know, and they got to me and they said, you want to say anything? And I said, my name's Mary, and I always wondered what a drunk looked like, and she looks a lot like me. I was home and I was scared and I was mad. I was not happy to see you, I'm sorry to tell you, I was not happy to be here, and but I had read that AA was kind of a cult, and so I came once a week, every Wednesday. I had great Wednesdays.

Every other day was horrible, but Wednesdays were great. And somebody said to me, this girl, Jeannie, from Tennessee, she really irritated me. And she said, maybe if you came more up and you have better days. So she invited me to a Tuesday meeting, and we've been going about 2 months by this time. Life was not better.

Going to meetings once a week, working no program and having no steps, it's just my idea of hell. You know, I was detoxing in the room. I was a I was a quart a day drinker. I was seeing spiders on the wall. I mean, I was physically in terrible shape.

So we go to this meeting after a couple of months of undrutness. I hate to even call it sobriety. And, the Al Anon wife is saying stuff like, let go and let god. You know, let's pray about it. I'm like, doesn't she get speed dial divorce?

What's wrong with this woman? You know, this is so quick and easy. I know how to do this. I'll help her. She didn't want my help.

And I needed to get married. I just couldn't be hanging around single. This doesn't work for me. So, we go to the meeting, and this guy, the chairperson, lets my husband share my husband oh my god. My boyfriend share, and, he tells the sad tale of his alanine wife and the no divorce, and the chairperson says, as chair people will do, keep coming back.

It will get better. And my boyfriend picked up the chair and threw it at him. Even in Central Florida, that is not good AA etiquette. Even there. So 2 big guys from the Navy base escorted him out saying, have you had a third step yet, buddy?' I'm crying my eyes out, crying my eyes out, and I'm thinking to myself, this is just great.

I'm about to get thrown out of the lowest of the low. I'm about to get kicked out of the losers club. This is just fabulous. And so we run out after the meeting. People try and talk to us.

I'm not talking to any of this because I know what's coming. They're going to tell us we can't come back anymore. And I didn't have my checkbook that night. Seconds and inches. Like a speaker, I've heard seconds and inches inches save our lives.

And, so I had to drive home to get the checkbook. So we get in the car and we're going to go drink. I've had enough of this nonsense. I am not happier. I am not feeling better.

2 months of no drinking is making me crazy. Everything is the same, except I can see it all. It is not good. Early sobriety is not good, you know, I mean, when you don't have anything else going for you. So I get home and I'm looking for the checkbook, and all of a sudden, there is AA police.

If anybody tells you otherwise, they are lying. I open the door. There's Jeannie, the Tennessee girl, and her big boyfriend. The boyfriend takes my boyfriend into one room and she looks at me and she says, Listen, honey, you are going to have to get down on your knees every day and beg God for your sobriety or you're going to get drugged. And I said, Excuse me, I don't believe that stuff.

And she said, I don't think I asked you what you believed, I think I just told you what to do. Well, nobody had ever done that to me before, but you know, that was another moment of grace because I knew she had my number and I knew I was going to die. I was going to die if I drank again. And so I did what she said. And she said, I want you to she said, here are the 2 things we need to do with you.

Number 1, you think you're so smart, you need to be d smarted and I'm one to do it. Number 2, you are no longer confident to talk to God. You can't do that yourself. So you will call me. I will call god.

I will discuss his your problem. I will call you back and tell you what god said. I will be your celestial telephone operator. And, you know, I bought this stuff. I did it.

I just figured I'm out of ideas, so every day, god help me stay sober. You know, that was how how reverent I was. She gave me a phone list and said, 'If you can't get me, start calling the phone list of the home group.' But there may come a day when you can't get anybody on the phone. If that day comes, you're going to have to talk to God yourself, but you're not ready. I'm like, okay.

And one Saturday night, about a month after that, I don't know if you've never had this happen, you might not know what I'm talking about, but there's a roller coaster that my emotions would get on. And you could feel it clicking, clicking, clicking, and you knew you knew it was going to go so far down and the only antidote for that was a drink. The only antidote. And I felt it going. I felt it going.

It's the first time I'd had that really powerful desire to drink. So I called Jeannie. She is not home in my hour of need. It is Saturday night. Where is she?

There's no meeting. What do alcoholics do on Saturday anyway? She should be home. So I got out the list, just like she told me. I went down the numbers.

Nobody in that home group was home. Liars, all liars, they said they'd be there, they weren't there, but it was the feelings getting bigger and stronger and bigger and stronger, and I had to do something. So I got on my knees and I said, God, if you're there, which I doubt, do something. And he did and I had a moment of the presence of the living God, right there. I was an atheist and 5 seconds later, there was no doubt, no doubt there was a God who loved me and cared about me, drunk or sober.

I could drink again but I could never not know again. My ignorance was gone. Well, I was blown away and the desire to drink left me at that moment. Well, I got on the phone to her the next morning to chastise her for her malfeasance and also to give her some big news. I said, Jeannie, there's a God.

She said, we knew that, Mary. Now start right in your 4 steps. No, I can't do that. I cannot do that Because I was a very bad girl. I did bad things.

I hurt people. And I was afraid. I was afraid nobody would want me around. But she insisted, and I did it, and we sat down together, and she did the most loving thing, and I still do it today when I sponsor women and listen to their 5th step. She said, before you start, I'm going to take your hands and we're going to pray and we're going to ask God to enter into this.